by Amo Jones
Everyone is too scared to talk about her, but I’m no bitch. “We gonna talk about Madison or what?” I say, flicking my tongue over my bottom lip. Fuck him if he thinks I’m going to pussyfoot around the subject when he let it rain blood just to get her, all to let her fucking walk away. We all fought for their relationship, not just him.
He stills, turning toward me. His eyes are on fire, his fists clenching beside him. He and I have been a little on edge lately, and I know me saying this is going to end in one way, with arms swinging, but the thing about Bishop is that he has to get angry before he makes sense of shit. So I’m fucking counting on him throwing punches.
And I’m not disappointed when his fist is flying into my face. I dodge it and laugh, backing away from him, only I lose my step just as his other fist swings and connects with my jaw. We both go down with Bishop plowing into my face. I take the hits, laughing as blood spills out of my nose and drips down my chin.
“Feel better yet, motherfucker?” I ask around my laughter.
“Fuck! Are you kidding me? Don’t get blood on my driveway, you idiots!” I can hear Tillie yelling, just as Bishop’s weight is being pulled off me and Nate is glaring down, shaking his head.
“Let me guess, you said the M-word.”
Rolling my tongue around the metallic liquid, I spit it all out and swipe my mouth with the back of my hand, unable to hide my smirk. “None of you bitches were going to do it.”
Bishop falls to the ground, his fingers buried in his hair. “This isn’t about me and her.” He glares up at me from beneath his lashes. “This should be about Saint.”
“But it’s not,” I say, getting to my feet and reaching down for his hand to help him up.
He takes it.
I continue, “It will never be about anything else until we’ve spoken about Mads, and you know it. You’re distracted. You can’t see anything past her.”
His eyes fly up to the front of the house where Tillie and Saint are both watching all of us. Saint is focused on me, her focus moving up and down my body frantically.
“So we can talk about Saint after we’ve spoken about Madison.” I push past him and Nate, making my way down the pathway that leads to Buckingham, which is behind the main house. Buckingham is directly behind a line of trees to the side of the house, hidden from plain view. If you didn’t know it was there, you wouldn’t see it. Thick shrubs conceal it perfectly, with the pool the main distraction. Nate and Tillie’s fancy shit. There’s a whole ass bar in the middle of the pool, too.
Pushing through the front door, I kick it closed and drop my cell phone into the metal bowl at the entrance, reaching for a rolled joint that’s on a table and snatching up a Zippo, sparking it up while moving to the negotiation table.
Eli and Hunter are on the sofa, watching the latest news when I’m sinking down onto one of the chairs, inhaling deeply before blowing out a cloud of smoke.
“You mentioned Madship?” Eli chuckles, shaking his head. “Had to be you.”
I ignore him as the door opens and closes again, and Bishop walks through on his phone before hanging up and dumping it into the bowl with the rest.
“Dad is coming. Table, now.”
I blow out more smoke and hand it to Nate as he sits on the opposite side of me, Bishop’s right hand. Eli and Hunter move in, too, until there’s nothing but silence.
“I’m not handling it well, shit.” He runs his hands through his hair again. “But you all have to respect my decision that I am not chasing her. She can stay there, and if she ever comes back to me, which I think she will, then I’ll be here. But for now, and for the future, I’m not chasing her again. I’m not a fucking puppy. Fool me once…” He looks around at all of us and my jaw clenches. His logic doesn’t make sense to me. He knows she didn’t cheat. He knows she was raped. I fucking know Madison. Longer than he has known her. I not only know her demons, I was there while those demons were created.
We share the same ones.
I may not have been a fan of her when I first met her. Hell, I barely tolerated her. Every time I looked into her eyes, I saw the kid that she no longer was. I saw everything that Lucan made us do to each other. Had nothing to do with her as a person, she was just a trigger to me. When you spend years upon years learning to control your demons, you get a little fucking angry when an old one comes back and reintroduces itself. Aside from that, I didn’t see the appeal that she had to Nate and Bishop, but that’s nothing new. Both of them never had problems dipping their dick into whatever wet hole they wanted. Me, on the other hand, chose my victims a little differently. Riding my dick wasn’t an easy feat, and surviving it wasn’t either, which was why…
Past
“Where the fuck are you going?” Nate shoved my arm as we walked down the loud corridor of this hellhole of a school. Senior year only just began, and I was ready to call it fucking quits. We didn’t need a fucking diploma. I had enough money to buy out the fucking president.
I needed something.
I pushed away from him and continued down the corridor.
“Fine, grumpy motherfucker! But we are partying this weekend! Your house!”
I flipped him off because that’s all we seemed to do lately was party.
When I shoved through the door of the final classroom at the back that led into the gymnasium, I slammed it closed and flicked the lock.
Her body stilled, her long blonde hair moving over one shoulder. I watched as the corner of her mouth kicked into a smile.
“You’ve been chasing my dick since you got to this school.” I kicked off the door and made my way farther into the room.
She didn’t move. Didn’t answer.
When I reached her back, my hand snaked around from behind until I had it wrapped around the front of her throat, yanking her head backward while kicking her legs wide. “Mrs. Fucking Kilpatrick.” Her wedding ring glistened on her finger as she slammed her hands onto her desk. She tilted her head until she was looking at me over her shoulder.
“What gave me away?” she said in a tone that I had never heard from her, definitely not when she would scream at us to jump hurdles during track.
I cranked my head, while running my hand over her lower back, over her tight ass and hooking my finger beneath the edge of her yoga pants. I slammed her headfirst onto her desk while leaning into her ear. “Aside from the fact you can’t keep your eyes off my dick whenever I’m near?”
I reached into my pants just as a door behind me opened. Fuck. There were two doors. She froze beneath me, but I didn’t allow her to move.
I slowly turned to look over my shoulder to find Nate standing at the threshold, his eyes on us, fist in his mouth. “Well, shit. Gotta say—”
“—gonna join in?” I snapped at him.
His eyes flew to Mrs. Kilpatrick. I mean, it wasn’t that she was ugly. She wasn’t. She was a forty-somethin’ hot as fuck woman who, I’m guessing, knew exactly what she was doing. It’s what I needed. I never touched high school chicks. The closest to my age I ever went were college girls, and even then, the sex was too basic for me. Too vanilla. Too clean. Literally.
Nate took the steps he needed while finally locking the second door behind him. “Yeah, fuck, I’m game.”
She wriggled beneath my grasp. “Brantley. If you break it, you gotta buy it, honey.”
“I’m not here to buy shit, I’m here to ruin you, so that the next time your husband shoves his cock into your cunt.” I sank my teeth into the flesh of her neck before finally whispering, “He’s going to wonder why his wife has been split open.”
Present
So, yeah. About that. I kept that happening for most of the year. Never wanted it from girls my age. Something about them reminded me too much of my childhood.
Too much. Too close. Too familiar. So, I kept it to older women. Married women. Having a married woman sucking my dick before going home to kiss her husband amused me. Knowing he’d be wondering why there were bite marks all over her bod
y…
“I get that,” I say, since no one fucking else is going to. Eli, I get. He’s the youngest out of all of us, and aside from that, he’s not interested in the drama between Madison and Bishop. His brain doesn’t tick to the same clock that most people’s do. “But it’s out of character for you. Someone who chased her down to the ends of the earth, just lets her walk.”
Bishop shrugs. “That was the fool me once I just spoke about. Can’t have a weakness. So if she really wants me, she needs to show that she can handle it.” He looks around the table. “Anyone else have anything they want to add, because speak now or forever hold your fucking peace.”
Silence.
“I think Tillie is talking to her.” All of us turn to Nate.
He shuffles in his seat.
“What the fuck do you mean?” Bishop growls, and I can see his easy demeanor slowly shift.
“I mean, I’ve caught her on the phone a couple times, and every time she sees me, she hangs up the phone, and when I ask her who she’s talking to, she says Bran Bran—” His eyes come to mine.
Fuck.
Fucking Tillie. I know I’ll be breaking our silent code of loyalty if I tell them it wasn’t me, but I’m a King before I’m anything else.
I shake my head. “Not me, fam.”
“Eh, what I suspected.” Nate shrugs, leaning back in his chair.
“But are you really surprised?” I say to Nate and then look between the two of them. The realization of everything dawns on me and I start laughing. “Damn. Love really turned you both slow as fuck.” I roll my eyes as the door opens and Hector enters. “Tillie is a girl’s girl. She looks after her friends. How are you surprised that she’s talking to Madison? If anything, at least you know she’s not fucking dead.”
I kick my legs out as Hector takes a seat on the opposite end of his son. The table is long, with ten seats, but both ends are for him and Bishop.
It’s tense when Hector clears his throat, and I don’t know if there’s something else happening between the two of them, or if it’s the whole Madison ghost that hovers over everything.
“You think she’s been talking to her for a while?” Nate asks, and I have his full attention.
I shrug. “It’s Tillie.”
Hector pulls out a cigar from the humidor and clips the end. “We’ve got something else we need to discuss, where’s Cash?”
“Out with Benny.”
The table grows quiet. I roll my eyes again. “He’s my cousin, not the fucking Devil.”
“So he’s out racing?” Hector further says, an eyebrow quirked.
Bishop shrugs. “Someone has to keep that going.”
“In my defense, I wanted to,” Eli says, raising his arm.
We all ignore him.
“What is it?” Bishop says to his father.
He flicks the ash off his cigar. “The old Riverside is reopening.”
“As in the old schools?” I fucking loved the old school. Was pissed when we had to be moved to the new building.
Hector nods. “The very same. We’re closing the one in the Hamptons and classes start back after the summer break.”
“I thought it was too old to have kids in, which is why they moved the school to the Hamptons?” Bishop questions Hector.
Hector shakes his head. “Not entirely true. We didn’t tell you all right away because you were only just stepping into your roles. We didn’t want to overwhelm you.”
I snicker. Pretty sure learning that our school was moving to a different location would be the least shocking lie we would learn.
“So what’s the story?” Nate asks.
“Since you’re taking the gavel this year, son, you will need to know all of the little cracks that we’ve hidden from you, and over time, you will know everything. But for right now, we need to talk about this.” His eyes flick to Nate. “Your father has pushed this, too, by the way. Pushy fucking bastard. He’s getting worse with age.”
“Why does it matter if the old schools are reopening?” I ask the question no one else seems to want to know, annoyed with the dancing around.
“Well, a few reasons,” Hector answers, and we all wait in silence for him to say what he needs to say. “And all of them impact each of you in one way or another.”
That has my attention.
“You.” He points to Bishop. “Because you’re going to be on the frontline to a decade long turf war. You.” He points to me. “Because you have something, or someone, in your possession that is far more valuable than you know, and you,” he finally says to Nate, and I have to pull in all of my instincts that are screaming to ask him what the fuck he means. “Because I promised Stuprum that I would protect your child from enemies, and I’m a man of my word.” Finally, he leans forward, unclasping the button of his suit jacket and resting his elbows on the table. “You should all, I, we, every King, be on high alert right now. Things are happening behind the shadows. There are movements happening that we’re not comfortable with.”
“We’re the motherfucking Elite Kings Club.” Nate waves off Hector. “Dare any dumb fucker to come near us and live to talk about it.”
“Well, that’s just it.” Hector shifts back in his chair, and for the first time ever, I see something foreign flash over his face. “It has.” Fear.
Saint
She’s so pretty it hurts. She has long dyed pink hair hiding her natural blonde. Not as blonde as me, but blonde. No one is as blonde as me naturally.
Her mouth is moving as she talks while zipping around the kitchen, flustered, her hair flying around the place. I have barely been able to get a word in. I hope she doesn’t think I’m rude.
“…so now I’m pregnant and my best friend isn’t here, her best friend has moved away with her boyfriend which, by the way, we wouldn’t be friends anyway. I don’t have any girlfriends except for those savages outside—” Her mouth stops moving. I realize she has stopped talking and she’s looking right at me. “Sorry, I’m not with it right now.”
I shake my head, running my sweaty palms over my thighs. “It’s fine. Really.” It’s sort of not. I don’t know how to talk to someone like this. Are most girls like this? I like her. Don’t get me wrong. She’s obviously fierce about the things she loves and I wouldn’t want to ever cross her, but she speaks at speeds I can’t catch. Maybe that comes from her confidence. She has a lot of it. She’s also so pretty.
She takes two steps closer to me, and I finally notice what she’s wearing. Skinny jeans and a Louis T-shirt that hangs loose on her figure. Her makeup is impeccable, her eyebrows perfect. You’re being weird.
“How old are you?” she asks simply.
“I’m seventeen.”
“When did you turn seventeen?” She examines me closely. When she looks me up and down, it isn’t in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable. In fact, I prefer it, because now I get to openly gawk at her without feeling like a weirdo.
“Three weeks ago.”
“Jesus,” she whispers. “You’re so young.”
“How old are you?” I find myself asking, because I wouldn’t think she’s much older than I am.
“I’m twenty.”
Huh. She doesn’t look it.
“You seem younger, though.”
My stomach flips. I have to fight the urge to reach forward and touch her hair.
“Anyway.” She brushes off our conversation. “You stay seated while I cook.”
“Cook?” My shoulders straighten, my attention successfully piqued. “Can I help?”
Tillie turns and smiles for the first time since we’ve spoken. “Sure. Okay.”
I push off my chair and she points to a laptop where an internet browser is open on Pinterest. “I want to make Korean. It’s Bishop’s favorite food, and I think he could do with something good right now.”
I find myself smiling as I tie my long hair up onto the top of my head. “It’s my favorite, too.”
Tillie chews on her bottom lip, and just as she
’s about to open her mouth, I interrupt. “I know a few recipes. I can make Japchae and Bulgogi. We can bake some Hoeddeok for dessert, too.”
Tillie doesn’t answer, and when I finally look up at her, her mouth is slightly open, her eyes wide. “I don’t know what all of that is, but okay! You tell me what to do.”
We move through the kitchen in silence, and when we do talk, it’s about simple stuff. I ask her about her best friend, and she tells me that she’s away right now and is dating Bishop, one of the guys Brantley is friends with. I’m thinking it was the guy I noticed yesterday. I don’t know why I feel drawn to him, but I do. I want to talk to him. I don’t know what I’d say, but I’m fascinated by him. She tells me that she and Nate have had a crazy relationship, her words not mine. They’ve broken each other’s hearts and came back together again, so she said the same will happen with Bishop and Madison.
“I don’t think I like cooking Korean food.” Tillie swipes the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hands.
I chuckle. “It’s not easy to perfect.”
“So how did you come about cooking?” she asks, and I know it’s a double-edged sword. She probably wants to know about Brantley and me more than she cares about how I came about cooking.
“When I was young, I didn’t speak English or understand the language. I think I understood Latin, but then I was later diagnosed with a mild speech impediment. So, I guess I always found myself in the kitchen, wanting to do something with my hands since I wasn’t very good with vocalizing. I felt like I was helping if I cooked food for Lucan and Brantley. I’d leave meals in the fridge. At first it never got eaten, and I’d end up throwing it out. But then as I got older, Brantley would finally eat it. The times he was home, at least.”
We start dishing out the meals into glass serving bowls, and I pull the bread buns out of the oven. Spices suffocate you as soon as you walk into the kitchen, with the subtle touch of freshly baked bread.
“Am I interrupting?” Brantley murmurs from the threshold between the kitchen and the dining room. In the dining room, there’s a big circular table with a crystal chandelier that hangs over the center. Vibrant red is clothed over the table with silver cutlery elegantly placed around the seating. It feels formal, yet it doesn’t.
