Chapter 137: Venom on Campus

Micah’s POV

Three days passed in the blink of an eye, and in that short span of time, the entire city fell straight into madness.

I was finally discharged from the hospital after forty-eight hours of constant neurological scans and observation. My neck was still stiff from Noah’s strike, and my wrists still bore faint reddish bruises where the ropes had cut into my skin, but physically, I was fine.

Mentally, I was coming apart.

While I was stuck in that sterile hospital bed, three more college athletes were abducted. First was a female track star snatched right from a campus parking lot. Then a collegiate boxer was taken on his way home from a gym. Yesterday afternoon, a soccer player was ambushed in broad daylight outside a convenience store.

The abductions weren’t confined to quiet alleys anymore. They had spread across the city like a wildfire... from university campuses to transit stations and hospital perimeters. The news anchors called it the worst public safety crisis in twenty years, and the city’s mayoral race was turning into an absolute slaughterhouse of political accusations.

Yesterday, the second I got out of the hospital, I took a cab straight to the Phoenix Club.

I needed to see Phoenix. I needed to look him in the eyes and tell him that I still cared, that I hadn’t forgotten about Sunny. When I walked into his private back office, the man looked like a walking ghost. His eyes were bloodshot, his hands were trembling with exhaustion, and his desk was covered in maps, traffic surveillance stills, and broken whiskey bottles. He was tearing the city apart with his crews, turning every stone in the dark to find his missing little sister, and coming up completely empty-handed.

Standing in front of him, I felt a wave of guilt so heavy and nauseating that I almost threw up on his Persian carpet.

I knew the truth. I knew who was pulling the strings.

My father.

Bernard Miller was the monster executing this entire nightmare. He was orchestrating Plan Mayor from the shadows, stealing innocent kids and holding them in hidden cages just to create mass panic so his syndicate’s puppet political candidate could sweep in, stage a heroic rescue, and win the election.

I stood there in Phoenix’s office, holding my breath, biting my tongue until I tasted iron. I wanted so badly to scream the truth. I wanted to tell Phoenix where to look, to tell him that my adoptive father was holding Sunny hostage.

But I couldn’t say a single word.

If I opened my mouth, Bernard would find out before the sun set. He would kill Sunny on the spot to silence the evidence, and then he would come for me. Noah had made that brutally clear before we left the hospital. Noah was calculating every move in the dark, preparing a counterstrike against Father that would tear the syndicate apart from the inside.

"Don’t do anything stupid, Micah," Noah had warned me, his cold eyes boring into mine. "You let me handle Bernard. You sit back, you stay quiet, and you watch."

So that was all I could do. Sit, watch, and choke on my own silence.

Tonight, the kitchen of our house was warm, filled with the aroma of freshly steamed rice, roasted chicken, and seasoned beef. I was packing hot, hearty meals into two heavy thermal carrier bags.

Noah and Damon needed to eat real food. For the last seventy-two hours, both of them had basically moved into the university’s ice arena. They were training like maniacs from dawn until three in the morning, running drills, and breaking hockey sticks across the boards.

Tomorrow was the official opening of the intercollegiate championship tournament.

The schedule was ruthless. The morning and afternoon were packed with track events, swimming relays, and basketball qualifiers. But the main event... the bloody spectacle the entire state was tuning in to watch... was the varsity hockey final tomorrow evening.

Our university was facing George Jenson’s school.

I didn’t give a damn about the other sports. Track, soccer, swimming... none of it mattered to me right now. My entire focus was locked on the ice rink. George Jenson’s hands were permanently ruined, four of his lackeys were dead in the dirt, and his remaining teammates were hungry for blood. They were going to skate onto that ice tomorrow with the sole intention of crippling Noah and Damon in front of thousands of spectators.

I zipped up the first thermal bag, packing Noah’s favorite side dishes along with three bottles of electrolyte water.

Then I turned to the second bag.

Damon.

My chest gave a quiet, involuntary thud as I carefully packed his containers. Alongside the meat and rice, I had added a box of sweet French pastries from the bakery downtown... the exact kind he had brought to our house the night Father almost sent me to the army.

I still hadn’t properly thanked him for saving my life at that construction site. When I was falling off that third-floor slab, plummeting toward those rusted iron rebar spikes, Damon had thrown his own bruised body over the edge, anchoring that net with his bare hands while the nylon shredded his skin. He had taken on that insane risk just to pull me back from the grave.

I owed him everything. Packing him a decent dinner was the absolute least I could do.

Just as I clicked the lock on the second carrier bag, my old phone buzzed loudly against the marble counter.

A notification from the campus media department’s group chat lit up the cracked screen.

Raven: URGENT ALL-HANDS MEETING. Room 304, Media Arts Wing. Exactly 8:00 PM tonight. We have mandatory accreditation badges to distribute and emergency broadcast protocols to finalize for tomorrow’s games. Do not skip this. If you are not in your seat, your press pass will be revoked.

My eyes widened. I quickly tapped the screen to check the digital clock in the corner.

It was 7:05 PM.

An hour until the meeting started. The media arts building was located right across the central quad from the ice arena. If I left right now, I could attend Raven’s briefing, grab my official press credentials for tomorrow’s match, and walk straight over to the locker rooms to deliver the food to Noah and Damon by nine o’clock.

"Perfect," I muttered to myself.

I typed a quick thumbs-up reaction into the group chat, grabbed my light jacket, and hauled both heavy thermal bags off the kitchen counter. I locked the front door behind me, jogged down the private driveway, and flagged down a passing cab at the main road.

"University central campus," I told the driver as I slid into the back seat.

The ride took twenty minutes. Looking out the window, the shift in the city’s atmosphere was impossible to miss. There were armored police cruisers stationed at almost every major intersection, their red and blue strobe lights flashing silently against the evening dusk.

When the cab pulled up near the gates of our university, my jaw tightened.

The campus looked like a high-security prison camp. The administration had doubled the perimeter guards, set up metal detectors at the vehicle gates, and stationed armed security teams in bright yellow vests along every major walkway. On paper, it looked like the university was taking every possible measure to ensure student safety before the big games.

In reality, it was an absolute joke.

Noah had pulled me aside yesterday and laid it out to me: Do not trust a single uniform on that campus, Micah. The Vice Chancellor is on Bernard’s payroll. That security presence is just cheap public relations theatre to make the board look competent. If the syndicate wants someone taken, those guards will turn their backs and open the gates themselves.

Remembering Noah’s warning made a cold shiver run down the back of my neck.

"Here we are, kid. Have a good night at the games," the driver said as the car came to a stop in front of the plaza.

"Thanks for the ride," I murmured, handing him the cash and stepping out onto the pavement.

The campus was packed with students, visiting athletes, and local fans. Huge satin banners hung between the ancient oak trees, advertising tomorrow’s tournament matchups. Bright string lights were strung across the central walkway, and commercial food stalls were already setting up along the grass, filling the air with the smell of roasted nuts, popcorn, and exhaust fumes.

The density of the crowd was overwhelming. People were shoulder-to-shoulder, laughing, yelling, taking selfies, and shoving their way through the narrow paths between the vendor tents.

I gripped the heavy straps of the two food bags tightly, pulling them close against my chest to keep them from getting knocked out of my hands.

"Excuse me... sorry, coming through," I mumbled repeatedly, ducking my head and trying to squeeze through the tight clusters of visiting students near the fountain.

I turned the corner toward the stone archway leading into the Media Arts courtyard. The noise of the festival crowd began to fade behind me as I entered the quieter, dimly lit pathway flanking the old lecture halls. I let out a soft sigh of relief, shifting the weight of the bags in my arms, glad to be out of the press of the crowd.

I took two steps forward onto the paved courtyard.

"He’s the one, is he not?"

A sharp, mocking female voice sliced through the quiet air from the shadows near the building entrance.

I froze dead in my tracks.

My stomach dropped into a cold pit.

Standing right in the center of the walkway, completely blocking the entrance to Room 304, were three girls dressed in high-end designer clothes.

The girl on the left, wearing a cropped leather jacket, nodded with a cruel smirk. "Yes, Jenny. That’s him. He’s Noah Miller’s younger brother. And from what everyone on campus is whispering... he’s probably the little plaything Damon Silver is dating now."

My breath locked tight in my throat.

The girl standing in the middle took a slow, confident step forward.

It was her.

The exact same girl from the mall. The girl who had held Damon’s arm like she owned him. The girl who had made Damon turn his back on me while those Jenson thugs held a gun to my spine.

Jennifer Riley.

Her expensive heels clicked sharply against the paving stones. She folded her arms across her chest, her sharp, heavily made-up eyes scanning me from the tips of my scuffed sneakers to the collar of my oversized jacket. Her lips curled into an expression of pure, unadulterated disgust.

"My Damon?" Jennifer sneered, her voice dripping with venom as she took another aggressive step toward me. "Damon is dating... this pathetic piece of trash?"

She stopped less than three feet from where I stood, looking down her nose at me like I was a cockroach crawling across her bedroom floor.

"He’s so puny I could stomp on him," she laughed coldly, tilting her head. "Tell me, little boy. What kind of dirty tricks did you use to get his attention?"

Puny? Stomp on me?

I stared at her, clutching the two heavy food bags against my ribs, my heart hammering a chaotic rhythm against my chest.

Ah... this is so completely fucked.