"The last thing we talked about last time?" Nathaniel repeated out loud before realizing what it was about. "Oh, you are talking about Roman Levy, the chapter leader of the Kappa Beta Sigma fraternity."
"Yes, that's the one. Following your allegations, I was sent to investigate and I met with him. He denied knowing anything about what his fellow brothers did and seemed quite angry at being asked about it. He also was very interested in knowing where the information came from and where he would be abusive with his girlfriend, an information I did not give of course. I also interviewed her and even if she did not come forth with information about it, I could clearly see that she was afraid but unfortunately, without testimony, we can't do anything about this."
"Despite our personal opinions, we can't act without evidence. Anyway, this is not the reason why I summoned you today. Late last night, the chapter leader in question was brutally assaulted on the Campus. He was found early this morning battered, naked and nails threw a wall. And that was not a figure of speech, he was literally nailed to the wall with both of his hands."
"Not to mention that he had a five inches cut near his groin area with the message 'Next time' near it." Joshua grumbled under his breath with a pained expression.
Nathaniel did not have to fake surprise hearing those words.
"You didn't know? This is all over the news!" Joshua exclaimed.
"No, like I said before, I was resting in my grandparents' home in the Hamptons. Resting and watching the news are two mutually excluding concepts."
Seeing the Dean not speaking but looking at him intently, Nathaniel realized something.
"Wait, you believe I have something to do with this!?" He exclaims.
"Not you per say but the last time you were here, you told me about your family being extremely protective of you, maybe they took it upon themselves to act on your behalf."
Nathaniel simply shook his head.
"That's not how this works, if my family were to move on this issue, they would go on the man who hit me, not him. He never attacked me, intentionally or otherwise. No, you are looking in the wrong direction, in more ways than one."
"What do you mean?" Joshua asked.
"Well, it's easy, based on what you described to me of the attack, you are looking for rage. You don't go around nailing people to the wall and threatening to cut his dick off if you are not enraged. Am I disgusted by his behavior? Obviously. Angry about what he's putting her through, you bet that I am but I'm not enraged. Moreover, you really think I would jeopardize my entire future to do something like that? You should know by now that I'm talented enough to give him what he deserves using our legal system."
"You are making some good points." The Dean nodded.
"If you are still doubtful, I can give you at least a dozen names, people who can testify that I wasn't even near New York last night." Nathaniel offers.
"That will not be necessary, Nathaniel. I just summoned you here today to have more information because I know how candid you are with them. I don't believe you were responsible if that made you feel better." The Dean explained.
"It does. Now, if that is all, I would like to go home." Nathaniel nodded.
"You are free to go, thanks again for coming by."
"No worries." Nathaniel answered before getting to his feet.
He had his hand on the handle of the door when he suddenly stopped and turned to Joshua.
"Joshua, where was he found this morning?"
Surprised by the direction addressed his way, he looked at the Dean for confirmation before answering once he got it.
"West 115th street and Amsterdam avenue, on a back alleyway. Why?"
"You visit them both during your investigation, from that place, where is she residing?"
"I didn't think about it but now that you are mentioning it, she lives almost next door." Joshua realized.
"It begged the question, what he was doing here in the middle of the night, right?" Nathaniel mused out loud before leaving the office.
*****
Later that day, Nathaniel and Na-Yung were walking into a pub on seventh street. The ambiance inside the pub was noisy to say the least with a rock band that Nathaniel did not know playing their instruments off to the crowd who was ecstatic and dancing on the floor crazily, trying and failing to follow the tempo of the song. Waddling around the crowd and a lot of sitting people busy drinking, Nathaniel and Na-Yung made their way to the most remote booth and took place in it, effectively bringing their conversation to a halt.
"What the hell are you two doing here!?"
"How did you get in there!? You both are not old enough to be allowed into bars!"
"How did you find out that we were here!?"
Immediately upon taking place here, Nathaniel and Na-Yung were pestered with questions from the group.
"Okay, let me answer you one at a time. We were sad to see a team bonding exercise and we were the only two not invited, that hurt Camilla you know. Jon, no I didn't beat the doorman to get in, we are just two young people from rich families and doormen especially in New York are good at smelling money, we didn't even have to have fake ID's to get in. Capitalism, right? And for the last question, it was easy Hans, I put a GPS tracker on your shoes to know where you all are at all times." Nathaniel explains with a deadpan expression on his face.
There was a long silence after that and Nathaniel held his expression in place until he saw Hans reaching for one of his shoes.
"Nah, I'm messing with you. Come on, I managed to track one of the most obscure killing organisations in the world. Do you really think that it was hard to find you? Especially when I heard you talk about that pub before?."
"Why are you here Nathaniel?" Lucie asked.
"Oh, that's easy. I gave Camilla an assignment. Something relatively easy, protect a college girl that is being terrorized by her ex boyfriend and beat him up without inflicting long term physical harm if he gets too close to her. Now, today I learned that the guy had his hands nailed to a wall and he was cut near his groin. What's up with that, Camilla?"
"He had a knife on him! That's why I cut him with it, to teach him and I was careful with the nails, I made sure to dodge bones and nerves in the hand. He is just going to feel it when it's going to rain for the rest of his life, no big deal!"
"That's what I would call a long lasting effect." Jon grumbled under his breath, earning himself Camilla glare.
"Did you just say something?"
"No… no." Jon answered, backing off knowing how unreasonable she was.
Not satisfied in the slightest by Camilla's explanation, Nathaniel was going to ripe her a new one when he felt something. That was a stare strained on him but not an ordinary one like he was so used to but a stare directed by a trained killer. He let it pass over him without reacting and when he felt it moving away from him, he threw a look in the direction that he felt it originated from. With so many people it was hard to lock on a specific individual and so he started to look at people's soul colors. Like Marc's, becoming a trained killer leaves a permanent mark on someone's soul and finding crimson in the middle of so many greyish colors was considerably easier.
That's how he spotted three people around a table seemingly having a conversation around a beer, one in the middle of the dancing crowd and the last near the entrance. Now that he identified the trained killers, he found that he and his team wasn't the target but a woman was. She wore a hoodie but was definitely female, sitting alone on the forth booth to the right based on their own position. Turning back to his team, he asked.
"Why did nobody tell me we had a new case?"
Seeing their expression of surprise, he realized they didn't know what they were walking in.
"We have a new case?" Na-Yung asked.
"What case?" Scott asked at the same time.
"I don't have time to explain." Nathaniel said, spotting one the three around the table getting to his feet and making his way to their target. "I spotted five of them but maybe they are more than that. Find them and try to know what they are after, I'm going in."
Without letting them time to object, he slided out of the booth and walked to the woman booth which he took place in without being invited in. Locking eyes with the woman in question, he realized upon a closer look that she was in her early thirties and that she was nervous even if she hid it pretty well.
"Hi." Nathaniel said, throwing one of his disarming smiles.