The F King: A Bad Boy Romance(33)

“Yes! Thank you! This solves everything!”

Sarina wrapped her arms around my neck and gave me a hug and kiss. We lost our balance a little as the driver turned into the driveway for Cumberland, but managed to avoid any clashes of teeth.

The first thing I saw when I stepped out of the car was that short chick from Sarina’s floor, Millie, standing outside the dorm with her hands on her hips. She threw up her hands in mock disgust when I helped Sarina out of the car.

“Are you fucking serious right now?” she asked, coming over to us.

“What?” asked Sarina.

“I just walked home from a date at the messiest house I’ve ever seen, by myself because “the game” was on, and you turn up like this? It’s not fair.” Millie turned to me. “You got any friends?”

I laughed. “Um… they’re all taken, I’m afraid.”

“You coming up?” asked Millie. “I’d like to grill you in the common room about why men are such a-holes.”

“Sounds like fun, but I’ve got somewhere else I need to be tonight.”

“Such a shame.” Sarina slipped her arms inside my jacket and cuddled up to me.

I would have loved to come up and christen Sarina’s bed with her, but my interrogation serum from hell was at a stage where I had a relatively small window to put the final touches on, or the whole batch was fucked. Either way I was glad to go without playing the agony aunt for Millie.

“Hey! You should come to the Halloween party! Dress up! Guests are allowed!” She poked Sarina in the arm.

“Oh… I’m not really sure Ryan’s interested in that…” said Sarina.

I remembered the Halloween parties from my college years, they were invariably incredible boozefests and the source of many a story for everybody who attended. Lots of fun. Plus, it would do my heart good to see the sexy thing snuggled up to me dressed as Sarina the Slutty Teenage Witch or something.

“I’m in,” I said.

“Really?” Sarina looked up at me.

“Oh yeah, those parties are always memorable, if you can remember them at all. But, listen, I’ve gotta go. Talk soon, OK?”

“OK.”

Sarina rose up on the tips of her toes and kissed me before letting go and heading towards the entrance with Millie. It was almost enough to make me forget about the potent chemicals bubbling away in my lab, but not quite.

“Bye. Talk soon?”

Sarina nodded and the girls both waved me off. I re-entered the car, and the last thing I saw as I was driven away was Sarina and Millie heading towards the entrance of Cumberland, with a couple other girls rushing out to get a debriefing on their dates.





Ryan





There were always a few Acardi soldiers around the lab, and even in the lab if it was just before a top to bottom clean anyway. They were there for security, to deter any stupid motherfuckers from trying to rob the place, or at least hold the fort while reinforcements came if a serious threat was posed to the operation.

Now that the latest batch of my interrogation serum was ready, all I had to do was wait for one that I hadn’t questioned before. There was a constant rotation of new people, so all I had to do was sit here at my computer with the bait out and see what I caught.

I’d never seen any of the soldiers on duty today, so it was the equivalent of an untapped fishing spot. I made sure my desk was clean, except for a Ziploc bag containing small sheet of absorbent paper divided into small squares and decorated with various cartoony pictures and other designs. They looked just like the acid tabs I was going to pretend they were.

It was around five o’clock in the afternoon when the greasiest mobster I’d ever seen wandered through the lab as my team packed up for the day, ahead of a major scrub-down they were doing in the morning. His hairstyle was a straight-up nineteen-fifties slick-back that may or may not have been assisted by copious amounts of lard and black shoe polish.

“Hey, what’s that you got there?” he asked.

“Hmmm? Just some LSD I got on the weekend. It’s getting a bit of a reputation in the club scene as some pretty good shit, a well-deserved reputation in my experience, so I brought it in to run some tests to see if I could figure out what they’re doing differently, and maybe who “they” are.”

“You… uh… need to test all of it?”

“No, why?”

“Well, I hooked up with this broad a couple weeks back. Real raver kinda girl, likes to wear hotpants, crop top and a glow in the dark pacifier when she goes dancin’, you know what I’m sayin’?”

“Yeah, I know the type,” I said.

“After the rave’s over, she likes to suck dick and I like to be around when she feels like that. We were gonna go out this weekend, so maybe I could grab some tabs and we’ll be the life of the party, whaddya say?”