Page 121 of Kings & Carnage

I opened up the app that was synced to Willa's tracker and felt my heart drop out of my fucking body.

I looked at Neo and Rock. "She's on the move. Heading towards the woods outside campus."

Chapter58

Willa

The first thing I noticed was the ice pick driving into my brain. After that, it was the sound of shuffling feet on snow, deep voices murmuring in conversation.

I opened my eyes and the sky spun above me, inky and scattered with stars.

"Well well well," a male voice said, "it looks like our little rabbit is waking up.”

A familiar face appeared above me.

Igor?

Sergei?

I couldn't pull the name from my throbbing head but he was one of the Russians, the father of someone I knew in the Rooks’ house.

"Let's not be rude," another voice said. "Help the little rabbit to her feet.”

I was hauled to my feet by two pairs of strong hands and then I realized something else.

I was cold. Like, fucking freezing.

My shoes were gone, leaving me standing barefoot in a shoveled clearing, the snow mostly gone, the ground frozen.

The costume that had been perfect for the masquerade at St. Andrew’s did nothing to protect my body from the elements, and I shivered, wishing I could pull the wings around me for warmth.

I couldn't, because my arms were being held by two men, the Russian I recognized and an unfamiliar man with red hair and a beard.

I took in the scene around me, trying to get my bearings, and realized we were at the site of the cabin where Dean Giordana had died. Its charred remains stood cold and vacant to one side of the clearing.

A small fire burned, not that I could feel any of the heat from where I stood.

I was surrounded by four men: the Russian, the redhead, a dark-haired dark-eyed man, and Roberto.

My stepfather stared at me, his eyes burning with hatred every bit as hot as the fire that crackled in the clearing, embers drifting up into the dark night.

"I tried to warn you," he said, his voice cold. "You just wouldn't stop.”

"You killed Emma," I said. "And all those other girls too.”

Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that I should have been looking for ways to escape, but after two years of wondering what had happened to my sister, I finally had the chance to find out.

"We kill people all the time," Roberto said. "Don't pretend to have a conscience now. It's what we do, what all of us do, what your father did before he became a fucking traitor.”

I was rendered momentarily speechless by the argument, because he wasn't wrong. Our families weren't good people. They stole and hurt and killed. It was why I’d wanted out.

But even knowing that, the killing of the girls from Bellepoint felt different.

"That was business," I said. "You killed those girls — you killed Emma — for fun.”

I saw shades of Neo in Roberto's smile, but that was where the resemblance ended. I knew deep down Neo was terrified of becoming like him and I couldn't wait to tell him there wasn't a chance in hell it would ever happen.

Neo was nothing like his father.

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