28. River
RIVER
I can’t believe Blaze pulled it off.
The warehouse space looks nothing like I remember it from the street fights.
The lighting is still dim, and the cage is where it belongs, but Blaze and the Kappa Alpha guys set up proper seating with bleachers, and the sound system has been upgraded to be much higher quality.
There are even refreshments, which would never have lasted for more than ten minutes at the usual fight nights.
The signs near the entrance give instructions on where to sit, where to place bets—for charity, of course—and the Wi-Fi password for the connection we’d set up for tonight alone.
Reception has always been a bitch in here. It rarely affected me, since I was fighting, but I’ve heard others complaining. Fenrir said it was by design, so it was harder for people to upload live content.
Rich people wouldn’t put up with shitty reception and no Wi-Fi, though. What if they get calls from their stock brokers or business rivals?
Just about everybody who’d come in immediately hooked their phone up to the Wi-Fi.
“There are so many people,” Mel’s voice says in my ear.
The in-ear headsets took some time to get used to. Everybody had been yelling at first before we figured out whispering was more than loud enough.
Mel is set up at the top of one of the bleachers, wearing black jeans and a hoodie.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen her wear something not ‘goth.’ She’s barely recognizable.
“Yeah, that’s the point, Melly,” Pandora answers. “More crowd, more chaos.”
Pandora has been borderline hostile to Mel since she showed up at the house, and I don’t understand why. I know it’s dangerous, but she seems more determined to antagonize Mel than dissuading her from being here.
Maybe that’s her way of trying to scare her off, but it seems excessive.
Not something to discuss right now. After all of this, we’ll have plenty of time to get into Pavone family drama.
“You going to be able to handle it?” I ask. “It’s only going to get worse.”
“Yes,” Mel says.
I’m not so sure, but I’m not going to argue with her. It’s a little late to chase her off now.
All we can do is keep her out of the line of fire and keep her safe.
“Kratos and I are in position too,” Ares says. “Just say when. And don’t wait too long, or we’ll get bored.”
“If you burn us all down, I will cut your dicks off and feed them to you,” Pandora snaps.
She’s in a bad mood.
She should be anticipatory, excited, ready to castrate Allers.
Her bad mood has me even more on edge.
“They aren’t going to burn us all down,” Asch says, his voice calm. I think he’s the least rattled out of all of us, despite the fact that he’d confided in me the night before that he has serious reservations about the entire plan.
That isn’t stopping him from going through with it.
“Mel, has Allers shown up yet?” he continues.
“I’ll tell you when he does,” Mel says, a hint of impatience in the words. “There are a lot of people, but I can do this.”
“Everyone’s getting impatient,” Fenrir says. “I think we need to start the show to keep them from leaving.”
The show being the boxing matches. Fenrir, Reaper, and I are the “headliners,” billed as being the strongest fighters. But a few other HEL guys, and some from Reaper’s motor cycle club, agreed to fight too.
“Hey!” a guy calls out to me. I tense, then turn to see Peyton.
He’s dressed in boxing gear, too.
“You don’t box,” I say, a bit dumbly.
Peyton glares. “It’s just a charity match, right?” He looks around the entire fight hall. “Fucking Blaze. He did all this as an apology?”
I don’t know how to answer that, but I’m in luck because Blaze appears then. He passes a water bottle to me. “Here.” He waves to Peyton. “Thanks for coming, Peyton.”
I take the water and sip lightly.
Peyton growls. “This is going to pay for the new building? And—”
“Yeah,” Blaze says. “You’re getting that internship you want, okay? I already talked to Drake Brutal. He says they’ve got your spot reserved. Provided your grades don’t suck.”
I have to say that Blaze is doing a decent job smoothing over things with the frat. He pulled strings and coaxed them onto his side.
I haven’t talked to him about how he did it, exactly, but the fact that he got Peyton here bodes well.
A few other Kappa Alpha brothers show up. Two of them joined at the same time I did, and I still remember their secrets. The mild ones, not the ones they would have had to voice in front of a camera to be recorded for all Kappa Alpha members to lord over us.
I wonder if any of us count as official members, if we didn’t finish the first year initiation.
“Okay, Peyton, Carleton, you two can do the first fight,” Blaze says. “Time for the warm up!”
Peyton grumbles about being the warm-up, but he and Carleton both get into the cage.
“Here we go!” Anastasia’s bright voice announces via our new speakers. “Is everybody ready for our first round of challengers?”
The crowd cheers.
“Is Allers here yet?” Pandora asks, barely audible over the noise.
“No,” Mel responds.
Pandora makes a frustrated sound. “Are you sure? Maybe you simply didn’t recognize him.”
“I’m not face-blind,” Mel snaps at her. “And people aren’t coming in with baseball caps or anything. No one’s trying to hide who they are. He’s not here yet.”
“Hey,” I interrupt. “It’s still early. Maybe he got held up in traffic or something.”
“Or he stopped for a quickie with somebody,” Ares suggests. “Or he changed his mind about attending.”
“He didn’t change his mind,” Asch says. “Be patient. We can’t do anything immediately anyway.”
“He wouldn’t change his mind,” Blaze adds. “I got him to agree to be one of the largest sponsors. Donors. Whatever. He’s supposed to give a speech about brotherhood and how important Kappa Alpha Omega Sigma is.”
I take a deep breath. Everyone’s on edge, including me. I can’t wait for everything to devolve into chaos, when the real fighting starts.
I wonder again if this is my father’s blood flowing through my veins, coaxing me toward violence to alleviate stress.
Maybe this is why my mother wants nothing to do with me.
That thought should probably quell some of the need to fight, but it only exacerbates it.
It’s going to go wrong.
We’ll fuck up the timing.
Allers won’t show.
Ares or Kratos will light the fires before we’re ready.
Anastasia won’t be as good as hacking as she thinks she is.
Bobbi will betray us.
Pandora will completely break down.
Why the fuck am I thinking so negatively now? None of those things are going to happen. We all know our roles, and so far everything is going according to plan.
“Shit,” Mel hisses. “Blaze, I’m sorry. I just noticed—”
Blaze goes completely still beside me. “Yeah, I see him.”
I follow Blaze’s gaze.
A tall man, with thick hair and a strong nose, wearing a dark blue tailored suit. In another twenty years, Blaze might look like him.
George Bouchard.
He’s accompanied by two large bodyguards. I wonder which of these is the impenetrable “Isaac.” They’re both blond and pale, like they were cloned in some Scandinavian bodyguard factory.
“See who?” Asch asks. “Allers?”
“Blaze’s dad,” Mel reports quietly, like she’s afraid that if she raises her voice even a little, he’ll notice her.
Maybe she can’t handle this, but it’s too late now.
We need her.
“Okay,” I say. “Allers should be here soon. He’s supposed to give his speech after Peyton and Carleton are done, right?”
“He was supposed to give his speech before it all started,” Pandora corrects. “Where is he? He has to be here.”
I’m surprised to hear Bobbi respond, “He likes to be fashionably late, princess. I’ve got eyes on him. He’s almost there.”
Eyes on him? Bobbi had been vague about what she was going to do, other than murder everybody involved in her and her sister’s kidnapping.
The bell rings to signal the end of a fight. I can’t tell if Carleton or Peyton won. A large part of the crowd cheers, though, so it must have been the fan favorite.
“Guys, I don’t want to keep announcing,” Anastasia complains. “It’s hard enough keeping track of the other stuff.”
Blaze shakes his head, then says, “Fine. I’ll do it.”
He grabs one of the mics on the nearby table, tests it, then walks over to the cage.
“What a fight! Let’s give it up for Carleton!
” he says as he gestures to the winner. “I hope you all got your bets in, because that was just the start of our program! Every dollar wagered goes toward the Kappa Alpha Sigma Fraternity. And whoever wins the most bets gets to name the new building, and have the image of their choice engraved on one wall. Within reason, of course. We have to keep it safe for campus eyes.” The audience laughs at the joke.
Blaze grins wider and waves to them as he circles to see everyone. “You all know the frat song, right?”
The stupid song that I’d had to memorize, all for an initiation that never happened for me.
The people in the crowd seem hesitant, but at Blaze’s prompting, they break out into the song. The other Kappa Alpha members standing near me sing, too.
Brotherhood above all else.
Raise each other up.
We stand successful together.
I didn’t think it was quite that literal.
When the song ends, Blaze laughs. “Thanks for indulging me, folks. Now, our next fighters are—”
“Oh! He’s here!” Mel announces.
I whip my head toward the entrance. The bleachers mean there’s a much clearer view of the entrance now than there would have been under other circumstances.
John Allers walks through with one man in a dark suit at his side.
John Allers himself is in casual clothes, in the style of fifteen years ago like he’s clinging to his fading youth.
His light brown hair is styled messily, and even though he’s smiling, I wonder if his eyes have the same dead look as in all the photos.
Blaze pivots in Allers’s direction. “Our next fighters will have to wait, actually, because our guest of honor is here!”
I assess the bodyguard with Allers. It’s going to be my job to drag Allers to Pandora’s specially designed murder hall.