Twisted Kings (Empire of Carnage #2)

1. Milo

1

Milo

R emoving pornographic images and videos from the internet was like playing whack-a-mole. If Thea had been underage, we’d have stood a chance of getting the footage taken down from all the major sites, but she wasn’t.

Lucian Forsyth’s PR team was probably going out hard to limit how far the incriminating footage spread, but it was a pointless task. By now, the film would have been shared a billion times, as well as uploaded onto hundreds of shady sites around the world.

Who’d uploaded the damn thing? That was the billion-dollar question.

The sound of fire alarms going off all over the place distracted me from my bank of screens. I pushed my headphones off and stood. What the fuck was going on? Had some pranksters set fire to the dumpsters behind the kitchen again?

When I looked out of my bedroom window, huge flames lit up the night sky, soaring upward from the direction of the science labs. Our apartment was too far away to be in danger, but staying put was still a bad idea in case the fire spread.

I glanced at my phone to see a ton of missed calls and messages from the guys. My call to Cassian rang out for a good few seconds. Just as I was about to hang up and try Lan, he picked up.

“What’s going on?” A symphony of screams and shouts in the background made it hard to hear his reply.

“The science labs are on fire. It’s chaos. Get your ass down to the assembly area. We need to talk.”

The acrid scent of smoke permeated with chemicals burned my nose and eyes. Students milled around in their ball gowns, some crying, others looking shell-shocked at the unexpected end to a festive evening of debauchery. Everyone had been looking forward to letting loose before we all headed home for the holidays.

When I found the guys, the three of them stood apart from the masses. Cassian’s Tom Ford tuxedo jacket hung over his shoulder and he’d rolled his shirtsleeves up, apparently oblivious to the sub-zero temperatures. The righteous fury on his face made me wonder what exactly I’d missed.

Lan seemed pissed off but resigned, while Kyril was quieter than I’d expect considering the current state of anarchy on campus.

I scanned the area, searching for my angel. Why wasn’t she with the guys?

“Where is she?” I asked when it became apparent she wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity. Fear of losing her had my emotional state unraveling faster like a cheap sweater from Shein.

“Like I give a fuck.” Cassian snarled dismissively.

His words registered, but they made no sense. Why was he acting like she meant nothing to him?

I fought to contain my panic. My therapist's words repeated on a loop in my head.

Breathe . Five things I can see: fire, Cassian, trees, the moon, and Kyril. Four things I can hear: crying, a fire alarm, the sound of sirens, and someone yelling. Three things I can touch: the grass beneath my feet, the smooth sleeve of my jacket, the wall. Two things I can smell: smoke and perfume. One thing I can taste: smoke.

The panic eased and my muscles unlocked. I took a few more deep breaths, wincing at the awful taste of chemical-infused smoke in the air.

“Tell me what’s happening? Why isn’t Thea with you?” Maybe she was with Eden. Those two seemed close. Yes, that made sense.

“She fucked us over, man,” Lan muttered while staring at his phone.

What? “Explain, please.”

Cassian rolled his eyes. “We don’t have time for this shit. My father will be here in five minutes, and I’m going to have to come up with a reason why I let some manipulative bitch fuck me up the ass with a giant dildo.”

My brow scrunched in confusion. The video clip lasted sixteen minutes and 32 seconds. Not once in that time had anyone fucked Cassian up the ass, with a dildo or otherwise.

“He doesn’t mean that literally,” Lan snorted, seeing my perplexed expression. Oh .

“So what has she done to upset you?”

Cassian clenched his fists and walked away, leaving Landon to explain.

“Dario played us an audio clip of Thea agreeing to plant drugs in the hotel room to ensure Cassian got arrested.”

“But the police raided the hotel room and found nothing?” Lan wasn’t making any sense.

“Yeah, but that was her plan,” Lan insisted. “So presumably something went wrong. I dunno. Maybe she didn’t have time? Or maybe she got too distracted by my dick?” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. She’s not who we thought she was, so she’s dead to us.”

“Or maybe the guy in the clip coerced her to do it,” Kyril snapped, glaring at Landon.

So Kyril believed she was a victim. That was interesting. Of the two of them, I’d have assumed Landon would take Thea’s side.

“I need to hear this audio,” I declared. It could be fake. There was enough technology available to cobble together voice recordings and use AI to turn them into a fake conversation. Were these idiots so na?ve as to take a recording on a phone at face value? “It might not even be real.”

“So you’re saying Dario faked it?”

“Dario? What does he have to do with this?”

“Dario was the one who played the audio.”

The plot thickened. Knowing how much he hated Thea, it was highly likely the file was fake, and even if it wasn’t, I wanted to know why he even had such a file.

But none of that mattered right now. Finding Thea was my priority.

“Where is she?” I asked again, squaring my shoulders.

“I don’t know,” Landon admitted. “She disappeared when we evacuated the main hall.”

“And you’ve not bothered looking for her?” I stared at him, silently wishing I had Kyril’s violent nature because right now, punching Lan in the face felt like an excellent use of my time.

“She’s most likely with Eden,” Lan muttered, refusing to meet my eye. He kept staring at his phone like it held the answers to the universe’s problems.

A flash of pink hair caught my attention and then a small but determined figure came hurtling over.

“Really?” I drawled sarcastically before Eden unleashed fury on us.

“What the FUCK have you done with my friend?” she screamed at Landon.

“Back off,” he huffed, moving out of her way.

“She’s not with you?” Panic flared in Kyril’s eyes.

Eden huffed irritably. “Ooh, let me check.” I watched as she opened her purse, scanned the contents, and then threw a venomous look at Kyril. “Nope. Apparently not.”

For once, Kyril didn’t bite back at her show of sass.

“She might have gone back to her room,” I concluded. If I was her, that’s where I’d have gone.

Thea’s room door stood ajar when we reached it. Just as I was about to step inside, Kryil stopped me.

“Let me go in there first,” he said in a low voice.

The inference I was too weak to handle any threats we might face irritated me, but I decided that yes, he was better equipped to fend off any murderous assailants.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Eden shoved her way past the both of us. “Bunch of pussies,” she scoffed. Kyril growled and squeezed his bulky frame into Thea’s small room after her.

We all took in the chair lying upended and the broken glass everywhere, and concluded something had happened.

Once again, panic mushroomed too fast to swallow it down. My breathing grew erratic and sweat beaded across my brow. The temperature in here was glacial, but in my panicked state of mind, the room felt boiling.

I couldn’t catch a breath and even my usual exercises didn’t help.

Then I felt a small hand on my arm. Eden stared up at me with concern.

“Milo, it’s OK. Thea is a complete badass. Whatever’s happened, she can handle it.”

Eden’s words sank through the swirling morass of chaotic thoughts in my head.

She was right. Thea was strong. She could handle herself.

“Milo,” Kyril barked when he stepped out of the bathroom. “You need to find her.”

“I need to find her,” I repeated, sucking in some deep breaths. It will be OK. I could find her. The cameras would show me what happened. Technology had never failed me yet.

“Where’s Cass?” Kyril asked when we arrived back at our apartment, minus Eden. Thankfully, her cousin had called her, so we parted ways outside.

My clothes stunk of smoke and I was desperate for a shower, but it could wait. There wasn’t time. The need to find Thea crawled beneath my skin like a plague of ants, scratching and biting, chewing away at my sanity.

“Gone,” Landon replied before slugging another mouthful of whiskey. He looked defeated, none of his usual humor in evidence. “His father took him away before the press could show up.”

“Are you not heading home?” Landon’s family home wasn’t far from here. It would be safer there than here. And also less contaminated. My nose wrinkled with disgust at the thought of all the disgusting toxins we’d likely inhaled tonight.

“Nope. Not welcome.” He poured more whiskey down his throat and closed his eyes. Kyril threw me a look that said he thought Lan was pathetic, but I said nothing.

“I’m going to get cleaned up. Call me when you find out where she went.”

I nodded and headed back into my room, shucking off my jacket on the way.

After trawling through the footage from all the cameras positioned around the campus, both inside and outdoors, I frowned.

There was no footage from Thea’s tower. Nothing from the two cameras in the science building. And someone had also wiped the cameras around the delivery entrance.

Thank God I had invested in my own cameras in key locations. There were nowhere near as many as the official system, but they were better quality and more discreet.

I logged into my system and set the search parameters for Thea. It took no time at all to find her leaving the main hall via the back entrance around the time people were being evacuated because of the fire. I picked her up again, entering her tower. The camera outside her room showed her arrival. After about 20 minutes, a man appeared with an unconscious Thea slung over his shoulder.

My heart stopped beating as I watched him disappear toward the rear entrance. He threw her in the back of a van and then left the campus.

Forcing myself not to panic, I focused on the screen. Panicking wouldn’t help Thea. She was in trouble. She needed me.

She needed us .

“Kyril!” I yelled. We couldn’t afford to waste time arguing over what she had done. I doubted any of this was her fault. He burst through my bedroom door naked, water dripping down his chest.

“What? Have you found my kotenok ?”

“ Kotenok ?” I frowned, distracted by the unfamiliar word.

“Kitten. Have you found her?”

Kitten? Thea wasn’t a kitten! She was a queen!

My fingers tapped the keyboard, enlarging the still I’d grabbed of the man who kidnapped Thea.

“She’s been taken and this is the man who took her.”

Kyril leaned over me, not caring that his dick brushed my arm. Gross . I edged away and concentrated on the screen.

“His name is Torrance Asaro. He’s Francesco di Luca’s chief enforcer,” he told me, his mouth flattened into a line. “If he has her, she’s in trouble.”

“Is that his name?” Landon staggered in on a cloud of whiskey fumes.

Kyril’s eyebrow shot up. “You’ve met him?”

“Yeah. He was with her when she arrived on induction day. I assumed he was her father because she called him papa.”

“He’s not her father,” Kyril said.

“He’s not,” I agreed, deciding it was time to share what I knew about Thea. “She’s Francesco di Luca’s daughter.”

“But he doesn’t have a daughter,” Kyril said, folding his arms across his chest and staring at me like I was a complete moron.

“Can you put some shorts on, please?” Nobody needed to see his dick. The thing deserved its own fucking zip code. Naturally, he ignored me.

Landon sniggered and sank onto the bed with his bottle tucked into his chest. Any moment now and he’d be asleep. In my bed. While wearing his contaminated clothes. Was it any wonder I hated people?

“My father is well acquainted with di Luca. I’d have heard about it if he had a daughter.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course you don’t believe me,” I muttered.

“He’s right. Francesco does have a daughter,” Dario interjected. “In fact, he has two daughters.”

“You have a fucking nerve showing up here,” Kyril yelled, his desire to kill Dario overruling his concern about Thea.

“Enough!” I yelled. “Can we stop and have a rational conversation?”

“Nah, I’m not in the mood.” Dario spun on his heel, but he didn’t get far. Kyril launched himself at the stupid Italian and they both ended up on the floor, trading punches for the millionth time.

Fuck my life. I was done with this bullshit. Landon snored loudly from my bed, where he’d passed out. The last dregs of his whiskey slowly seeped into my quilt.

For a moment, I contemplated packing my bag and leaving. I could find her myself. Be her knight in shining armor riding to the rescue before we sailed off into the sunset.

Dammit. Mixed metaphors made my head hurt.

After a few moments, I scrapped that idea. If I was being completely honest with myself, I needed help. More specifically, I needed Kyril’s help. I had the brains, but he was the brawn. There was no doubt in my mind that I could find her, but the rest of the rescue operation was hazy at best.

Inflicting violence was second nature to Kyril. And if Thea was back with her father, we’d have to shed a lot of blood to rescue her.