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But this isn’t a normal situation. She’s put me between a rock and a hard place. She holds all the cards, and I’m left with no choice but to send my very best fighter into the Death Cage and hope for the fucking best.
With teeth gritting so tightly my jaw is bound to dislocate, I eye them all one last time before digging my gaze into Emma’s pale blue eyes.
And I nod.
She catches her surprise quickly, pretending to be a tough girl who knew this would work all along.
“Tonight,” she finally says. “I won’t wait another day for this town to belong to me.”
“I’ll see you there.”
That’s all I can muster before leaving. I close the door quietly and stride to my car, calm as the sea on a beautiful day. I sail through the streets, open my door, and look ahead of me as I grab the steering wheel with a white-knuckled grip.
Ivan is right here next to me. He was waiting for me in case this was a trap.
It was a trap. Because while it wasn’t violent, I came in owning the North Shore, and walked out in some sort of limbo where these streets don’t really belong to me anymore. At least not until I win that fight.
“So?” Ivan asks softly as he puts a hand on my thigh.
“Fuck,” I whisper. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”
I hit the wheel so hard a honk resonates down the empty streets. It’s bordered by dilapidated homes with front yards that look like dumpsters. Broken cars, broken windows, broken lives. That’s what this town is. Broken. And yet we all fight to make it our own.
My phone rings the second I put the car into drive. This time, I ignore it on purpose. I need to go to Elliot’s house and tell him what happened.
I’m haunted by my dad’s bored voice as I drive. He had that way of putting you down so low yet still acting like he didn’t care about it.
You lost the deal with the Wolves.
You lost the money from the robbery.
You’re going to lose the North Shore.
Someone is going to die tonight. Either from NSC or the Kings. And only one crew will keep control of the North Shore.
One life lost to save many others.
When my phone rings again, I grunt in frustration.
“Do you want me to take that?”
“No,” I snap at Ivan.
I park in front of the brothers’ house and walk in without knocking.
“Please, come in,” Elliot says from the sofa, sarcasm thick in his tone. “What took you so long to come over?
“Three minutes earlier, and you’d have caught us naked,” Jade, their girlfriend, laughs, sitting between the two brothers.
Jade is the girl who chose the Kings over going back to the man from the Wolves who used to pay her to keep her. She chose us. She didn’t want to go back, and in exchange for protecting her and keeping her, we lost our deal with the Bratva.
She’s wearing her nasal cannula, which means that sex session was pretty intense because she barely ever needs to use her small oxygen bag anymore. Girl got shot in the chest by NSC a few months ago. She’s yet another reminder of my failures to protect my crew.
“What’s up?” Ethan asks. The quieter of the two brothers who live in this house nods at Ivan and stands up, grabbing two chairs for us and putting them next to the coffee table.
But I’m unable to sit.
“I have news.”
