Page 95 of Fight for You

I don't have an answer for him. I don't have an answer for anyone.

"But you didn't think the SUV might have been related?" he asks, shoving the sharp blade of guilt a little bit deeper. He crosses his arms over his chest and hits me with a look of disbelief. "You're a smart kid, Kincaid. You're pulling a 4.0 at UCLA. From what I hear, you'll probably graduate with honors."

"I fucked up," I mumble, not even trying to defend myself. What's the point when he's right? I should have put the pieces together. This is my fucking fault, for more reasons than he knows. "It was January's birthday. She was cold. I was trying to get her inside. I needed to show her something…I didn't think. I should have, but I didn't." I meet his gaze, holding it. Let him see the guilt written on my face. Let him know I'm the reason my best friend and his mom are dead and my fiancée is broken. "I fucked up."

He's quiet for a minute and then shakes his head like that wasn't what he was suggesting, even though we both know it was. "I'm not saying it's your fault, kid. I was just asking a question. We all fuck up sometimes, miss important shit. I'm just trying to gather all the pieces to make sure we don't miss anything else that could be important."

"What do you want me to say?" I ask, unable to hide the bitterness in my voice. "They caught him fucking up their shit and told him that he owed them restitution, or they were going to kill him. He thought he had more time, but he was wrong. I should have put it together when I saw the SUV, but I didn't. As soon as I heard the fucking gunshots, I knew…but it was too late by then." I scrub my hands down my face, trying to erase the sound of gunshots and the image of Titan and Jana lying on the ground. "I was too goddamn late."

Whitten stands quietly for a minute and then changes tactics. "I understand Titan's sister, January, is your girl. Is she doing okay?"

"What do you think?" My brows come together as I snap my gaze up to meet his, and I know he can see my irritation with his stupid fucking question written all over my face. I don't care, though. How does he think anyone would be doing after losing their family like January just lost hers?

"I can get you in touch with a grief counselor," he offers like that's going to fix her. It won't. She just lost her entire family. And instead of beating down doors to find the motherfuckers responsible, he's knocking on my door, asking me the same questions I've already answered.

I'm tired of it. I don't need the LAPD to remind me at every available opportunity that this is a nightmare of my own making. I'm living it…every excruciating fucking second. I need them to do their jobs and find out who the fuck killed Titan and Jana. But they won't. And we both know that, too.

"A grief counselor? Are you fucking kidding me? How about you find the motherfuckers responsible for destroying her life?" I bark, climbing to my feet. "Because that's what she needs, Detective. For someone to tell her that the people who killed her mom and the brother she idolized are locked up where they belong. But you can't tell me that, can you?"

"I promise you that we're doing everything we can," he says.

"Right," I snort, not giving a shit if I piss him off or not. Whether he wants to admit it or not, we both know they aren't bending over backward to solve this murder. In neighborhoods like this, people like Titan and Jana are just another fucking statistic. A cautionary tale about what happens when you grow up poor like Jana or with the wrong skin color like Titan. He's just another casualty in a war he never wanted to fight, and she's collateral damage.

"You said yourself that I'm a smart kid, Whitten. You think I don't know you're here knocking on my door because you don't have a clue who rolled up on my girl's house and killed her family? You think I don't know that the LAPD doesn't know which Diablo pulled the fucking trigger and isn't bending over backward to find out? To the LAPD, Titan was just another poor mixed kid slinging dope. How many similar cases are still sitting open on your desk? Forty? Fifty?" I shake my head in disgust. "Motherfuckers like the Diablos run this city, and guys like you just let them do it because you're too goddamn scared to set foot in neighborhoods like this unless you're forced to do it."

He opens his mouth to say something, but I cut him off.

"You wonder why kids like Titan die? It's because of cops like you," I snap. "I told you what I know. I've told you guys over and over and over that the Diablos did this, and Curtis Kaleo might as well have put the fucking gun in their hands. Maybe stop knocking on my door and start knocking on their doors. Maybe then you'll find out what the fuck happened to Titan and Jana. Maybe then my girl wouldn't be staring at the ceiling, too traumatized by watching her brother bleed out and die in the street to even speak."

"Michael, I'm on your side," Whitten says, holding his hands up like he's not the enemy. And maybe he's not. I don't have a problem with cops in general. But I do have a problem with guys like Whitten feeding me a bunch of bullshit because he doesn't have the first clue which of the Diablos killed my best friend…and he never will.

Gang crime is the LAPD's dirty little secret, the one they pretend not to see until rich white folks like my grandparents get caught in the middle. Then, it's an issue to solve. Then gang crime is a priority. Until then, Titan is just another case file in a fucking stack.

"I've got nothing else to say," I mutter with a disgusted shake of my head. "Get the fuck off my porch."

With that, I storm back inside, leaving him sputtering and stuttering through an explanation we both know is more manufactured bullshit. He doesn't have a clue who killed Titan. He'll poke around for a few days, maybe haul in a couple of the usual suspects, and then he'll toss the case aside and pick up the next.

I slam the door so hard the windowpanes rattle in the living room.

"You good?" Quan asks, looking up from the television. His eyes are just as bloodshot and bruised as mine. He's slept just as little as I have. He lost someone important to him, too. And I can't even tell him that it's my goddamn fault.

"No," I tell him, fighting for control when all I want to do is put my fist through the wall. Anything to release even a fraction of the guilt and rage eating me alive. "The fucking cops are useless."

"Truth," he says, putting a fist in the air like it's the 1968 Olympics, and he's standing on the podium with Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Times haven't changed much since then, not around here. If anyone gets that, it's Quan. He knows it a whole hell of a lot better than I do because he's mixed. He lives with the reality every day. I don't deal with half as much bullshit as he does simply because I was born a different color.

But, hell, on this side of the poverty line, not even being white will save you. Jana was white. She's still dead, and no one's doing a goddamn thing about it because she wasn't the right kind of white from the right kind of neighborhood. In neighborhoods like this, life is a motherfucker. Doesn't matter what color we are or where we're from, we're all bleeding down here, and no one gives a flying fuck about any of us. They never have. Just ask the residents of Skid Row, where our decades-long attempts to contain the poorest of us have created a goddamn maze of tents and desperation.

I drop my forehead to the door and then bounce it against the hardwood a couple of times like that'll calm my ass down. "I'm done, Quan. I'm just fucking done with this shit."

"Michael, man, chill," Quan says, a warning in his tone.

But I don't listen. I'm too wound up to shut my mouth. "January's falling apart. Her grief is fucking killing me. I feel like I can't breathe here, and I'm just done with all of it. I hate this city and every motherfucker in it. I want out." I regret the words as soon as they leave my lips because they aren't what I mean at all, but it's too late.

January gasps from behind me.

"Fuck." I spin around to find her standing in the hallway. Her face is pale, her eyes stricken. Her hair is a wild mess. She's wearing one of Titan's hoodies. It's so big on her that it swallows her curvy body, hiding the pair of boxers I know she's wearing underneath it. Even grieving, she looks like a porcelain doll…more fragile than I've ever seen her before. The pained look she shoots in my direction guts me.

"January–"

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