The Risk (Kings of Linwood Academy 3)

I wanted to see Hollowell come undone. I wanted to see him afraid of something for once in his goddamn life.

But I can’t enjoy it. Not when the boys I love are sitting next to me with guns aimed at their heads.

“You know, I thought after all we’d been through together, you would’ve had a little fucking loyalty,” Niles tells the man kneeling in front of him, his voice hard with anger.

“I do. Of course I do.” Hollowell shakes his head, and he’s already mastering his emotions, the mask of casual control returning.

“Do you? Because these goddamn kids came to my place of business today with a very interesting story. Do you know what that was?”

Hollowell’s gaze flashes to the five of us, lingering the longest on me. I can’t tell what he’s thinking, but his expression seems to tighten somehow. Then he shifts his attention back to Niles, charm radiating from every pore. And although I hate the motherfucker, I have to admit he knows how to be charming—how to disarm people with his voice, his words, and his pleasant smile.

“No, I don’t know. But that girl is the one whose mother was arrested for Iris’s death. So I presume she’d make up any story about me she could think of to try to turn you against me.”

“Is that what you’d presume?” Niles tilts his head, taking a step closer to Hollowell. “You’ve handled this whole thing pretty fucking poorly, Alex. Iris seeing us together was bad enough, but now you’ve got five more teenagers who know about us? I didn’t tell you to get rid of her just so you could replace her with five more potential leaks. Especially ones you never told me about.”

“I was handling it,” Hollowell says smoothly, although when his gaze darts to me again, I can see a wild look in his eyes. “I was taking care of everything. Just like I took care of Iris.”

“I don’t give a fuck about that girl!”

Niles’s voice booms out so suddenly and so loudly that it makes me jump. Chase presses closer to me, as if he’s trying to lend me strength and keep me still all at once. All three of the men surrounding us tense, their muscles bunching slightly.

Hollowell shrinks a little as he looks up at Niles, who seems to have grown in his anger, towering over the other man.

“I give a fuck about the fact that after relying on us for years while you built yourself up in this town, you thought it would be wise to run for office on a campaign promise of wiping me off the face of the earth,” Niles continues. His voice was like a gunshot before, but now it’s as quiet and deadly as the purr of a lion.

Hollowell freezes. Then he shakes his head, letting out a small, disbelieving laugh. “That’s not true. I would never do that.”

“Are you sure?” Niles purses his lips. “It would be quite a coup for a new Senator. The kind of feather in the cap of your career I know you’ve been craving.”

Judge Hollowell licks his lips. The calm is cracking again, his charming half-smile gone. He’s on his knees before the two men, and now he clasps both hands together, making it look so much like he’s praying that it sends a shiver up my spine.

I’d be fucking praying too.

He opens his mouth once and then closes it, then tries again, smiling disbelievingly like he can’t believe they’re even discussing this.

“I…” He shrugs helplessly. “I might’ve mentioned it to a few private donors. In the context of a broader need to be tough on crime. But no promises were made. That’s just how politics go. You tell people what they want to hear in the moment, but no one keeps their word on every campaign promise.”

Niles shakes his head, taking a step back from the man on the floor. “Oh, you don’t have to tell me about people breaking promises.”

He lifts his hand, the one holding the dark gun with the silencer on the end, and I see the moment Hollowell registers it, see him open his mouth, see his body lurch forward with desperation.

But then a small metallic noise sounds as the gun fires, and Hollowell jerks back.

24

My body jerks right along with Hollowell’s, shock and adrenaline pouring through me so quickly it’s like getting punched in the heart.

His head and shoulders hit the ground with an awful sounding smack, his arms not even moving to brace his fall. His legs bend awkwardly underneath him because of the angle of his fall, and thick red blood begins to spread across his chest, staining his suit-jacket and crisp white shirt.

Fuck.

Holy fuck.

Bile races up my throat, filling my mouth with a metallic taste, and I swallow several times to force i

t back down. Everything inside my body wants out, as though if I won’t flee, my internal organs are planning to make a break for it on their own.

Hollowell’s dead. Or if he’s not dead yet, he will be soon.