Page 73 of Evil Villain (The Royal Court)

I could see Deon shifting uncomfortably at the concept, but I put my hand on his back. “Please?”

Deon looked at me and nodded. “Yeah, okay.” He picked a chip up off his plate and popped it in his mouth. “Damn, if someone had told me that I’d be holding back and letting The Royal Court of all people carry instead of me, I’d have punched that person in the face.”

“We’re sort of The Dark Royal Court now,” Alistair said.

Nathan smiled. “I like that. The Dark Royal Court.”

27

Deon

The Black Star Night Club was situated in Downtown Postings, ironically not far from where Loche Corporation Enterprises was located. I couldn’t help but feel like it wasn’t chance placement, and I imagined that Connor Loche had done more than one shifty dealing in the bowels of the place. The outside was painted black brick with gold stars painted all over it, so it stuck out like a sore thumb from the modern, sleek buildings that were situated on either side of it. Postings was a manufacturing city, so most of the downtown buildings were offices to support all the commerce coming into Maine from the coast. There were a few night clubs and bars, as any city had, but it seemed Black Star Night Club was the club of choice. When we got there, there was a line of people around the block.

“Wow,” Cherri said. “Packed to hell.”

“I mean,” Colette said from the back seat. “We’re notnormalpeople. We should be able to throw our names around and get in, right? We’ll be standing in that line long past nine.”

Cherri was driving a car with her, me, Sicily, Colette, and Jaxon in it, and Kyle was driving in front of us with Brayden, Nathan, Nikita, Alistair and Avery.

“That’s going to be up to Nathan, I think,” Cherri said. “He’s the one with all the clout at the end of the day.”

“Excuse me, Colette has clout,” Jaxon said.

I turned around and looked backwards at him, and saw that his face was stone serious. I laughed and looked at Cherri. “It’s unexpectedly adorable.”

“Oh I know. I can’t get over it,” she replied.

I took a moment while we were stuck in traffic to look Cherri’s outfit over once again. She was wearing a high-waisted, black leather skirt and a black, ruffled crop top. Her hair was down, and she’d applied a layer of dark makeup with black lipstick and a deep purple eyeshadow. She looked good enough to eat.

“Stop it,” Cherri said. “We’re never going to make it all the way through this night if you keep looking at me like that.”

“Fine by me,” I joked, glancing sideways at her, but she just shook her head. I loved the slight blush that rose to her face.

Eventually, Cherri’s car phone rang, and she answered, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Nathan said. “We’re not standing in this line. We’re gonna go park in the L.C.E. parking lot and walk over.”

“Okay,” Cherri said.

We followed Kyle’s truck around the block and into the parking garage that was attached to Loche Corporation Enterprises. We all climbed out of the cars and walked across the street and back down the block to where the line was beginning. Nathan strode right past the line, and I shook my head at how entitled he looked, not even making eye contact with the pissed-off people glaring at him from the line. If the situation were any different, I would have demanded we wait in line like everyone else, but we didn’t have time for that.

When we got to the front of the line, the thick-armed, broad-shouldered security guard looked us up and down. His lip curled up as he hissed, “This isn’t a fucking daycare. Run along, tykes.”

Nathan reached into his suit jacket pocket and pulled out a few things. One of them was a white card that I couldn’t read, one of them was the fake ID that Sicily had made, and the last was a flush of hundreds. He handed all three things over to the security guard and waited.

The security guard flipped through the handful of hundreds and then looked at the card and ID. He looked up at Nathan, scanned him over, scanned the rest of us, and then looked back down at the card. Finally, he pressed the button on the walkie talkie on his chest pocket and said, “Got eleven coming in. Let ‘em by.” He grabbed the velvet rope that was separating the outside of the club from the inside, and waved us by. “Come on, before I lose my fucking job.”

We didn’t hesitate at all. We all slid inside, past the line of swearing club-goers waiting to get in, and past the second security guard inside. Flashing our IDs, we finally left the waiting line behind and entered the club. Music was pumping and directly opposite the door was a massive dance floor, sunken lower than the main level we entered on, and to the left and right were staircases that led up to a second floor with bars on it, overlooking the dance floor. Lights were flashing and fog machines were raining down on the dancers, spurring them on.

“I wanna go!” Colette yelped. “It looks like so much fun.”

“We have work to do first,” Nathan said. “Partying afterwards.”

I looked up to the balcony that was overlooking the dance floor and could see a line of purple, velvet curtains hanging down, separating what looked like V.I.P. booths. “Up there.”

All of The Royal Court’s gazes shifted up to the balcony, and then Kyle turned and led the way up the staircase to the left. There was a glowing bar situated along the wall at the top of the second floor, and once we were up there, we could see that the area with the velvet curtains was roped off and guarded. With Cherri’s hand clasped in mine, I stepped through to the front of the group and led us over to the roped area. A guard noticed us immediately and crossed his arms, preparing to face us when we reached him.

“You got a reservation?” he growled.

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