Page 7 of Kings & Corruption

Maybe Emma had just wanted out. Maybe she didn’t want to be Frank Russo’s exiled daughter anymore, trying to fit in at Bellepoint, afraid to tell any of the guys at Aventine her last name.

“Emma wouldn’t do that,” I said. “Not this way. She would have told me.”

My mom’s eyes flashed. “Because you were so close?”

Ouch. Okay, that stung. Emma and I weren’t close, not when she disappeared. But we’d been close, once, after we’d grown out of the childhood get-out-of-my-room phase, just before Emma went to college.

Back then, we’d lie on her bed and stare at the stars projected onto her ceiling, talking about where our dad was, what he was doing, if he ever thought of us.

And then, when we were feeling really honest, whether he was still alive at all. There had been rumors in the family, rumors that he’d been killed, and since he’d never actually shown up on the witness stand at trial, they weren’t impossible to believe.

They were things we could only say to each other, and it had been a relief to let it all out in the dim glow of Emma’s bedroom before she went to Bellepoint and the weeks afterward when she’d started to feel like a total stranger.

“Because we were sisters,” I said.

“Maybe you should start entertaining the possibility that you don’t know everyone as well as you think, Willa.”

Another low blow. I had been the holdout in our family after my dad disappeared, the one who didn’t believe he’d turned to the Feds until I saw it on the news.

The one who’d always believed he was going to come back.

Roberto had stepped out of the glass doors at the top of the stone steps with a middle-aged man wearing a dark suit.

Dean Giordana, I presumed.

“Or maybe I’m not in such a hurry to move on that I’m willing to sell my soul to the devil,” I said, watching as Roberto put his hand on the other man’s shoulder.

My mom flipped down the Mercedes’s visor. I caught her eyes as she checked her makeup in the tiny mirror. “Women in our world only have a couple of tools available to them, Willa.” She suddenly sounded tired. “Beauty, youth. We have to use them when we can. While we can. You’ll find that out soon enough.”

Roberto climbed down the stairs with athletic grace and got back in the car.

“All set?” my mom asked.

“All set.” He put the car in gear and used the circular drive to come back the way we came.

Nervousness twisted my stomach as the dorms came into view. After a year of being anonymous in my travels, I wasn’t at all ready to be an outcast in my new living quarters.

But when we reached the road leading to the dorms, Roberto kept on driving.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Come now,” Robert said as he pulled out of the gates and onto the road, “you didn’t think we’d let you live in the dorms alone after what happened to Emma.”

“I won’t be alone in the dorms,” I said. “Besides, where else would I live?”

A bubble of hope floated through my chest. Maybe they’d gotten me an apartment off campus, somewhere I could be alone, away from the judging eyes of everyone at Aventine who would know I was Frank Russo’s daughter.

“Roberto has made special arrangements with Dean Giordana,” my mom said. “And with Neo.”

I sat up straighter. “Neo? What does he have to do with anything?”

My heart thumped like a trapped bird in my chest as we pulled onto a long driveway sheltered by trees on either side.

I had a bad feeling. A very bad feeling.

“Neo is the one who decides who lives in the Kings’ house,” my mom said as a sleek modern home made of glass came into view in the clearing up ahead. “So of course, Roberto had to speak with him about allowing you to live here.”

“Wait… you expect me to live in the Kings' house?” I caught the note of hysteria in my voice but couldn’t do anything about it. “With Neo?”

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