Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
“My mom didn’t do that.” I chuckled.
“I don’t think it’s the same in reverse. The world is kind of sexist that way. When a woman—or a girl like I’d been—hits a man, it’s not seen the same way if it’s reversed. A man hits a woman, and all of a sudden shit’s flying, and you’ve gone and screwed yourself.”
“My dad did do something right…” I sighed, knowing that I was about to tell her my greatest and worst secret. “I got my head on straight. Did better…and tried to get my sister out of the gang along with myself.”
“But…”
“But, shit didn’t go as planned,” I continued. “And I found myself getting initiated instead of helping her leave…let’s just say shit didn’t go as planned.”
“What happened?”
I lifted my hands and guided them to my head, rubbing slightly over my badly-in-need-of-a-cut hair.
Did I want to tell her my darkest secret?
Maybe if I did, she’d see the error in her ways and leave.
“Earlier that night…” This was the part that was going to scare her away. Absently, I touched the tattoo on my neck, the one that mimicked my own throat being slashed, and hoped that what I was about to tell her wouldn’t completely freak her out. “I’d slit a kid’s throat.”
She looked at me like I had a few screws loose.
“You did what?”
I chuckled darkly.
“You heard me.”
“You slit some kid’s throat?” she squeaked, her eyes going to my neck.
It was as if she understood what it meant despite me not saying a word about it.
She didn’t look surprised. Not really. More wary than anything.
“Well, it wasn’t necessarily a kid. I was a kid. I thought I was a badass. A badass who wanted to make sure that his sister didn’t get killed…and it was either watch him slit her throat, or I slit this other kid’s throat who was trying to get out just like I wanted to do,” I murmured, eyes on the ceiling.
“Holy shit.”
I nodded. “Thought that I was going to go in there and tell them how it was. Tell them that my sister and me were leaving, and there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it…then my fucking sister walks over to her man—the fucking leader of the gang—and chooses her side. The side that wasn’t with me.” I swallowed. “Then the gang leader put his knife to her throat, and she realized what a big mistake she’d made. And she looked at me like I would betray her if I chose any other way but the way that didn’t end in her death.”
“Holy crap.”
I nodded.
“Did you do it—did you kill him?”
I shook my head. “Not for lack of trying on my part. I did it…then ran. Called the police at the closest pay phone. It was lucky for both of us that there was a medic and a cruiser right around the block. They’d just finished responding to a structure fire. They had like a thirty-second response time. Saved Bryce’s life.”
“Bryce.”
I smiled then. “Bryce…” I laughed hollowly. “I paid my dues. I did what I had to do to make sure they stayed alive. Anyway, I was in the gang for a while, doing what they wanted me to do while I’d rather be anywhere but there. It was after I’d gotten locked up for the umpteenth time that my dad had enough. He gave me an ultimatum. Jail or the Navy. I chose the Navy. He was supposed to keep them safe, and I was supposed to ship out and get my head on straight. But the moment I was gone, and the gang realized what I’d done, they killed my mother and sister. The same way they always threatened to when I stepped out of line.”
“How?”
She said the word so softly that I could barely hear it. The emotion that I read on her face devastated me.
“Slitting their throats.” I swallowed thickly. “Gutted me. My sister had Gunner, and the only reason Gunner wasn’t killed, too, was because he was the gang leader’s kid. Otherwise, he would’ve shared the same fate.”
“And you’ve been broken ever since.”
I snorted. “I was broken way before that, but yeah, that really put the icing on the fucked up cake of my life.”
“And what about the kid that you tried to kill—do you know how he is now?”
She sounded like she’d swallowed a frog.
I ran my tongue over my teeth. “Funny thing about that… I have to see him quite a bit. We both ended up in the same fucking city almost twenty years later. I have to see him more than I think he really wants to see me.”
“Who is it, and why?”
I had a feeling at this point, she knew exactly who I was talking about.
I grunted. “You probably don’t know him as Bryce. You know him as Loki.”