Page 13 of Tore Up

This wasn’t helping me. I needed answers.

“What did he do, Nicco?” I demanded.

Nicco shook his head. “I don’t know,” he lied.

“Yes, you do! I need to know. This man is coming back.”

Nicco let his head fall forward as he groaned. “Fucking hell, Ares.”

“My family left me, I won’t have anywhere to live in two days, and, oh, I just got fired this morning. So, you see, this is just one of many problems I seem to have. I don’t have time for you to panic or rant. I need to know what I am dealing with. Is it drugs? Did y’all get drugs from someone and not pay them?”

Nicco shook his head and turned to look at me. “It’s not drugs,” he said. “Ares stopped drugs back when he decided to enlist in the Army.”

I threw up my hands. “Then, what is it? Don’t tell me you don’t know because you do.”

He rubbed his face, looking at me like he’d rather jump off the balcony than tell me what my brother had done.

There was a knock on the door, and he looked relieved for the interruption.

“It’s probably Ronnie’s bitch, tracking him down. She’ll keep banging and start yelling if I don’t get it,” he said, walking over to the door and jerking it open.

It wasn’t a female. Nicco was thrown back so hard that he landed on his butt in a loud crash as his body knocked over several of the empty liquor bottles. A much larger guy walked into the apartment, closing the door behind him. I sucked in a breath and held it. He was here, and I’d been wrong. In the light of day, he was even more attractive. And he had a gun in his right hand, pointed at Nicco.

“I didn’t do it, man,” Nicco told him, holding up both hands. “I swear it!”

The man tilted his head, and the sinister gleam in his eyes lifted to me.

Topaz. His eyes were topaz. They were breathtaking, but they belonged to a man who was holding a gun and wanted to kill me.

“You said I had twenty-four hours,” I blurted.

He motioned to Nicco with the gun in his hand. “I lied. You did as expected and led me to answers.”

“He’s not here! Tell him, Halo! He’s gone.”

Those eyes swung back to Nicco. “Then, where the fuck is he?”

Oh God. We were all going to die.

I put both hands on my stomach, as if that were enough to protect the life inside me. If he shot me, my hands weren’t going to do anything.

“Ares enlisted in the Army after graduation. He left for boot camp two months ago.”

Rage lit his expression as he lifted his arm and pointed the gun at me. “You lied to me last night.”

I shook my head. “No. No, I don’t know where boot camp is. I planned on telling you this tonight.”

“You expect me to believe that? Why wait? Come here to see this guy? Hmm? What was it you were warning him about? I told you if you ran, I’d kill you and your entire family.”

“That’s not it. You don’t understand,” I replied just as a bullet silently whizzed past me and into the cabinet, causing something to shatter inside.

A cry tore from my mouth, and I dropped to the floor.

“WHOA!” Nicco shouted. “Don’t kill her! She didn’t do shit! I swear it!”

“That was a warning. If I’d wanted to kill her just now, she’d be dead,” he replied.

Another sob escaped me, and I ducked my head, covering my mouth. Wishing I could crawl into a small hole and hide. He’d shot at me.

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