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“João’s mother,” I said, undoing mine to get out of the car.
She shouldn’t be around here, especially after what had happened. João wasn’t home, watching Ana, which meant that his mom should be at home, watching her. Ana shouldn’t be left home alone in a neighborhood like that. She was so young.
An uneasy feeling bubbled in the pit of my stomach. I sprinted down the sidewalk to see if I could catch her outside to ask her why she had come back after what happened, to see if Ana was with her. I didn’t know much Portuguese yet, but I could at least try to say a couple words to her.
“Imani!” Akio called, but I continued.
When I turned the corner, the woman was gone.
“Where’d that woman go?” I asked the burly man standing outside.
He stared at me for a couple moments. “You’re Poison’s friend, aren’t you?” he asked.
I swallowed hard and stared up at him, not liking the way he looked at me. Poison had a lot of enemies, even in this part of town, apparently. So, I had to lie to whoever they had pissed off lately.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Yeah, you are.” He stepped closer, his burly frame towering over me. “And João murdered my boss last week. It looks like it’s time to return the fucking favor.”
Before I could react, the man pulled out a gun from his pocket. A gunshot rang out through the air. I ducked and shielded my head. And when I didn’t feel any pain, I glanced up to see the man had dropped his gun and was clutching his bloody hand.
My eyes widened, and I picked up the gun in a shaky hand, so he couldn’t hurt me with it. I turned around, expecting to see Kai or João or even Landon behind me, but Akio stood there, looking like a deer in fucking headlights with a gun in his hand.
Unable to believe what was happening, I sprinted toward him and shoved him back into my car before any of that man’s friends could come out and shoot at us. My heart pounded against my chest, my thoughts racing.
Akio stared through the windshield, tears in his eyes. “I-I’m sorry. He … he was going to kill you. He had a gun. I didn’t think …” Akio continued stumbling over his words, never really completing a full, coherent sentence.
Still in shock, I sped to the Overlook and parked my car. After glancing in my rearview mirror about a hundred times to make sure nobody had followed us, I turned toward Akio and stared at him with wide eyes, taking his gun out of his shaky hand and shoving both his and now my gun into the glove box.
“What the hell was that?!” I asked, swallowing hard. I had so many fucking questions running through my mind that I didn’t even know if I wanted to find out the answers. “Where did you get a gun?! Where did you learn how to shoot it like that?!”
