Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 74949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
“Beat his ass, Riv. He’s a loser,” Rex goaded me on, still laughing.
“He doesn’t need me to do it. He’s gonna do it to himself. I’m not touching him again. Too easy. I’m not going after someone who can’t even stand on his feet.”
Rex rolled his eyes at me. “You’re such a pussy sometimes.” And then it was him going after Jerry, who was still focused on me.
It all happened so fast, I couldn’t get any words out—Rex colliding with Jerry, Jerry falling to the concrete, his head snapping backward and smacking against the curb.
Blood. So much fucking blood.
Convulsions.
“What the hell did you do?” I shouted at Rex, running over and collapsing to the concrete beside Jerry. “Call 911.”
“Fuck that shit. I’m getting the hell out of here. Let’s go, Riven.”
“We can’t just leave him!”
“You idiot! We need to get the hell out of here now!” And then he ran, leaving me there, with Jerry bleeding all over the ground.
I reached for my cell phone, but it wasn’t on me. I didn’t know where in the hell it was. My heart was a stampede of elephants in my chest. Bile climbed up my throat.
He was dying. Right there in front of me.
I ran for the back door, which was closest. It led to Bill’s office at the bar. There was a keypad on the back, my fingers frantically punching in the code.
Bill and Frank were in there together, a stack of money between them. “He’s dying! Rex knocked him down and his head smacked into the concrete! Call an ambulance!”
It was Frank who grabbed me and kept me from going outside. Frank who didn’t let Bill make a call…didn’t let me leave.
“Where’s Rex?” he asked.
“He fucking left. Help me!”
“Tell me what happened. Don’t leave anything out,” Frank insisted.
Why was he stalling? Jerry could die, and it would be our fault…my fault, for driving Rex here. For talking shit. For hitting Jerry. Christ, Rex hadn’t even hit him until the tackle.
Still, I spilled the story, heart in my throat the whole time.
“Son…listen to me, son. This is where you show us what you’re made of, how you pay our family back for all the things we’ve done for you. I’ve loved you like my own, raised you, and you stayed…Rex left. There’s no sense in both of you going down.”
“What?” I asked, body vibrating.
“You do this for us. You owe us. Bill and I saw it all go down.” I couldn’t keep up, couldn’t make sense of what was happening. They hadn’t seen a damn thing. “There are two ways this goes: either we saw it and it was self-defense—you won’t get much time for that—or we saw it and you killed that man in cold blood. Think about your grandma. You know what happens to narcs, Riven. You do this, and we take care of you and your family. You don’t want…” He shrugged. “Who knows what will happen.”
I didn’t need him to explain what he was saying, what he would do. This was my father figure—the man had told me I was like a son to him—and yet he wanted me to go to prison for something I didn’t do, and was threatening the only person I ever loved if I didn’t do it.
CHAPTER ONE
Riven
Getting out of prison wasn’t what I thought it would be.
It really was similar to the way it happened in movies. Once I wasn’t property of the United States government anymore, they didn’t really care what happened to me—well, unless I screwed up again. All bets were off then.
What I didn’t expect was how lonely the walk down the fenced tunnel would be, and I couldn’t make sense of why I felt that way—why I felt much of anything when I’d gotten pretty good at turning that shit off during my lifetime.
Grandma was waiting for me outside, like I knew she would. She was the only person in my life who had ever really given a shit about me. She always had my back no matter how angry I was as a kid or how many times I’d fucked up. I’d made her cry too much over the years, but that was in the past. Things were going to be different now. I was…damn, I was tired. The bone-deep kind that weighed down your body and your mind, and I wasn’t sure if I could ever make that go away. I might never be happy, but I was going to keep my ass out of trouble, was going to stay away from Rex Hunt—away from all the Hunts.
“Riven,” she said, tears already in her eyes, hand shaking as she pressed it against her mouth. The last few years had turned her ponytail a little grayer.
“Hey, Grandma.” I dropped my bag to the dirty, hot ground and wrapped her in a hug. She squeezed tighter than the strength most people probably thought she had, but the truth was, this small woman in my arms was the strongest person I knew. “Don’t cry.”