Total pages in book: 150
Estimated words: 136791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
Dr. Jenner smiles at me and nods her head approvingly. "Do you think the police were too scared of the hood to do their jobs?"
I snort at the way she says hood like it's foreign to her. She doesn't like the connotations associated with the word, doesn't like the way it divides people. But that's exactly what life is like where I live.
We're seen as less than our neighbors in better communities. We're the people the rest of the world would like to forget—the ones treated more like a shameful secret than like people with hopes and dreams and feelings.
Most cops don’t know what to do about gangs or MCs. People like that scare the crap out of most cops. So when they move into neighborhoods like ours, those of us who live there pay the price.
We don’t matter. We never did. We’re what people call an acceptable loss to most of society.
"Yeah," I say softly. "I think they were afraid. Titan was a mixed kid from the wrong side of the city. No one really cared what happened to him. They didn't want to get their hands dirty looking."
"You resent that."
"Hell yes, I resent it. My brother was an amazing person. He was funny and kind and so protective. He got mixed up with Kaleo to help me, not because he was a bad person. I hate that all they saw when they looked at him was another drug dealer. That's not who he was."
Even after Cade left, that's all LAPD saw. When they came around to ask me questions, it was clear they didn't want to be there and didn't much care about my mom or Titan. As far as they were concerned, he was part of the problem in neighborhoods like ours, and that was that. How could they seek justice when they thought it'd already been served?
Eventually, I got fed up the same way Cade did and told them not to come back anymore unless they were coming to tell me they knew who killed my family. They stopped coming after that.
About a year later, Detective Whitten came by campus to tell me that he believed the men who killed Titan and my mom were dead, and that they were closing the case. I'd already put the pieces together long before that and figured out Cade had found the Diablos responsible and killed them before disappearing.
"Cops are human too," Dr. Jenner reminds me. "They make mistakes and have fears just like the rest of us. It's entirely possible they were afraid to look too hard into what happened. But isn't it also possible they were doing the best they could with what they had?"
"Maybe," I say with a shrug, not convinced. Maybe they were doing the best they could. Maybe they just didn't care. At the end of the day, the results were the same. Cade took care of the problem when they couldn't or wouldn't. He's been taking care of problems every day since.
In my eyes, he will always be a hero. Maybe that’s wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t put him on a pedestal when he murdered three people. I don’t know. But he will always be the one who cared enough about Titan to do something when no one else would. To me, that matters.
If killing them makes him a monster, then I guess I’m a monster too because I’m glad he did it. I just wish he’d taken Curtis Kaleo with them.
"It kills me that he blames himself for what happened when all he was trying to do was protect me, just like Titan was." I've thought about that a lot—about the fact that, had things gone differently, it might have been Cade who died that night.
I'm sure sometimes he wishes it had been him. That kills me too. I wish we could all go back and do it over. I'd be stronger, fight harder to defend myself. I'd have listened to Cade when he told me that he didn't want me being friends with Tony. Maybe changing that one decision would have put us all on a different path…one that didn't end with my mom and Titan dying in the street.
Maybe Cade would have made the same career choice. I don't know. What I do know is that I'm proud of him, and I'm so thankful he wasn't taken from me that night, too. He's still here. He's still alive. I wish like hell Titan and my mom were with us, too.
"I have homework for you this weekend," Dr. Jenner announces a few minutes later. "You told me about the necklace your brother gave you for your birthday before he died. I want you to take it out of the box in your closet. You don't have to open it. You don't have to wear it. Just take it out of the box."