“What the hell was that?” Ash and Claire ran over to us with Izzy in tow.
Junior just shrugged and then turned around to the crowd. “Are you not entertained?”
Cheers erupted.
I gave Junior a high five. “Sorry Ash, he was cockblocking me again.”
Claire laughed. “So, this is all over what? A guy asking you out on a date?”
I scrunched up my nose. “Didn’t get that far because dick for brains over here threatened to shoot off the star quarterback’s Achilles tendon!”
“Nice.” Ash gave Junior a fist bump.
I sighed. “Can we be done with the first day of classes now and party?”
Claire grabbed her phone. “Ugh, I have one more class, but I’ll meet you guys later tonight?”
“Same spot?” Ash was clearly following her to class, more like stalking her.
“Same.” I needed to shower first and rub some CBD all over my already achy and bruised body, but other than that, I was ready to let loose.
Izzy’s blue eyes searched my body before she looked back at Ash, “I actually have some homework, I’m gonna head back. Maksim said he’d help.”
Of course he did, Maksim was a friggin’ genius.
“Iz,” Ash wrapped an arm around her. “Homework can wait. It’s the first party of the entire year; you know they expect us to host.”
Izzy sighed. “It’s embarrassing.”
“Sitting on a fucking throne?” Junior piped up. “No, that’s our right.”
“The elite of the elite,” I added. “It’s the expectation, and you know the real reason for all of this. To be so blatantly arrogant that we draw out our enemies and pick them off one by one.”
“Well.” Izzy sighed. “The fight sure helped things!”
“Hey,” Junior sobered. “All that matters is keeping our family safe, and if we get to act like idiots in the process, that’s our gain, not our loss.”
“I know.” Izzy’s face fell. “I just… sometimes I worry you guys are getting too distracted, not paying attention, I mean did you even look over the new student registration today?”
“Yes,” Junior and I said in unison.
“Why?” Asher and Claire shared a confused look as Breaker, Tex’s son, jogged over to us all six-foot-five of him.
Kid was huge and still growing at nineteen. “We’ve got a problem.”
Dread filled my stomach. “What?”
He ran his hands through his long reddish-brown hair, girls compared him to a young Johnny Depp, and he looked it more and more every day only somehow more attractive.
Tex said it just meant his sperm was the best even though we all knew that Breaker was adopted.
Ah, the Capo, couldn’t live with him, would die without him.
“So, I was making out with this transfer.” He stopped his story to give high fives to both guys.
“Get there faster, Breaker. We get it; you’re a manwhore, please continue.”
“Is it whoring, though, if they just throw themselves at me?” he wondered out loud with a cocky grin.
I glared.
“Fine.” He sighed. “So, things were getting hot and heavy—”
“Naturally,” Junior said in a bored tone.
Breaker ignored him. “And then she starts talking about how she was so excited to transfer to Eagle Elite because last year she saw some of the kids from the fence and wondered if the rumors were true.”
“Wait, back up.” I held up my hand. “The fence?”
“I’m getting there.” He sighed. “So I asked her what fence and who the hell just stares at people?”
“We do. We do that all the time.” I pointed out. “But our goal is to scare them shitless, not build shrines to people’s hair.”
“One time,” Breaker said, becoming irritated. “Anyway, so she takes me to the opposite end of campus where sure enough a brand-new fence was put up dividing our property and that old community college that can barely keep its doors open. She said the college got a grant last year and was able to hire better professors, offer scholarships… but the weird part is that the only reason she even knew about what went on here at EE was because the new brochures for the college use our families’ names as a selling point.”
“Did you get a—”
“Yes.” He rolled his eyes and held out a brochure.
I snatched it while the rest of the group huddled around me to read it. And sure enough, on the brochure advertising Chicago Community, was a teaser line that said: “Located next to the notorious Eagle Elite University, funded by the original Five Families. Study side by side with mafia’s elite, and maybe you’ll even be lucky enough to study with them!”
Below that were several student testimonials of not only hanging out with us but with edited pictures of us.
Including Breaker.
My hands shook. “This is bad.”
“They have our pictures,” Junior cursed.
“How did this get through our intel?” Breaker asked.
“Paper.” Izzy sighed.
I wanted to scream.
“The only trail is paper,” she elaborated. “No social footprint, nothing online; this is all word of mouth.”
“The question is, are they trying to make money and boost enrollment, or is this something else?” Ash took the paper and examined it. “What do you think, Junior?”