AllFreeNovel
Share Us
IMANI
After being with the boys all day and all night, I needed to get home to make sure that Mom was okay. It had been over twenty-four hours since I had really talked to her, and Redwood had been going insane from what I had seen all over social media and the news.
Kai had left about fifteen minutes ago. I sat in the car in my driveway, enjoying a few moments to myself. Today had been so fucking stressful with Allie’s mother almost dying in the hospital and the outrage that happened outside.
Once I calmed myself down and prepared myself to talk with Mom, I exited the car, tugged my key out of my purse, and unlocked the door.
“Mom!” I shouted, walking into the house and dumping my bag on the foyer’s couch.
The house was silent for a few moments, and then Mom finally answered.
“In here, sweetheart!” she shouted from the living room.
Texting Landon that I made it to my house safely with Kai, I glanced down at my phone and walked into the quiet room. Surprisingly, everything in my neighborhood wasn’t as bad as everyone had made it out to be. Maybe it was because our neighborhood was guarded.
It didn’t make a diff—
For a brief moment, I glanced up from my phone and let out a piercing scream.
Mom and Dad sat in the middle of the living room floor, on their knees, with Akio and Akio’s parents holding up guns to their heads. My mouth dried, and my eyes filled with tears almost immediately.
“Wh-what is happening?” I whispered.
Only then did I realize that we weren’t alone. Men were posted at almost every corner. All held guns. All pointed them in our direction, focusing them on me and my family.
I glanced over at Akio, who refused to look me in the eyes.
This was … this had been … a setup? Had they been waiting for me? What the fuck was going on? What did they want? For me to rat out Poison? Give them their location? No fucking way would I let them hurt any of my guys or Ana.
And what the fuck was Akio doing here? He hated his parents. He had fucking told Poison that he’d work with them in taking down the Redwood Mafia. How could he betray me and us after everything that had happened, especially with Nicole? How could he live with himself?
“Cooperate with us, Imani,” Akio’s mother said. “And I’ll only kill your parents.”
“Kill them?” I whispered.
“Kill them.”
Hot, rage-filled tears welled up in my eyes. I didn’t know whether to feel hurt, betrayed, or terrified about what was happening tonight.
But I refused to be civil with them. They had been threatening my family for weeks on end now, had been using us to gain resources from Dad’s work and more money, and … they had made this place a shithole.
No more backing down. No more being intimidated.
Tonight, I wouldn’t cooperate with them. Tonight, I would rather die.
And by the looks of it … tonight, I would die.
“What do you want?” I asked through gritted teeth.
I tried to look intimidating, to show that she wasn’t affecting me the way she was, but the tears wavering in my eyes gave me away. And sure, it might’ve looked weak, but it wasn’t. Tonight, I refused to give them any information, and I would die alongside my parents.
“Join me.”
“I’m not giving you—” I paused when her words finally stuck and stared at her. “What?”
“Join me,” she said, lowering her gun and stepping forward. “I want you to work with me, Imani. Your mother and father have betrayed me these past few years. They’re backstabbing assholes who can’t follow orders. But you …”
She stalked around me like I was some prey and pushed some hair back behind my shoulder with the barrel of her gun. My entire body tensed, as I hadn’t been ready for such a question, nor was I ready to have a gun brush against me as gently as she was doing.
