Page 23 of Falling in Reverse

A weapon.

Something I could use against the bothersome and irritating wannabe gangbanger, Matteo De Leon, because it bothered the ever-loving shit out of him when I was near her. When I was eye-fucking her from across the way and there wasn’t shit he could do about it but run his mouth and spit out empty threats.

Matteo wasn’t built like me in the sense that his little Pistol Posse was some brand-new group wanting to make waves in our world. I outnumbered him by triple the numbers and even more now that so many years have gone by.

Then shit changed.

They broke up and she went back to South Shore. A place that I couldn’t openly go to find her. However, when I did see her again about a year later, she was no longer a blonde but this gorgeous dark-haired beauty who still had the same effect on me.

The problem was, and is, that she’s Levi Wallace’s sidekick. She never leaves his fucking immediate vicinity.

And that actually pisses me off more than when she dated De Leon.

There’s no reason why she would be runnin’ with him unless she was with him. To where he got to run his unworthy hands up her body and experience what she feels like from the inside.

I always wondered why Levi Wallace allowed her to date that prick. Matteo was an up-and-coming, had shit for brains and was a little too ambitious. Being in this business is risky, reckless even, and you need some wit and rationality with you to stay alive.

And trust me, I’ve had my share of assassination attempts. One by her ex’s hands, which caused me to burn half of his drug houses down in retaliation.

Bay Astor was always supposed to be mine.

I made those promises to her a dozen times, and I’m pissed that she never came to me after she kicked De Leon to the curb. She just ran off to my mortal enemy and became his.

However, Bay isn’t the same girl who was untainted by the world we were raised in. She’s harder and more reality-checked from what’s been taking place between our two towns.

We’re sworn enemies by circumstance and not choice.

Any other way would’ve been easier for me to make Bay what she was always supposed to be. My so-called crush, if you will, definitely hasn’t withered away.

I’m actually more interested and enamored and that’s probably because my pride doesn’t want to fuck off and take a loss.

And I’m always searching for ways to fuck Wallace over every chance I get.

She may run with more prominent muscles and a man with a bit more brains than her ex. However, I can’t say it was a good move. Levi Wallace isn’t shit, will never be worth shit, and I’m tired of the fucking prick always traipsing around and causing shit.

For example, tonight.

Those guns he stole were ones that I was going to rip off my own brother. Ramsey’s stupid ass decided to make a choice by having his cargo go through rival territory and now I have to put in double the work to gain what I set out to do in the first place.

All because Wallace is touching things that doesn’t belong to him.

Yet, standing on top of this shipping container with guns going off around us, I’m staring at an ass that doesn’t belong to the young teenage girl who I chased every chance I got.

But one that I need to own for my damn self.

Though, the moment my words promptly leave my lips, I’m presented with a shiny gun aimed at me and Bay on her back.

Gone is that innocence I enjoyed.

She was this beacon in the world of darkness and havoc. Someone who didn’t really belong but was around anyway. A girl that would make me forget the constant bullshit I was pulled into left and right.

“Get the fuck down,” she orders, steel laced in that slightly deep voice of hers and, I don’t know who the hell she thinks she’s talking to, but it sure as fuck isn’t me. “Or you’re going to get blown off this thing.”

“That’s no way to greet a friend, Astor,” I reply calmly because she wouldn’t.

There’s no way she’s so deep in this game that she’d shoot my ass.

No fucking way.

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