Page 8 of Kings & Corruption

“Neo will keep an eye on you,” Roberto said crisply, opening the car door.

I looked to my mom for help, but she was already halfway out of the car. I sat in the back seat in silence, my mind frantically searching for a way out. It didn’t take long to find the answer.

There wasn’t one.

If I wanted to help Emma, I needed to be near the place where she was last seen. That meant I needed tuition, and thanks to my dad’s abandonment of our family, that meant Roberto Alinari.

My mom hadn’t said it, but the reality was pretty damn clear: his money, his rules.

All of which meant I wasn’t just attending the same school as Neo, Rock, and Drago — I would be living with them too.

Chapter4

Willa

Less than twenty minutes. That’s how long it took my mom and Roberto to leave.

Not that I was complaining. My mom and I had been close once, I think. I have vague memories of her laughing and dancing around the house, of her gentle touch on my forehead when I was sick.

But that was all so far in the past it felt like a dream. Now when I thought of her, I thought of the angry, bitter person she’d been in the years before my dad turned on the family, and the distant, imperious one she’d become since she’d started seeing Roberto Alinari.

We’d gone through all the stages of grief after Emma’s disappearance, had countless fights about whether Emma had run, like my dad, or whether something had happened to her.

What more was there to say? Especially with Roberto hanging around the edges of every conversation, his eyes alert like he was some kind of robot recording our conversations with a microchip in his brain.

So it was actually okay with me when they left after dumping my stuff in the foyer of the Kings’ house. My mom still couldn’t meet my eyes. She’d just given me a stiff hug and waited while Roberto handed over a platinum American Express card for my “incidentals.”

I didn’t want to take it, but I wanted to argue about it even less, so I slipped it into the pocket of my shorts and let him kiss me stiffly on the cheek before leaving.

I watched through the big glass doors as they drove away, then turned to look at the house.

I don’t know what I’d expected. I guess some beat-up old place with beer-stained carpets and thrift store furniture. Wasn’t that what most frat houses looked like? I didn’t actually know, but that’s what they always seemed to look like on TV and in the movies.

But this place was… wow. I mean, gorgeous didn’t even begin to describe it. It looked expensive from outside, but inside, it was even more obvious that the place was worth a fortune.

The foyer had triple-height ceilings and opened right onto an enormous sunken living room with a massive TV and several sofas. The sofas were sleek and modern, but they also looked comfortable, and they coordinated perfectly with the eclectic side tables and lamps, not to mention the modern fireplace under the TV.

This did not look like a place decorated by three gym bros whose combined decorating knowledge probably weighed less than a five-pound dumbbell.

I edged into the room, feeling almost guilty for wearing shoes on the pristine wood floors.

No beer-stained carpet here.

A wide staircase with a cable railing led upwards, and the place was filled with light, entire walls made of windows, all of them looking out onto a grassy clearing that led to banks of trees on every side.

What the actual fuck?

I started down a central hall, aiming for the kitchen at the end of it, then stopped when I heard voices coming from one of the closed doors.

I froze, listening, then rapped softly on the door. No one answered, and the voices continued unabated from inside, so I reached for the doorknob and opened the door.

Gunfire assaulted my ears as it swung open, and I instinctively cowered before realizing it was coming from another huge TV mounted to the wall in front of several rows of seating.

A figure popped up from one of the seats, popcorn flying in every direction as he turned to look at me standing in the doorway.

“What the…?” He stopped moving. “Oh, it’s you.”

“It’s… me?” I shook my head. “Who are you?”

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