Protective

Phase Eight??

Lana

"Thank you, Iosef. You're work is as diligent as always," I said into the phone, "Please tell my father that I am fine to go to dinner with him later on."

I hung up and turned to face Roman, "So where is my test?"

He eyed me from the drivers seat of his car. This was the point where he was trying to decide how trustworthy I was. I needed the location of all the tests, not just one in my possession and with my father back in town, I couldn't ask Iosef to tail him.

Iosef had just finished delivering me the information I was missing on Violette and it was far more surprising than I had anticipated. I could use this to keep her under my thumb while I remove Roman from his spot.

"How much time to you have?"

I shrugged, "Depends."

"On?"

I smiled, "How long you can keep me entertained for."

He smiled, turning on his car, "Alright. Then I'm taking you somewhere."

"That sounds cryptic," I laughed, "Where are we going?"

"To get your test."

After twenty minutes of driving, we finally arrived to a storage facility. It wasn't so far away from everything but it was far enough. I made a mental note of the name of it.

"You mean to tell me that my test is inside one of these?"

Roman nodded, taking my hand as we walked past the clerk in the front, "The collection of tests has been building since the Pride was first founded. Only a handful of members know of this location."

"And you're taking me?" I batted my eyelashes, "Are you allowed to do that?"

He laughed, as if I had said the most ridiculous thing in the world, "I'm in charge, beautiful. I can do whatever I want. Under my reign of this school, there has been an addition of over seventy-six tests, including midterms and finals. It's my own personal record."

He grabbed a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked a storage unit numbered 34801. Inside was box after box after box stacked on racks that reminded me of the secret room in my fathers office. Each box had its own label based on school subject and unit.

"Your box is this way," he said, guiding me deeper inside the storage unit.

"I don't understand," I shook my head, "How do you get away with having all of these?"

I needed to understand the system of these tests and right now, Roman was going to give me whatever information I asked. He was bragging, after all and a person that has such a large ego leaves little space for care.

I needed to know how were they distributed if barely anyone knew where they were being stored?

How else could I keep the system going once he was gone?

"Well only Pride members get the tests, everyone else just speculates, which is why you've heard of it," he smiled, "It's a little system we have where a message passes to a few different people that eventually gets to me. I get the test from here and once it gets back to the person who requested it, they've been assigned a guardian."

"A guardian?"

"Yeah, a guardian prevents people from trying to copy the test for themselves," he explained, reaching into a box and pulling out a folder, "That way the system stays in my control."

He handed the folder to me, "A deals a deal. That's your test."

"Does that mean I get assigned a guardian too?"