Page 24 of Kings & Chaos

”Yeah, you're just pissed because you've been too stubborn to sample the goods,” I added.

"He's right," Drago said. “And that sounds like a you problem.”

"It has nothing to do with me," Neo said, his arms folded over his chest.

Speaking of babies.

"It has everything to do with you," I said. "And frankly, this wholeI hate Willaact is getting old, especially since we all know it’s an act.”

"A necessary act," Neo said. "And we all know that too.”

“Nope,” Drago said, “that’s just a story you tell yourself to keep your distance.”

Neo stood, his face tight with anger and probably all the pent-up lust he'd been carrying for our girl for the past couple of years. "I don't need to be therapized, and if I did, I wouldn’t choose you two motherfuckers.”

Actually, Neo needed therapy more than anyone I knew, but it was a fair point that Drago and I weren’t mentally sound enough to get the job done. We were all fucked up in our own ways. It was one of the things that bonded us together, and Willa too, although it didn’t seem like she remembered that part yet.

I sighed. “If we just told her— ”

“No,” Neo said. “The shrink told us it’d be better for her if she remembered on her own.”

“At some point, it’s more dangerous for her not to know the truth.” I wanted to protect Willa as much as Neo and Drago, but it was getting harder and harder not to come clean.

“The truth is fucking complicated,” Drago said.

He wasn’t wrong. Because the truth? Well, the truth was that Willa had once gotten hurt trying to protect Neo, and that was a debt Neo would never consider repaid.

Not that his feelings for her were about debt.

That was just a story he told himself too.

The truth was that Willa had become some kind of talisman for us all, an avenging angel who’d stared down the devil — a devil who had paralyzed the rest of us — when she’d been nothing but a kid.

She thought she was weak, that she was nothing but background noise for Emma, but Willa had just forgotten who she really was.

Which was why we were going to help her remember.

Chapter9

Willa

Ispent a frenzied fifteen minutes with my vibrator after the incident with Neo in the kitchen —incidentwas so much kinder to myself than admitting he’d left me with blue lady balls — but it hadn’t done much for my focus.

I wanted Neo’s dick. That was the horrible, humiliating, pathetic truth of it.

I wanted all that angry energy inside me. I wanted to know what it felt like to be in the eye of the storm.

Obviously not an option, so I finished my essay, then opened the search engine on my computer. I typed in Dean Giordana’s full name and started bookmarking the ones I needed to figure out what happened to Emma.

Names of Dean Giordana’s wife and two daughters.

Address.

Hobbies (he was member of a local hunting club - that was interesting).

It wasn’t hard. He’d done lots of interviews for websites devoted to higher learning and local people of interest, and his wife sat on the board of a couple philanthropic organizations.

I wasn’t totally sure what I’d need, but it was better to have too much than too little.

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