Chapter 30 Blaze
BLAZE
I hang my keys up on the hook by the front door and take my shoes off.
I’m completely exhausted. From the sex, from chasing Pandora around, from the idea of finding Pandora’s friend and rescuing her.
My dad will be furious if he finds out.
Samantha could destroy everything.
Shit.
“You okay?” Asch asks from behind me.
“Yeah,” I say. I hang up my coat and hold my hand out for Asch’s so I can hang his up too.
If I don’t do it for him, the coat will end up over a chair or a couch.
Asch hands it to me. “Uh huh,” he replies.
He couldn’t sound more skeptical if he tried.
I go to the couch and flop down.
“I have to be okay,” I say quietly. “Not for me. For Pandora.” I run my hand through my hair. “The rest doesn’t matter right now.”
He joins me on the couch. “It’s going to matter soon enough,” he remarks. “We shouldn’t go into this half-cocked, and you know it.”
“I don’t do things half-cocked,” I joke.
Asch rolls his eyes. “Don’t copy Pandora’s bad jokes. They aren’t funny.”
“They are!” I grin, but the smile fades fast. “I don’t know. What the fuck am I supposed to do, Asch? My dad’s not going to let me waltz into one of these facilities and take a girl for no reason.”
“He might if you tell him you want her,” Asch says. “But I think that might cause more trouble down the line, and…” He hesitates, then continues carefully, “Zayden and Ezio have probably told him about Pandora. He may not believe you want Zayden’s ex.”
“Not like my dad knows Zayden was stringing her along.” I tap my fingers on my thigh. “I could go tour a facility. You could join me. We can scope the place out, see if there are any vulnerabilities.”
Asch takes a deep breath, and I can see his discomfort. He steels himself, though, schooling his expression into something more neutral. “Yeah. Assuming your dad doesn’t think it’s weird that I’m showing up after you’ve spent so much time shielding me from all of this.”
“He won’t care.” I get up and pace across the room, just for something to do. “He’s got zero interest in what you do. I’m more worried about keeping Pandora from doing something really, really stupid.”
“Like burn a frat house down?” Asch suggests. “Or chop someone into pieces?” He watches me pace, pursing his lips. “I think the only thing left is mass murder, and I wouldn’t put that beyond her, honestly.”
After how she’d been acting last night… neither would I.
Okay, realistically, it was Zayden’s head that convinced me of her ability to commit mass murder.
It’s not like my own family is free of guilt. I don’t know how many people my father has had killed, but it’s not only a few.
And I’m the one who had a classmate killed because he was a dick to Asch.
I would have done it with my own hands, too, if I hadn’t been worried about potentially getting caught.
Pandora never seems to worry about that part.
“I just don’t want her to do anything that could blow back on her,” I say. I go over to the armchair and sit down. “She’s not as invincible as she thinks she is.”
Asch shakes his head. “She’s not. And…” His lips quirk into a weird smile. “I don’t really want her to find that out the hard way. That’s stupid, right? After everything?”
Is it dumb to want this crazy woman who cut me up, got Asch to hate me, had him fuck my face, to still think she’s on top of the world?
Guess I’m dumb, then.
And crazy too.
“She deserves the fucking world,” I say. I glance down at my hands. “She deserves everything she wants.”
“Does she?” Asch asks. But he sighs. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess she does. And she’s used to getting it. I guess if we’re going to be proper boyfriends, we need to make sure she does.” Another crooked smile. “So how the fuck are we going to do this without your dad coming down hard on you?”
That’s the million dollar question.
I’m still trying to come up with an idea, any idea, when the front door opens again.
River and Pandora walk in. She’s got a duffel bag over her shoulder that I eye suspiciously.
“Are you staying here now?” I ask.
I try to imagine her actually living here.
Having Pandora within arm’s reach. Being able to joke and laugh with her. Discussing her violent fantasies. All the amazing sex.
There might be too much of a good thing, though.
Pandora smiles. “Why, are you inviting me to move in, Blabe?”
“Blabe?” I repeat.
River and Asch both snicker.
“Yeah. Blaze plus babe. Blabe.” Pandora’s grin widens.
“You aren’t funny,” I say, deadpan.
“Told you,” Asch says.
“She can stay with me,” River says, trying to take her bag, but she doesn’t let go of it. “Until these things are sorted, anyway.”
Pandora sets her duffel bag on the coffee table. There’s a large couch for her to sit on, but she instead chooses to settle on my lap.
I wrap my arms around her and look up into her eyes.
Not crazed, not tired, not sad.
Determined. Fierce. Alive.
This is the Pandora I got to know.
This is the Pandora I fell for.
She gives me a quick kiss on the lips. “Does this place actually have an extra room or is it strictly a bachelor pad?”
“If you always share with somebody else, you don’t need an extra room,” I point out. “You can rotate beds.”
Pandora laughs and taps my nose. “Will Echo rotate beds as well?”
I recoil and shake my head. “No. No snakes in my bedroom.”
“You brought Echo with you?” Asch asks. He eyes the duffel bag with less caution than I think is appropriate.
Pandora rolls her eyes. “Of course not. She’s in her enclosure. I’m not going to stress her out by moving her pointlessly.”
River smirks. “Really, Blaze. What did you think, that she’d just throw her baby in a duffel bag and call it a day?”
“I don’t know how snakes work!” I argue. Pandora nuzzles her nose against my neck, then she bites down.
I grunt, but I don’t push her away.
Maybe we don’t need to plot to undermine my father. Maybe we can simply have sex right here in the living room.
Asch gets up and approaches, standing behind Pandora. His arm loops around her shoulders, and he rests his chin on her head.
“So do we have any ideas yet?” River asks without preamble, ruining what could otherwise have been a perfectly good moment.
Pandora groans and stops nipping my skin. “I don’t know. I brought all your drives. The blackmail materials. There’s so much shit there though.” She sits up and turns enough to kiss Asch.
Asch pulls her against him, kissing her hard. His hand slides up her back until it’s resting at the back of her neck. He squeezes lightly then draws back enough so he can look at her properly. “You okay?” he asks, his voice quiet.
Something dark flickers across Pandora’s expression. “We established that I’m fine, Asch.” She pushes him away, then gets off my lap to retrieve something from the duffel bag.
The external drives that had been set up to store all the blackmail material we’d collected from our frat members. It’s backed up in other places, but that anyone outside the frat even had access is… not great.
As we’ve already experienced.
“So, any idea of what to do with all this stuff so we can get Samantha back?” Pandora asks. “I assume uploading this to some leak website isn’t going to get us what we want.”
“Doubt it,” River says, shaking his head. “But maybe if there’s something on Ezio, we could pressure him to help us?”
He doesn’t sound convinced.
“No. Ezio would go right to Blaze’s dad if we even tried it,” Asch says.
“Who even is that dickwad?” Pandora asks. She sits down on the coffee table, and I’m glad the place came with a sturdy one and not the delicate glass coffee table in my parents’ living room. “Blah blah, former frat member, but he has to be somebody if he’s trusted with all this bullshit, right?”
I shrug. “He joined the Syndicate after he graduated. I don’t remember all the details, I wasn’t exactly part of the business yet. He showed up for meetings a few times.”
“I don’t know if he’s putting on a front or if he actually knows as much as he’s pretending to, honestly.” Asch glances at Pandora. “He’s positive you’re involved with Zayden’s disappearance, and he’s going to keep sniffing around until he figures something out.”
“Ugh.” Pandora taps her foot against my shin. “Can’t you tell him to back off? You’re the Bouchard heir!”
“What do you think I’ve been trying to do?” I grumble. “But he isn’t taking any hints, and my dad wants him here, so I can’t get rid of him entirely.”
“We need to work around him, then,” River says.
“And how do you plan on doing that when he’s right in the middle of everything?” Asch asks, sitting on the edge of the couch.
“I don’t know!” River snaps.
“I guess we could stab him?” Pandora suggests.
“No!” River and Asch both shout.
“Okay, shut up, all of you.” I get up and rush up the stairs. I hear them still arguing even after I leave. I grab my laptop, barely remembering to unplug it, then rejoin everybody in the living room.
“Tell me you have cables for those drives,” I say to Pandora.
She holds up a bunch of cables. “Tell me your laptop has ports of any kind.”
“Not just ports. It even has a headphone jack,” I say smugly.
“Ohh, a headphone jack,” Asch drawls. “How quaint.”
“I haven’t seen one of those on a computer in a long time,” River comments. “But we don’t need one of those. Just put it on speaker. May as well hear what Pandora already knows.”
“I had to pay extra for that,” I grumble. “So I can use proper headphones with good sound quality—ugh, never mind.” I set the laptop down on the coffee table and plug in the drive.
I’m dismayed when I find it opens without a password prompt at all. I wonder how Pandora got past all the security.
I click around until I find the folder I want. Pandora leans closer to look over my shoulder.
“Are these folders organized?” she asks. “It all looks like random letters and numbers.”
“Of course they’re organized.” I have to back out of the current folder and go to another one. I’d been off by a year, but I find Ezio’s confessional video.
I start it up and fullscreen it.