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“Angela. Let’s not act like I don’t know what is going on,” Ice said.
“Then you know she is one to kill the first three circles of family and friends,” the man stated, “and leave the last one standing to watch as the world burns.”
“But Misty is dead?” Ice bit. “Was she not the one who fucked Angela’s husband?”
The sardonic smirk on the face of the man holding the gun told the story. Angela had not only been cuckolded, but it had been a man.Hadbeing the operative word. John had intermixed Misty’s story with his own, and somewhere in the middle was the truth. He wasn’t left to bear the burden of his wife’s sins. He was left to live with his and never be able to make them again.
“Hey, Fubar, any chance you want to help Mrs. Parker over in her sedan?” Ice directed. “Seems these two either convinced the lady they planted a bomb in her car or actually planted a bomb.”
“That wasn’t fucking nice,” he snarled, keeping his gun bouncing between the men as he headed toward the car.
“The problem with circles,” Ice said, “is they intersect, like concussion bombs and dominos. You get me, my kids, that brings down a whole big-ass circle, one even the Brambillas aren’t going to want to deal with.”
“Not our issue,” the one with the kid said. The toddler started to rouse a bit, making the man pick him up, as if he hadn’t been safe while Bree still had a gun pointed at her temple. It would have been easy to take the man out, but his brother was the threat Ice cared about.
In his arms was the one woman in the world he’d lay his life down for. The fight was crawling with sharp claws along his back, marring his skin with muscle-twitching barbs, making him worry the finger wrapped in the trigger could pull from a spasm.
“They are my children, not his,” Ice offered as a chance for reprieve. “And she’s a neighbor, no more, no less.”
“She had custody of them, which meant she was part of the inner circle.”
“Her? You think she has any value to John or Misty or my kids?” he said, praying they couldn’t hear the empty lies floating through the air in bright neon lights. “She was a convenience because she answered a door.”
“Then you won’t mind if I shoot her,” he reasoned right as a concussive blast sent the man’s hand flying up into the air.
Ice half lunged and half was thrown forward enough to catch the hand as fire scorched his back. Tossing his own gun to the side, he wrestled for control as Bree rolled from between the two of them. Their strengths matched as a ball of flame dwindled down to a bonfire in Mrs. Parker’s car, the world a mix of whistles and ringing from the explosion, the face in front of him charred with black soot. They rolled on the hard concrete, the sound of rounds being fired to his left and right deafening him as the animal emerged and got the better of him, slamming the man’s hand over and over until the gun fell away, crushing his skull between Ice’s hands as he repeated the action, slamming the man’s head over and over into the concrete reddening from his blood until he felt the gelatinous mush of brain matter on his fingertips.
The threat of this man taking his children and Bree, all because John got a little ass action, enraged him. The man had stolen his kids, wasted Ice’s money over and over, until he could no longer stand the fight and had to regroup. Now Death had been brought to his door, and if it hadn’t been for Bree, he might have invited it in and let it stay. But he had someone to live for. Someone he didn’t have to fight in court for a few hours every other weekend. For the first time, he could see beyond the next moment, and he was going to grab it.
Arms exhausted, Ice lifted his hands to see his own knuckles bloodied, and he was uncertain if it was from his blood or the man dead beneath him. Right as he remembered the secondary threat, he lifted his head to see the gun raised and trigger being pulled. He waited, the world slowing to the point he could see the atoms of oxygen floating in the empty space between him and the man. The pop of fire burst like stardust from the end of the barrel as his body flew to the side.
Bree had rushed and tackled Ice to the ground a millisecond before the man’s twin began jerking to and fro from the bullets opening him up as Fubar unloaded an entire clip into him. Deafened, a void of distant noises had him searching for Bree’s voice beyond the lips moving in front of him. Her hands cradled his face, and the last thing he saw were the deep brown eyes pleading with him to stay with her as he fell away into the darkness.
