Entrance Bay Academy was one of the top ten prep schools in the country and as such, it was ludicrously expensive to attend and boasted a gorgeous campus. Headmaster Adams’ office was probably the nicest office I had ever seen in my life, and William was a lawyer so I’d seen a lot of them. The lower half of the walls were paneled in deep mahogany wood with navy blue paint on the rest, the other school colors reflected in the yellow accent pillows on the leather couch and the emerald green curtains and lush grey green rugs. Adams himself sat in an enormous wing-backed, tufted leather chair with, I kid you not, a pipe growing cold in its placeholder on his empirical desk.
He suited the room. It was more than just his grey and green tweed blazer with the elbow patches and his beautifully maintained moustache. He oozed authority and social elegance. He was large, having once been young and fit whereas now he was old and soft over a layer of lingering muscle. His great big cloud of white hair was parted to reveal his florid scalp and he was taken with crossing his hands over his chest like some kind of academic Santa Claus.
I quite liked him. He was easy for me to read and even easier for me to please because he was the type of man my father and William had been.
I did not like him at the moment, as he scowled at me from under his fuzzy eyebrows.
“You’ve put me in quite the position, Mrs. Irons,” he said finally, after studying me for several moments.
I didn’t understand how it had come to this. I’d arrived, irate, with a terrified Carson and an unflappable King in tow, explained how things had unfolded to the Headmaster then I had been promptly ordered to wait in the reception while he spoke first with both of them, and then individually to each.
Now, he had beckoned me back into his office and I felt very much like a naughty child once more called into my father’s study.
“You see,” Adams continued, “Carson Gentry’s mother is sisters with Mayor Lafayette’s wife and his father owns half of this town. It would be unfortunate if I had to telephone them about this little mishap as they contribute annually and generously to this school.”
“Headmaster—” I started.
He lifted a single finger and wagged it. “Now, I agree there must be something done about Mr. Garro. Normally, I would suspend him at the very least but his father has made it quite clear that he expects Kyle to be treated with above normal reverence.”
“’S not above normal anything,” the deepest voice I’d ever heard sounded from over my shoulder. “My boy fucked up, fine. Strike one. You want ‘im out of your prissy little school because you think my boy is beneath you when the truth is, he’s fuckin’ better than us all.”
I swiveled in my seat, eager beyond belief to match the voice to the name.
Zeus Garro filled the doorway the way I knew he would and still he took my breath away. Not like King did, with his sheer beauty, but because Zeus was the biggest, scariest man I’d ever laid eyes on.
He was at least six-foot-five, quilted with muscles so dense that I’d break my finger if I poked him, I was certain of it. Like his son, he had a riot of curly, wavy hair but it was longer and darker, brown at the roots lightening to sun soaked golden at the ends. It was touchable hair that gave him a ‘just fucked’ quality that didn’t help dampen his incredible sexual charisma. He had a lush mouth surrounded by a short, well-groomed beard, and thick lashed eyes just a shade more silver than King’s. He should have been beautiful, a kind of gorgeous that you could have cried over. Instead, the hard set of his jaw, the bumps in his strong nose that denoted it at least twice or thrice broken, and the hard glint in those icy eyes turned me to stone with fear.
Zeus Garro was not someone you fucked with.
And it was clear as he moved his enormous, tattooed bulk through the elegant room to stand before the desk with crossed arms that he felt Headmaster Adams was trying to fuck with him.
Adrenaline kicked into gear through my blood and brought me to that dark place of joy as I waited for him to rip into Adams.
I wasn’t disappointed.
“Mr. Garro, you have to understand that Kyle was trying to sell drugs to a student,” Adams began righteously.
“The fuck he was,” Zeus growled. He tipped his head my way without looking at me. “She tell you that?”
“Well, of course!”
Zeus swiveled his head my way in a move so smooth and menacing that it made goose bumps break out over my skin. “You tell him that?”