Page 82 of Wicked Knight (Knight's Ridge Empire 1)

“Make me,” she hisses, taking my words as nothing more than a challenge.

We’re almost at the basement door when it opens and Theo appears with a dark-haired girl attached to him.

He takes one look at me before his eyes shoot to the person behind me.

“Go to your room, Calli,” he demands.

“Do you know what?” Calli, snaps while Stella smirks in accomplishment. “I’m sick to death of you lot ordering me around. If I wanna go down there, then I’m going to fucking go down there.”

Theo laughs to himself and shakes his head.

“Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Calli races around us, ready to bolt down the stairs the second Theo moves out of the way. “You might think we’re controlling arseholes, Calli. But trust me when I tell you that’s only the half of it.”

“Whatever. Jerk.”

The second he moves, she’s gone.

Finally, I spin Stella around, pressing my front to her back as we descend the stairs after Calli, but I don’t release her.

The music changes as we move, the air around us becoming thick with cigarette smoke and weed. The main party might be happening upstairs, but down here in our den is where the real fun happens.

And Calli is about to get the shock of her life. I hope Stella knows what she’s doing.

When we get to the bottom of the stairs and turn into the room that spans the entire length of the house, Stella sucks in a breath.

Nico lives down here. It’s a huge self-contained apartment and has almost everything our dark little hearts desire.

There’s a couple of guys snorting coke off the coffee table. Girls dancing who are wearing significantly less than the woman in my grasp, and right at the other end of the room, Nico is sitting on the edge of his bed, thankfully with his back to us, getting a special birthday blowy off one of the girls.

“Oh my God,” Calli cries beside us. “This is what you do down here.”

“Yeah, baby C. You still wanna hang out with the big boys?”

She turns to me, her eyes holding mine for a beat before she looks at Stella, who shrugs in my hold.

“Do you know what? I do. Maybe I’ll even give my whore of a brother a little show of his own.”

She marches farther into the room as someone shouts, “Cirillo, baby sister in the house.”

If it weren’t for the rat in my hold, I’d laugh my arse off at the way he jumps up, ripping his cock out of the more than willing mouth, and frantically tucks himself away.

His face is damn near purple as he approaches Calli and starts barking orders at her.

Stella jolts in my hold as if she wants to go and help her.

“Let’s see how much you’ve rubbed off on our innocent little princess, shall we?”

Calli shouts back, giving as good as she gets.

I’m weirdly proud of her, seeing as she’s usually as quiet as a church mouse when it comes to dealing with us all.

“Holy shit,” I breathe in shock as we all watch Calli turn to the nearest guy and slam her lips to his.

He hesitates for a second—rightly so—before Nico pushes his sister aside and ploughs his fist into the guy’s face.

“Whoops, that was probably a mistake.”

“You’re all a bunch of hypocritical cunts,” Stella snarls.