CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ALEXA
ICAN’T BELIEVEit! How did I not see it? Was I that blind? Or just stupid? A conversation I once had with my brother and April comes to mind when she first found out that Ethan was hiding something from her.
She sits across the bar from me up at Lucky’s.
“Anything you need me to do?” Derek asks. “Want me to talk to him about something? Is it girls?” he asks referring to Ethan.
She shakes her head. “I found a key card of some sort from Kingdom at the shop today. I think it fell out of his jacket pocket.”
“What?” I ask. “How the hell would he get in there?” Her younger brother isn’t even old enough to gamble.
She shrugs. “I’m not sure what the hell he would be doing with that.”
Derek’s dark eyes look around before he leans forward and whispers to her, “Kingdom is bad fucking news, April.”
She waves him off. “It’s just a casino.”
“No. I hear shit in here. Kingdom is into some bad shit.”
“Like what?” She frowns.
“Yeah? Like what?” I ask Derek. How the hell does he know about what goes on there? I’ve never heard talk in here about Kingdom before.
“I hear that the guy, Bones, is in big with the Mafia. Whatever they want, he gets them. Vice versa. And they bury bodies in the desert.”
“Mafia? Really?” She laughs. “Since when do you believe in that shit? And what could this Bones guy get them?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know exactly. I just know that anything goes there. I guess there’s some sort of black market that the guys run.”
“Illegally?”
He rolls his dark eyes. “That’s what black market stands for.”
“What would Ethan have to do with that?” She wonders, still skeptic.
He shakes his head. “You need to find out. And better hope that it’s not too late to get him out of it.”
Bodies? Isn’t that what Jasmine mentioned to Haven that morning at breakfast? How in the fuck did Derek know about all that? And who did he hear it from? Who is he hanging out with that would have that kind of inside information?
“Alexa?” I hear Jasmine call my name, but I jump onto the elevator. Before the door can close, she jumps in. “Hey, what happened?”
I spin around on her. “Luca runs the Mafia?”
She sighs, her shoulders sagging.
“Derek was right, and you …”
“It’s none of Derek’s business what others choose to do with their life,” she snaps. “Sometimes it’s either you do what you’re told, or you die.” She turns away from me, all of a sudden regretting getting in the elevator with me. “I don’t expect someone like you or Derek to understand that.”
The elevator dings, and the door opens. She steps out, and I go to reach out for her, but she pulls her arm away just in time to avoid it. “Jasmine?” Now I’m the one hollering at her, but she’s gone.
I run my hands through my hair, aggravated.What in the fuck just happened?
“Problem?”
I jump when I hear the man behind me. Spinning around, I come face-to-face with another King—Titan. All the Kings have one thing about them that’s the same—intimidation. They are all covered in ink, have muscles, and a pretty face. It’s truly unfair. Like they were all made in a lab. Titan is by far the largest of them. He has tattoos like Bones that run up and around his neck.
