The meeting
Prologue
"How could you lie to me!"
The scream tore from my throat, and Alessandro froze. A single tear tracked down his cheek, but I watched it with a cold heart—it was an act, just like everything else.
"Stay away from me," I said, my voice dropping to a dangerously level skin-crawl. "I never want to see your face again. You absolutely disgust me."
"Please, Mercy... listen to me, I—" He reached out, his fingers trembling, but I lashed out and slapped his hand away.
Never again. I wouldn’t be his plaything or his fool. I turned and walked away, staring straight ahead at the blurring horizon. I didn't dare look back, because I knew if I saw his face just one more time, I’d lose my nerve and run right back into his arms.
~How it started~
Chapter One: The Meeting
The damp of Blackthorn University didn't just sit on your skin. It got into your bones and made a home there.
I stood in front of Whitaker Hall, clutching my leather notebook like it was the only warm thing left in England, and stared up at the Gothic spires. Black stone, ivy that looked like dried blood running down the walls, and over every arch that stupid, beautiful crest — a thorned rose strangling a snake. *Blackthorn University: Veritas in Tenebris.* Truth in darkness. Pretentious. Perfect.
It was a far cry from Pretoria. There, the sun made my skin glow. Here, even my caramel skin looked muted under the drizzle. I adjusted my glasses for the third time in two minutes, checked my phone — no new messages — and told myself I wasn't cold.
That was a lie too.
"You look like you're about to stage a coup, or perhaps just a very intense library session."
The voice came from behind me, smooth, low, with an accent I couldn't place. Italian, maybe, softened by expensive English schooling.
I turned.
He was leaning against a matte black bike that was parked in the Founder's spot. No student is allowed to have a motorbike on Blackthorn campus — it's in the handbook, page 47, I checked — except apparently him. Security walked right past it like it was invisible.
He was tall, lean muscle under a thick cream sweater that probably cost more than my flight here. Hair almost black, damp from the rain, just long enough to graze his ears. But his eyes — God, his eyes were a startling, deep ocean blue against the grey. Warm and deceptively kind.
He wasn't looking at me like a girl. He was looking at me like a problem he'd already solved.
"I'm Alessandro," he said, with a small, polite nod. "You look lost."
"I'm finding my bearings," I said, voice steadier than I felt.
He smiled, and for a second the cold didn't bite so hard. "Blackthorn doesn't do bearings. It does allegiances. Come on. I'll show you where they hide the good coffee that isn't just damp wool water. Must be strange being here on scholarship, so far from home. Pretoria to Blackthorn is a long way."
My stomach dropped.
I stared at him.
"How do you know I'm from South Africa? How do you know I'm from Pretoria? How do you know I'm on scholarship?"
His smile didn't falter. If anything, it sharpened, just a fraction.
"Blackthorn is a small place," he said, like that explained anything. "And you say Pretoria like someone who misses the sun. It wasn't hard to guess."
That was a lie. It had to be a lie. I said nothing about Pretoria. I said nothing about a scholarship. I was wearing a plain wool coat, no uniform, no lanyard.
He knew. He already knew who I was before I opened my mouth.
"I don't take coffee from strangers who know my file, Alessandro," I said, pulling my coat tighter.
"Smart girl," he said, pushing off his bike, that ocean gaze never leaving mine. "Most scholarship girls spend their first week trying to be liked. You're already trying to be invisible. That's why you'll last longer than they did."
That was the first lie, I realized later. He didn't want to show me coffee. He wanted to see how easily a girl who had already been researched could still be undone by a boy who looked like he already owne
