Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 102929 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102929 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
I don’t think I have to worry, right?
Trust didn’t come easy for me by any means, and if I couldn’t trust my own brother, my own flesh and blood, then who could I trust?
Isla’s my best friend, and the best relationships stem from friendships, right?
The last thing I wanted was to see with my own two eyes what was happening behind my back.
“What the fuck?” I muttered under my breath, standing to get closer to the screen.
“Hmm…” Marco hummed, swiftly gripping my shoulder. “Looks like you might have some competition.”
I was a ticking fucking time bomb about to explode.
“Your brother doesn’t know you’ve been trying to get custody of him, does he?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I didn’t want to get his hopes up.”
The longer I stood there, the more I realized I couldn’t save him. Maybe because he wanted a rival, an enemy to blame. For years, I’d been killing myself to take care of him, to make sure he had a roof over his head and food on the table.
I bent over backward for him anytime he needed me. He never asked. I just did. It was my role as his older brother. I had to protect him. For a long time, until Isla came along, he was my only family. The only person who mattered to me.
But this…
Watching as he hovered above her with no distance between their mouths.
This, I couldn’t forgive.
Forget.
Ignore.
Pretend this wasn’t a betrayal, a slap in my face, the biggest fuck you. This was the line he decided to cross. Out of all the boundaries to burn, this was where I stopped being his shield and started being his threat.
I spent the past ten months since I turned eighteen working behind the scenes with a lawyer, filling out the proper paperwork to prove that our parents couldn’t sign him over to me, and that this needed to be mandated by the state. I also had to show a stable income for as far back as I could go, but most of my jobs were paid cash under the table.
The only money I had coming in now was from dealing, and although it was thousands at a time, it couldn’t look suspicious, or it’d bring a whole other set of problems, and I’d wind up in jail or worse —prison. I was no longer a minor, so I’d be tried as an adult. What was supposed to only be until I turned eighteen became a full-time career, and I had no plans for the future other than dealing drugs.
I was losing myself, and the only grounding I had was in two of the closest people to me, Isla and Kraven.
I didn’t add all my money to the bank to avoid questions about its source. Marco knew someone willing to lie as long as I paid them off, claiming I worked at their auto mechanic shop to prove established employment.
On top of providing a care plan for the future, I was winging every step of the way. It needed to include expenses, the mortgage I’d been paying for years, and everything in between. There had to be a paper trail. To make matters worse, I had to get replacements for our birth certificates and Social Security cards, and they had to run background checks on us.
With all our run-ins with the law, it didn’t help my case. Not to mention all our encounters with CPS. Now, with Kraven turning eighteen in a couple of months, all my hard work was pointless. I’d basically been chasing my own ass, and this was just the icing on the cake.
“You do what you need to.” Marco squeezed my shoulder one last time before he let go. “But don’t make a scene in my club.”
I didn’t move.
I was frozen.
Stuck.
Glued to the floor beneath me until I witnessed him backing her up against the wall, hauling her up to straddle his waist. That was all it took for me to snap. I heard it loud and clear. Something broke inside me, snapping in half like it was nothing more than a twig pretending to be metal. The crack echoed in my chest, vibrating deep into my core.
It reverberated all around me as I flew through the crowd, feeling like a man running to his own execution. In the end, it didn’t matter what way I decided to go. I was already going to be burned at the stake with no mercy.
I took off from across the dance floor, shoving people out of the way in the path of my own destruction, needing to get to them as fast as possible. Once I could see them right in front of me, his hands moved from her waist up her body.
Why isn’t she fighting him off?
Rage quickly slammed into me as I roughly tore Kraven off her, causing her to squeal from the unexpected jolt. I caught her before she hit the floor. In a heartbeat, I threw his ass out the back door into the alley, trying to respect Marco’s request.