Chapter 25 Asch
ASCH
We get back to the house, and I can feel the bad mood roiling off Blaze.
Because of Ezio, or because Pandora blew us off?
Either way, Blaze drops his messenger bag on the couch and stalks to the kitchen. “You want a drink?” he calls out.
Normally, I’d say no, but it’s been a long day.
It’s been a long month, honestly, and if there was ever a time to soothe my nerves, this would be it.
“Yeah,” I reply.
I set my backpack on the floor next to the couch and sit down.
We obviously knew Ezio had been sniffing around, but I hadn’t expected him to go for Pandora.
At least he’d done it in public.
I look at my phone, half-expecting a text from her, but there’s nothing.
Blaze returns from the kitchen, holding two bottles of beer.
He hands me one, and I nod. “Thanks.”
Fuck, I missed this.
“So this went from bad to worse,” I say after a pause, watching Blaze.
“Yeah.” Blaze presses the cold bottle against his temple. “Fuck. Bad enough he was looking into her. Now Ezio is on Pandora’s radar. There’s no way we could explain away Ezio’s disappearance.”
I exhale slowly, looking down at the bottle in my hands instead of at Blaze. “Do you think he had anything to do with Rachel?” I ask. “Not that she’s going to care. He’s Kappa Alpha. She’ll blame him anyway.”
“He didn’t pick her. That wasn’t his job. That was… well, Zayden and Logan last year. You remember him?” Blaze lets out a small laugh. “Shit, I should reach out to him and ask if he knows Rachel.”
I do remember Logan. He’d been one of the senior brothers, and something about him had rubbed me the wrong way. I couldn’t place it though, because he wasn’t openly hostile. He was just boisterous, and overly friendly. He was also really popular with women.
I want to say I must have sensed he was involved in all this stuff, and that’s why I didn’t like him, but if I’m honest… I resented how much time Blaze spent with him. Secret frat meetings and party planning I was never involved in.
Now I understand why, and I’m uncomfortably grateful about being left in the dark.
The sex clubs themselves don’t bother me. The women are there of their own volition.
At least, I’d thought they were. Some of them might not be.
Now that I know the terrible secret, I look at the whole business with new eyes. I haven’t been able to bring myself to ask Blaze how many of the missing girls are dead, and it’s a level of cowardice I hate associating with myself.
“What good is that going to do now?” I point out. “It’ll just put one more person on Pandora’s radar.”
“If we help her find out what happened to Rachel, maybe she’ll back down,” Blaze suggests. Two seconds later, he sighs loudly. “Okay, fine. I know, that’s fucking unrealistic.”
“There’s no way she’s going to be like… ‘Okay, I know who killed my best friend, so now I’m going to drop it,’” I say. “So the question is, what the fuck do we do when she finds out?” I eye Blaze. “Because she is going to find out, whether you tell her or not.”
The front door opens, and River trudges in. He takes one look at us, then says, “I take it those aren’t celebratory beers.”
I snort. “No. No, they aren’t. Get one and join us, I guess.” I glance at Blaze. “Might as well tell him, too.”
Blaze raises his beer in River’s direction. “Yeah. You’re not officially part of Kappa Alpha yet, but I think I can trust you not to do anything that would fuck things over. Seeing as how it would also blow back on Pandora.”
River sets his bag down by the door. “Great.” His voice makes it clear that it is not, in fact, “great.”
Nothing about this situation is “great.”
He leaves the room to grab his own beer, and Blaze and I sit in silence until he returns.
“So what’s going on?” River asks as he sinks down into the armchair.
I look at Blaze, unsure of what he wants to tell River. Whatever he says has a good chance of getting back to Pandora, one way or another.
“So. That Rachel girl.” Blaze takes a long swig, then glances at River. “What actually happened to her? I gather she’s dead. And she was Pandora’s friend, and you had some sort of falling out? But Asch and I don’t know the full story.”
“We don’t know exactly,” River says, his eyes narrowed. “She disappeared, and two weeks later, she showed up in a landfill in pieces.” He takes a long drink of his beer. “The falling out was… sort of unrelated.”
I wait, curious to see if he’s going to give any more details.
“What happened between me and Pandora didn’t have to do with Rachel,” River says instead.
Blaze rolls his eyes. “Yeah, sure.” He takes his phone out of his pocket and taps on the screen. “Rachel Turner.” He grimaces. “Found cut up in a land fill. That’s… sloppy.”
“Sloppy.” River’s voice is savage. “Yeah. That’s one word for it, Blaze.” He pauses, then glances between the two of us. “What do you know? You said you didn’t know anything about her.”
“We didn’t,” I say. “Not at the time.”
Not until very recently, I don’t say.
“Pandora was right that she was here.” Blaze starts peeling the wrapper off his beer bottle.
“I found her ‘modeling’ contract. I hadn’t seen her though.
Normally we do thorough checks. If anyone had known she had ties with the Pavone family, there’s no fucking way she would have been pulled in.
And the murder—no. Most of them don’t get killed.
And they definitely don’t get left where they could be found. ”
It should be a relief to hear that the women don’t generally end up killed, but the whole thing is so unpalatable that I can’t bring myself to feel anything but angry. How had I been so stupid that I hadn’t realized that some of the women at the clubs might not have been entirely willing?
“How many of them do get killed?” River asks, voicing the question I had been too cowardly to find out the answer to. “And why? Can’t keep a few women under control?”
Blaze glowers at River. “Do you really want to start casting stones, Rivera? I know what your family does for the Pavones.”
“At least we aren’t killing innocent girls,” River snaps at him.
“Come off it. If she weren’t your friend, you wouldn’t have given a shit,” Blaze answers. “Even Pandora wouldn’t have given a shit. As evidenced by the fucking head she delivered to us. Not exactly the actions of someone who cares about the sanctity of human life.”
“Zayden deserved it,” River says.
“Did he, though?” I ask.
“Yes!” River shouts. “He was responsible for girls going missing.”
“But did Pandora even know that when she killed him?” I ask slowly. “Or did she just think he was responsible for the…”
For the incident at the gym.
“I don’t know,” River growls. “I guess she could’ve blamed him for that. She thought he was there. But why would she—” He cuts himself off with a bark of a laugh. “Never mind. I know why she didn’t come at us. She didn’t want us dead. She wanted us to suffer.”
“And she was doing a fucking fine job of it,” Blaze mutters. “You got off easy though, didn’t you? No weird sex games with you. She didn’t threaten to remove more bones.”
River’s expression flickers, and I wonder if she did do something to him after all. He doesn’t seem interested in telling us. “Just more violence,” River retorts instead.
“But you still have all your parts. Minus a finger,” I say, exhaling slowly. “Fuck. Okay. So first of all, we have to worry about Ezio zeroing in completely on her. Then we have to worry about what happens when she finds out about Rachel.”
“And we have to figure out how to get her out of this… mood that she’s in,” River replies. “She’s not acting like herself.”
No. She isn’t.
“I don’t get it,” Blaze adds. “Didn’t you two fuck her at the club? And we beat up Tate for her. Why’s she suddenly so…”
“Depressed,” I finish for him.
She’s putting on a brave face, she’s still threatening us and flirting, but it’s so different from before.
It’s different even from when she’d told me about the scholarship and when she’d goaded me into fucking Blaze’s face.
She’s…
Fragile.
Not like one of Blaze’s dahlias, which would wilt beneath a touch, but like an explosive, capable of taking everything in the vicinity down with her.
“She gets like that sometimes,” River says. “And can you blame her? After everything she’s been through this past month alone, is it any wonder she’s depressed?”
“Gets like what?” Blaze asks. “Do we have to worry about more than random decapitations?”
“I think Zayden was her first,” River says, and the fact that he doesn’t sound certain is telling. “But now that she’s been let off the leash, there’s no telling what she’s willing to do to get back at the people making her feel this way.”
I set my beer aside. “I don’t think telling her the truth about Rachel is going to make her feel ‘better,’” I say. “So what the hell do we do?”
And why do I care?
“Help her?” Blaze suggests. He shrugs at my glare. “What? She wants revenge for what happened to Rachel. That seems like the fastest way to get her out of that funk. If I had access to all the files, I might be able to figure out who Zayden delivered her to.”
“There’s also Samantha,” River says.
“Who’s Samantha?” I ask.
“Her roommate, who went missing.” River grimaces. “She’s pretty sure Samantha’s already dead, but she was so disinterested about it.”
That doesn’t sound like Pandora at all. The Pandora I know is strong, fierce, savage — and completely unwilling to accept anything like that.
River must catch the look on my face because he nods. “Yeah. That’s what I thought, too. Zayden apparently took her somewhere, but she didn’t know where.”
Blaze starts laughing. “So she killed her best lead? Good job, Pandora.”
“It’s not funny,” I snap at Blaze. “That means she’s going to go rogue the second she gets any useful information, and we won’t be able to do a damn thing about it.” I pause, then ask, “What are the chances the roommate is still alive?”
I’m not sure I like the odds.
“I told you, they don’t usually get killed!” Blaze hisses. “If Zayden went through the proper channels, she’ll be either at a… well, we call them warehouses. Or there was a specific buyer in mind.”
Blaze doesn’t react when both River and I glare at him.
“That’s one of the perks of joining Kappa Alpha,” Blaze says.
“Connections. Power. Anything you desire. You just have to show loyalty and open doors for your fellow brothers.” The smile he turns on me is nasty.
“I would have made sure you got everything you ever wanted too, Asch. Whether you stayed here or transferred out.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
“And if he wanted a woman?” River asks in my stead. “Would you just have delivered one to his doorstep?”
“Why not?” Blaze props his legs up onto the coffee table. “But that’s a moot point. I’m not delivering Pandora to anyone. And I know she’s the only woman Asch wants now.”
“I don’t want a random woman,” I agree. “And I’d never want Pandora against—”
Against her will.
Can I even say that? Do I have the right to say that after what I participated in? I hadn’t fucked her, but does that really make a difference?
I make a frustrated sound. The supposed perks of Kappa Alpha don’t matter now.
“If you find out who the buyer was, can we get her back? Or is she gone forever?” I ask.
“Depends on the buyer.” Blaze stares up at the ceiling. “I can ask. If she’s at a warehouse, we might be able to get her out… but we’d have to guarantee she won’t snitch. If she’s already with somebody powerful…”
“Snitches get murder,” River mutters.
I look sharply at him. “What?”
River shakes his head. “Something Pandora says.”
In the face of what’s happening, it’s not very funny because if Samantha did get out and “snitched,” that’s the least of what would happen to her. Unless I miss my guess, people like George Bouchard would never tolerate that.
I doubt he’d tolerate Blaze wanting to get her out to begin with.
“So.” Blaze sits up. “I’ll look into it. But that’s not going to fix whatever the fuck is wrong with Pandora.”
“No,” River says, “it’s not.”
“Then what is?” I ask.
“I don’t know!” he snaps at me. “I’m not the Pandora whisperer, okay?”
“Calm down,” I tell him. “It was just a question.”
“Yeah, well,” River says. “It was a stupid question. She’ll either come around or she won’t.”
“Great,” I say. “That’s a brilliant plan. Just sit around and do nothing.”
“It’s the best plan I have,” River says, slamming his beer bottle down on the coffee table. “It’s not like she’s predictable. Chocolate and flowers and heart candies won’t get you anywhere.”
“Violence, adrenaline, and snakes might,” Blaze answers blithely. He turns to consider River. “Don’t you have a boxing match on Saturday?”
River eyes him. “What does that have to do with anything?” he asks.
“Well, that’s violence and adrenaline all in one,” Blaze responds with a grin. “Then we take her on a date afterwards.” He pauses. “But she’ll have to make do with the snakes in our trousers, because I’m not getting near one of those disgusting things.”
I groan, tossing a pillow at him. He catches it easily and gives me one of his charming smiles, the kind I haven’t seen in a while.
“They’re not disgusting,” River retorts.
“But I don’t think there’s space for a second enclosure, so snakes are out anyway.
” He stares at his beer bottle. “Yeah. Invite her to the match, then we’ll see if we can corner her afterwards and fuck her brains out until she’s too tired to move when we talk to her. ”
“Great. I’ll book a hotel room.” Blaze gets up while staring at his phone. “Asch, you can text Pandora about it. The boxing match, not the rest of it. River… Take a fucking shower and rest, you look like shit.”
River flips him off. “Whatever.” He gets up, grabbing his beer bottle to drain it before heading into the kitchen to discard it.
After he disappears upstairs, I turn back to Blaze, only to realize I don’t know what to say. All of this information has my brain in overload, and I need time to process.
I hate that he was right that I couldn’t handle the truth.
I hate even more that this is his reality.