Page 23 of Hold Him Like Gravity

“Not that he brought around here. He was always texting people, though.”

“Fuck,” I hissed, whipping around to stalk across the apartment. “Fuck,” I added, more defeated.

This was supposed to be easy.

Pop in, give Jake a piece of my mind, tell him to stay the fuck away from me. And then that was it. It was over. I was done with this old life of mine. For good this time.

Now?

Now, I had to worry about that idiot and what he’d gotten himself into.

I wanted to tell myself not to care, to just walk away and not look back.

The problem with that was, despite myself, some part of me did still care. The other part was also worried that this wouldn’t be the last time. That, maybe, those guys would come back to the meat shop, that the one guy would finish what he started.

Damnit.

“Alright,” I said, walking back over to Bobby’s desk, grabbing a sticky note, and jotting down my new email address onto it. I’d be damned if I gave Bobby, and possibly by extension, Jake, access to my new phone number. “If you hear from him, email me.”

“Should I tell him you stopped by?” Bobby asked as I made my way to the door.

“If I told you not to, you wouldn’t listen to me anyway,” I said, shrugging, then making my way out into the hall.

I waited until I was in the elevator to lean against the wall and take several deep, steadying breaths.

I never wanted to get wrapped up with Jake and his bullshit again.

But I couldn’t just walk away when things looked… off.

Could I?

No.

No, of course not.

He was my brother, after all.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Rico

Our investigation went nowhere.

Sure, we had footage. But the guys had been masked and gloved. So aside from having general body types and an eye color or two, we had nothing else to go on.

The footage from the office had been what had me out of my chair, wanting to hit the streets, and beat someone to death.

Sure, Kick had been pushed around in the front of the store. Had her lip split open. But that was all, you know, part of the robbery. As fucked as that was to think.

But that fucker walked her back into the office under the guise of getting the money from the safe. Only to get her alone to try to assault her.

That shit was hard to watch.

But I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

And, really, there didn’t seem to be anything.

Until the other guy came in, grabbing the one who was attacking Kick, claiming Kick had hit a silent alarm that didn’t exist.

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