The Devils Of Harvard

Chapter Seventeen

"Don't finish that" August warns.

I lift my hand to stop him, as the sudden rush of confidence that I know for a fact is my father's genealogy at work on a behavioral level.

"No let him" I say, "complete that sentence I dare you".

"There is it, the classic near arrogant confidence of father and son. Nathanial Winters everyone" Chris says looking at me as I stand looking around the room with my head held high, practically daring anyone in the room to say a word.

They all knew what that meant though, here I was in front of them the heir of the most powerful family any of them would ever encounter. My sisters and I actually joked about how we were so young but held so much power just because our parents terrified everyone. Once again we knew better then to flaunt it.

"If any one of you says a word about who I really am there won't be a single one of you who will be able to grasp what kind of torment awaits you all. However while we're here I would say we'll have a duel seems only fair" I remark a classic smirk flashing across my features before I pulled down the mask and returned to my mark on the mat.

"This is why no one should challenge him" August mutters and though he couldn't see it I smiled wryly at the comment.

"I'll do it" the guy from earlier who made a comment on the shade of uniform I wore walked over.

"How many seconds until I beat you Nathan" he says and even through the mesh I could see his face.

"I'll give you twenty seconds" I sigh saluting him before readying.

"Achtung" Chris says and I step forward and the clash begins of back and forth parry's. I was sensing for his weaknesses though, what little habit will he use when, what is his preferred range, how good his footwork was.

It was all just about perfect.

As he went to stab me I dropped getting him in the stomach.

"You're good fencer" he comments.

"So are you, your step back is slightly slow though, because of positioning you can't move back out of range fast enough" I remark, "but aside from that form is perfect".

"I never noticed the footwork" he says.

"Arlo that's because you are faster then just about everyone here" Chris says, "in all honesty I didn't notice it even once".

"How long have you been fencing?" Arlo asks looking to me as he removes his mask.

"About four years, got into it when I was fifteen as a coping mechanism" I reply getting off the mat, and turning to walk off towards the bench.

"Everyone meet up two weeks from now on the Friday we all know the drill" Chris calls while I go to change.

Neatly putting everything away I walked out of the hall and began to make my way to the parking lot so that I could go back to the house and get a drink to think about certain things that I'd recently decided to revisit.

Specifically the recent anniversary of my grandparents deaths. My father mourned them and whether he admitted it to himself or not the three generations after the man I was named after are the ones that made the Winters name what it was, and we all got worse, but I also knew that my parents never wanted me or my sisters to end up on the same path, to make the same mistakes as they did. My dad was the one I looked up to but I also knew that all that made him who he was, came from a decade of pain and betrayal, along with fighting for what mattered to him.

Getting to my car I dropped the bag into the trunk and shut it leaning on the back for a second before I spotted Arilynn walking out of the school, she hadn't joined any clubs she just reminded me that she'd been studying for the past hour.