Chapter 298: The Phone Kept Ringing

The moment Lucas stepped outside the arena, the crowd came with him.

Students filled the entrance and spilled across the walkway, still riding the high of the finals. Some were shouting his name. Others held their phones above their heads. A few pushed forward with cameras already open, desperate for one picture with the player who had just turned Ashford’s biggest game of the season into a spectacle.

"Lucas! Lucas!"

"One picture, bro! Just one!"

"Man, you can’t leave yet!"

"Lucas, over here!"

Someone even yelled, "Bro, I’ll give you my whole scholarship for a selfie!"

Lucas glanced over.

"Keep your scholarship."

The guy immediately shouted back, "Then just give me the picture!"

He kept moving anyway.

There was something restless in the crowd now. Everyone wanted a piece of the moment, and the more he tried to cut through them, the more bodies seemed to appear in front of him.

Devon stayed close behind, using his shoulders to clear space.

"Give him some room!"

"Back up!"

"Let him through!"

Lucas could have forced a path.

He didn’t.

These people were celebrating with him. There was no reason to knock somebody over just because he was in a hurry.

"Easy," he muttered. "I’ll get through."

Then he saw the parking lot.

His steps slowed.

The Bugatti was still there.

So were the police.

Several patrol cars had blocked off part of the lot, red and blue lights flashing across the pavement in hard, repeating bursts. A crowd had gathered near the vehicles, but the mood out here was nothing like the celebration behind him. Nobody was laughing. Nobody was chanting.

Lucas’s eyes narrowed.

*What the hell happened?*

He started walking faster.

Then he saw them.

Three figures near the ground.

His expression changed at once.

Daisy was crouched beside Mia, hair messy, clothes wrinkled from whatever had taken place. Her face was flushed, and tears had left faint tracks down her cheeks as she held Mia’s hand with both of hers.

"Mia..."

Her voice trembled.

"Mia, wake up. Come on. Look at me."

Lucas stopped.

For a moment, his mind refused to line the pieces up cleanly.

Mia was lying against the pavement, barely moving. Her face looked pale beneath the swelling around one eye, and a thin streak of blood still clung to the corner of her mouth.

"Daisy?"

Daisy looked up.

The second she saw him, whatever strength she had been holding onto finally broke.

"Lucas!"

She rushed forward and wrapped both arms around him, voice shaking against his chest.

"They tried to break into your car!"

The words came out fast and uneven.

"We tried to stop them. We protected it, but they attacked us. They beat Mia and Debbie. I tried calling you, but you weren’t answering!"

Lucas stood completely still.

His eyes moved past Daisy.

Toward the car.

Then back to the people on the ground.

This was the last thing he had expected to find after walking out of a championship celebration.

He placed a hand on Daisy’s shoulder.

"Move."

She released him at once.

Lucas crouched beside Mia.

"Mia."

No response.

He checked her breathing carefully.

She was breathing.

Weakly, but she was.

His jaw tightened.

He looked over at Debbie next.

She was sitting against the side of the car, conscious but clearly shaken. One side of her face was swollen, and she kept a hand pressed to her cheek like the pain was still settling in.

"Debbie?"

"I’m okay," she managed.

Lucas nodded once.

Then his attention returned to Mia.

She was in worse shape than either of them.

A strange silence settled over him.

The crowd was still there.

The police were still there.

People were still talking.

But almost none of it reached him.

The Bugatti sat only a few feet away. For a moment, that had been the only thing in his mind when Devon first mentioned trouble outside. Now he could barely bring himself to look at it.

He slipped one arm beneath Mia’s shoulders and the other beneath her knees.

"Get the door."

Daisy moved immediately.

Lucas lifted Mia carefully, keeping her head against his chest.

"Easy..."

His voice was quiet now.

Nothing like the confident tone that had filled the arena minutes earlier.

He carried her to the car and only looked back at the parking lot after she was safely inside.

The three men were still being held by the police.

Lucas stared at them.

His face went cold.

*So these are the bastards.*

He looked at the car.

Then at Mia.

The anger in his chest had already changed shape.

This was no longer about a scratched Bugatti.

Someone had hurt his girls.

And Lucas was not the kind of man who forgot something like that.

He closed the car door gently.

Lucas stared at the three men for a long second longer.

The cold in his eyes did not disappear, but it settled into something tighter and more controlled. This was not finished. Not even close. But Mia came first. Once she recovered, he would deal with the bastards properly. There would be time for that.

He forced the worst of the anger down and looked from the police to Daisy and Debbie.

"Book a ride," he said. "Come back to the house. I need to take care of Mia, and the car won’t hold all of us the way she is now."

Both of them understood at once.

"Go," Debbie said quickly. "We’ll be right behind you."

Daisy nodded, still wiping at her face. "Just take her. Hurry."

Lucas did not waste another second.

Around them, the watching crowd had already shifted from curiosity into something more emotional. A few girls near the police line stared with open envy as he lifted Mia and settled her carefully into the car. Some of them looked like they were half-praying for the same kind of attention, the same protective urgency, the same arms carrying them away like they mattered that much.

One girl muttered under her breath, almost to herself, "If he just hugged me like that, I’d be satisfied..."

Lucas never even glanced their way.

The police helped clear a path through the edge of the lot. The moment the road opened, he put the car in gear and pulled out hard.

The engine roared as the Bugatti shot away from the arena lights.

---

Daisy and Debbie remained behind, standing close together while they waited for their ride.

All around them, eyes kept drifting over. Some of the boys watched with open interest. Some of the girls watched with something sharper and less friendly. Whispers moved through the people still lingering near the lot.

How did Lucas know them?

Why were those three the ones he ran to?

Why did he look at them like that?

Envy sat plainly on more than a few faces.

Daisy kept her arms folded and her eyes on the road. Debbie stayed quiet beside her, one hand still near her swollen cheek, both of them only wanting the ride to arrive so they could leave the staring behind.

---

Lucas made the trip home in about thirty minutes.

He drove with no patience for traffic and no interest in careful speed. The city lights blurred past the windows while his mind stayed fixed on the girl in the passenger seat. Every few seconds, his eyes flicked toward Mia’s face, checking her breathing, checking the swelling, checking that nothing had worsened.

When he finally pulled into the compound, he barely shut the car off before he was out and around to her side.

He scooped her up again and carried her straight into the house.

His phone was already ringing when he stepped into the house.

He threw it onto the living room chair without even checking the screen and took the stairs two at a time with Mia in his arms. In the bedroom, he lowered her onto the bed carefully, adjusting the pillow beneath her head before stepping back just long enough to bring out the Soul Awakening Needles.

His hands were steady now.

Whatever rage had been burning in the parking lot had been pushed behind the work in front of him. He positioned the needles with practiced precision and injected them into Mia, focusing entirely on pulling her back toward recovery.

Downstairs, the phone he had abandoned kept ringing.

And ringing.

And ringing.