Page 33 of Pretty Little Rocker

Nothing about those two words sounded good at all, and then there was the whole thing with the driver knowing I was Havoc.

I felt like I was going to puke, imagining Evan and Ali at some dirty, underground fighting warehouse. I barely heard Abi when she screamed at the driver. “Oh my God, drive. Please, hurry.”

I’d lived in SoCal all my life, but I’d never been to the warehouse area where the driver dropped us off. Getting into the building was easy enough, finding my brother and Abi’s sister, not so much. Over a thousand people were stuffed into the building.

Lights flashed overhead in time to the music being played from a platform that was hanging overhead, while a DJ mixed songs that had my blood thumping in my ears. Or maybe that was the fear. I didn’t scare easily, but fuck if I wasn’t terrified then and there.

This was gang territory, and I knew that because I was seeing some shit that didn’t just suggest it but screamed it loud and clear. Like the guy with the word “Lunatic” inked across his forehead, waving a gun around his group while appearing to laugh maniacally. I wasn’t sure, because all I could hear was the music and the buzz of voices that blended into a bad symphony of chatter. All the people around him were dressed in gang-specific colors, which, according to the snippets I’d gotten from the news over the years, meant they were the worst of the worst.

Trying to put distance between ourselves and Lunatic, I desperately looked around for my brother, hoping to see his mop of curls above everyone else. But an hour later, we still hadn’t seen anything but a lot of shit that was going to give me nightmares later.

As we squeezed through another group, getting closer to the center of the warehouse where the fighting was taking place, the lights flashed over a face that had me stopping in my tracks for a moment. I blinked, the nausea in my stomach churning faster. That couldn’t be…

Sparks wouldn’t be at this place.

I shifted closer to the man, his arm tossed around a girl with dark hair slicked into a high ponytail. She looked up at him with unfocused eyes, but I was more caught on him. When he shifted again, he kissed her, and my knees went weak. Stiffening them, I locked my spine, ready to tear the ponytail off that bitch’s head.

But then I caught sight of the guy’s ink, and the jealous, possessive monster that had taken hold of me calmed down. Not Sparks’s tattoos. Although there was one that was all too familiar. Just like Sparks’s face, but an older version of it. Like the hands of time had fast-forwarded, showing me what he would look like in ten years.

As if he could feel my gaze on him, the older version of Sparks turned his head, his eyes finding me in the crowd. A frown pulled at his brows as our gazes stayed locked. Every survival instinct within me screamed to run, but I was frozen in place. The ink on this man I’d seen, the same tattoo that was on my Sparks, wasn’t the same as what was branded on the gang members. This was different.

Warning bells were going off in my head, but still, I kept my eyes on the man.

With a blink of his brown eyes, his brow smoothed out, and he smirked at me. “Havoc.” I watched as his mouth shaped the name, and I whimpered.

Something told me that my guys would not be happy that this man knew my name, even if it was just my social media persona.

Jamie was going to spank me so hard for this.

That thought barely formed, causing me to shiver in a blend of fear and excitement, before I spotted Sixx.

“There!” I shouted at Abi, pointing. He was on the fighting mat. Leaner than the other opponent—but at sixteen, that would eventually turn into a mass that rivaled every other fighter in the building—he was dominating the other guy. “There’s Sixx!”

Abi looked over at them, shook off my hand gripping hers, and started running. I lost her in the crowd, but I was too desperate to get to the mat to worry about her. The closer I got, the more people I recognized. Bentley and Evan stood with Ali, the two of them trying to hold her back as she screamed at Sixx to stop.

“Sixx, you don’t have to do this. We’ll figure it out. Please!”

Finally reaching my brother, I saw relief fill his face when he realized I was there. “What the fuck?” I shouted at him over the roars of the crowd around us trying to amp up the fighters. A glance at the mat showed me that Sixx was destroying the other guy. Fuck, he was brutal.

For all of two seconds, I was relieved that he was beating the shit out of someone else and not my baby brother. Then the reality of the danger they had put themselves in, had dragged Abi and me into, hit me.

And where the fuck was Abi?

“Abi!” I shouted, trying to crane my neck to find the redhead.

Ali almost got free from Bentley, and I grabbed on to her, keeping her off the mat as she struggled like a wildcat to get to Sixx. She was smaller than Abi, but Ali fought the three of us like her life depended on it. As the people around us grew more and more excited, Ali became more ferocious. The lights kept flashing around, highlighting the splatters of blood that Sixx was beating out of his opponent.

And then the music stopped. Stark silence was filled with only the sounds of flesh pounding against flesh, and the groans of the man Sixx was beating into unconsciousness.

When the lights went out, I had a moment of true panic hit me.

Chapter Nineteen

Sparks

I glared down at my phone before stuffing it into my front pocket. My brother could go fuck himself. Since I’d left the family, he randomly texted me. Usually to shoot the shit, ask how I was doing, make sure I was alive.

Ky and Jamie had helped me make a fresh start with a new name. But it was my brother who had been the most instrumental in making this new life a possibility. He’d been supportive of my passion for playing the guitar, wanting me to do something other than selling drugs or taking over the fights. That didn’t mean he didn’t get in a random pissy mood and try to mess with my head, though. Usually when he’d gotten too into the coke or was drunk off his ass.

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