He’s just as entitled and spoiled as the rest of them, I can’t help but think, even though guilt immediately races through me for the thought.
“I care!” Blaze says. “But I’m not going to cave to their stupid demands. They don’t even know what they want, honestly. They’re just blindly following along with Ezio.” He smiles at me, that charming smile that got so many women to drop their panties for him. “Don’t worry, Asch. We’ll get it sorted. We’ll take care of Ezio and everybody else will fall into line.”
“We can’t keep ‘taking care’ of people!” I say, my voice getting loud. “We can’t ‘take care’ of every single person who tries to go up against you. Eventually, this is going to bite us in the ass, and then what? What happens then?”
He drops the smile. “Fucking hell. I’m not an idiot, Asch. But you think we should cower because of their threats? You think we should let them do whatever they want to Pandora? Because that’s what it’ll lead to. Ezio’s not going to stop until Pandora is dead or worse—and we’ve already seen whereworseleads.”
“No, I don’t think we should let him do whatever he wants to Pandora. I don’t think we should let him doanythingto Pandora. But we can’t keep acting like we’re above it all. We’re dealing with serious shit here, Blaze!” I snarl at him. “You’re acting like you can keep your dad in check forever with the threat of the Pavones and some blackmail material, but don’t you think he’s dealt with worse before? And Ezio is here, right now, apparently—which you didn’t bother to tell me! Don’t you think this whole situation is looking bad?”
“The situation is absolute shit, and it’s bad enough trying to wrangle Pandora,” Blaze says darkly. “You’ve got your own problems to deal with right now, Asch. You worry about your grades, I’ll handle everything else.”
“Worry about my grades?” I repeat with a harsh laugh. “Yeah, what’s that going to do, Blaze? Your dad’s going to yank that so-called scholarship the second he can. It doesn’t matter what my grades are. You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t pullyourtuition too after all of this!”
“He’s not going to do that,” Blaze snaps. “And if you keep your grades up, we can talk to the tuition people here and get you a real scholarship. Or at least have you transfer to a school that’ll give you one, I don’t know!”
The thought makes something seize inside of me. Being away from Blaze and Pandora, in another school, in another city…
“You don’t know what he’s going to do!” I tell him, trying and failing to keep my tone under control. “You don’t know how petty he’s going to be about all of this. It’s possible I’m going to have to goback to NewVa, but I don’t fucking know what that’s going to look like for me.”
And now that I don’t have the promise of the cushion of that supposed scholarship, I don’t know what I’ll do. Return to New Valence, to my mother and her chaotic, messy home where I’ll drown in all of it, and try to make something of myself while I end up in some dead-end job and fail.
Everything will fail, and Blaze doesn’t even seem to understand how at risk we are. Me, and River and Pandora and even Samantha, and who the fuck knows who else?
“Everything will be fucking fine!” Blaze shouts. He clutches the kitchen counter and bares his teeth. “It has to be. We didn’t do all of this just to fail. We’re going to find out who killed Rachel, we’ll stop the trafficking to make Pandora happy?—”
“Are you listening to yourself?” I demand. “You’re acting like we’re dealing with children, not hardened criminals who have spent decades building up their empire. How the fuck do you plan on taking that down? They’ll rebuild right around you and chew you up and spit you out in the process.”
I get up, agitation racing through me, and glare at him.
“What do you want me to do, then?” Blaze asks hotly. “Roll over? Give up?”
“Of course not,” I snap at him. “But you need to remember how dangerous this is. Stop trying to take it all on by yourself. Fucking talk to me about this shit instead of shutting me out. I know I didn’t grow up like you did, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have ideas and thoughts about all of this.”
“I’m not shutting you out!” Blaze shouts. “You’ve been busy with your studying and you don’t need to be distracted by all this, okay?” He bites his lip. “My family has put you through enough shit.”
I deflate, letting out a deep breath. My voice is much quieter when I reply, “And there’s more shit they can put me through, Blaze. There are things I need to know if I’m going to defend myself. I need you to talk to me. I need you to trust me, man.”
Blaze doesn’t say anything for a while. A lot more quietly, he finally says, “I don’t know, Asch. There’s no good solution. I’m supposed to be on top of this shit. I’m supposed to know how to handle everything. We’ve got a pile of secrets and nobody else on our side.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I say, “but I need you to trust me. Okay? Finals are almost over, then we can focus on how the hell to fix all of this. There has to be something we can do. In the meantime, we need to sort out this frat bullshit because the brothers are talking mutiny.”
“We need to figure out how to scare them so shitless, they won’t dare go against us,” Blaze suggests with a wide grin.
I have no idea how he expects to do that. I don’t even know if it’s the best course of action. But I nod anyway.
One way or another, we’ll figure it out.
We don’t exactly have a choice.
8
PANDORA
The proctor announces the end of the exam time, and I quickly hit thesubmitbutton.
Well, that was it. The last exam for the semester.
Of course it was biochem, and of course I’d floundered while staring at the answers.
