Page 25 of Protecting Charity

My chest heaved with laughter. “Okay. Okay. For real now, let’s go.”

He picked up the controller as his character respawned, and the hunt began. “Tell me about the person who broke in.”

I shrugged, wanting to give him all the answers he needed, but I didn’t have any. “Wish I could tell you something. He broke in and stood there doing nothing, then left.”

Little did Charity know that all of us being here wasn’t by happenstance. She refused to allow us to protect her by leaving her home, so I brought the three most powerful Morenos to her. Two could play at her stubborn game; I just didn’t know who’d come out on top. We were both pretty good at it.

“Did you see her car?”

“Yeah.” My screen went red as my character went down in an ambush that only Nico could have conducted. “Fuck. Where did you come from?”

“That’s what you get for cheating in the first round.” He laughed madly.

I always wondered how my extremely competitive cousin could keep a straight face in court and not run around yelling, ‘suck it’ to the opposition after winning. There was no professionalism here as he did his merry jig and prepared for war again. Nico’s competitive nature was why he was a successful lawyer—he hated to lose, and he rarely ever did. He’d appeal the system until the judge was blue in the face and tired of seeing the names on the docket.

“What do you think it means? The word on her car, I mean,” he asked, taking his head out of the game.

“Repent. What else could that mean? Someone clearly knows she has something to confess.”

“You’re worried like me?”

I sat back, waiting for my respawn, and pondered. I didn’t like that someone out there knew about her. It meant they, it, he, she, was out there watching her, gathering dirt, and who knows what they would do with that information. “If they know what she does—know that she is dangerous—yet still threatened her and vandalized her car, they are either stupid and have a death wish, or they are just as dangerous and aren’t scared of her. If that is the case, there will be bloodshed, and we better prepare for it.”

Nico clucked his tongue and bobbed his head. “I was thinking the same thing.”

“What about Elias?”

Elias was a savage motherfucker that we had a cordial business relationship with—for now. Jose was one of his know nothing dealers, and it shouldn’t have bothered Elias enough for him to pay her a personal visit. How he found out who she was in the first place was disturbing. We tried keeping our best-kept weapon a secret and out of the public eye the best we could, but Charity always had other plans. Those were Uncle Turo’s orders, among others where she was concerned.

Uncle Turo regarded Charity as not only a valuable asset to the organization but also like the daughter he never had. It was why we were never allowed to touch her. He set the grounds for it right at the beginning when she joined us. As soon as he lifted his order, we swooped in and laid claim to her at breakneck speeds.

“Not sure what he was thinking there. If he knows who she is, then he made a serious mistake going to her and not to Luca.”

It wouldn’t cause a war, but it did cause tension in a relationship that was already on the verge of snapping. Luca had little to say on the matter, mainly because he was still livid from the disrespect. But this was why Luca was in charge—he thought things out, even though he was a bit of a hot-head at times.

“Me neither. He won’t be ready for the war that will rain down on him if he does something to her.”

“I don’t think it will come to that. Elias is a smart man. He’s not going to risk his empire unless it’s seriously egregious. Charity nor the Morenos have done anything to him that would cause him to lose his shit.”

“True.”

I laid waste to his crew with one bullet left. I was ready to do my victory dance when he shot me in the back. My screen went crimson, and I clenched my controller until I could hear micro-cracks spider webbing across the plastic.

“That’s it, I’m done; I need to get going. Are you staying here?” Nico put his controller on the table and stretched.

It was late and haunting silence came from the bedroom, so it was safe to say they were dead or sleeping.

“Yeah. I’m going to sleep on the couch. Tomorrow, I’m going to take her car in and get it fixed before the detective gets a whiff of anything.”

Charity having a detective as a dad put a kink in things and not in a good way. It was simpler with Josh because he wasn’t so much in his eye as Charity was. Josh was always a bit of a rebel and never held his dad’s attention like she did, which was why we paid more attention to the goings-on in his home—he was far more observant than a regular parent. Then, there was her mother, who kept shoving men at her like she was her pimp. Thankfully, Charity wasn’t entertaining her mother’s nonsense anymore.

Having to listen to her pathetic dates with those losers was excruciating. Each man that came close enough to her made us want to break him in half and feed him to alligators. If Oisin hadn’t gotten to that hippy, we would have just for failing to protect her. He got what he deserved for being a failure.

“Okay. Lock it up behind me. Get the keys to this damn door, would you?”

I nodded, then flipped the lock as he closed up. I went to the hall closet, grabbed a pillow and blanket, and then threw them on the couch. Cannoli stretched, then walked to where I threw my pillow and plopped his ass on it.

“Get off, you little shit.”

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