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My skin starts to itch.
I’ve always found that story particularly disturbing, and I’ve always had a hunch that Romano had something to do with the death of Annabelle’s boyfriend. But that Romano would start courting her just days after his death...
“Was Annabelle’s boyfriend from a rich and influential family, too?”
“I don’t know,” Eva replies. “They didn’t get into those kinds of details at the debriefing. Even the fact that Romano is Sade’s adoptive father, they only mentioned it in passing. As if to pinpoint that birthright isn’t what makes him a King. What I can tell you without being briefed about it is that, believe it or not, Sade has had advantages from his mother’s marriage with the Duke as well. Without this alliance, he wouldn’t be wielding the power he does over the warlords in the Far East. Romano used his new wife’s money to worm his way back to a position of power over them–and that’s one hell of a feat. After all, he’s a King, too. That’s not the kind of information you get in an official meeting with the dean, but the professors’ lounges are hotbeds of gossip. You’d be surprised at the kind of intel they can yield.”
“Iwouldn’t,” Annie says, winking at us. “Cooks at Sade’s mansion, anyone? I bet your professors got nothing on them, sweetie.”
I’d crack some insider jokes on that under any other circumstances, but now I’m too keen on Eva’s story.
“Now, so that you understand the magnitude of this better,” she says, “imagine that control over war zones comes with arms trade contracts, paramilitary groups, weapon production facilities and, of course, the financial network you need for all of that. They control banks in all the financial hotspots in the world, from Switzerland to England to Dubai and Hong Kong.”
“This is fucking scary,” Annie whispers. “If only one King–or two, with Micah–controls all that, then what do the others control? The fucking White House?”
“I don’t know about all of them, but I know that Chase Daytona is in the arms trade business too,” Eva says. “He runs a number of paramilitary groups and, already at a young age, he advises governments on defense matters. A genius of violence. A strategist and–” she stops herself, realizing that something different is slowly infiltrating her contemptuous tone. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it’s admiration. She clears her throat, and continues. “That’s why he’s gone so often. Carlton Wilde? While his friends are in the business of taking lives, his family is in the business of protecting them. Pharma industry. He controls eighty percent of the largest brands.”
“Fucking Flying Dutchman,” I whisper, rubbing my arms against a sudden chill. And here goes the question I hoped I wouldn’t have to ask. “And Dogg Wilson?”
Eva purses her lips for a moment, her eyes narrowing as if she’s not sure about something. “Here’s where things don’t add up. While all the other Kings are super-brains, super-talents in their fields, there’s nothing special about Dogg Wilson. I mean, yeah, he’s smart, he models great economic and financial forecasts and would be an asset for any trust fund or mega bank, but he could have easily gotten his education at Stanford or Harvard or any other university. He’d be a better fit for the universities in England, if you ask me. So...”
“So we don’t know why he’s here,” Annie completes. “How about his family? What do they do?”
“His father used to be in Congress, and now he coordinates our countries’ relationship to former Soviet governments.”
A slap against the wooden table makes me jump. “There it is,” Annie exclaims. “With all these families together, their control and influence and wealth, they go full circle. They need each other–and we’re all nothing but ants at their feet.”
A passing librarian hushes us, staring at our alcove with quiet anger. Annie holds up her hands in an offer of peace, waiting for the woman to be done shaking her head before she bends over the table to us again.
“That’s gotta be it. He barely made it into the club. That’s why he’s such a bitch. I mean, the other ones can be nasty too, but there’s something sleazy about Dogg. He’s mean because he feels inferior, I tell you.”
Eva lets her finish, not wanting to burst her bubble, but then she contradicts.
“Like I said, the power of one’s family isn’t enough to get anyone into the Kings’ club or out of it.” She shrugs a shoulder. “Maybe it would work if it was just the four families, Royales, Wilde, Wilson and Daytona, but there are a dozen more scattered around other universities. The air is thin at the top, but it’s still more than just a few families. It takes a tribe to run the world so, over the centuries, these families turned their circle into a well-oiled machine. They may be much above mere mortals, on a Mount Olympus of their own, but they still have to answer to each other.”
“That’s why Sade got such heat when he beat Dogg to a pulp last month,” Annie says, more to herself to make sense of things than to us.
My head whips to her. “Sade beat up Dogg? Why didn’t I know that?”
“Probably because you stuck your head in the sand whenever he came around or even when someone mentioned him.”
She’s not wrong. I was always afraid that if Sade caught me as much as glancing in his direction, he’d read all the dirty fantasies I had of him in my eyes.
“That he got heat is to say the least,” Eva picks it up. “If it happens again, it could start a war–and it wouldn’t be a war Sade could win. The Kings’ families would have to choose who they support. If they choose Sade, it doesn’t mean they would fight on his side. It just means they won’t attack him, or help Dogg’s family in the process. Sade’s own family can choose to stay out of it, just to avoid greater damage. Too much is at stake. A war between the ruling families of the world would mean the apocalypse.”
“Do you realize what this means, Justice?” Annie chimes in. “If Sade swore to protect you–”
“He didn’t swear anything,” I cut her off, but there’s no stopping Annie once she’s all riled up about something.
“No, listen.” Whenever her eyes light up like this, and she starts quivering like a giddy cat, it means she’s inside one of those smutty books of hers. “Sade made it clear to the entire campus that you’re under his protection now. That includes Dogg. And that confirms what I thought all along–that you mean much more to him than a simple fuck.”
“Really?” Eva chimes in, her arms crossed, a blonde eyebrow lifting. “Youthought that all along?”
“Just because you pointed it out, it doesn’t mean it didn’t cross all of our minds. Even Mel confirmed.” She pouts at Eva for only another second before she turns to me with a wide grin, her eyes sparkling behind her glasses. “You need to play this card right, Justice.”
“There’s a right way to play it?”
“Hey, you were between a rock and a hard place.” I glare at her, and her hands fly up in the same pacifying gesture she gave the librarian. “No pun intended. I’m just saying, you need to snap out of it, because the man is capable of starting a war for you.”
