Blaze
I drive up to Asch’s house and honk. It takes about two seconds before the door flies open and Asch runs out.
He was probably waiting by the door, wedged between all the junk in his mother’s house. He thinks I don’t know about the state of the house, but I can see through the windows.
Or rather, I can see how blocked the windows are.
Asch slides into the passenger seat. “Neon’s got a good lineup tonight,” he says by way of greeting.
“Sounds good.” I start driving. “Wait, do you mean music, or the other stuff?”
He gives me a sidelong look. “I mean music. I mean, the kink stuff is fun to watch, but that’s something I’d rather do with Pandora along. We need to drag her here on spring break, really show her the sights.”
Pandora would love Neon, I’m sure of it.
It’s one of the older nightclubs in NewVa, and part of the appeal is the ironic posters warning that all kink is banned from the premises—except the interior is entirely kink themed.
Dancers in cages, staff wearing collars, and private workshops in the VIP areas.
“Just watch, we drag her here and she’ll tell us there’s a bigger, better version of it in NB.”
I navigate us to the downtown area of New Valence. Traffic isn’t too bad, but there are stoplights at every intersection.
I drum my fingers on the steering wheel.
I’m surprised my dad didn’t sell the car while I was gone.
I glance out my side window and see the water in the distance. The city lights reflect off of it. The buildings block most of the view, but I can see one of the tourist tour boats coming into the harbor.
Asch nudges me. “It’s green.”
I turn my attention back to traffic, and on a whim I make a left turn.
“Uh. Where are you going? Neon’s the other way,” Asch says.
“I know.” I drive us closer to the riverfront. “It’ll be packed, and full of women who want to fuck us, or get mad that we danced with them, or whatever. Unless you really want to go dancing.”
“Not really,” Asch says. “It wouldn’t feel the same without Pandora.” He gazes out of the window. “Plus, I really don’t want to get my balls cut off because I danced with another woman.”
“She wouldn’t really.” I grin. “She’d joke about it though.”
I find parking on a lot that’s almost full, and I pretend not to notice Asch wincing when he looks at the per-hour parking rate.
“Let’s do one of those tourist boat rides,” I say. “I haven’t done one of those in ages. Y’know, where they tell you about all the famous people who lived and/or died here.”
Asch makes a face. “Pass. If we’re going to do anything, we should do one of the ghost tours. We can take pictures of the places and tell Pandora all about the spooky stuff she’s missing out on.”
“Does she like spooky things?” I ask as we walk toward the shops. It’s packed, with everybody doing their last-minute shopping or going out for drinks. The tourists are out in full force too, several large groups already blocking the sidewalks.
“She likes snakes. Those are spooky, I guess.” Asch pulls out his phone and types a text to somebody.
While he does that, I buy us some beignets at the street vendor locals know is the best but that tourists avoid because they don’t trust street food.
My phone buzzes, and I finagle the beignets so I can check the messages.
Asch
Do you like horror movies?
Pandora
Eww, no, I can’t stand gore.
I stare at the text for a few seconds, uncomprehending. Then I burst out laughing. I pass Asch his portion of beignets.
“She’s fucking with us,” I say in between chuckles.
“Of course she is,” Asch says, taking the small paper bag from me. “And of course I wore black.”
“You’re supposed to eat them, not get them all over the place. How long have you lived in NewVa, exactly, to where you don’t know how to eat a beignet properly?” I ask him.
Asch rolls his eyes at me. “Look, I can’t help it I’m a mess…” He trails off, the words obviously laden with more meaning than he’d intended. “Anyway, what kind of tourist do you think she’d be? The kind to want to see everything local, or just the tourist traps?”
“She would insist we take her to the good places.” I bite into one of my beignets, managing not to get powdered sugar all over myself. “Oh, she’d love Ghost House.”
Asch nods. “Yeah. If we can get an invite to one of their private events.”
I give him a look, because when has getting an invite ever been a problem for me? Even the exclusive, invite-only places like Ghost House aren’t a problem.
I think they call themselves that because it’s supposed to be hard to see them, or attend the place, or whatever, but for somebody with the right connections, it’s only a house that hosts regular kink parties.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Asch grumbles, taking a bite of one of his beignets.
He doesn’t get powdered sugar everywhere despite his complaints.
“How much do we really know about her, anyway? We don’t know what she enjoys beyond snakes and violence.
And that her family is big in the underworld, or used to be. Oh, and that they’re terrifying.”
“They aren’t that bad,” I grumble.
The more fear you show, the more people will try to take advantage of you. That’s true of Giulio Pavone, and it’s true of my father as well.
Fuck, I don’t want to think about him.
I lead us down to the riverfront. It’s early enough that people are still out with their families, and we have to avoid the tourists to find the more isolated sections of the riverfront.
I sit down on the steps leading down to the mini dock. Asch sits down beside me, and we eat the rest of our beignets in silence as we watch the boats move across the water.
“Blaze,” he begins, crumpling up his bag without looking at me.
“We really need to figure out what we’re going to do.
Things are bad. Really bad. And with your dad pissed and the frat pissed and everyone pissed, there has to be something.
We can’t keep going on like this and expect it all to go away. ”
I want to say that it’s fine. That nothing could possibly happen, that we’re untouchable.
But my dad and I haven’t exchanged a single word since I got home.
I’ve poked around the hard drive, but it’s an unsorted mess, and I haven’t found my dad’s secrets yet. Maybe they’re not even on that hard drive at all.
More importantly, I still don’t know what to do with it all. Blackmail more people, I guess, which is what my dad would do.
I’m more cynical than he is, though, because there’s some information on these drives that feels so minimal and boring now.
One guy I’d recognized as a current representative talked about raping a girl in high school, and the statute of limitation on that is long over anyway.
Never mind that I doubt it would hurt his political career at this stage.
People who have done worse are in office now.
I sigh. “I don’t know, Asch. We were both so sure the future was… this. We’d be part of NewVa’s underworld, riches and power handed to us on a plate. But Pandora threw a wrench in all of it.”
Asch sighs. “I don’t know what our future is anymore. Yours, mine… Hell, I don’t know what hers looks like either. Do we have a place in it? We’re burning down bridges, and honestly, some of them need to be burned down.”
He means the trafficking, I know.
“But beyond that, you and I only have futures if your dad doesn’t disown you and ignore the debt he owes to my mom,” he continues.
“His choices are to keep me close or to kill me,” I say matter-of-factly.
Asch looks at me with wide eyes. “What?”
I shrug. “It’s the truth. He can’t have me running off and helping anyone else.
Right now, it’s mutually assured destruction, right?
He ruins my life, I ruin his. If I defect to the Corroux, or god forbid, the Pavones…
That’s a bigger threat.” I sit back and stare up at the sky.
I can barely see any stars, between the moon and the light pollution.
“I’d have to commit too, though. If I want to defect, I have to be willing to cut all ties with my family. ”
“Is defection the best option?” he asks. “The Pavones do legit sex work now, right? It’s at least slightly more palatable than selling women.”
“I mean, that’s what they say.” I glance over to him.
“My dad thought Pavone was mostly out of the picture, before all this stuff with Pandora. Maybe he knows more than he was telling me though. And we don’t only do the stuff with the women.
It’s…” I sigh and sit up again. “It’s making sure you get money for your pet projects, or support from governments.
It’s enabling your cocaine or ketamine addiction.
It’s getting you big contracts that will ensure your success.
Access to country clubs with all the right people. ”
Asch nods. “I don’t know what you should do,” he admits.
“I don’t know what we should do. But we need to get as many people on our side as possible.
I don’t know what that means for us, either.
But we have to stop pissing people off.” He offers a rueful smile.
“Seeing as how Pandora has no intention of stopping until the world is burning, that’s going to be… hard.”
“Well, we’ll have to deal with all the Kappa Asshole bullshit when we get back.” I stop, then groan. “Kappa Alpha. Jesus, she’s got me doing it too.”
“Is she wrong?” Asch asks dryly. “But it’s probably not something we should do in front of our brothers.” He shakes his head. “You know I’ve never felt like I fit in, but you do. You need to get control back from Ezio before he gets in everyone’s heads too much.”
That sounds like a doable goal.
“Yeah. Ezio’s one dickbag.” I grin. “And as you’ve been telling me, one dickbag is nothing if he doesn’t have support. They want me to be the frat leader, then I should be the frat leader, right?”