Page 94 of Kings & Carnage

"I know the identity of the Knights that are involved in the disappearance of those girls," she said.

We should have been happy. The Knights’ house would be the first to name their killer and it had only been a couple of weeks since the kickoff of game number four.But something wasn't right, and the Kings must've felt it too because they weren’t exactly celebrating.

"You want to tell us why you're here alone?” Oscar asked.

Alexa wasn't technically part of the Knights’ house. She was a Queen, and while she’d been forced to work with her male peers at Aventine on game four, it was more than a little strange that she was here alone to deliver the news that they’d completed it.

She pressed her lips together like she wanted to keep the words from spilling out of her mouth. "It's my father," she finally said. "Or he's one of them.”

"One of them?" I asked.

She nodded. "There are more. All alumni.”

"How did you find this out?" Rock asked.

She rubbed her palms nervously on her jeans. "I've… had a feeling. After you announced game four, I went home and did some digging, and I found escrow papers from the purchase of the cabin belonging to Global Limited, the shell company that holds most of the bratva’s property interests.”

I was quietly reeling, trying to make sense of the fact that my arch nemesis at Aventine was giving up her own father as one of the men responsible for Emma's disappearance.

I forced myself to stay quiet, letting the Kings take the lead. I wasn't sure I even trusted myself to speak.

"I'm sorry," Rock said.

She shrugged, but I saw the grief in her eyes, recognized it as my own, because if there was one thing I had a lot of experience with, it was being disappointed in people who shared your last name.

She reached into her jeans, pulled out a folded scrap of paper, and held it out to Neo. “These are the other names.”

“And they’re all alumni of the Knights’ house?" Neo asked.

She nodded.

Oscar glanced at Neo and Rock, some kind of unspoken communication passing between them. "Then why are you here alone?”

"They wouldn't come,” she said simply.

"Because the ones involved are family?" Oscar asked.

"Their fathers mostly," Alexa said. "I found their names next to the names of missing girls from Bellepoint, plus a few I’d never heard of. It was like…" She exhaled slowly, like she was trying to keep herself calm. "It was like each of them had chosen one of the girls or taken her or… something.”

"Fuck," Neo said.

Oscar and Rock moved closer to me on the sofa, taking up positions on either side of my body like they could provide shelter from an incoming storm.

And this was one hell of an incoming storm.

Because if what Alexa said was true, we weren’t talking about one man from each family kidnapping and murdering girls but a coordinated effort between multiple members of each houses’ alumni over a period of decades.

Alumni whose offspring now attended the same school.

And worst of all, those offspring — at least in the Knights’ house — had elected not to come clean to the Kings.

"This isn't about the game," I said.

For the first time, Alexa really met my eyes. "No. It's about Emma and all those other girls. I just couldn't…" She looked down at her hands. "I just couldn't stay quiet.”

Now I understood her shaking hand at Chasen’s, the words she hadn't spoken, her argument with the Knight at the Orpheum.

"Do they know you're here?" Oscar asked.

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