Page 46 of Kings & Chaos

“Why are you doing this to me?” Now I just sounded pathetic.

“For you,” Neo said.

I shook my head. “Excuse me?”

It took an eternity for him to answer, the silence stretched long and taut in the muffled confines of the car.

When he met my eyes in the mirror again, his jaw was set in a firm line, his gaze resolute. “We’re not doing this to you. We’re doing it for you.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “And what about that hacker you said you were going to talk to? You’re probably blowing sunshine up my ass about that too.”

I was falling into the habit of quoting Reva, which wasn’t great considering a lot of her sayings didn’t even make sense to me.

Rock reached over and put a hand on my knee. “No one is blowing sunshine up your ass, kitten.”

I shoved his hand off my knee. Neo didn’t make decisions about the game alone. If I’d been assigned to play — again — it was because Oscar and Rock had agreed.

Traitors.

“Then why haven’t we heard anything?” I asked.

We reached the new gate to the house, and Neo used the smart home app on his phone to enter the code.

The iron gates swung open and Neo pulled the Hummer through. I knew the gates would close in 9.5 seconds because I’d been there when the security guy had explained the system to the Kings, but Neo stopped the car just inside the gate anyway, waiting to make sure they closed without anyone entering the property behind us.

“Well?” I asked when he started up the long driveway. I’d been working my own plan, but I was going to hold their feet to the fire on their promise to help me find Emma and include me in whatever they found.

“It’s not a fucking Google search, Jezebel. The guy’s a hacker. It takes how long it takes.”

The trees on either side of the long driveway looked ghostly in the Hummer’s headlights, the gravel crunching under the tires sounding ominous in the dark.

“I’m sure we’ll hear back soon,” Rock soothed next to me.

We approached the garage and Neo hit a button on his phone. One of the doors rolled up and he inched forward, the motorcycles and other cars gleaming like jewels from inside the pristine space that housed the Kings’ toys.

“Wait!” Oscar said.

Neo hit the brakes hard. “What thefuck, Drago?”

“There’s something by the front door,” Oscar said.

I followed his gaze to a small brown box on the porch. “How did someone get in through the gate?”

The Kings had set up a P.O. box for packages after the gate was installed.

Oscar pulled his gun from the holster under his jacket. “Wait here.”

“Fuck you.” Neo got out of the car with his own gun drawn. He looked back at Rock. “Stay with Willa.”

My heart pounded out a rhythm in my ears as Oscar approached the porch, Neo giving him cover, gun pointed into the woods surrounding the house.

I half-expected gunfire to sound from the trees, to watch Oscar or Neo — or both — fall, but everything was quiet as Oscar picked up the box.

He got back into the passenger seat and twisted to look at me in the back seat. “It’s addressed to you.”

Chapter17

Willa

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