Page 7 of Villainous Kingpin

“I shouldn’t have let y’all go,” I groaned, then followed up with a few creative cuss words. I heard plenty from my cousin, Killian. “I shouldn’t have driven you. Made us all stay back at the dorms. We should have called Uncle Liam and asked him to send someone there.”

I straightened up, meeting my friends’ eyes. We did this together and we’d get out of it together. That’s what friends and family were for, we stuck together.

“Maybe we ask Uncle to help us now,” I suggested, pushing both hands through my curls. My hands trembled badly. “We’re out of our element here.”

“No!” Juliette screeched, her eyes bulging out of their sockets.

“No,” Davina protested firmly. “You have all done enough. I should go to the police and just tell them I did it. I was mad and lost my temper.”

“Fuck no.” Juliette, Ivy, and I retorted in unison.

“Besides, that fucker said he has all four of us on tape,” I told her, trying to reason with her. “No sense in admitting anything with such evidence.”

“That weaselly little fucker,” Juliette snapped. “We should just kill him.”

“Yeah, let’s add murder to the destruction of property and arson charges,” I snickered. That was sure to get me expelled from the Olympics.

Only if caught,my mind whispered.

One of these days, Juliette would bark at the wrong person and end up getting us killed. She was too rash at times. And seriously, killing him? We weren’t killers. Heck, we weren’t even criminals.

Uncle Liam and Killian did a good job keeping Juliette and me in the dark about their underworld activities. Despite not being part of the Brennan mafia and geographical distance from Uncle’s territory, we’ve heard rumors about Uncle’s war with the Russians and DiLustros. We didn’t know the reasons for it. Heck, Uncle and Killian could make people disappear and we didn’t even know how to sneak into a house undetected. Of course, setting Garrett's house on fire wasn't in the original plan.

Ugh, I wished Uncle and Killian taught us some criminal activities, rather than treating us like fragile things that needed protection. We might have known how to get out of this clusterfuck.

“But the tape will show that it happened by accident,” Ivy reasoned.

Assuming someone gave us that much credit, for being dumb and clumsy, we’d still be guilty of starting a fire. Accident or not.

“Juliette, we should get out of town,” I said. Seeking refuge in Uncle’s Hampton home would give us time to regroup and maybe even come up with an idea of how to handle the mess we’d found ourselves in. “Let’s go to Uncle’s beach house in the Hamptons.”

“You want to go on vacationnow?” Ivy asked in shock, her hazel eyes darting between me and the girls.

“You might be onto something,” Juliette agreed pensively. The two of us shared a glance, then Juliette explained, “We might be able to find something of value and pay off this prick. Or at the minimum, lay low until we figure out how to get out of this mess.”

Cash would be better,I mused silently, though there was nothing amusing about this shitstorm.

“And what about when he doesn’t stop at just five hundred thousand?” Davina questioned. At least she was smart. More than likely Garrett would try and blackmail us again. “At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if he blackmails us for the rest of our lives.”

“Then we kill him,” Juliette concluded, as if that was a normal solution to any blackmailer. If you listened to Killian, it was indeed a solution.

“Let’s not become killers quite yet,” I retorted dryly, rolling my eyes at my cousin’s idiotic suggestion, then started the Jeep so we could head to the beach house.

“God, I need a drink,” Juliette muttered from the back seat.

“Me too,” Ivy agreed.

Juliette and Ivy continued to throw out ideas as I placed the Jeep in drive and pulled from the Whole Foods parking lot. I tuned those two out, not in the mood to listen to their ideas. Most of them would land us behind bars before we got our diplomas from Yale.

Davina sat next to me, her mood somber and matching mine. I knew she blamed herself, but truthfully, we all fucked up. We all knew right from wrong.

My phone buzzed and I glanced at the caller ID. It was Uncle Liam. I ignored the message. He had been demanding either Juliette or I call him. Neither one of us responded. There was only so much shit I could put up with today. Juliette had been ignoring him for months now, and I wasn’t in the mood to play peacemaker.

I sped down the streets as my brain vigorously worked on possibilities. I wasn’t a criminal mastermind, but there should be a way to get out of this unscathed. All four of us.

Killing Garrett, Davina’s cheating ex, was a no go. It’d put us in more trouble.

Giving him money was an option, but just as Davina said, I wouldn’t put it past him to blackmail us again. Assuming we could come up with five hundred grand. Uncle Liam was loaded but it didn’t mean he threw money at us. Both Mom and Uncle believed it would build character if Juliette and I earned our own money.