Page 52 of Kings & Chaos

“You need to get your head straight,” I said.

His eyes flared. “The only problem I have right now is you telling me what I need.”

“You’re distracted,” I said, because the thing about knowing someone since you were kids, about knowing someone so well they were your fuckingfamily?

They couldn’t bullshit you.

You knew all their tells, all their weaknesses.

It went both ways with Neo and Drago — I couldn’t get shit past them either — but right now, I knew Neo was distracted, and being distracted on fight night was bad news.

“I’m fine,” he said, dropping his jeans.

He stuffed them into the duffel and pulled out a pair of basketball shorts.

“You’re going to get yourself killed.” We never had any idea who was fighting at the Orpheum, but no one was invincible, and Blackwell Falls had its share of scary dudes.

Neo needed to fire on all cylinders at every fight.

“Someone wants her dead,” Neo huffed, peeling off his shirt.

“We knew that,” I said. “Last night’s delivery doesn’t change anything.”

“She hates us,” he said. “She hates me.”

Now we were getting somewhere.

“Speak for yourself,” I said. “Willa doesn’t hate me. She’s just pissed about the game because she doesn’t understand why we’re making her play. She’ll get over it.”

He pulled on a wifebeater. “Maybe we shouldn’t have put her up to play this time.”

“You’re the one who said we should.”

“Maybe I made a mistake.”

I did a double take, because stop the fucking presses but Neo copping to a mistake was breaking fucking news. “Because she’s mad?”

He pulled a jump rope out of his bag and started using it, warming up for the fight. “She’s not like us.”

“She’s notnotlike us either,” I said.

“We don’t know that.” He wasn’t even out of breath.

“We do.” I’d seen it in the way she didn’t take any shit, the way she’d fought when that fucker Enzo tried to rape her, the way she’d fired the gun in the cabin without hesitating.

She was strong as fuck. She always had been, ever since she was a little girl facing down the monster that was Roberto Alinari.

She needed to remember it — toknowit — to survive what was coming for her.

For all of us.

He stopped jumping and stared at me. “Nothing can happen to her.”

“It won’t.”

I sounded sure because I was. We wouldn’t let it.

He nodded. “Now get the fuck out of here.”

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