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Kilo’s left eye twitched and his brow furrowed. Grant narrowed his gaze on the man who’d made Morgan his pawn. He saw right quick-like that this man wasn’t going away without a fight. And as for selling her at a fair price, Grant might have laughed at that if this guy Kilo wasn’t so pathetic. Apparently, he really thought he could sell another human being.
“I ain’t leaving without her,” Kilo said, studying his fingernails. “I was thinking about, you know, selling her to ya, but on second thought, I want her with me.”
“Is it because you love her, or because you refuse to let another man—or men—make her happy?”
“What difference does it make?”
Grant turned toward Blake and shrugged. “He’s right. It doesn’t make a damn to me either way.”
Kilo flashed a couple of gold teeth. His smile widened and then rapidly dimmed.
Before Blake could stop him, not that Grant expected he might, Grant threw the first punch of many. Once he started the beating, he couldn’t hit Kilo hard enough or often enough.
* * * *
In the distance, Morgan wailed like a baby. Her cries only added fuel to the fire. She would deal with the nightmares and cold sweats for a long time coming, and the least Grant could do was fight for the woman he used to know, for the lover who’d owned his heart right from the start.
He threw a left hook, and then a right one. Then, he thought of another reason to throw a few more for good measure. He hit Kilo on his left side, imagining he must’ve provided drugs to someone like his brother, too.
“Holy shit, man! Stop! I give, okay! I give! I’ll uh…get lost! Ouch! Motherfucker, you just broke my nose!” Blood squirted everywhere.
“Men like you don’t give a damn about anyone, and God help the person who needs some compassion. People like you rob from charities to pad the pockets of the rich, throwing in a few bucks’ worth of drugs, too, just for good measure and a quicker hook!”
“Man, you got this all wrong! Stop it!” Kilo didn’t defend himself, and by all accounts, Grant continued to attack him, refusing to listen to anything the man might say.
Grant bitch-slapped him a time or two more, his hands popping Kilo’s jaws automatically and so rapidly he wasn’t sure he could stop unless someone made him. Kilo yelled and he tried, somewhat, to talk Grant down, but it was no use.
Grant grew angrier. In the distance, Morgan cried out, screaming at the top of her lungs as another nightmare led her into the kind of hell from which she’d never co
mpletely escape. Grant knew that for certain. He’d watched his brother fall victim to the horror discovered in the clutches of crystal meth.
Hearing Morgan, Grant began obsessing over his brother Scott. He thought of Kilo or someone like him helping Scott put a drug in his arm, handing him the needle, giving him the dope.
Grant all-out assaulted Kilo then, punching him over and over again until he was blinded by the anger, provoked by the fury and choking on pure rage.
“I lost my brother! Damn you! I won’t lose my woman to a fucking drug, too!” He backed away and kicked him. The fury had gone too far now. His rage and anger were out of control. This was a defining moment, one from which he couldn’t escape.
“That’s enough, Grant!” Blake screamed, trying to pull him off and push him back.
Grant still couldn’t stop. He was like a locomotive propelling down a narrow track with only one destination now—prison. But he didn’t care. He couldn’t care. He wanted this guy to die for what he’d done to Morgan, what guys like him had done to other young women like Morgan.
He wanted him dead because his brother was dead.
Another hit followed a swift kick. Another wail resounded in the distance. “Morgan suffers today because of you!”
Kilo’s protests had long since faded away.
“Grant! You have to stop! You’re gonna kill him!”
A fountain of sweat spewed off his body. “No! This substance abuse problem has to stop! It’s affecting everyone around us! Don’t you see? Mothers and fathers lose their children every single day to this drug. Babies lose their parents. There’s an epidemic out there, and our country’s politicians prefer to fight wars that don’t concern them!”
Exhausted, Grant was finally overpowered when Blake dragged him away from a badly beaten Kilo. “Fighting never solves anything. You know this! What the hell has gotten into you?”
He glared at the man curled up at the foot of the large oak tree. “If my brother is dead in his grave, those who supplied him and others like him have tombstones with their names on them, too. I intend to help bury them under the cold stones awaiting them.”
Blake shook his head. “Grant, there are too many of them. If you kill Kilo, there will be others. You’re a bigger man than this guy. If you want to beat this thing, you do it the right way. Don’t stoop to a drug dealer’s level and fight with guns or fists.”
“You’re right,” Grant said, using his sleeve to wipe the sweat off his brow.
