Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Kick

How was he alive?

My throat felt tight, like someone was closing their hand around it and squeezing tighter with each passing second.

I’d stabbed him.

Repeatedly.

He’d been slumped over, barely moving, when I’d walked away.

There was no way he’d survived that.

Except, of course, the fact that he had.

Because he was leering at me from the doorway of the hall.

He looked different. He’d cut his hair, had grown a beard. But through the patchy hair on his neck, I could clearly see the proof of my attempted murder, my last-ditch attempt to finally get myself free of him.

That coldness I was so familiar with in his eyes, though? That was still there. Amplified.

“Surprise, darling ,” he said, lips lifting up as he registered my disbelief. “Guess you never thought you’d see me again,” he added as he moved out into the kitchen, heading toward me.

Evander was perched on the top of the counter. As Kyle moved past, he let out a hiss.

So he didn’t love all men.

He just liked Rico.

Somehow, thinking of him while facing down Kyle was like a knife sunk in my heart.

“Well, I certainly hoped I wouldn’t,” I said, refusing to sit there trembling and on the verge of tears.

“Bitch,” his buddy mumbled under his breath.

“You made that clear when you plunged a knife into my throat,” Kyle said, venom dripping from his tongue. “But only you would be so inept to miss the carotid artery four separate times.”

My stomach clenched at the insult, some part of me still susceptible to his disapproval. But that part was much smaller than it used to be. And all the months free of him made the anger fill the places that used to be teeming with hurt.

“I won’t miss a second time. Want a rematch?” I asked, jaw trembling with my rage.

“You’ll get yours,” he said, nodding slowly. “But I have to get mine first. Show her,” he demanded, glancing at his accomplice.

My stomach knotted, not sure what this was about, but knowing Kyle well enough to know he had something big up his sleeve. Because as much as he was trying to play it cool, he was practically bouncing with his excitement.

The other guy reached in his pocket for his phone. I expected a picture or something, but he made a call then waited for someone to answer as my pulse whooshed so hard in my ears that I could barely hear past it.

“Show her,” he demanded to whoever he was speaking to before turning the phone to me, showing me the screen of the video call.

For a second, it was just shaky footage of a cement wall and stairs. A basement, it seemed.

But then there was an image that had my stomach bottoming out.

Because there was Jake.

Chained to a metal beam, blood caked on his shirt, on his skin, his face so swollen that I could barely recognize him.

Everything clicked together at once, then, the parts that I couldn’t piece together when I’d been overcome with shock, fear, and anger.

Jake with the other robbers.

Jake saving me at the last second.

Jake’s disappearance.

The guy he’d robbed the store with in my apartment.

That guy’s connection with Kyle.

“Say hi to your sister,” a deep voice said from the phone, making Jake’s head snap up, his eyes looking suddenly brighter as he stared at the phone.

“Just do what they want, Kick,” he said, voice hoarse. “Please. Just do what he wants.”

Kyle snatched the phone, ending the call.

“Now are you paying attention?” he asked, staring down at me.

“I can’t do this,” I insisted, swallowing back the urge to plead for him to release my brother. That was what he wanted. He thrived on beating me down. I couldn’t give him that satisfaction ever again.

“Yet, you will. This is a start. But there’s plenty more in that building.”

“You’re… even dumber than you used to be,” I scoffed, watching as his face hardened, as he took a step toward me, hand cocking back. “Go ahead,” I invited. “It won’t look suspicious or anything that I got my face messed up twice in a month.”

It killed him to pull back, his body practically vibrating with tension as his hand curled into a fist.

“The money is there. And you will get it for me. Or I will hold you down and force you to watch as my men torture, then kill, your brother.”

He would do that.

There wasn’t a doubt in my mind about it.

But I did doubt that there was enough money in the store to placate him. It was a meat shop , for God’s sake. And they balanced the books. They would see the money missing eventually. It was only a matter of time before they figured out it was me.

What choice did I have, though, but to try? To placate him. He had my brother.

“Fine,” I said, staring up at him, lifting my chin defiantly.

“Really lucky that you fucks decided to rob that store,” Kyle said, whacking his friend on the back as he smiled. “What?” he snarled at me, his smile falling as a strange, high-pitched laugh escaped me.

“I gave you too much credit,” I said, close to hysterical from the shock and stress.

“What?”

“I thought you were some criminal mastermind,” I chuckled, shaking my head at the movie-level villain I’d painted in my mind of him.

Someone calm and collected enough to pull off some patient, multi-step plan to get back at me.

That wasn’t it at all.

This had fallen into his lap.

He’d never tracked me down at all.

“I’m curious,” I said, pulling myself together as the two men watched me like I was deranged.

“About what?”

“How you found out it was me. It was you, wasn’t it?” I asked, looking at the other guy. “When Jake saved me, lied to you about the alarms, and the cops never came. You were the one to put it all together.”

“I put it together,” Kyle claimed, but I saw the other guy’s eyes go hard, clearly pissed to have his credit taken away. “See, once I recovered, I went looking for you. We needed to have a little chat.”

“Chat,” I scoffed. “That’s what we’re calling domestic abuse now, huh?”

“And, of course, I went to your brother. He was so helpful before,” he said, taking a fist to my heart at that memory.

The brother I was going to steal from my job for had sold me out to my abusive ex for… nothing.

“Was interesting to hear you’d cut him off too. A cold little bitch you turned out to be,” Kyle said, tssking at me. “But me and Jake, we started to talk, got close,” he said as my heart shrank in my chest. “He told me about this crew he was working with,” he said, glancing over at his accomplice. “We joined forces. When the heat got too hot in the Bronx, we set our sights on Brooklyn.”

“It was a complete accident that you robbed my job,” I concluded.

“I like to think it was fate,” Kyle said. “And then there was that little incident in the office.”

“By ‘incident’ you mean your friend here trying to rape me?” I asked, proud at how little emotion slipped into my voice.

“There’s still time for that,” Kyle said. “Maybe we will all get a turn if you don’t do what you’re told.”

“Where were you?” I asked instead of rising to the bait. “Too afraid to get in there yourself?”

“I was in the alley,” he said, making me think of Ricky and his busted-up face.

“Of course you were,” I said.

“You stupid—“ Kyle started, taking a threatening step toward me, only to have his friend press an arm against his chest.

“If Rico starts asking questions about her busted-up face, this could all fall apart,” he reminded Kyle. “You can do whatever you want to her once it’s over.”

Kyle made a rumbling sound at the back of his throat, but he stepped back again.

“You’re going back to work,” he told me. “And you are going to start skimming off the register every night, then bring it to me once a week.”

“For how long? Jake can’t keep going on like that,” I said, thinking of the blood loss, how pale he looked.

“Well, if you show up with the cash, we’ll feed him. Might even toss some electrolytes at him every now and again.”

“To what end ?” I asked. “I won’t get away with it forever. Rico will notice the money missing eventually.”

“Well then, maybe you’ll get a new job. And start the process all over again,” Kyle said.

“You’re just going to keep Jake a prisoner forever?” I asked.

“Why not? I kept you for years,” Kyle said, making my stomach twist at the unfortunate truth of that.

“I wasn’t chained in a basement,” I reminded him.

“Don’t think I didn’t consider it,” Kyle said. “But then where would the money come from?”

“You’re not thinking this through, Kyle,” I told him.

“Thought it through a lot, actually.”

“Then you’re an idiot. I’ll get caught eventually. Then what? You’ll actually have to earn your own money for a change? You’re being short-sighted.”

A muscle ticked in Kyle’s jaw. Because he knew I was right. He’d always been good on acting on his impulses. And terrible at multiple-step thinking.

“If the boss gets suspicious, you clear the safe and get out of there,” his friend said.

I decided not to bring up the fact that I had no experience getting into safes.

“And then?”

“None of your fucking business. We have it all figured out,” Kyle said. We all knew he was lying. But now I’d given them the hole in their plan. They would have nothing but time to fill it in. “All you need to worry about is getting us our money. You miss a payment, your brother loses a finger or two. See how you handle that on your conscience.”

With that, he nodded at his friend, who made his way to the door.

But Kyle didn’t immediately follow.

Instead, he reached down, grabbing me by my upper arms hard enough to make me hiss in pain, something that made joy brighten his eyes as he pulled me up and off the couch and near his face.

“You fuck me over and you and your brother will pay. Don’t fucking try me again.”

With that, he dropped me down onto the couch and strode out of my apartment.

Alone, a little whimper escaped me as I reached across to rub each of my arms, knowing there would be fingerprints on my skin by morning.

I didn’t bother to get up and lock the door. What good would that do? They’d already gotten past the locks once.

I heard the thump as Evander jumped down from the counter, then felt the weight of him as he jumped up onto my lap, settling there.

That, more than anything, seemed to break the dam inside, making my eyes flood with tears.

“What am I going to do?” I asked him through sniffles, my hand landing on his back.

I mean, there was only one thing to do. What Kyle wanted. Steal the money. Keep stealing the money. Until it got too risky. Then take all of the money and run.

To him.

Because as long as he had my brother, he had control over me and he knew it.

I could, of course, go to the police. But what if Kyle had someone watching me? What if they knew it was happening, killed Jake, then disappeared?

If I was going to make it out of this, with my brother, I needed a plan. A foolproof plan.

Maybe, if I wasn’t being watched, I could try to follow one of them . See where they were going, if those places had basements. Then wait until everyone was out or asleep, go in, get Jake, then run.

No, I didn’t have much money now that Kyle had taken the stacks of cash Rico had given me. But what did money matter in this kind of situation? Sleeping on park benches or in shelters while we figured it out was better than being under Kyle’s thumb.

It would take time to try to find Jake, though. Maybe even more than a week or two. That meant that I was going to need to do what they wanted from me until then.

And doing that meant betraying Rico.

That hurt more than I thought it would.

I guess maybe because it was Kyle taking yet another thing from me. Or the hope of something, since I didn’t actually have Rico, no matter how many times I may have imagined that.

“What’s gonna happen to you?” I asked Evander as I rubbed his back. “Who’s going to feed you the expensive food and give you milk?” Evander looked up at me with his big yellow eyes, like he understood, like he was wondering the same thing. “Maybe I can take you with us,” I said, even though I knew that potentially living on the street in the middle of winter wouldn’t be fair to him. “Or I can… leave you at the shop for Rico to find. You like Rico. I don’t blame you. I like him too.”

When I finally had the address for my brother, I could just… bring Evander to the meat shop with me, sneak in the always-unlocked back door, and stick him in the office where no one but Rico ever went.

He would know then.

That I’d been the one to betray him, to steal from him. But maybe finding out that I’d left Evander in his care would make him see that I had no choice, that I didn’t want to screw him over.

Evander jumped down and made his way down the hallway, prompting me to stand, wiping tears from my eyes as I locked my door then walked around the apartment, setting things that weren’t broken to rights again.

Not only had Kyle found the money Rico had given me, but he’d taken the hundred bucks I had stashed in the freezer with my pizzas.

It wasn’t everything I had to my name. I had a paycheck going into my account the following day. And a small savings.

Enough to get us out of the city and a cheap rental.

So long as one, or both, of us could get a job quickly, we could rebuild, could heal.

I hated that my only option was to run, to keep running. While Kyle just got to go on living his life. No punishment, nothing to stop him from continuing the cycle of abuse.

What other option did I have, though?

I had to get away from him for good.

Not just a borough away.

An entire country away, if that’s what needed to happen.

Until then, I had to play my part.

I had to steal from Rico.