Chapter Thirty-Three

Tomás

"I guess your brother stepped up for you, huh. Had to kill my son but got you."

I turned the words over and over in my head as Mad Dog drove. I couldn't remember walking out of the house, getting in the car. I breathed into the window and drew a smiley face. "The city is so cold," I said, watching the urban neighborhood rush past me. "It's always so cold."

I heard Mad Dog beside me breathe but didn't want to look at him. My face burned with all the scratches moms left me. I didn't want to ask the question I knew was true.

Mad Dog was my brother.

I wasn't a Brennan, which meant that Mad Dog and I did not share fathers. Which considering he killed my father, that was a good thing for him. But Daniel. It made sense. The reason he saved my life.

I licked my swollen lip and winced. Touching the swelling carefully just to be sure. Yup. It hurt.

The city landscape changed to highway road. We were headed to the airport. We'd leave Chicago behind. I'd never see moms again. Maybe not Nick. Definitely not the neighborhood. And I didn't feel particularly sad about that. But I still needed to know. I wasn't good at keeping shit inside. Brenda, Daniel's nice girlfriend had once said I was like Tinker Bell. She could only hold one emotion inside at a time before she exploded.

"Are you my brother?" I asked. It sounded stupid. Anticlimactic. I wanted to take it back.

"Katarina is my biological mother," he answered. "Yeah, we're brothers."

"Did you kill Daniel?"

"I did not kill Daniel," he said. Stressing the I part. I didn't ask for clarification. Afraid of his response.

"When did you find out?"

"That night. Daniel used it as his trump card. Said he found my birth certificate and that we were brothers. Of course, I didn't believe him, so I took some of his hair for DNA before…"

I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. Before someone killed him. "He knew? He didn't tell me."

"I wasn't sure," Mad Dog shook his head at a memory, probably. "I wasn't sure if that day you knew. That you came to kill me because you knew. But when you said what you did about her, I knew you didn't. And then the gun was empty…" he shook his head again and turned away from me.

"It wasn't the money," I snorted and winced. "I could've afforded the bullets."

"I know. You're not a killer like us."

"Us?"

"Joaquín killed Trinidad for some reason we're still unclear about. Miguel was there, but Cruz and Daniel weren't. A surveillance camera across the street caught them. They broke their vows."

"Daniel didn't. And neither did Cruz."

"And that's why I gave them a pardon." He slammed the steering wheel hard. "I switched their bodies, gave them new identities, sent them to boofoo Egypt with a warning if they ever popped up on a radar, I would erase them and their bloodline."

"Daniel's alive?"

"Delete that shit from your brain, Tomás. I mean it. If my father finds out what I did, we are dead. He will use you to get to me. To get to Daniel."

I swallowed. Kieran had said that two men were there for me. That others would be coming. I had a contract out on me. It all clicked. "I think he knows. He put a contract out on me."

Just then, a semi-truck slammed into the back of Maddox's car, sending us into a ditch. The airbag exploded in my face and for a second all I felt was pain. My ears rang and everything around me seemed to slow. Maddox was already climbing out of the car, gun in hand.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

Three muffled shots erupted. Three pops returned and the sound of bullet against metal somewhere around me. Hands were on me and my little bubble burst. I flailed, slammed a fist at a jaw.

"I'm trying to get you out," Maddox growled out.

My seatbelt ripped and I stumbled out. Strong hands grabbed me way too hard and shoved me into the motherfucking trees. Everything surreal. A shootout in broad daylight in Chicago traffic. What the ever-loving fuck? Where was a cop when you needed one?

"Move," Maddox ordered.

I spat out a glob of blood. "I thought airbags are supposed to protect you."

He grunted, grabbed my collar, and shoved me ahead of him. His gun aimed somewhere behind him. He must've seen something I didn't because another pop rang out.

The fucker had some sort of sound suppressor. I shouldn't have been impressed. I should've been running.

"I said move," he hissed and shoved me too damn hard.

I fell on my ass, and he left me there. Disappeared just as two figures walked out of the trees, guns trained on me.

"Grab this one," the taller guy said. They were wearing balaclavas, only their eyes visible.

The shorter one reached for me. I heard two quick pops and both guys fell, blood spreading out underneath them. Maddox sprinted out of the woods again and hauled me to my feet. He was on the phone with someone. I didn't know who. Back up, a clean-up crew. The fucking army.

Once he got me to my feet, he started deeper into the trees. He slid left to go back around. Probably to see if there was anyone else. The whole world fell out of play, as if it didn't exist. Cops, people, traffic, no one cared.

The woods. I hated them.

Maddox had disappeared again. He wasn't much of a team player since he left his team member—me—behind. I started to move when I felt a pinch on my ass. I pulled out a dart from my left cheek and looked at it as if it held the answers to the questions of the universe. Heat rushed through my veins, my heart. My head fuzzy and I face planted on the ground. I couldn't move but it didn't mean that I lost consciousness. I saw the big man lift me over his shoulder, and he sprinted to the right, away from Maddox. I tried to call my brother, but my tongue felt too damn heavy.

I was dropped into a truck bed, tires spun, and all I could see were the clouds above me and all I could think about was that Daniel was alive. Maddox had saved him. But he had doomed me. Moms had it wrong. Everything bad that happened to me had been Maddox's fault. Jack trying to kill me because of Maddox. Mom hated me because I looked like him. He killed my dad. Joaquín Moya may have made a lot of mistakes, but he had taken care of his children. He never abandoned us. And now I die because of fucking Maddox Brennan.

I wanted to hate him, but I didn't. Hate was too strong a word.