Page 71 of Kings & Corruption

At first Marvin flailed, trying to free his hands, but it only took a few seconds for him to realize it was futile. Neo’s muscular legs were locked around Marvin’s arms and chest like a vise. His face was a mask of cold tranquility, like he was taking out the trash instead of beating a man two inches taller and fifty pounds heavier to within an inch of his life.

The crowd roared its approval and I started to worry Neo was actually going to kill Marvin, that the crowd was going to let him do it, when the woman named Marge stepped next to Marvin’s bloodied head.

“Calling it!” she shouted.

“He didn’t tap out,” Neo grunted, hitting Marvin again. Blood sprayed against the concrete floor.

“You have his arms in a lock,” she pointed out.

Neo paused, then jumped to his feet with the agility of a cat. He looked unbothered in spite of his bruised and bleeding face. He didn’t even seem to be breathing hard.

Marge grabbed Neo’s hand and tried to lift it in the air but only got about halfway there because she was so short.

“Neo takes it!” she shouted.

Someone cranked the music and a wave of noise rolled through the crowd. I tried to get a read on how much of it was approval and how much of it was disdain. It was almost impossible to tell, but if I had to guess, I’d give the edge to disdain. Clearly most of the people at the Orpheum didn’t like Neo, didn’t like any of the Kings.

So why did they do this?

I looked at Oscar, but he was taking pictures, not with his camera this time but with his phone

Marvin was stirring on the floor, a couple of big bikers at his side, when Neo started through the crowd. Most of them gave him a wide berth, but a few of the girls who looked like students moved toward him, trying to catch his eye.

I couldn’t blame them. With his shirt off and his inked chest on full display, the angel tattoo glistening with blood and sweat, he elicited carnal fantasies even from me.

I was glad when Rock eased me off his shoulders and onto the ground. I had no interest in watching girls fawn over my douchebag of a stepbrother.

I looked up at Rock. “Now what?”

Half the crowd had started for the bar and the other half had started dancing like Neo hadn’t just beaten the shit out of a man called Mayhem, now being helped to his feet by his biker buddies in the middle of their party.

“Now we wait for Neo to finish his pussy tour,” Rock shouted over the music.

“His pussy tour?”

Rock grinned and nodded toward the girls falling all over themselves to get Neo’s attention. “He can take his pick tonight.”

I rolled my eyes and looked at Oscar, but he was looking at something across the theater. A second later he shoved his camera at Rock, his eyes still on something — or someone — across the cavernous room. “Hold this.”

I watched as he made his way through the teeming mass. It didn’t take long to see that he was headed for a guy leaning against the wall in the shadows — the same inked-up guy who’d been staring at me earlier.

Oscar leaned in and said something to him, and he pushed off the wall to walk with Oscar toward the theater exit.

I felt like Dorothy inThe Wizard of Oz, except instead of going from black and white to color, I’d done the opposite: gone from a world that made sense to one that was shadowed with gray.

The Kings were nothing like what I’d imagined. They were obviously into some dark shit and some very shady people. Now I just needed to figure out what it all meant — and whether it had anything to do with Emma.

Chapter32

Willa

Ithought about the fight all day at school the next day. I had questions, but none of them were formulated enough to actually ask, so I kept quiet on the way to campus, this time in the Hummer with all three guys.

Neo’s face looked better than I’d expected. He’d still been bleeding when he got in the car — surprisingly single — after the fight, but now it was just bruised, the cut above his eye closed with a butterfly bandage.

Still, he didn’t say a word to me the whole way, and I was unsurprised when he got out of the car and walked off without a word.

“He’s chipper today,” I said. It was hard not to admire the span of his shoulders as he walked away, especially now that I’d seen him shirtless and in action at the Orpheum.

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