From Bullets To Billions novel Chapter 131

Chapter 131: Knowing The Right People

The three girls walked hand-in-hand, glancing back several times as the door to that room, the one they’d been trapped in just minutes ago, finally swung shut behind them.

They still didn’t fully understand how they’d gotten out of it. The whole thing felt like a blur, too fast, too intense. But none of them wanted to stick around long enough to ask questions.

Instead, they left the bowling alley completely, not stopping until they were out of the park and back on a busy street, surrounded by the noise and movement of everyday life.

Even with all the people walking by, they didn’t feel safe.

Not really.

"What was that back there?" Cindy asked, still a little breathless.

"I don’t know," Abby said, "but it felt like there was some kind of internal fight going on. Like... they were all from the same group, right? I think the girls Kira brought in belonged to that other girl too, Aki or whatever her name was. And for some reason... she chose to help us."

They kept walking, trying to make sense of it, until they noticed Sheri hadn’t said a word. She was staring off into space, her expression blank, like she wasn’t even there.

"Sheri, are you okay?" Cindy asked softly. Then she sighed. "What am I saying? Of course you’re not okay. None of us are."

Cindy reached into Sheri’s coat pocket and pulled out her phone. She tapped through the screen and quickly dialed her own number, holding it to her ear until it rang.

"This is my number, alright?" she said, pressing the phone back into Sheri’s hand. "If anything happens again, anything at all, you call us. I don’t know what those people are capable of, and I don’t care. You don’t deal with it alone."

Sheri finally blinked, snapping out of her daze. She looked down at the phone in her hand, then back at her friends.

"There’s something I’ve been thinking about," she said slowly. "Have you ever heard of a group called the Billion Bloodline... or Bloodline Gym?"

Cindy and Abby exchanged a look.

"Those girls... they were all wearing the same logo," Sheri continued. "That red blood drop? It was on jackets, wristbands, everything. I didn’t notice it at first. But when we were leaving, it hit me."

She hesitated.

’My mom mentioned the name Billion Bloodline VC before. Said they were the company that saved my family. But I don’t get it. What does a gym, filled with fighters like them, have to do with a corporation that powerful?’ Sheri thought, and didn’t say it out loud.

What the girls didn’t know, what no one at school really knew, was that the delinquents from Seaton only wore the Bloodline Gym merch under specific conditions.

They didn’t flaunt it on school grounds. It wasn’t about showing off. They wore it when they trained outside school, or when they had to handle... certain kinds of business.

To most students, it was just gym gear. Nothing more. Nothing worth paying attention to.

***

Back inside the bowling alley, the two men seated near the entrance, who’d been quietly monitoring everything, picked up the phone again.

"Yes. The three girls exited safely," one of them said in a low voice. "They left after others entered the room. The rest of the group hasn’t come out yet... We’ll stay put and keep watch. Just give us the word."

He ended the call and set the phone back down on the table.

****

In the glass-walled party room, the scene had changed.

Aki stood over the Seaton girls, Synthia, and the two others, now kneeling on the floor. Synthia’s cheek was still visibly swollen, red from where Aki had struck her earlier.

Aki crossed her arms, disappointment simmering in her expression.

"What the hell were you thinking?" she said. "Doing something like this just because a girl from another school asked you to?"

Synthia looked up, tears brimming in her eyes. "Aki... we don’t understand. What did we do that was so wrong?"

Aki exhaled through her nose, hard. "You should understand. You should know exactly what you did."

She stepped forward.

"That school, their school, we formed an alliance with them. You know what that means? It means from now on, they’re off-limits. We don’t mess with them. We don’t touch them."

Her voice dropped, heavy with warning.

"And you didn’t just mess with a few randoms... you laid hands on the wrong ones. Bad enough I might not be able to clean this up on my own."

The three girls looked up at her, faces pale, reality finally sinking in.

"Lucky for you," Aki continued, "it doesn’t look like those girls were hurt too badly. We’ll shift the blame if we have to. Twist the story. But I want you to know, I’m doing this for you. Don’t mistake it for mercy."

Without thinking, Synthia stood up, stumbled forward, and wrapped her arms around Aki. Her shoulders shook as tears slid down her face, soaking into the back of Aki’s jacket.

"I’m sorry," she whispered.

Aki didn’t return the hug. But she didn’t push her away either.

If there was one thing the Seaton Academy girls truly appreciated, it was that Aki genuinely cared about them.

She wasn’t just tough. She was protective. And they knew that.

"Things can be better. So don’t pull a stunt like this again."

He stepped forward, eyes narrowed. "If that’s true... then I guess you don’t mind if we use you however we want too."

Synthia was near the back of the group when one of the men, Fallen, reached out and grabbed her wrist. _{frёeweɓηovel.coɱ}

"Because if you were... I’d be real upset."

"Man," one of the guys said, glancing around, "there’s a lot of women in here."