Page 14 of Kings & Chaos

I heard Rock’s voice, talking about Professor Ryan, in my head:you think you’re the first student he’s preyed on?

I slid into a seat halfway up the theater-style seating and settled in for class, wondering when the Kings had started to feel like allies and everyone else had started to seem like the enemy.

Chapter5

Neo

Ifucking hated leaving her with Rock and Drago.

Not because I was worried about her safety. My brothers were more dangerous than they looked, and I knew they’d happily take a bullet or five to protect her.

We all would.

No, I hated leaving her with them because I wanted it to be me.

I wanted to be the one walking her to class. I wanted her to look at me and smile. I wanted to be the one making her come until she screamed.

I even wanted to hold her hand.

Fucking pathetic.

I shook my head even though I was all alone in the Hummer, like that would be enough to get Willa Russo out of my system. It was stupid. I’d been trying to get Willa Russo out of my head for the last fifteen years.

Nothing had worked so far.

I passed through the campus gates and headed for town. Willa was better off with Rock and Drago.

Safer.

That was what mattered.

It was still busy in town — a lot of the tourists made three- or four-day weekends out of their trips to Blackwell Falls, and I watched them wander Main Street, ducking into the high-end cafes and stores that weren’t really high-end.

People were dumb. Slap a green awning on a place and write the name in gold in the window and suddenly everyone thought you were Versace. Tourists came here thinking Blackwell Falls was a quaint small town where nothing bad ever happened.

They had no fucking clue.

I hated them almost as much as I hated myself.

It took all of three minutes to pass through the north side of town, and I felt my shoulders relax as I crossed into Southside. It shouldn’t have made sense. On the outside, I looked like one of the oblivious tourists having an iced soy mocha oatmilk latte or whatever the fuck they ordered, but I knew the truth.

Inside, my heart was blacker than any of the motherfuckers who thought they ran Southside.

My grip tightened on the steering wheel as I passed the Orpheum. My next fight was less than a week away, but there wasn’t much to think about. I never knew who I was fighting. Might be some state college dweeb trying to prove something to his frat boys, might be a monster like Marvin.

That was part of the fun. Not knowing forced me to train harder, to stay flexible.

Not knowing forced me to be ready for anything, and being ready for anything was what had kept me alive all these years.

As soon as the thought crossed my mind, a familiar darkness descended over me like a black fog, thick and heavy, threatening to black out my vision as it crawled toward me on all sides.

My head buzzed and I rolled down the window and shook my head hard to clear away the weight of it.

I would never have admitted it to anyone, but I was relieved to see the brick factory building come into view on the left, the old BLACKWELL WIRE sign still intact on the roof even though the place hadn’t manufactured floral wire for at least fifty years,

I needed some fresh air.

I pulled over and looked around to get my bearings. I had no reason to believe I’d get jumped — as far as I knew we were more or less cool with the various criminals and gangs that ran Blackwell Falls — but it was never a bad idea to know what you were stepping into.

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