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ALLIE
Landon walked down some creaky-ass steps into a basement and shut the door behind us. A shirtless João was sitting on a beaten-up and stained couch with Kai, each with a video game controller in their hands. They looked over at me when I walked in, Kai raising his brows at Landon.
“Jace,” Landon said, and that was it.
João and Landon went back to their video game.
Kai nodded to another couch across from the boys for me to sit on and handed me a cold beer. I sat on the couch awkwardly, crossing my arms over my chest, and glanced around the room, seeing their backpacks thrown in the corner of the room as if they didn’t give a fuck about school, weed on the coffee table, beer bottles gathered in the corner of the room.
“Fuck you, dude,” João said, tossing his controller onto the coffee table with the weed. He looked over at me, then at the unopened can. “Loosen up, buttercup. Take a swig.” He took the can from me, opened it up, and handed it back.
The stench hit my nose and almost made me gag, but I took a sip of it anyway, needing something after what I had witnessed. I never thought I’d ever see something like that in my life, never thought that Jace would be the one getting abused. In football, he was always so … so … rough and violent and had that don’t fuck with me attitude.
“Feel better?” João asked, his mouth curled into his signature smirk. His dark hair was a tousled mess on his head, and a metal feather earring hung off one of his ears. His body was covered with tattoos.
I blew a breath out my mouth and decided not to lie. There was no point in it. I was going to be a mess all night with them, worrying about Jace. “No,” I said, grabbing some napkins from the table and placing them on the back of my head to stop the blood. “I’m not.”
Landon sat on the couch next to me and tossed the cash Jace had given him onto the table. “Don’t worry about Jace. He’ll be all right. He always is.”
“You don’t know what he’s going through.”
“Oh, come on.” Landon laughed. “His daddy hits him. Everyone here knows it. He brought you here because he doesn’t want you getting hurt. Daddy is probably off drinking or some shit.” He waved his hand dismissively. “It’s not a secret to us. He’s handled worse shit than that.”
Worse shit.I didn’t believe it.
“Am I right, or am I right?” Landon said.
I stayed quiet and took a huge fucking gulp of the drink, wanting to erase everything about tonight from my mind. First, Vaughn. Then, Harlan. We should’ve never gone home tonight. Imani would’ve let us stay in one of her spare rooms if I’d begged. Jamal might’ve even let us stay with him too.
The two boys went back to playing video games, and I watched them aimlessly, not being able to forget about it. This damn beer wasn’t helping, so I pulled out my phone to check to see if Jace had texted me. But I had no notifications. Part of me wanted to call Jace to make sure everything was okay, but I didn’t want to make it worse.
“So, how’s Imani?” João asked me, lighting up another cigarette and blowing the smoke out of his nose.
I arched a brow at him and narrowed my eyes. “Why are you guys blackmailing her?”
Landon looked over and chuckled. “Wouldn’t you love to know? What we do with Imani is none of your business.”
“Yes, it is. She’s my best friend, and I don’t want you guys ruining her life like you ruined Jace’s. I’m sick of you butting into everyone’s business.” I put all my insecurities aside and told them off for the first time ever, and it felt damn good. “Stop bothering good people and bringing them down.”
While Landon and João looked over at me, Kai flicked his cigarette into the ashtray and slumped down on the couch next to me.
“She’s had a hard night,” he said, waving off the guys to let them play more games. “Let it slide.”
When the guys turned back to the TV, I glared at Kai and crossed my arms over my chest. “I want to go home. I need to make sure that Jace is okay. He can’t stay with Harlan tonight. You know what he’ll do to him.”
“You’re staying here tonight. I can’t let you go back over there. Jace would try to kill me.” Kai placed a hand on my shoulder and turned toward me. “And, plus, it’s the only way you’re safe.”
“Why does he trust you?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Jace?” Kai asked, brows furrowed together. “Because we do good work for him.”
“And why did my dad trust you?”
All the emotion on Kai’s face evaporated. He sat back up very uncomfortably and shifted in his seat. “What makes you think your dad trusted me?” he asked. Not trusted Poison, but him—Kai. Something had gone on between my father and Kai, and I needed to figure out what it was.
“You said he did a favor for you. What was it?”
Kai tore his gaze away from me and grabbed my beer. “You keep asking me questions that you know I can’t answer about our business.” He was suddenly cold and even distant. “Ask me something I can answer.”
“No.” I crossed my arms and lay back on the couch, knowing that I wouldn’t get anything out of him. “I want you to answer this for me. He was my father. I want to know what kind of business he was in before he was killed.”
“Keep dreamin’,” João said from the floor, tossing his controller on the ground and looking back at us. “If you want to know what happens when we do business with someone, why don’t you offer up a job, and we’ll show you how it works?”
I narrowed my eyes at him and then tore my gaze away. I didn’t know how the hell Imani dealt with their shit. They were the three most annoying assholes on the planet, almost even worse than Jace during the past two shitty years.
Not caring that the blood was seeping into their stained couch, I closed my eyes and prayed that Jace would still be alive tomorrow morning and that he’d come back to get me. All I wanted was to spend my life with him.
