Alek

Chapter 25: Mae Kazimi

Chapter 25: Mae Kazimi

Three years ago:

Damnit, I think I've just made the stupidest mistake of my life.

And Hale is going to kill me.

"Rashid please!" I whisper, shaking his arm as we stand in the center of a moving crowd in New York. Fall is almost over and the trees have gone barren, the cold whistling through my hair and setting my teeth into a noisy chatter. "If you don't help me I swear I'll tell Hale that you tried breaking into The HIT Network website and almost got caught, he'll never forgive you."

Rashid turns to me, his glasses all frosted from the cold and a stubble growing on his jaw. He looks down at me and with an older brotherly sigh, he grabs my arm and shoves me into the nearest cafe to get out of the cold, "Why do you always have to be so irresponsible all the time?"

"It's a one-time mistake," I promise him, trying to imitate Avery's puppy eyes as we settle into a booth in the far corner. "Please, Rashid, I'll do your laundry for a whole week."

This seems to make his eyes glow and he straightens, a small smile on his lips, "No laundry for a week?"

"God, Rashid, you're twenty-four and well capable of doing it yourself but-"

"Do you want me to help you find your phone or not?"

"Yes, yes, sorry. Hurry."

While Rashid pulls out his laptop from his bag and begins to type away, I order him a coffee and a hot chocolate for myself. Two hours ago, I stupidly left my phone at a restaurant a block from here and after I did everything I could possibly think of to find it, I'd given up and called Rashid.

I knew he would help me. He always did.

When Rashid hadn't picked up at first, I'd called Kai.

"Kai, where the hell is Rashid?" I'd demanded, shivering outside in the corner of a shop. "Please tell me he's with you."

Kai, being nineteen, had just dropped out of his second year of college. "I'm too rich and smart for college," he'd said. "I'd rather make money from fighting." I mean, he wasn't wrong. He was better off fighting in Hale's illegal underground fighting arena and taking down men twice his size.

"He's not here," Kai had said breathlessly into the phone. I guessed he'd been training. "Call Avery, they are probably doing their usual criminal activities."

I remembered snorting at that despite the situation I was in but called Avery nonetheless.

"No, he's not here," Avery had said the second she picked up. She was fourteen and too brazen for her own good but I was no one to say anything about it.

"How did you know?"

I knew she was grinning because I could hear it in her voice, "It's because I can read minds-"

I'd closed the call.

Fifteen minutes later, Rashid finally called me back and I had to force him to meet me in the middle of absolutely nowhere because I had stupidly left my phone in a restaurant.

And now, we sat here. Me anxiously sipping my hot chocolate and bouncing my leg while Rashid tried to track it down with his magical hacker abilities.