Page 23 of Science Project

Rick slammed his fist into the side of my face and sent me flying to the ground. My glasses fell right off my face, and Rick stomped on them, the sound of glass shattering and of metal snapping echoing through the room.

Pain radiated from my face and down my neck, and my vision was cloudy.

“He deserved it,” I gritted out.

Loud footsteps approached me from the left.

“Rick,” Mom warned.

The toe of Rick’s boot collided with my left cheekbone. I flew backward and landed on the hardwood floor again, the iron taste of blood filling my mouth. After rolling over onto my knees, one hand posted on the ground and the other clutching my face, I spit up the blood.

“Your brother deserved everything that fucking happened to him,” I gritted out.

Rick slammed his heel into my ribs with even more force. My hands slipped, and I face-planted into the hardwood, hitting the left side of my face a third time. I grunted and attempted to lift myself back up, but my arms were too weak.

I hated Rick. Almost as much as I hated his asshole brother.

“If Joe hit as hard as you do, he wouldn’t be dead,” I sputtered.

After releasing his anger in the form of a shout, Rick tightened his fists.

“Rick,” Mom warned again, “stop it.”

“He fucking killed my brother!” Rick shouted, readying to lunge at me again.

This time, before Rick could make contact with me, Mom lifted her gun and pressed it against the back of his head. “If you touch my son one more time, I’ll put a bullet through your head and kill you too. Calm the fuck down and let the boy explain.”

Balling my hands into fists on the floor, I wanted to so desperately pound them into Rick too. He had bullied me for so long, always put me down in front of my parents, and was far more of a nuisance in my life than Poison ever had been.

“Why’d you kill Joe?” Mom asked me.

“He hurt me.”

She didn’t need more of an explanation than that. Joe fucking Santos had hurt Nicole, in turn hurting me too. Of course I’d had to kill him, just like I would with anyone else who even touched her in a way that she didn’t want.

“How?” Mom urged.

After spitting up some more blood, I lifted my head and met her stare. “He. Hurt. Me.”

“He’s fucking lying,” Rick growled, lunging at me.

Another one of Mom’s men grabbed him by the collar and shoved him toward the front door.

Rick shouted and hollered, screaming at my mother to punish me because, “Joe didn’t deserve to die,” but he didn’t know what Joe had done to Nicole.

Or maybe he did know and just didn’t care.

Mom crouched down to my level and grabbed me by the chin, fingers digging hard into my cheeks. “If I find out that Nicole killed him and you’re covering for her, there will be consequences. Do you understand me?”

“You’re not going to find out shit,” I said through my teeth, raising my hands to show her the scabs on my knuckles from pounding my fists into Joe Santos’s face in a wild rage last night. “You see where my knuckles are split open?”

“That doesn’t mean anything, Akio.”

“It will when you find his face bashed in,” I said.

Nicole couldn’t have done that.

Mom held my glare for a few moments, then released me. “Joe was one of my men.”

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