Page 101 of Kings & Corruption

“That’s on you,” Neo said tightly, finishing the rest of his beer in one long drink.

He wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t felt great about getting Willa into the house under false pretenses — she’d been through enough — but guilt had started really fucking eating away at me. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been prepared to like Willa. We all liked her, even Neo, emotionally broken as he was.

But I hadn’t expected to have, well,feelingsfor her. I hadn’t expected to find her funny and interesting. I hadn’t expected to want her in my bed for more than sex.

I hadn’t expected to want to tear the head off anyone who hurt her.

Even Neo.

Sure, I’d had a thing for Willa for half my life. We all had, and that was a fucking fact, however much Neo wanted to lie to himself. We’d all wanted to protect her, in a wounded-animal-kind-of way.

We owed her that much.

Except my protective instincts were in overdrive now that I really knew her. The girl fucking haunted my dreams. She was a drug I had no desire to quit. I couldn’t stay away from her, and I didn’t even want to try.

“This is a waste of time,” Rock said, leaning against the counter and folding his arms over his chest. “This is bad. Very bad.”

“No shit,” Neo said. “But what’s done is done.”

“So it’s damage control time,” Rock said.

Neo snorted. “Obviously. I’ll call Rafe.”

I nodded. Rafe was the security guy. He’d installed the system currently in place at the house, but it obviously hadn’t been enough.

And things were only going to get worse.

I looked at the manila envelope on the island and thought about the pictures of Willa, thought about someone following her, scratching her eyes out of the photographs. I was no FBI profiler, but that was some serious rage, and the thought of it directed at Willa made me want to kill someone.

Slowly.

“Tell him to make sure no one can get within half a mile of this place without us knowing,” I said. “We should beef up our access to protection inside the house too.”

We always had weapons scattered throughout the house. The other guys didn’t know anything about them, although I doubted they’d be surprised. Frat life at Aventine wasn’t like frat life anywhere else, and we chose our pledges carefully, with an eye toward their usefulness in our off-campus operations.

Every one of the pledges came from a notorious crime family, even doofuses like Matt, who constantly eye-fucked Willa with his puppy dog eyes. The rookies would understand the need for guns in the house.

Especially ours.

“Rafe is defense,” Rock said. “So are more guns in the house — which I agree with, by the way — but we need to play offense too.”

“We’ve sent the message,” I said. The message being that Willa was ours, that she was under our protection.

“Not loud enough,” Neo said. “Obviously.”

I looked from him to Rock, my resolve to protect Willa hardening into stone.

Immoveable.

Indestructible.

“So we send it again,” I said. “Louder this time.”

Chapter44

Willa

Ilay in bed, staring at the ceiling and replaying everything that had happened in the kitchen for the hundredth time. My mind was spinning, jumping from the package that had been delivered to the house to the fact that the guys were opening my mail to the annoying but undeniable chemistry between me and Neo.

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