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 saywhen. 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 castrateAllers.
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 anapology?”
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.
