CHAPTER ONE
MAKARI “HAVOC” SANCHEZ
Iraised the glass of Henny up to my lips, hissing as the liquid warmed my throat on the way down. I closed my eyes and grunted behind clenched teeth at the throbbing in my arm. I could feel the blood slowly slithering down the length of my arm from the bullet hole. It felt like it had been cut by a million razor blades—sadly, a feeling I knew all too well.
Flitting my eyes open, I turned them to my mother and asked, “Are you just gonna sit there or you gonna remove the bullet before I bleed to death?”
She looked at me with trepidation flooding her brown orbs before she sighed heavily.
“I still think you should go to the hospital, Makari!”
She’d been saying that ever since me and my brother, Hell, walked in over thirty minutes ago.
All I wanted her to do was remove this bullet from my arm so that I could take my ass home to sleep. I wasn’t in the mood to go to the hospital and sit around for hours before they even called my name.
I’d stupidly believed that my mother would be able to help me quicker than they could, but all she wanted to do wasquestion me while trying to persuade me to do something I just wasn’t gonna do.
Why can’t she just do what I want her to do? What I want to do?
I watched as she lifted her hands like she was finally going to do something, only to drop them again in exasperation.
“Ma, for real, just take it out so I can go home!”
All I wanted to do was go home.
“This nigga has clearly lost his mind since he want you to do it without any pain meds. So, just do it, Lara.”
My attention was drawn to my older half brother who had waltzed into the den. Just like my mama, he had been trying to get me to go to the hospital, but knowing I wasn’t about to budge, he brought me to her instead.
He and I only shared fathers, so he wasn’t my mother’s son.
Kelechi, who was also known as Hell, was four years older than me at thirty-five.
We were as close as we could be considering he wasn’t my mother’s son. I couldn’t stand my father, and I knew the feeling was mutual.
“Fine,” she huffed before doing what I asked her to do.
My teeth tightly gripped at my bottom lip as I gritted when my mother pushed the tweezer into my wound to pull the bullet out. It took her a few more seconds of prodding around to finally locate it and pull it out.
I quickly lifted the glass up to my lips again and downed its entire contents as she cleaned up my arm and dressed it for me.
“I’on know how the fuck you can sit there and just take that shit,” Hell grumbled, eyeing me with a shake of his head.
I didn’t bother answering him as I poured myself another glass of Henny, hoping it would finally help me calm down.
That notion went out of the window when I heard the front door open followed by my father’s voice.
What is he doing here???
My eyes bounced over to my mother, giving me the answer. And just that fast, I felt my anger go from 60 to 1,000 because I did everything in my power to stay outta his presence for a reason, and my mother knew it too.
“He was worried about you,” was her feeble attempt at explaining, and that had me chuckling mirthlessly because she truly didn’t know that man if she thought that he cared about me.
“Where is he? Where is he?” his deep voice rumbled out in the foyer until his tall, lean body finally darkened the doorway.
Wait? Is he really looking for me?
I felt something hit me in my chest—a longing I didn’t know I still held for my father.
