I Regret Nothing - JB Trepagnier Page 0,44

wouldn’t have taken her up on it. She wanted the foxes to beat her up because she knew exactly what kind of support she would get from her coven. She’s going to say I beat her up with the foxes, and she wants everyone upset with Astrid to get rid of her for Venus.”

I’d met some pretty bad people in prison. Between Scorchwood and Silverhold, I’d met prolific serial killers and rapists. Most of them weren’t the least bit sorry for what they did and could admit it was only a matter of time until they got caught. Most of them were totally psycho and would brag about their crimes to make themselves seem more powerful. Some were stupid enough to try to keep committing them while in prison, and they always got killed.

I’d met some stupid criminals and some evil criminals, but Venus took the cake. There were pecking orders in prison. Respect had to be earned. Everyone understood that. If you wanted to insert yourself as a leader, you challenged the one in place in front of everyone, so they knew who to give credit to when one of you ended up dead. Long live the king or queen.

These games Venus was playing was fucked up. You just didn’t do that in prison, and it was going to bite her in the ass. If she had riled up the foxes because she wanted the witches turning on Astrid and coming after Rei, then she’d made an enemy of the foxes. If she was randomly going to bathrooms and trying to arrange a hit, she’d made even more. Every gang had someone or several people who did their killing for them. If you needed someone dead, you went to that person.

You just did not walk around prison asking random people to do your dirty work for you. Some gangs took offense at that like you were looking down your nose at them.

“I’m sorry, Astrid. I know you want to handle this your own way, but that witch is causing drama with more than just your coven now,” Dakarys said.

I totally agreed. She got that beating from the foxes on purpose. She was already down. Someone should get into medical and just put a pillow over her face until she couldn’t cause trouble anymore.

“Why couldn’t you just let her have the amulet?” Astrid asked. “You’re both causing too much drama.”

I watched Rei fume.

“Excuse the fuck out of me? Venus didn’t research the security of the Museum of the Profane. I saw her face on the security cameras I was trying to disable. She didn’t bother finding out how to disable the alarm either. She just barged in and tried to use magic like the Museum of the Profane doesn’t have wards for that. She would have gone down for that theft even if I hadn’t bitten her.”

“Maybe, but did you have to bite her? My witches are less offended that she got arrested and are more offended about the biting. Everyone in here knows if you’re going to become a career criminal, you will eventually get caught. Venus is pissed she ended up here and blames you, but my coven gets it. They don’t think you should have bitten her.”

“If someone wronged one of your witch’s mentors and caused physical harm to them, would you let that slide or get a blow in when you could?”

“She’s not wrong,” Wren said. “It’s just how things are. Rei said Venus got her mentor beaten several times. Rei has the right to take whatever revenge she wants for every single one of those beatings.”

“There is no way to spin this without starting a war. If I say it was the foxes acting without Rei’s orders, the coven will come after the foxes and Rei. I can’t blame anyone else either. If my witches start coming after a particular gang for no reason, they’ll know I condoned it, and they’ll come for me personally.”

This was so fucked up because it was true. Venus had clearly never been in prison before, and she hadn’t bothered learning how things work before she started moving things in place. Even if Venus managed to take over the witches, she’d never keep that position. She’d pissed off way too many people here. And I didn’t know what to tell Astrid because everyone here respected the pecking order and didn’t play fucked up games when they wanted to take over.

How did we fix this shit without starting a prison war?

“I