“You all are wasting precious time,” Spade retorts.
Mila hisses. “Remember, Spade. You came to me. This wasn’t my choice.”
“What’s that thing people say? Every action has a reaction? Everything you have chosen has led to this point. I’m supposed to bring you back,” he volleys back. “Do you think I want to be here? I told you at your graduation party that I never wanted to see your face again. You have no idea the ripple effects of your actions. The family’s been in shambles.”
She grits out, “Bulletproof was not a family. These people,” she insists, nodding toward her Beta Beta Psi sisters, plus Mom, Dad, Melinda, Sawyer, Tabitha, Beau, and Bryan, “are the real deal. And capable of far more mayhem than you and whatever boys you’re hiding in the shadows to take me by force, Spade.”
The former bodyguard scans the crowd of people standing between the people here for revenge and me.
We wait. We all wait for what feels like thirty minutes but is probably more like 30 seconds.
“What the fuck am I supposed to tell Crypto?”
I watch Mila think it over, but her softly-green eyes dart to mine for one tiny second. I know what this means. She’s already known what she’s going to say.
“Then, Spade, I promote you to general as your new boss. And as the first order of business, I want you to dissolve all of it. The lending company, the drug trafficking—everything that’s not, you know, reporting its income to the IRS. Sell the Whitman compound and donate all the money to a charity of your choice. Whitman Holdings is going legit.”
Spade looks from Mila to me, then back to Mila.
Finally, he shrugs. “Fair enough. I wanna get out of North Carolina. Boiled peanuts ain’t my style.”
There’s no way it’s that easy.
Spade strolls back to his black SUV, gets in the back seat, and closes the door. We wait for him to pull away, but nothing happens at first. We wait maybe two or three minutes.
After what feels like infinity, the back door on the street side is thrown open, and another figure steps out. More like sprints out and doesn’t bother to close the door behind him. It’s a young man in an expensive tracksuit and a massive gold ring on one hand, and he looks pissed.
“Here we go,” Mila mutters, sinking deeper into my side. My grip on her shoulders tightens.
The young dude’s face is full of thunder, and he marches straight toward us, cussing up a storm.
“What the actual fuck, Kendall?” shouts the kid.
“Crypto?” I ask out of the side of my mouth.
“Yep,” she breathes.
He looks loaded for bear. Crypto stops about fifteen feet from us lest he is skewered by the campfire poker that Tabitha is brandishing at the front of the pack of lovable fools.
He sights all the various weapons…er, things…pointed at him, holds his hands up, and bounces back into the street. “Whoa. What…”
Mila moves to step around the phalanx, but I’m not having it. She looks up at me pleadingly and rests a hand on my chest. “You can come with me, but I need to talk to him.”