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“We can’t have that.” Her fingers trail up my chest before curling to the back of my head. She pulls me down until her lips brush my ear. “And I have a friend.”
I bury my hand in her hair and tug her in close, until my teeth sink into her bottom lip. “Then I’m no longer bored.”
“Hey, bitches!” Halen stands outside, one hand on her hip and the other twirling her keys. “Who wants to burn rubber?”
I shift backward. Yeah, timing is not suspicious at all.
“She’s bossy,” the girl in front of me says.
“Ah—” the other girl murmurs, snatching the keys off her flirty little friend. “She’s Halen fucking Hayes. You do as you’re told.”
The corner of my mouth slowly lifts in a wicked smirk.That you do.
I watch as the dark clouds roll over the thick trees in the distance, coming to a stop where we are in the town center. Perdita isn’t a place for the mundane. It’s an island completely owned by the Elite Kings.
It’s a weapon.
Historically, Perdita has always been run by one of the Founding Families: the Stuprum bloodline.
My mother’s bloodline.
Only when it was time for her to reign, she declined the crown and handed it down to another, who was the one who ran it to this day. When you wear the crown of Perdita, you become Katsia. It can get confusing as fuck when you flick through our family grimoires, especially now, since the old Katsia wasn’t the next Katsia-in-line’s biological mom, but that didn’t matter to the old one—for whatever reason. She cared about the girl enough to crown and love her as much as a Katsia could love. People don’t know this as it is classified information, but even the old Katsia wasn’t of pure bloodline, since my mother was the last living Stuprum and they whacked off all the others, including Mom’s sister.
“Boys,” Hector Hayes announces through an ashtray for a throat. He’d done two terms of presidency. He may have kept America happy—well, sixty percent—but most people hate him. And those that hate him? They still fear him.
Bishop isn’t like Hector. He rules the Kings down a path of destruction, sure, but he has a moral compass.
“I hate that flight.” Priest stretches out his arms, clicking his neck. We stand out the front of an iron gate with tips as sharp as swords. The house itself is modern, designed with glasswindows as walls which display the main street of town behind us. High towered ceilings and corpulent overgrown shrubs manicure the footpath. Flowers grow through the foliage, but they lack vibrancy. Almost withered.
“What did you think, Vaden?” Hector lifts his eyes to V who stands beside me.
Vaden stares back at Hector. “I think I’m ready.”
Hector smirks wide, his cheeks creasing as he slowly turns back to the gate. He looks up to a camera that’s pointing down and twirls his finger in the air. “If you haven’t figured it out, I’ll be doing your training. Teaching you the fundamentals of a King. Most you know, some you don’t, others you will soon find out, and those I don’t show you, already live within you. You just need to rip the layers of humanity off to reveal the roots before you water the seed.”
“Samson and Aire? They won’t be part of this either?”
“Their duties and training will be completed elsewhere.” Hector pushes open the high-wire gate, straightening his suit. He takes a moment to look between all of us. “Your fathers didn’t have this opportunity. They were thrust into this life by my choice and the sins of their own fathers. You’re all privileged in that aspect, where none of yours screwed up.” He pauses, his eyes narrowing on Vaden. “Yours didn’t force you to have sex with another girl while recording it and then try to kill everyone around you. Yours,” he points to War. “Well, to be fair, Nate’s old man wasn’t horrible compared to both me and Brantley’s Dad, and your—" He finally settles on Priest, and none of us miss the pride in his eyes.
Priest is about as expressionless as a fucking blank wall begging to be graffitied, but the corner of his mouth moves up a little. Hector winks at him. “Well, yours didn’t try to kill your girl, among other things, to say the least.”
“Don’t worry, Pop…” Priest steps closer to his grandfather. We all watch in silence as he grabs Hector by the back of the head and pulls him in for a hug. “I won’t let you down, ever.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. Well, goddamn. This is going to be an EKC Hector two point oh.
“No more killing Swans…” I sneer at Hector in passing, hiding my snicker. He can think I’m joking, and if I didn’t see the love he has for Halen, I would probably be skeptical around the subject. But if anyone comes near any of those girls, they’ll have to go through all of us first. As much as Priest loves his pop and he’s EKC first, his sister is more than a sister to him. She’s his soulmate. She’s his other half. It’s why he’s so unfazed by her.
If the Kingdom falls, anyone left standing would be eradicated.
“Come on…” The gate slams closed. “Someone here wants to meet you.”
We had started training when we were five years old. For years, it was the simple things. I have a feeling it is only going to go up from there.
50 Cent’s “Just a Lil Bit” plays through one of the cars parked up near the water hole, and I lean back on the hood of my R32, one leg perched on the bonnet and the other laid flat. I think we all silently agreed to give the girls until the ritual before we thrust them right into the belly of the fire. They think they can handle it, and shit, maybe they can. Halen, most definitely. And Stella, because she’s a fucking menace. But River? I’m not so sure. She puts on a hard front, but we all know she keeps everything bottled.
“So?”
Candy? Cassandra? Fuck…
