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Reno flashed a wicked grin and gripped the man’s hair, yanking his head back. “Joshy asked for an extension on his loan. You know I’m a reasonable guy. I allow one extension, which I think is more than generous. Joshy’s on extension number three. Joshy obviously thinks I’m a little bitch. I had to do a little work to relieve him of that notion.”
“Hmmm.” I tucked my hands in my pockets and rocked on my heels. “How much does he owe?”
Reno chuckled. “That’s the funny part. Joshy was down to the last five hundred. He was so close to the finish line, but he had to go fuck it all up.” He bent down, getting in the bloody man’s face. “Not gonna do that again, are you, Joshua?”
Bloody Man grunted in what I assumed was affirmation. I wouldn’t want to get on Reno’s bad side, not because he was so scary, but because he did not give a single fuck. Violence didn’t bother me, but it delighted my brother. He’d barely made it out of high school because he kept getting in fights over the slightest provocation. He’d even punched a teacher, the idiot.
When he finished beating the shit out of Joshua, we went to his office where he counted out the money I’d collected, just as I knew he would.
“How’s it going?” he asked as he put the cash back in his safe. “How are classes?”
“Good. A lot of work.”
He sat down in his chair, shaking his head. “My baby brother, the genius. You’re gonna go straight and make more money than I ever will.”
I turned my hands over in my lap. “That’s the dream. We’ll see.”
He leaned forward, steepling his hands under his chin. “Nah, you will. God didn’t give you that intellect for nothing.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What’s with the flattery?”
That made him rock back in his chair and laugh. “Fuck you very much. I can’t admire my kid brother?”
“I know you. I know you want me to get into pharma. If you’re trying to butter me up, it’s not happening. I can’t take on anything else, and this summer, when I’m interning, I’m going to have to cut back. You support me going legit, then you need to drop the talk of me diversifying my product.”
He turned serious. “I heard you the last time. I’m bringing in Eddie on that front. He has contacts in TJ we’re going to work with.”
I pressed my fingertips to my eyes. “I don’t want to know, all right? Just don’t get yourself killed.”
“How can I when I’m immortal?”
That had me grinning at him. “Is this like the time you convinced me you could fly and fractured your arm in three places?”
Reno’s brain didn’t work the same as other people’s. His sense of danger was pretty much nonexistent. So when I asked him to prove he could fly when I was seven, he took me by the hand, walked me to the nearby park, climbed to the top of a huge tree...and he flew. The asshat was lucky to survive that stunt.
He rolled his eyes. “That tree grew ten feet after I climbed it. The wind changed directions. Someone put lead in my boots. There was kryptonite in someone’s pocket. A witch cursed me.”
I chuckled as he spouted off all the excuses he’d given me when he’d crash-landed with an arm bent the wrong way.
“I don’t give a fuck what anyone says, those were good times,” he said.
Huffing, I let my head fall back. There was a lot of bad in my brother.A lot. I was under no illusions about who he was as a person. But the asshole had always been a good brother. When he talked about me going legit and being successful, pride seeped through every word. I didn’t know if he really cared about anyone else on earth besides me. I never saw it if he did.
Marco and Julien didn’t get why I stayed. Why I kept working for Reno when the risks weren’t worth it. This was why. Times like these when we were just two brothers who grew up with no one to count on but each other.
“Yeah, we made our own good times,” I replied.
Our parents had been around, but they were pretty indifferent to us. It’d been just me and Reno most of the time. That kind of history was pretty much impossible to turn my back on.
“Are you going out tonight?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“No?” He raised a brow.
“I’ve got my girl.”
He cocked his head. “The pretty thick one? What was her name?”
