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I should’ve realized the grin he put on when he noticed me was fake. Someone tried to kill him. Run a knife through his heart, and the person is still out there. I knew what it was to have a shadow lurking over you. I’d want the fighting to end too.
“Mmmm.” Jeremy’s high-pitched hum grated on my nerves. “Just like that. You’re ready to give in.”
“Not to you.” Roan wrenched the mic from his hands. “To them.”
Roan turned to the crowd. “These shits don’t matter. They’re HC trash. Outsiders,” he said. “But you’re Bedlamites. This is our town. You’re my people. If there’s anything the Bedlam-born respect, it’s a revolt.”
The boos ceased. Jeering quieted. They were listening.
“If you don’t want the Bedlam Boys running things anymore, we’ll step aside, and I speak for all of us.” Roan turned his head up to me—a brief glance, then he flicked away. “We were trying to help. It may not seem that way, but we didn’t want to make you hate us or put you under another tyrant’s rule. We for fuck sure didn’t want to cause the destruction of Bedlam. Our town ripped in half for some company in Hunter’s Crest to make a few bucks.” He shook his head. “It makes me sick.”
“It’s not about money,” Jeremy snapped. “This is our home now too. We want the best for it, and that’s not living in fear of the consequences of pissing off your corrupt mommies and daddies. No one buys that the mayor, judge, sheriff, dean, and billionaire don’t know what you guys do. They let you because if we’re in your control, we’re in theirs!”
Nods went through the crowd.
“The only way to be free of them is to build a new town. Put an end to their corruption.”
“Yeah.”
“Exactly.”
“Bullshit,” Roan said, blunt as a hammer. “This is the only way. We don’t have a choice. You know which kind of fear-mongering thickhead uses phrases like that? You.”
Jeremy launched at him and had to be held back.
“The only way isn’t chopping our town in half and giving power to a bunch of guys we don’t know,” he said. “The only way is for you all to choose.”
The half-drunk and high crowd exchanged looks.
“You choose who you’ll trust with the future of this town. If it’s Jeremy, his old man, and the Crows, the Bedlam Boys will back off. If it’s us, we’ll do what we always do and protect Bedlam from anyone who tries to fuck with us. It’s your choice,” he repeated, “but ask yourself this before you consider the Crows.”
Roan pointed up. “Are these the people who’ll lead you to the promised land free of corruption, violence, and extortion?”
Paris opened her mouth. “What’s he—?”
The television screen went black mid-orgy. In a blink it came back on, picture whirling as the cameraperson righted themselves.
“Get ’em,” a voice rang out of the speakers. “Fuck him up.”
The shot cleared on a fight. Half a dozen guys stomped some mewling soul into the ground. They had crows on their necks.
“Shut that off,” Jeremy cried. “Turn it off!”
He, Gael, and the others ran at the television cords. They found ten guys in their path.
I hardly paid attention to the unfolding fight below. The video was still going.
Photos of Gael passing baggies and collecting money in a drug deal. A video of Jonah at a party with a girl who was obviously barely conscious. They sloppily made out and then the video shifted. We watched him carry her passed out into a bedroom, and shut the door.
“I didn’t do anything!” Jonah shouted. “I swear. I let her sleep it off. I didn’t touch her!”
The video wasn’t over. Bentley’s handsome face filled the screen. The angle zoomed out, revealing a profile page on the website Honeycomb. I didn’t know much about these things, but living on a farm wasn’t living on the wrong side of a rock. Even I knew that site was for young men and women looking for sugar mamas. Sex for cash and gifts. Straight up.
Photos of them stealing things. Videos of them bullying people. Bentley making out with a woman old enough to be his mother in the back seat of a car.
“Turn it off!”
The Crows were throwing themselves at the barricade. Why? The damage was done.
“Ellis here wants to talk about corruption,” Roan said. “He’s got a lot to say about us and the shit we do. We grew up together. Y’all have known us for too long for me to pretend we’re angels. We’re not,” he stated. “But we’re also not this. And even the Bedlam Boys know there are lines you don’t cross.
“Unlike Micah and Jeremy Ellis.”
The picture faded out again and was replaced with a very naked Micah Ellis, winking seductively at the camera with his hand around his cock.
