Angel and the Assassin 3: Sins of the Father

paratrooper boots he loved so
    much, those skinny jeans that hung off his arse in that ridiculous way, and a lavender
    shirt under his black leather jacket. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he had pulled his long
    hair into a ponytail.
    The boy’s face lit up as soon as he saw Kael. “Hi, Daddy.” Reaching round behind
    him, Kael snatched the black elastic from his ponytail. “Ow! Daddy!”
    “We’re getting that hair cut.” Kael walked past him along the corridor, expecting
    Angel to follow. “And don’t call me daddy in front of the headmaster.” Inside the
    waiting room for the headmaster’s office, Kael sat down.
    “Mr. Saunders, you’re in at five,” the secretary said.
    “I know,” Kael said abruptly. Why the hell was he so anxious? He’d been terrified
    of the headmaster at College Grange when he first got there, but he’d never let the man
    know it. He was acting now as if he’d been ordered to the office as he was so often in
    his first year at the boarding school.
    When Angel didn’t appear, Kael got up again and went back into the corridor to
    find him at the water fountain. “Stop dawdling and get in here.”
    “We still have five minutes.”
    “Why did you go home and change?”
    “I wanted to.”
    Fyn Alexander | Sins of the Father
    70

    “Well, you shouldn’t have. Get in here and sit down.” By the time they walked
    into the headmaster’s office, Kael was more on edge than ever and Angel looked
    decidedly rebellious.
    “Mr. Saunders.” The headmaster shook his hand vigorously. “Mr. Button. Please
    sit down.”
    “Hi, Mr. Staynton,” Angel said.
    The headmaster clapped his hands together. He wasn’t that old, but he was
    extremely nerdy and wore glasses on the end of his long nose. “So! What do you have
    in mind for your future, Angel? Where would you like to study next?”
    “I want to take a gap year and then decide.”
    Suppressing the desire to slap the boy, Kael said, “I don’t know where he gets
    these ideas. I want him to go to Cambridge. I think he should get a history degree.
    That’s always a good place to start.”
    “Most of the young people take a gap year these days. It’s not such a bad idea. But
    why Cambridge?” Mr. Staynton asked.
    “That’s where I went,” Kael said.
    “And where did you go before that, Mr. Saunders?”
    “College Grange.”
    “Yes, an excellent school. That’s the thing, you see. For the big ones, Oxford and
    Cambridge, you either have to be quite brilliant or have gone to one of the schools.”
    “Kael was both. Brilliant and went to one of the schools,” Angel said.
    If he was not already nervous about this and annoyed with Angel for being
    uncooperative, he might not have taken such exception to Angel’s tone, which was
    probably not as sarcastic as it sounded in that moment. “If you have nothing useful to
    add, then be quiet, Angel.”
    With a little cough, the headmaster went on. “Whatever people might say to the
    contrary these days, Oxford and Cambridge do reserve places for the young people
    Fyn Alexander | Sins of the Father
    71

    coming out of the best schools, and while Redmond has an excellent reputation, Angel’s
    prior school record is nonexistent.”
    “But he gets top marks,” Kael said. “He did extremely well in his GCSEs, and he’ll
    pass all his A levels, won’t he?”
    Nodding, the headmaster said, “Yes, Angel will get his A levels and will move on
    to university. But while he is a good student, he is not in the top five percent in the
    country, which would get him into Cambridge automatically.”
    “Kael was in the top five percent, weren’t you?” Angel looked at him.
    “Yes, I was.” He had told Angel not to call him Daddy, but there was something
    about his sub calling him Kael that pissed him off royally.
    “What do you do, Mr. Saunders?” Mr. Staynton asked.
    Tense and increasingly annoyed, Kael said, “I’m a security consultant. I also do
    some translating and teaching languages. Are you saying Angel’s not going to get into
    Cambridge?”
    “It’s unlikely he’ll get in despite being a very bright young man. What about
    Durham or Glasgow? They’re both excellent.”
    Disappointment flooding him, Kael’s fists clenched involuntarily. “Right, I’ll have
    to think more about this.”
    “Why not let him take a gap year and put things in perspective. It will give you
    both a whole year to plan.”
    “That’s what I think too,” Angel said.
    First Conran