Page 130 of Mafie Kings

I hadn’t even realized it was hers. “Maybe her room?” I suggest.

Alexi shakes his head. “I’ve combed every inch of her room multiple times before, and I've never found a blade laying around. The only time they are ever off of her is when she’s showering, or when she sleeps. Even then, they aren’t far.”

“Maybe they bought one just like hers?” Damien pipes in. This time I shake my head.

“She’s told me her blades are all custom-made for her, and they all have an insignia on them that she created.”

My phone chimes, then Alexi’s, then Damien's.

What the fuck could be happening now.

*SYSTEM RESET*flashes across our phones.The shed?

“Who knows the code to the shed?” I ask, looking at the screen and wondering who in the hell has the knowledge to reset my highly advanced system.

“Just us and Evie,” Alexi says, looking at me. “I installed cameras.”

He gets up and walks to his room as we follow. He pulls up the feed on his laptop to find Evie is already at the doors with a jammer plugged into our system and her computer connected.

No.

“My room, now,” I say. Pulling up the feed on my three screens, we watch intently as Evie works. She’s already in the system, creating a reset. She’s programmed a new code.

The cameras are on a different system, and it doesn’t look like she’s noticed they are there.

“She has the codes, why is she doing this?” Alexi asks over my shoulder.

“She doesn’t want to be interrupted,” Damien says, his brow pinching in confusion at first, but clarity seems to wash over his face quickly. “She’s going to kill him.”

It makes sense after everything that's happened today. She wants to finish whatever this is. But she could have just told us, we would have given her space.

While also watching on whatever cameras Alexi installed.

Who am I kidding? We all would have wanted to be right there, and I doubt she has any energy left today to fight with us about it.

I pull up the camera to the room Slade is being held in just as Evie enters. The room is a mess; blood, sweat, and other bodily fluids cover the space.

Evie doesn’t seem very affected by the environment. In fact, she almost looks like I used to. Distant, like she’s not here but she is. She starts off by questioning him and her victim breaks easily. Three months in confinement will do that to someone. Well, someone who’s weak at least.

Her blades work around his skin in a fluid dance. He tells her everything she wants to know, but the wounds she inflicts are punishment for who he is. Each precise stroke comes from a place of white-hot anger that I can feel coming off of her in waves, even through the screen.

Then she starts talking out loud. Not asking questions, simply talking through her thoughts. The three of us are crowding around my computer, waiting for her next move. I turn up the volume so we can all hear more clearly.

“Apparently the man I’ve been hiding from most of my life finally found me here. I was planning to leave tonight and go back into hiding, but I don’t think I want to do that anymore.”

That explains why her identity was kept secret, and why she wanted to get away from us tonight.

“Do The Kings know who you are?” Slade asks her, seeming to know more than us.

“I don’t think so.” She takes a moment to think. “If anyone could have figured it out, it would have been Alexi since we met when we were kids. So he’s either a master actor, or he has no idea. I’m pretty sure I’d be dead if he did.” I look at Alexi, but his expression is neutral and guarded.

Evie walks to the back of the room, grabs a chair from the wall, and opens it to sit in front of Slade as if they were friends having a casual conversation. “I saved him today,” she says as she looks down. “I wanted to save them all, even when I thought they were the ones setting me up.”

Why would she think we set her up?

“They’re monsters,” Slade says, spitting on the ground.

A grin splits Evie’s face, one that has me truly scared to find out what they are talking about. “Thank god I’m a bigger monster then. After all, only a monster can challenge another monster and bring them to their side.”

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