Chapter Nineteen

Cade

T hen (Age Twenty-One)

"Michael Kincaid?" an LAPD officer asks, flashing his badge as soon as I pull open the front door. He's dressed in black slacks and a blue button-down, with a radio and his gun clipped to his belt. I've seen a lot of cops lately. I have no clue if he's one that I've already spoken with. I'm guessing not.

"That's me," I mutter, staring at him through bleary eyes. It's been a week since Titan and Jana were murdered. I'm exhausted. I haven't slept because January isn't sleeping. She isn't eating. Or talking. Or doing much of anything other than lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling. I thought maybe the double funeral two days ago would get a response out of her, but it didn't.

She sat in the first pew beside me and didn't say a word. She stared blankly into space, not even acknowledging anyone who stopped by to offer their condolences. Mandy Wright cried on her shoulder, for fuck's sake, and she didn't even move.

She's broken, and I don't know how to help her. I don't even know how to help myself. I'm drowning in guilt and grief and fucking worry for my girl. I feel like I'm going to break in half under the weight of it all.

"I'm Detective Whitten," the officer—detective—says, shoving his badge back into his pocket. He gives me a smile, but it doesn't meet his brown eyes. Those are carefully blank. "Do you have a few minutes?"

I glance over my shoulder into the house, but January hasn't emerged from my bedroom. Not that I expected she would have. I think the world could end around her right now, and she'd still be right there, staring at the fucking ceiling.

"I got her," Quan says from his spot on the couch.

I jerk my chin in a nod and then step outside and close the door. "What do you want, Detective Whitten?"

"I have a couple of follow-up questions if you have a few minutes to answer them."

"Fine," I mumble and scrub a hand down my face before dropping down into Ma Lucia's favorite rocking chair. I tilt my head back and close my eyes for a second, trying to get my mind in working order.

LAPD has had a million questions, but I don't know how to answer them. Telling them the truth—that Titan was dealing for Kaleo to ensure his little sister got to attend UCLA and Kaleo left us the fuck alone—isn't an option. She's already devastated. I don't want her blaming herself. I don't want her blaming me. And I'm fucking terrified that's exactly what's going to happen. There's no denying that this is my fucking fault. There's no running away from it. Her family is dead, and I'm the reason.

"I understand you told responding officers that you noticed an SUV circling the block approximately ten minutes before Jana and Titan James were killed. Is that correct?" Whitten studies me intently, paying close attention to every move I make.

"Yeah." A ripple of pain radiates out from my chest. "A black Honda SUV. It was creeping down the block. I noticed it in front of my house."

"You ever see the vehicle before that night?"

I shake my head.

"Anything stand out on the vehicle? A license plate? Damage? Anything at all?"

"No, nothing except for the fact that it was too new to belong in this neighborhood."

"You get a look at the driver?"

I shake my head again. "The windows were tinted, and it was dark."

Whitten frowns, his dark brows winging together. "Were you aware that Mr. James was in a dispute with the Southside Diablos?" he asks, making it sound like Titan was at war with them or some shit.

"They were targeting him," I mutter, even though I'm the one who gave them that information to begin with. Every fucking thing they know about this case, I've told them.

"Right. For vandalizing one of their businesses. You were aware of this?" he asks.

"He told me they caught him breaking out windows," I say, those ripples spreading. I already know where he's going with this line of questioning. I've been asking myself the same question for the last week. Why didn't I put two and two together sooner? Why didn't I stop for five goddamn seconds to think about what that fucking SUV was doing creeping down the block? Why didn't I do anything that would have saved him and Jana?

I don't have an answer for him. I don't have an answer for anyone.

"But you didn't think the SUV might have been related?" he asks, shoving the sharp blade of guilt a little bit deeper. He crosses his arms over his chest and hits me with a look of disbelief. "You're a smart kid, Kincaid. You're pulling a 4.0 at UCLA. From what I hear, you'll probably graduate with honors."

"I fucked up," I mumble, not even trying to defend myself. What's the point when he's right? I should have put the pieces together. This is my fucking fault, for more reasons than he knows. "It was January's birthday. She was cold. I was trying to get her inside. I needed to show her something…I didn't think. I should have, but I didn't." I meet his gaze, holding it. Let him see the guilt written on my face. Let him know I'm the reason my best friend and his mom are dead and my fiancée is broken. "I fucked up."

He's quiet for a minute and then shakes his head like that wasn't what he was suggesting, even though we both know it was. "I'm not saying it's your fault, kid. I was just asking a question. We all fuck up sometimes, miss important shit. I'm just trying to gather all the pieces to make sure we don't miss anything else that could be important."

"What do you want me to say?" I ask, unable to hide the bitterness in my voice. "They caught him fucking up their shit and told him that he owed them restitution, or they were going to kill him. He thought he had more time, but he was wrong. I should have put it together when I saw the SUV, but I didn't. As soon as I heard the fucking gunshots, I knew…but it was too late by then." I scrub my hands down my face, trying to erase the sound of gunshots and the image of Titan and Jana lying on the ground. "I was too goddamn late."

Whitten stands quietly for a minute and then changes tactics. "I understand Titan's sister, January, is your girl. Is she doing okay?"

"What do you think?" My brows come together as I snap my gaze up to meet his, and I know he can see my irritation with his stupid fucking question written all over my face. I don't care, though. How does he think anyone would be doing after losing their family like January just lost hers?

"I can get you in touch with a grief counselor," he offers like that's going to fix her. It won't. She just lost her entire family. And instead of beating down doors to find the motherfuckers responsible, he's knocking on my door, asking me the same questions I've already answered.

I'm tired of it. I don't need the LAPD to remind me at every available opportunity that this is a nightmare of my own making. I'm living it…every excruciating fucking second. I need them to do their jobs and find out who the fuck killed Titan and Jana. But they won't. And we both know that, too.

"A grief counselor? Are you fucking kidding me? How about you find the motherfuckers responsible for destroying her life?" I bark, climbing to my feet. "Because that's what she needs, Detective. For someone to tell her that the people who killed her mom and the brother she idolized are locked up where they belong. But you can't tell me that, can you?"

"I promise you that we're doing everything we can," he says.

"Right," I snort, not giving a shit if I piss him off or not. Whether he wants to admit it or not, we both know they aren't bending over backward to solve this murder. In neighborhoods like this, people like Titan and Jana are just another fucking statistic. A cautionary tale about what happens when you grow up poor like Jana or with the wrong skin color like Titan. He's just another casualty in a war he never wanted to fight, and she's collateral damage.

"You said yourself that I'm a smart kid, Whitten. You think I don't know you're here knocking on my door because you don't have a clue who rolled up on my girl's house and killed her family? You think I don't know that the LAPD doesn't know which Diablo pulled the fucking trigger and isn't bending over backward to find out? To the LAPD, Titan was just another poor mixed kid slinging dope. How many similar cases are still sitting open on your desk? Forty? Fifty?" I shake my head in disgust. "Motherfuckers like the Diablos run this city, and guys like you just let them do it because you're too goddamn scared to set foot in neighborhoods like this unless you're forced to do it."

He opens his mouth to say something, but I cut him off.

"You wonder why kids like Titan die? It's because of cops like you," I snap. "I told you what I know. I've told you guys over and over and over that the Diablos did this, and Curtis Kaleo might as well have put the fucking gun in their hands. Maybe stop knocking on my door and start knocking on their doors. Maybe then you'll find out what the fuck happened to Titan and Jana. Maybe then my girl wouldn't be staring at the ceiling, too traumatized by watching her brother bleed out and die in the street to even speak."

"Michael, I'm on your side," Whitten says, holding his hands up like he's not the enemy. And maybe he's not. I don't have a problem with cops in general. But I do have a problem with guys like Whitten feeding me a bunch of bullshit because he doesn't have the first clue which of the Diablos killed my best friend…and he never will.

Gang crime is the LAPD's dirty little secret, the one they pretend not to see until rich white folks like my grandparents get caught in the middle. Then, it's an issue to solve. Then gang crime is a priority. Until then, Titan is just another case file in a fucking stack.

"I've got nothing else to say," I mutter with a disgusted shake of my head. "Get the fuck off my porch."

With that, I storm back inside, leaving him sputtering and stuttering through an explanation we both know is more manufactured bullshit. He doesn't have a clue who killed Titan. He'll poke around for a few days, maybe haul in a couple of the usual suspects, and then he'll toss the case aside and pick up the next.

I slam the door so hard the windowpanes rattle in the living room.

"You good?" Quan asks, looking up from the television. His eyes are just as bloodshot and bruised as mine. He's slept just as little as I have. He lost someone important to him, too. And I can't even tell him that it's my goddamn fault.

"No," I tell him, fighting for control when all I want to do is put my fist through the wall. Anything to release even a fraction of the guilt and rage eating me alive. "The fucking cops are useless."

"Truth," he says, putting a fist in the air like it's the 1968 Olympics, and he's standing on the podium with Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Times haven't changed much since then, not around here. If anyone gets that, it's Quan. He knows it a whole hell of a lot better than I do because he's mixed. He lives with the reality every day. I don't deal with half as much bullshit as he does simply because I was born a different color.

But, hell, on this side of the poverty line, not even being white will save you. Jana was white. She's still dead, and no one's doing a goddamn thing about it because she wasn't the right kind of white from the right kind of neighborhood. In neighborhoods like this, life is a motherfucker. Doesn't matter what color we are or where we're from, we're all bleeding down here, and no one gives a flying fuck about any of us. They never have. Just ask the residents of Skid Row, where our decades-long attempts to contain the poorest of us have created a goddamn maze of tents and desperation.

I drop my forehead to the door and then bounce it against the hardwood a couple of times like that'll calm my ass down. "I'm done, Quan. I'm just fucking done with this shit."

"Michael, man, chill," Quan says, a warning in his tone.

But I don't listen. I'm too wound up to shut my mouth. "January's falling apart. Her grief is fucking killing me. I feel like I can't breathe here, and I'm just done with all of it. I hate this city and every motherfucker in it. I want out." I regret the words as soon as they leave my lips because they aren't what I mean at all, but it's too late.

January gasps from behind me.

"Fuck." I spin around to find her standing in the hallway. Her face is pale, her eyes stricken. Her hair is a wild mess. She's wearing one of Titan's hoodies. It's so big on her that it swallows her curvy body, hiding the pair of boxers I know she's wearing underneath it. Even grieving, she looks like a porcelain doll…more fragile than I've ever seen her before. The pained look she shoots in my direction guts me.

"January–"

"I'm going home," she whispers, the first words she's spoken in two days.

"Baby girl–" I take a step toward her, but she throws a hand up in the air, halting me in my tracks.

"Don't touch me," she says. There's something wild in her voice, in her eyes…something I've never seen there before. It's as close to rage as I've ever seen her come. She shuffles across the room to the front door, her arms wrapped around her body like she's trying to hold herself together.

"January, I didn't mean–"

She pushes past me without even looking at me and then storms outside, slamming the door behind her before I can explain that I didn't mean I was done with trying to be here for her. I meant I was done with watching her break while LAPD does nothing. I'm tired of knowing the motherfuckers responsible for her pain are still out there. I'm done watching people like Titan die because people like Kaleo think they can do whatever the fuck they want. I'm sick and fucking tired of the Kaleos of the world running shit while people like Titan and Jana suffer and die because of it. I want out of this fucking neighborhood, not out of our relationship.

"Fuck," I whisper, feeling like the world's biggest asshole.

"Go," Quan says.

I fling the door open before he even finishes speaking the word and jog outside after January. She's already across the yard, running up the steps to her house as fast as she can. Seeing her running from me breaks me in ways I can't even explain. She hasn't run from me since the first time she kissed me five years ago.

I race after her, my heart pounding so fast it feels like it's trying to beat its way out of my chest.

"Go away!" she yells at me when I burst through the door behind her.

"No." I stride across the living room toward her and try to pull her into my arms, but she fights me. "I'm not going anywhere, January."

"I hate you!" she screams, hitting me with those tiny fists.

Fuck, hearing that hurts like hell.

"Don't say that."

"It's true!" She pushes away from me, knocking me back a step. She glares at me, her face red and splotchy like she's been crying even though she hasn't been able to shed a single tear in a week. That same wild look is in her eyes, turning the emerald green dark and glassy. "You only care about yourself."

"January–"

"You think you're the only one who hates everyone? You're wrong! I thought I could pretend that I don't blame you, but I can't."

"What are you saying?" I ask, my stomach roiling as guilt crashes through me.

"I'm saying that my mom and brother are dead, and you're the one I blame. You're the one who got him involved in that fucking MC. You're the one who started all of this! Why did you drag me to Ma Lucia's instead of letting me stay with my brother? Why didn't you do something to stop Kaleo years ago instead of letting my brother walk out there to die?" She screams the words at me, each one hitting me like a bomb blast.

Guilt lashes at me, cutting deep. I stumble back a step, but that doesn't do a damn thing to stop it. I open my mouth to defend myself, but I can't because she's right, and she doesn't even know the worst of it.

She thinks she hates me now because I started the MC. How's she going to feel when she finds out that I knew he was in trouble? How's she going to feel when she finds out her brother was working with Kaleo because of me? That he started dealing because I was too goddamn scared to tell him about the money sitting in a trust fund?

How fucked-up is it that the first time I touched that money, it was to pay for the funerals it could have prevented?

"I feel like I'm dying. Every day, it hurts even worse, and all you care about is yourself. You said you'd always protect me, but you didn't. You're a liar," she says, whispering this time. Her tongue darts out to wet her bottom lip. "I can't trust you anymore. I can't count on you."

"January, that's not–"

"I can't be with you anymore." Tears pool in her eyes. For the first time in days, she's crying. Only she's not crying for the brother she lost or her mom. She's crying over me. She stomps to the closet and flings it open, reaching inside for her jacket.

I watch with tears in my eyes as she rips my patch from it, tearing her jacket in the process. She slams the patch against my chest hard enough to knock me back a step. "You need to leave."

"January, baby girl, please don't do this," I plead, even though I don't have that right. Even though I see the resolve stamped across each delicate feature of her face. I destroyed her world, and now she's cutting me off before I can take anything else from her.

"I don't ever want to see you again." She pulls my ring from her finger and holds it out to me. "It's over, Cade."

Those three words—It's over, Cade—tear through me, ripping me apart from the inside out. Hearing them is like finding Titan and Jana on the sidewalk all over again. It hurts every-goddamn-where.

"Take it."

I shake my head, shoving my hands into my pockets. I'm not taking that ring or my patch back. They're hers, even if she doesn't want them anymore. Even if she doesn't want me anymore. I've taken enough from her. I won't take this too. And I won't make her beg me to leave. After everything, I owe her the chance to end this with whatever composure she's got left.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, choking on the words as I back toward the door, determined to give her what she's asked for and leave. "I'm so fucking sorry, January."

She stares at me, not speaking.

I step outside, every cell in my body screaming at me to march back in there and fight for her. But I can't, because then I have to tell her the whole truth, and she really will hate me.

And I can't live with that.

Somehow, I stumble away from her house. I don't go home, though. I just stagger down the street, and then I keep going. Day turns to night and then to day again. I keep moving until I'm lost. But I don't go home. I don't go anywhere.

I just wander around, completely fucking lost. Everything that matters is just fucking gone. January. Titan. Everything. And it's my fault. I destroy every fucking thing I touch.

Each breath I take burns like acid.

Her words lash at me like a whip across my back, driving me onward. The accusation and sorrow in her eyes taunt me until I'm practically running across the city, trying to outpace the memory of them.

Somewhere around day three, I finally manage to shove the brutal memories down into a little ball and think through the pain. I start focusing on what happens next. On where I go from here.

The answer leads me back toward home.

I stop at a corner store and pick up what I need before I bypass our block and keep walking.

When night falls, I creep in through Kaleo's window. His house is a wreck. He should be ashamed to be a grown-ass man living like a fucking pig. I kick my way through the mess of shit on his floor, turning his bedroom upside down in search of what I need. Everything in his closet and drawers ends up on the floor, along with the trash and dirty clothes. I finally find what I want hidden in a loose panel behind his dresser.

The gun is an unfamiliar weight in my gloved hands. It's loaded. I make sure there's one in the chamber, too. Once I'm sure I know how to handle the weapon, I shove a pile of clothes and food wrappers off a chair in the corner and sit down to wait.

I don't know how long I sit there, staring at nothing, but eventually Kaleo appears.

"Surprise, motherfucker," I growl, grabbing him around the throat and putting the gun to his head as soon as he steps into his bedroom.

His body goes limp as I press the muzzle of the gun to his temple. A pathetic whimper leaves his lips. I'm pretty sure he actually pisses himself. At least, I'm guessing that's what just dribbled onto my shoe, but I don't care enough to confirm that suspicion.

"Kincaid," he mewls like the little bitch he is. "I didn't know, man." It's the same shit he said the day Tony attacked January. Ignorance is always his excuse.

He won't be using it anymore.

I pull back the hammer on the gun, grunting when he cries out in fear. I don't feel satisfaction. I don't feel relief. I don't fucking feel anything. I haven't since January told me that she was done with me. Every person I ever cared about is gone, and the motherfucker in front of me is responsible for part of that, but I feel nothing.

It's almost a relief.

"I know who killed them!" he yelps.

I hesitate for a second.

"You let me live, I'll tell you," he says, tripping over the words in his haste to get them out. "I'll stay off your block. I'll leave you and January alone. Don't kill me, Kincaid. Please."

"Who?"

"Jace Adams, Sean Cortez, and Tully Adcock," he says. "They're Diablos."

"Where are they?"

He rattles off an address.

"You sure?"

"It's Adcock's house. They hang out there most nights."

I nod and press the gun to his temple again.

"Kincaid! Please, man!"

The enraged, wounded part of me whispers that I should pull the trigger and blow his fucking head off. He deserves it. After all the evil he's perpetrated, he deserves to die with piss in his shorts and tears in his eyes. But I can't do it. Because I don't know who will take his place if I do.

Kaleo is beaten, whimpering and pleading for his life. He acts so hard, so big and bad, but he's just a pathetic little boy, hiding behind people like they're human shields. He's a piece of shit…but he's a piece of shit I now know how to control.

"I know about the guns and the drugs. I know you're pimping out girls. Cheyenne Trundle is sixteen years old."

"I don't know Cheyenne," he lies.

"Bullshit. Titan collected all kinds of info on you, Kaleo. I know all your dirty deeds." I dig through my pocket with my free hand and pull out my phone. Scrolling quickly through the videos, I load up one of Kaleo and Dante that Titan took a few months ago. All the evidence he collected was in his bedroom, exactly like he said. There's enough there to send Kaleo to prison for a long time.

"Cheyenne's sixteen, Kaleo," Dante says in the video, his voice full of hesitation.

"I don't give a fuck how old she is, D," Kaleo laughs. "That's prime pussy. Tell her she can work off her debt on her back. She's a whore anyway. Might as well use it to my advantage."

"Fuck," he whispers as the video plays.

"You're a sick motherfucker," I growl, stopping the video. "Pimping out teenage girls?"

"I can explain," he says like there's some reasonable excuse for the things he's done. We both know there isn't, though. The only explanation he has is greed. He thought he was untouchable. That he could do whatever he wanted because he had his hands around Titan's throat. He thought I wouldn't come for him so long as he had Titan on a leash, that no one would, but he never counted on Titan being the one to ruin him. He was too fucking stupid to think that far ahead.

"Please, Kincaid. I'll do whatever you want. Please don't kill me."

"The block belongs to January now," I tell him, holding the gun steady against his temple. Either he agrees, or he'll be my first murder tonight. "You don't set foot on it. You don't go anywhere near her. If your people even step a toe onto her block, I'll come for you."

"Okay," he agrees, practically sobbing the word. "Okay, man."

"The pimping ends right now. I find out you're even thinking about putting your hands on another girl, and I'll fucking kill you."

"Even the older–?"

I crack him in the back of the head with the gun, driving it down hard against his skull twice in rapid succession.

He cries out and falls forward, his face slamming into the edge of his dresser. Before he can hit the floor, I yank him up and throw him into the wall, shoving the gun in his face.

"What the fuck did I just say?" I roar at him.

"No girls. Okay, Kincaid. Okay." He holds his hands up, babbling and crying. Blood smears across the wall from the gash on the back of his head. There's another cut above his eyebrow where he hit the dresser. "I'll cut them all loose, I promise."

I keep the gun pressed to his cheek for a long moment, just watching him cower and cry. He's pathetic. All that talk about how he's the baddest motherfucker out here, but he's begging for his life like the cockroach he is.

"Give me a reason to kill you, Kaleo. Just one, and I'll be on you so fast you won't even see me coming."

"The block is January's. I'll let the girls go. We're cool, Kincaid. We're cool, man."

I nod, satisfied he'll keep his word. He's too fucking terrified to try to wiggle out of this. He knows that video alone is enough to destroy him. And I think he knows I'll kill him without hesitation or remorse. I'm done playing defense, trying to keep people like Kaleo from taking what doesn't belong to them.

I'm making the rules now.

Getting into Tully Adcock's house is as easy as getting into Kaleo's was. Seems guys like them are all the same. They think they're tough, that no one will step to them. That no one would dare come after them inside their own homes. They're wrong.

I find the first of the three, Jace Adams, passed out on the couch with a bottle of Stoli knocked over beside him. I kick his Jays to wake him up. He doesn't get to die in his sleep. They didn't give Titan and Jana any mercy. I won't give him any, either.

"What the fuck?" he asks, jarring awake. "Who the fuck are you?"

"Kincaid."

The confusion in his eyes is laughable.

"You killed Titan James," I say.

Recognition flares in his gaze as soon as I say Titan's name. Kaleo wasn't lying. This motherfucker killed Titan.

"He was going to pay you," I say and pull the trigger on the gun I stole from Kaleo. The shot is loud, echoing in my ears. There's nothing satisfying about it. I still feel nothing.

His brain splatters all over the arm of the couch. He dies with his mouth hanging open and his hand on the back of the sofa where he was trying to push himself up into a sitting position.

I'm moving again in an instant, making my way carefully through the house. I find Tully in a bedroom, bare-ass naked with a line of cocaine still on the fucking mirror beside him. If he heard the shot that killed his friend, I don't think it registered in his cocaine-addled brain because he's still rolling up a dollar bill.

He jumps to his feet when I step into the room, but he's too full of blow to comprehend what's happening.

"You remember Titan James?" I ask him.

Like an idiot, he nods. That's all the confirmation I need.

"This is for him," I say and pull the trigger, pumping two bullets into his chest. He crashes backward, collapsing onto the bedside table. The mirror tumbles off the side of the bed, white powder sifting to the floor.

Sean's harder to kill. He hears me coming and starts firing through the bathroom door. I crouch down and wait for him to empty the magazine. As soon as he stops firing, I kick the door open. He's trying to jump out the window, his pants around his ankles where he tried to get them on in a hurry and failed.

"I'm gonna kill you, motherfucker!" he yells when he spots me.

"Like you killed Titan James?" I ask.

"Fuck you!" He reaches for his gun.

I don't know if it's the same one he just unloaded or not, but I'm not willing to take the chance. They've already given me everything I need to know Kaleo didn't lie to me about who killed Titan and Jana. I fire twice in rapid succession. One shot goes wide, slamming into the wall. The other hits Sean in the side where he's turned halfway toward me and halfway toward the window, torn between staying to fight and fleeing for his life.

"Fuck Titan's bitch ass and his whore mama!" he yells loudly and tries to haul himself the rest of the way through the window.

I pull the trigger again and then again. I don't stop firing until I've unloaded the gun in him. He slumps over, his upper body hanging halfway out of the window while his lower body is still in the bathroom. He doesn't move.

Satisfied none of them will ever be a problem for anyone again, I shove Kaleo's gun into my pocket and hurry from the house. People are hollering out front, asking what's going on. I jog through the backyard, keeping to the shadows as I strip the gloves off my hands and yank the beanie off my head.

By the time I hear sirens in the distance, I'm three streets away, headed toward Kaleo's territory. If anyone sees me, I'm banking on them thinking I'm one of his. If they don't buy it and I get busted…well, at least there are three fewer murderers running loose.

That's the best I can do for January. I couldn't save Titan. I couldn't protect her. She'll probably never even know that the men responsible for destroying her life are gone. There's no justice here. There's no peace in knowing they're dead. But their deaths are all I have to give her.

Maybe, someday, it'll be enough for her.

Maybe, someday, it'll be enough for me too.