Page 48 of Kings & Chaos

“Did he just… take a picture?” I asked.

“Who does this asshole think he is?” Drago fumed. “FedEx?”

The man turned to leave and Neo paused the video, then enlarged the image. It wasn’t any help. He was covered head to toe. Even his hands were encased in gloves. His only visible features were his eyes and mouth, and neither did anything to help identify him.

He literally could have been anyone.

“Fuck,” Neo swore. “He had to have come in through the woods. I knew that was a fucking problem.”

“Supply chain issues are out of our control,” Rock said.

Rafe, the guy who’d set up the security system and installed the gate, had told the Kings that the steel needed for a fence around the perimeter of the house was stuck overseas and wouldn’t be in for at least four more weeks.

Neo had made him call every potential supplier in the country, but they’d all said the same thing.

“Nothing can be out of our control,” Neo said. “Not with this.”

I assumedthismeant my stalker, although I was surprised Neo cared.

“So we hire guards,” Oscar said. “Armed ones.”

“Whoa!” I held up my hand. “Let’s not go allGodfatheruntil we find out what’s in the package.”

Neo put his phone down as Oscar grabbed box cutters from a drawer in the kitchen.

“Shouldn’t we record this?” I asked.

“Why the fuck would we do that?” Neo asked.

“In case we need to take it to the police or something. We probably shouldn’t even open it without them.”

“No one is going to the fucking police, Jezebel. Are you fucking high?”

Okay, fine. That was my bad. People like us didn’t go to the police.

For anything. We didn’t draw attention to ourselves with law enforcement.

We were our own law enforcement.

“Fine,” I grumbled. “Just open it already.”

Oscar slit open the packing tape on the box. “Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s going to explode in our faces. Guy who dropped it off wasn’t all that careful.”

He set the box cutter down and opened the flaps, then reached inside and removed a stack of photos.

My breath caught in my throat when I saw the one on top: me sitting at a table, my eyes scratched out again.

“Is that at Syd’s?” Oscar asked, picking it up and looking more closely.

“Looks like it,” Rock said. “How the fuck…”

Oscar set a piece of paper on the island, another note spelled out with jagged letters cut out from a magazine.

I picked it up:

TELL YOUR BOYFRIENDS TO STOP DIGGING, SLUT.

OR WE’LL STOP THEM FOR YOU — RIGHT BEFORE WE SHUT YOU UP FOR GOOD.

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