Page 49 of Brick

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Brick

Six weeks later

“I told the new guy I’d have the money at the beginning of the week. Ask him; he’ll tell you.” Pam lifted her hands to stop Brick’s approach.

“If you told Tre you couldn’t pay, he would’ve told you the money’s not due next week. It’s due right now.” He massaged the palm of his right hand with his left thumb.

Fucking Tre. Sucre let him do some work on his own now, but it was up to Brick to clean up any messes he made.

Pam dropped to her knees, and his stomach lurched. She whimpered as she reached for his belt buckle.

He took a step back. “Don’t do this,” he warned.

Her green eyes filled with tears as she lifted her head. She would’ve been a pretty girl if she didn’t have sores all over her face. Meth fucked people up. “I’m begging you. Please. Keep the new guy away from me. I can’t—” Her voice broke. “I can’t go through that again.”

He had no doubt the terror in her eyes was real.

His mind started spinning. When exactly had Tre been here and why? Pam wasn’t due a visit until today. He squatted down to her eye level. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

“He did things to me.” She trembled. “Last night. It was late, after midnight. He was so angry when he showed up. Said Sucre takes his money seriously.” Her tears streamed down her face. “I told him I didn’t have it all yet. I said I was going to go work the street tonight to get the rest, but he didn’t want to hear it. Said he was going to…take it out of my ass.”

A knot formed in his stomach. “Did he rape you?”

Her answer was to wrap her arms across her torso and start rocking.

He reached out to comfort her, but she scuttled back, her chest heaving with frantic breaths. Pam thought he was the same kind of beast as the man who broke her the night before. He twisted the shiny gold ring on his left pinkie. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Her eyes darted back and forth, like she couldn’t make sense of his words. “Afterward, he said if I kept my mouth shut, he’d let me pay next week.” Finally, her gaze landed on him. “He was lying, wasn’t he?”

He nodded. “Just give me what you have, and we’ll call it square.” He’d use his own money to pay the difference.

Scrambling to her feet, Pam disappeared into her bedroom and returned with a handful of rumpled bills. “I can’t face him again.”

“You can’t tell anyone about this.” With a churning stomach, he took the cash and left.

The rain had finally stopped, but there were huge puddles he had to avoid on the way to his truck. The air hung heavy with the smell of wet garbage. His heart was even heavier.

Sucre’s lesson may have worked in the short term, but the monster under Tre’s skin was peeking out again. And his boss had been clear: next time Tre forgot the rules, Brick would be the one delivering the message.

He’d done terrible things, but he’d never raped anyone, and he refused to start now.

No. He’d keep his mouth shut and hope somehow, some way, he could get it through Tre’s thick head to follow the rules, before they both lived to regret it.

***

Liv

Devon didn’t show up for the first day of school. Or the second. When she saw still no sign of him after the first two weeks, Liv went to see the guidance counselor at lunch. She’d planned to do it back in May, and now she regretted the delay. Unfortunately, Mr. Barnes was out of the office. The administrative assistant said he had a bad case of the flu.

It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to drag her heels again.

“You don’t roll over and die when things get tough,” Carol had told her once when Liv was so sick and weak, she could barely lift her cheek from the rim of the toilet bowl. “You can’t win the prize if you stop running the race.”

Helping this kid—changing his life—it mattered.

Not because Carol put it on her list. She still couldn’t think about the damn list. But Devon had so much potential. She couldn’t let him throw it away.

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