Asch #2
The woman startles. “Oh, you were watching?” She gives me an assessing once-over, and shakes her head. “No offense, but I don’t like uneven matches. You’ll need to find somebody down on your own level.”
I blink at her, shocked by her assessment. “Excuse me?” I ask, incredulous. “I’ve been doing MMA since I was a kid.”
I’m at least as good as River is. I’d helped take down one of the goons at the hotel those women had been held at, and I’ve earned my way through the ranks of my MMA classes.
“Sure. If you say so.” She laughs as she pulls her satchel closer. “Anyway, I need to get to the bio lab. Nice talking to you…?”
I glare at her. “Yeah. It’s been great,” I say, ignoring the grasp for my name or whatever she’s trying to pull. “See you.”
I stalk off like an angry cat. I’m not a shitty fighter. Just because I don’t fight in street fights or whatever doesn’t mean I can’t handle myself.
I’m still fuming by the time I get back to the house, and it has me in a shitty mood as I seek out Blaze, who’s in the kitchen cooking.
He takes one look at me and quirks a brow. “What crawled up your ass?”
I grit my teeth. “Nothing.”
“Uh huh.” Blaze flips his eggs over. “Do you want some eggs too? Pandora gave me this spicy dressing that’s actually really delicious. And not destroy-your-tongue spicy like that stuff her Daddy eats.”
“No,” I say, my voice more clipped than I intend it to be. I exhale slowly, then say more calmly, “No, thank you.”
Blaze shrugs and plates his eggs, adding some red sauce from a large jar. After taking a bite, he says, “It’s different from NewVa spice. But good, too.” He holds out his fork with some spice-covered eggs. “You sure you don’t want any?”
I’ve never been a fan of anything on my eggs, and it sounds gross. “I’m positive.” I sigh, raking a hand through my hair as I sit down hard at the kitchen table. “Holden cornered me in the library,” I tell him. “Apparently Pandora pulled some shit at Holden’s place…?”
Blaze takes a long time chewing and swallowing before he responds. “Yeah. But it’s fine. River and I talked to her. Anyway, Keegan definitely deserved it.” His jaw clenches. “He’s been smart and laying low, but Ezio must have convinced him it was safe to show his face again.”
I stare at him. What hasn’t he been telling me?
“Wait, what?” I ask. “Ezio? What does he have to do with anything?”
Blaze freezes up like a deer in headlights.
“Eh, it’s nothing,” he says quickly. He finishes off his eggs and immediately puts the plate and fork into the dishwasher.
“How’s studying going? We can work on the stats class shit if you’re done with macro economics or whatever hell you’re torturing yourself with right now. ”
“It’s not nothing,” I snap at him. “What the fuck, Blaze? You and River are dealing with Pandora now, and Ezio is… What? He’s back? Don’t you think I need to know these things? The frat is fucking furious with you, and they’re talking about ‘doing something’ about it.”
Blaze lets out a long sigh. “They talk big, but we both know they won’t pull any shit. They’re all entitled, spoiled kids who piss themselves when they get scared.” He grins widely. “Literally, in Holden’s case.”
“We’re already in deep shit with your dad,” I point out, not sharing his amusement. “And now Ezio is around again? How do you think we’re not going to run into problems, Blaze? Don’t you care about any of this?”
He’s just as entitled and spoiled as the rest of them, I can’t help but think, even though guilt immediately races through me for the thought.
“I care!” Blaze says. “But I’m not going to cave to their stupid demands.
They don’t even know what they want, honestly.
They’re just blindly following along with Ezio.
” He smiles at me, that charming smile that got so many women to drop their panties for him.
“Don’t worry, Asch. We’ll get it sorted.
We’ll take care of Ezio and everybody else will fall into line. ”
“We can’t keep ‘taking care’ of people!” I say, my voice getting loud. “We can’t ‘take care’ of every single person who tries to go up against you. Eventually, this is going to bite us in the ass, and then what? What happens then?”
He drops the smile. “Fucking hell. I’m not an idiot, Asch.
But you think we should cower because of their threats?
You think we should let them do whatever they want to Pandora?
Because that’s what it’ll lead to. Ezio’s not going to stop until Pandora is dead or worse—and we’ve already seen where worse leads. ”
“No, I don’t think we should let him do whatever he wants to Pandora.
I don’t think we should let him do anything to Pandora.
But we can’t keep acting like we’re above it all.
We’re dealing with serious shit here, Blaze!
” I snarl at him. “You’re acting like you can keep your dad in check forever with the threat of the Pavones and some blackmail material, but don’t you think he’s dealt with worse before?
And Ezio is here, right now, apparently—which you didn’t bother to tell me!
Don’t you think this whole situation is looking bad? ”
“The situation is absolute shit, and it’s bad enough trying to wrangle Pandora,” Blaze says darkly. “You’ve got your own problems to deal with right now, Asch. You worry about your grades, I’ll handle everything else.”
“Worry about my grades?” I repeat with a harsh laugh. “Yeah, what’s that going to do, Blaze? Your dad’s going to yank that so-called scholarship the second he can. It doesn’t matter what my grades are. You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t pull your tuition too after all of this!”
“He’s not going to do that,” Blaze snaps. “And if you keep your grades up, we can talk to the tuition people here and get you a real scholarship. Or at least have you transfer to a school that’ll give you one, I don’t know!”
The thought makes something seize inside of me. Being away from Blaze and Pandora, in another school, in another city…
“You don’t know what he’s going to do!” I tell him, trying and failing to keep my tone under control. “You don’t know how petty he’s going to be about all of this. It’s possible I’m going to have to go back to NewVa, but I don’t fucking know what that’s going to look like for me.”
And now that I don’t have the promise of the cushion of that supposed scholarship, I don’t know what I’ll do. Return to New Valence, to my mother and her chaotic, messy home where I’ll drown in all of it, and try to make something of myself while I end up in some dead-end job and fail.
Everything will fail, and Blaze doesn’t even seem to understand how at risk we are. Me, and River and Pandora and even Samantha, and who the fuck knows who else?
“Everything will be fucking fine!” Blaze shouts. He clutches the kitchen counter and bares his teeth. “It has to be. We didn’t do all of this just to fail. We’re going to find out who killed Rachel, we’ll stop the trafficking to make Pandora happy—”
“Are you listening to yourself?” I demand. “You’re acting like we’re dealing with children, not hardened criminals who have spent decades building up their empire. How the fuck do you plan on taking that down? They’ll rebuild right around you and chew you up and spit you out in the process.”
I get up, agitation racing through me, and glare at him.
“What do you want me to do, then?” Blaze asks hotly. “Roll over? Give up?”
“Of course not,” I snap at him. “But you need to remember how dangerous this is. Stop trying to take it all on by yourself. Fucking talk to me about this shit instead of shutting me out. I know I didn’t grow up like you did, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have ideas and thoughts about all of this.”
“I’m not shutting you out!” Blaze shouts. “You’ve been busy with your studying and you don’t need to be distracted by all this, okay?” He bites his lip. “My family has put you through enough shit.”
I deflate, letting out a deep breath. My voice is much quieter when I reply, “And there’s more shit they can put me through, Blaze. There are things I need to know if I’m going to defend myself. I need you to talk to me. I need you to trust me, man.”
Blaze doesn’t say anything for a while. A lot more quietly, he finally says, “I don’t know, Asch. There’s no good solution. I’m supposed to be on top of this shit. I’m supposed to know how to handle everything. We’ve got a pile of secrets and nobody else on our side.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I say, “but I need you to trust me. Okay? Finals are almost over, then we can focus on how the hell to fix all of this. There has to be something we can do. In the meantime, we need to sort out this frat bullshit because the brothers are talking mutiny.”
“We need to figure out how to scare them so shitless, they won’t dare go against us,” Blaze suggests with a wide grin.
I have no idea how he expects to do that. I don’t even know if it’s the best course of action. But I nod anyway.
One way or another, we’ll figure it out.
We don’t exactly have a choice.