Page 102 of Falling in Reverse

“The agreement was to hand them off,” I clip out through clenched teeth. “You want to send my bes—boyfriend back with a ticking time bomb.”

“Baby, we didn’t put the bomb on.” He stops a few feet from me. “I’m here with a message from the prick.”

The prick…

“Emilio,” Reeve fills in through my silence, careful to keep his voice down. “He wants you to text him back.”

I gape at him and swallow the lump forming in my throat. “Are you…serious?”

“Dude is desperate, what can I say?”

There’s no way.

Emilio is off his shit, apparently. Strapping a bomb to my best friend is going to make me move?

It got your full attention, didn’t it?

“He says he’ll see you Friday,” he continues, bringing his hazel eyes to latch back onto me. “And, he hopes you figure out the bomb.”

My nostrils flare, even though it’s not Reeve’s doing. “Do you see where I’d have a problem with that?”

“I do.”

“Juice.” He immediately comes to my side, and I love that I didn’t have to beg or plead for some damn help. “Where do you see fit?”

I feel his eyes on me, understanding exactly what I’m implying. “Thigh.”

Without double-thinking or talking myself out of it, I aim across and yank on the trigger, sending a bullet into Torin’s leg and disregarding the consequences.

Torin curses profusely, his body falling forward, but Juice catches him to keep from faceplanting into the dirt road.

“Are you fucking stupid?” Cairo barks out yards away, but why should he be so surprised?

An eye for an eye, right?

“Are you?” I shoot back. “I have to get a fucking bomb I have to get off him. At least your boy’s shit is fixable. You can thank Emilio for me.”

Because ever since he blabbed about who I was, these boys are going to see me as a looming threat they have to get rid of.

Their town, gang, and inheritance rest on offing me.

“Get him the fuck out of here,” I compel with a wave of my gun to one of my guys. “Give Emilio my best.”

Cairo shoves Levi closer as Reeve helps Torin back to his boys.

I may have just entered the war, but Emilio Wildes started it.

TWENTY-EIGHT

bay

Levi’s wide back faces me along the edge of an empty shipping dock as I sprint in his direction. At the end is Hot Rod and Juice, waiting for me—I guess—so I can hug my best friend to see if he’s hurt, and have at it with him over everything that’s happened.

When I’m about to hit the wooden dock, Hot Rod’s arm shoots out to block me.

“Can’t go any farther, sweet cheeks,” he replies flatly, looking down at me with malice and pure fury pooled within his eyes.

Whatever, he’s pissed. And the bomb currently strapped to my best friend’s ankle is because of me.

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