Page 27 of Risking it All

“We? Only a hundred more? I don’t have enough money for the bills we have now, never mind your debt. And why are you selling again? Didn’t that halfway house set you up as a dishwasher?”

“They don’t pay enough.”

No, they didn’t, but… “But selling leaves a trail of dead bodies. If you bring danger into this home and it hurts Camila or Lyra, you’ll be begging Eric to protect you from me.”

Dad didn’t say anything, just stared at the floor. “I’m going to make this right, Relic. I’m going to pay off the debt and become the father you need.”

“I don’t need a father,” I spat at him. “I need you out of my life.”

“Relic?” Camila’s groggy voice held the threat of tears. With her Tianna nightgown stuck to her sweaty body because of the million-degree apartment temperature—even with the air conditioner running—she stood near the hallway, rubbing her eyes.

“Hey, Camila.” Dad’s voice trembled with excitement, and Camila quaked as though she had been electrocuted. “You are so pretty. Just like your momma.”

She threw herself in my direction, then climbed me like a tree. With her arms and legs moving in a thousand different directions, catching Camila was like scooping up air, but eventually I got her settled on my hip. Dad took a step toward us, she shook, and I shot Dad down with a glare. “Stay back.”

She buried her head into my shoulder and whispered, “Who’s that?”

To Camila, Dad was a stranger. He spoiled in prison for years, and before that, he only returned home when crashing from a drug binge. Otherwise, he lived for the party. To my sister,while she understood we were her siblings, in reality, Lyra and I were her parents. For Camila, a mom and a dad were as real as Leprechauns at the end of the rainbow.

“I’ll tell you tomorrow. Let’s go back to bed.”

“Relic,” Dad started, but I was done with him.

“I said back off.” I returned to Camila’s room, shut the door, placed her in bed, tucked four of her stuffed animals around her, and made sure the fan blew directly onto her hot body.

“Is that man staying?” Camila asked.

Though I hated it… “Yeah.”

She remained silent as her eyes studied me in the dim light straining from the crack under the shut door. “I don’t like him. I don’t like how he looked.”

I didn’t like him either. “You’re safe. I promise.”

“Will you stay?” Camila asked.

She wasn’t one to ask for such things, at least not when the skies were clear. Bring on a thunderstorm and she’d stick to me like glue.

“Sure.” I sank to the floor and leaned my back against her bed.

“You don’t like him,” Camila said. “The man out there.”

No, I didn’t. “It’s complicated.”

“Is he going to hurt us?”

He already had. “I’ll make sure everything is okay. Now, go to sleep.”

“I love you, Relic.”

My throat swelled with her innocence. Innocence I never possessed. “I love you, too.”

My mind was a tornado, tearing through all that happened over the last few days. Losing my job, gaining a job, making friends with Macie Hutchins, learning that she can’t talk about that night, Eric cornering me like a rabid dog, and then my mind circled back to the same thought—a fifty-thousand-dollar reward.

Macie Hutchins didn’t know it yet, but she and I were about to find the people who jacked her car, and when we found them…hell hath no fury like a desperate man in need of fifty thousand dollars and the freedom it bought.

Chapter ten

Macie

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