Page 7 of Kings & Chaos

“Guy they’re naming for the murder of Nikki,” Oscar said.

I held up my hands. “Just… give me a minute to catch up here.”

His expression softened and he came toward me and pulled me into his arms. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” I said against his chest. He smelled like clean laundry, good cologne, and just enough man-sweat to be a turn-on. “I’m starting to feel like I’m missing something.”

He stroked my hair and kissed the top of my head. “Sit.”

Rock pulled out one of the chairs at the kitchen island and I sat with a heavy sigh. Bright afternoon sun filled the spacious modern kitchen, but there was already the hint of twilight behind it. The days were getting shorter, winter staring us down like a storm cloud on the horizon.

“Did this guy kill Emma?” I asked no one in particular.

Neo turned around, eyes blazing.“No.”

He was so emphatic that I blinked in surprise. I struggled to make sense of it. How could Neo know the dead guy didn’t do it unless he’d been the one to kill Nikki?

But that didn’t make sense either. Whoever had killed Nikki had most likely taken Emma and the other girls. If Neo had done those things, wouldn’t he welcome a scapegoat? Especially a dead one who’d left a note confessing to Nikki’s murder?

“Then what the actual fuck is going on?” I asked.

They glanced at each other, obviously using their stupid Kings telepathy to try and decide how much to tell me.

Anger bubbled up and out of my body like an erupting volcano. I couldn’t have stopped it if I tried. It was so forceful it pulled me up out of the chair. “Stop doing that! Just… stoplyingto me!”

Oscar held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “No one is lying to you. It—”

“I saw the tape.” I hadn’t meant to tell them. Not now. Not like this. I’d meant to save it, to be strategic about revealing that I’d seen the footage of Neo grabbing Emma outside the house the night she went missing. “I know Emma was here the night she disappeared.”

They froze, and I tried to use the time to get a read on what was going on. Neo was unreadable as always. I could never tell what he was thinking unless he wanted to murder or fuck me, and he was in one of those two states most of the time.

Worry creased Oscar’s brow, and he teased the ring on his lip with his tongue stud, the way he did when he was thinking.

Rock sighed in resignation. “I told you we should have told her.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Tell me now. Why was Emma here that night? Did you…” I could hardly get the words out around the pain that constricted my chest, because the only thing worse than having someone hurt Emma would be having Rock or Oscar hurt Emma when I’d started to trust them. “Did one of you — or all of you — hurt her?”

Rock’s eyes went wide. “Willa, no.” He raked a hand through his shaggy blond hair. “No one in this house hurt Emma. You have my word.”

“Then why was she here? Why didn’t you tell me — or the police — that she was here that night?”

“Sit down, Jezebel,” Neo said.

I might have refused on principle if it had been an order, but for the first time ever, he sounded resigned. He was still hot af in jeans and a black T-shirt that showed off his broad shoulders and cut biceps, but there was something weary in his amber eyes that I’d never seen before.

Neo didn’t do weary.

Asshole? Sure.

Dickhead? Definitely.

Stick up his ass? Almost always.

But I’d never seen weary on his stupid, perfect face.

I took a seat at the island, and Rock slid into the seat next to me while Oscar leaned against the kitchen counter.

Neo paced toward the big window overlooking the property. “She was here,” he said with his back to us. “The night she disappeared.”

---