The car was a black Mercedes Benz. It was the same car Damien and Antonio took me in. Speaking of Damien and Antonio...

There were no cars behind me.

That was unsettling. Then I realized what was happening.

Shit! This car could be tracked!

Nevertheless I drove to my college. The institute made me feel safe. It was my ground and I was dangerous there. There was really nowhere else. If I went to my apartment I was a sitting duck. I had no fighting chance.

But where the fuck was I?

I switched on the GPS. I didn't type out any directions. I just took in the surroundings and roads till I recognized the highway to the university. Getting there was atleast a two hour drive. Two hours.

I'm an atheist but at that point I prayed to every single God I'd known or heard of. Even the Egyptian Gods (don't judge. I had three murderers behind me).

I wondered if it was possible to resist hypnosis. Somehow I doubted it. I knew the basics. It was a state of hyperfocus. You focus on something too much and you are open to suggestions. In therapeutic hypnotherapy you were safe. For example, the man who killed himself. If someone told him to slit his throat he wouldn't have done it. You need the corporation of the subject. Hypnosis wasn't mind control. But if you have him a knife when he was distracted and told him that his neck was itching badly and that he should scratch it. Well...I preferred to forget what I'd just witnessed.

Adrian was more of a psychopath than a psychologist.

There were different ways to hypnotize someone. But you needed the subject to be willing. I guessed that's where Adrian's natural talent for manipulation and intelligence came in.

Nothing was impossible. And it was scary as fuck. Images of me smiling with my throat slit kept flashing through my head. It was going to be a long two hours.

I drove to the university in silence. The drive calmed me down. The gates were shut. They'd open only in the morning now and it was 3am.

I ditched the car and looked around. Nobody there. I'd have to climb the gate. Thank God I'd worn something sensible. Though I was still barefoot.

I climbed the gates with ease. Dylan had taught me how. Dylan. I had to find him. Maybe another Mafia family had him. Thankfully not the DeLuca.

I despised monarchy. It didn't make sense to me. Power was supposed to be hard earned it wasn't supposed to depend on whom your mother fucked nine months before your birth.

Frankly, I could not think of anyone more terrifying than Adrian. He seemed fit for the job.

My feet were hurting from the bite of the metal, carefully, I lowered myself to the ground. I stumbled ahead but atleast I was in the institute.

I walked across the moonlit lawns of the campus. I wanted to see what was up with Roy, but first things first. I walked over to the faculty houses and reached the living quarters. The door was bolted and locked with a padlock.

I walked over to the chemistry lab. It was open, thankfully. I snuck in. The university was asleep and for the first time in three days, I felt safe.

Using a trick I had borrowed from my friend in high school, I picked up some Nitric acid and some hydrochloric acid. Both of them were industrial strength.

I walked back over to Roy's house, nearly invisible in the night.

I mixed the two chemicals together in their approximate proportions to form Aqua Regia. A dangerous acid that could dissolve even gold and platinum. Iron was child's play.

Within minutes the lock fell to the ground with a dull thud. I unbolted the door and stepped in. I used the flashlight I had picked up from the lab to illuminate the way.

The place was a gigantic mess. It looked like something had exploded in there.

There were papers strewn everywhere. This place hadn't been cleaned in a long, long time. I wouldn't be surprised to find prehistoric remains under the mess.

Even my room was messy but navigating this house was like a fucking obstacle course.

There was nothing interesting to be found. But surely he must have left something behind, either by accident or on purpose. Depends on whether he ran away or was kidnapped.

I couldn't deny that I was a bit concerned. The only reason my physics was strong was because he sat and taught me the entire subject. I hoped he was okay.

I kind of felt guilty, steering clear of him when I found out he had ties with the Mafia. Not even going back to thank him.

I opened the door to his room.

If I thought the rest of the house was a mess, it was nothing compared to the condition of the room.

I switched on the computer. There was something that was eating away at me for a long time.

I typed in 'Adrian DeLuca.'

Holy shit.

Okay first off, I thought it was Adrian, but it was actually Adrien. With an 'e'. But fuck that pedantry.

I'd expected him to be smart but this guy was a fucking genius. He was handsome, charming and smart. Either a god or a complete psychopath.

A news article showed the DeLuca heir graduating Harvard with honours at fifteen. His mother, Carelia DeLuca was smiling next to him. He was a cute kid. Another article showed him receiving a PhD at nineteen for his work in psychology that made him a candidate for the Nobel Prize. He had an IQ of about 160.

Fuck.

If I thought he was attractive before, this made him sexy as hell. Yep, I'm one of the weirdos that thought intelligence was hot.

Under different circumstances, I would have been thrilled to meet him. Unfortunately, I was running away from him. You know, because he wanted to kill me.

The strangest part was that every picture I pulled up usually showed Adrian alone, or with his mother, Carelia. Guess his dad wasn't exactly a father of the year candidate. I didn't have too much pity for him.

My own father wanted me to pursue law but when I found science to be my calling, I was informed that I had to pay for college myself.

My mom paid for part of it. I paid for the rest. My relationship with father dear were still rocky but it was getting better-ish.

Carelia DeLuca.

I did a quick internet search. Okay, Adrian definitely got his looks from her. And the intelligence from his father. To say Carelia DeLuca was beautiful was an understatement. She was resplendent. She had the charm of a black and white movie star. Classic lips, sharp features.

Wow.

The computer was acting up. It was getting slow. I frowned. Something else was going on. I opened the IDE and started typing the code to pass the firewall. Within seconds I was in. Id already done it before.

What I saw made no sense. There were no blueprints. Instead there was a weird string of letters and numbers that made no sense to me.

What the heck?

"He's nuts." I murmured to myself.

"Still smarter than you." A soft voice spoke from behind me, causing me to nearly fall off the chair.