Page 4 of Shattered

I don’t know what that means, either, but Rocco looks sickly satisfied with that. When he finally turns to loom over me, I glare athim, hating this position. I wouldn’t put it past him to stuff his dick in my mouth, and if he does, he has to know I’ll just bite the fucker off.

Rocco tries to tilt my chin with his finger, but I glare daggers at him and refuse to move under his knobby finger.

“If you wanted a piece of that ass, you could’ve just asked. She’s a dirty fucking whore, she’ll fuck anything with a pole,” Rocco says.

I shouldn’t be surprised that Rocco shares her. Rocco’s fucked enough in the head that nothing should surprise me anymore. But she’s his wife. I can’t imagine sharing a woman I give a crap about. I also can’t imagine giving a crap about a woman, considering I never have.

“I would’ve been less angry if you’d asked to borrow her,” Rocco says in that unhinged tone that ices me. “Do you think you could do the responsible thing and apologize for touching what doesn’t belong to you?”

I could apologize, but it wouldn’t do any good. Rocco and Rooney don’t take apologies. Their debts are paid in blood, and I won’t give them the satisfaction.

“Eat a bag of dicks,” I say simply.

Rocco shakes his head as though he’s disappointed. “You’re going to leave town. If I see you here again, I’ll break your other leg.”

I don’t have time to ask him what that means before he lifts the metal bat, and it cracks against my thigh.

Chapter 1

Asher

“Be careful with my shit!” I snap at the two movers carrying, and nearly dropping, my enormous flatscreen TV. One rolls his eyes, and Bane grips the sleeve of my T-shirt with a white fist as if to hold me back. “Why aren’t you helping?”

“Aren’t we paying them for that?” We’re sitting on our back deck in chairs we stole from the house next door, watching through the back door as the movers carry everything inside the front as slowly as possible.

I roll my eyes. “At this rate, we’ll be unpacking at midnight. Get off your ass.”

“Right, what’s your excuse?”

If eyes could cut through skin, Bane would have a hole where his face should be. While a decent friend would tread carefully around myfucked leg, Bane practically beats it with a stick. It’s like he never wants me to forget it.

“Do not make me regret letting you move here with me.”

“You would’ve gone crazy, hiding out here all alone.”

He may be right, but I’ll never admit that.

“I still don’t know why you were stupid enough to fuck Raven.”

I shoot a warning glare his way. “Bane.”

“Screw you, I’m allowed to be mad. It’s your fucking fault we had to leave Kingston and move in the first place, and why I haven’t gotten a paycheck in three months. You’re telling me you couldn’t get pussy anywhere else?” he growls.

“Bane, shut your fucking mouth before I shut it for you.”

Bane has been my best friend for years since he moved in as my roommate. We look more like brothers than Rocco and Rooney. We’re both tall and fit, with lots of muscle to show, and we have similar facial features, such as a square jaw, prominent nose, and brown eyes. Our only real difference is our hair, his being short and red and mine being longer and darker. We met when I put up an ad since rent is expensive and I had a two-bedroom. He went to college, though you wouldn’t know it. He started in forestry and quit after three months. From there, he moved on to personal training and then construction. He lost that job after getting drunk with two of his friends, one of whom operated an excavator. He talked that guy into swinging them around in his bucket and then threw them off a rock wall. They all lived, but their jobs didn’t. After that, I got Bane a job at the shop as the receptionist, where he worked until Raven took over when she got together with Rocco. Over the years of working there, Bane got into art, eventually becoming my apprentice. It’s been two years since hestarted on skin, and this career seems to be sticking for him. Thank fuck.

But even if he wasn’t my apprentice, I know Bane would have followed me after Rocco and Rooney turned on me. Neither of us has any family we actually like, so we’re all each other has, not that the stubborn asshole will admit it.

And neither will I.

I haven’t spoken to my parents in thirteen years since I moved out at eighteen, and it’s fine by me. They didn’t give a fuck about me when I lived with them, so I don’t know why they’d start caring after I left. While I’ve never lost sleep over it, it does sometimes rub me the wrong way that the two people whose job it was to give a shit about me just… didn’t.

It’s nearly five, and the movers continue to drag out the transfer of our things. Bane doesn’t get up to help, and I don’t give him shit for it. I know he’ll be picking up my slack when unpacking.

There’s a nice summer breeze out here; it feels cleaner than Kingston. It whips through the thick trees beyond my new backyard. There’s a house beside me, the only other house along this bend in the road. It’s deep yellow, with an enormous decorative sun facing the road. The lawn is freshly cut, the siding and shingles are clean, and even the silver SUV in the paved driveway is spotless. It looks so cheerful; the longer I stare at the property, the more I consider painting the brown exterior of my new house black to make it look like death next to the sun.

I turn my attention back to the movers just in time to see two of them carrying my bed frame through the doorway that leads to the den.

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