Chapter 51
POE
Neo and Drago were waiting outside Aventine University’s administration building when we got there. Their dark hair gleamed under the old-fashioned lamps that dotted the campus, and Drago’s facial piercings caught the light.
“Sorry we’re late,” Remy said. “Didn’t realize the parking lot was so far from the main building.”
We had no reason to be familiar with Aventine’s campus. The Kings dealt with the drug trade between the school and Blackwell Falls, and we’d never had a reason to get in their business.
It was a perfect arrangement: the on-campus dealers bought from our wholesalers and cut the Kings in, the Kings cut us in, and we got another cut from our wholesalers.
The end.
“Hi,” Maeve said, greeting the Kings.
They said hello and Bram looked up at the old building’s stone facade. With its tall arched windows and the landscape lighting, it looked like a castle.
“This is fancy as fuck,” Bram said.
Neo shrugged. “Let’s go.”
He was wearing trousers and a button-down shirt under a sweater, an expensive leather jacket over that. Drago wore jeans at least, although they were dark wash, the kind I’d wear out to dinner, not to sift through a bunch of dusty old records.
They looked like what they were: rich kids with one foot in the criminal underworld and the other in the good life.
“Where’s Rock?” I asked as we made our way toward the doors.
“Home with Willa and the baby,” Neo grumbled. “Lucky bastard.”
Two years ago I would have been surprised to hear Neo wax poetic about staying in. Back then, the Kings had run Aventine, and it had been all partying, all the time.
Now they had a reason to be home. It was a reason I understood, because even though I’d never been a big partier, I’d enjoyed my share of nights at Syd’s and now all I wanted to do was stay home and watch movies with Maeve, preferably before fucking her brains out.
Neo removed a set of keys from the pocket of his jacket and unlocked the doors and we stepped into an expansive triple-height vestibule. A staircase curved to the second floor, like it was somebody’s mansion instead of a school building.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. The school was funded by deep-pocketed alumni with their hands in every criminal enterprise known to man. They weren’t going to send their kids to some shabby public school.
“This way.” Neo led the way down a long hall. The main lights were off, but smaller lights remained lit near the floors, probably for the cleaning staff who must have come at night.
Nothing about the place was generic. The doors were carved, the floors gleaming hardwood. Gallery lights hung over the artwork that was interspersed on the walls — and not the cheap artwork you usually saw in a school or a hotel.
The real deal.
Neo stopped outside a closed door with a plaque on the wall that read Chess Room.
“You have a fucking chess room?” Bram asked.
“No one uses it anymore,” Drago said.
“How come?” Remy asked.
“Who the fuck knows,” Neo said. “Computers, cell phones, social media. It’s a different world, but the school used to be big into the game.”
I’d never thought about it before but it made sense now. The frats at Aventine were named for chess pieces: the Kings, the Knights, the Saints, the Rooks.
The Queens had their own house too. Remy had once had a thing for one of them, a bratva princess with blonde hair down to her ass and a Russian accent that had made me laugh.
We stepped into a room that screamed old money: wood paneled walls, carved tables, plush chairs, more art. The walls were lined with bookcases and leather-bound books reached all the way to the ceiling.
A dusty bar stood at one end of the room, half-full bottles of liquor lining the shelf behind it.
Remy whistled. “This is what you fuckers do at school?”
“Like I said, we don’t use it anymore.” Neo walked across the room and turned on one of the table lamps that sat next to a leather chair.
“Yeah, but somebody did.” I looked at Maeve, who was taking it all in right along with me.
“Chess is a game of strategy,” Drago said. “It’s a lot like what our families do in real life.”
“I’m sure it’s a fun game,” Bram said. “But we don’t play chess.”
“Speak for yourself,” Remy said.
“We’re not here to play.” Drago walked to one of the bookshelves and studied the spines, then removed one of the books. He reached into the space left by it and a beep sounded from inside the walls in the moment before the bookcase popped out by eighteen inches.
Drago slid it to the side, over the bookcase next to it.
Neo threw him the ring of keys and Drago used one of them to open a door that had been hidden behind the bookcase.
Maeve’s eyes were wide as Drago disappeared down a staircase.
Neo followed. “You coming?”