His bloodshot red eyes bounced around the room until they finally landed on who he was searching for.
“Son, are you hurt?!”
I stiffened.
“Nah, Pops, I’m good,” Hell answered, waving him off as our father frantically searched every inch of my brother’s body that was, fortunately, bullet free. He didn’t even see me, or maybe he just didn’t want to.
I sat still, my jaw tightening and my mind blank, before I looked over at my father consoling my brother, wondering what that truly felt like.
Our father always only ever saw me as something to train and keep around for his benefit. Once I learned all that I could, he put me to work for my brother. I was a weapon to Orlando—nothing more and nothing less.
I suddenly caught my mother staring at me, tears glistening in her eyes, and I slowly stood to my feet, suddenly in a rush to leave.
But before I could even slink out of the room, hoping to remain unseen by Orlando Sanchez, he was in my face.
“What the fuck happened?!” he barked, not even caring to notice the gauze on my arm, but honestly, I didn’t expect him to. I may have shared blood with him, much to my chagrin, but Kelechi was and would always be the only son he ever saw. I was nothing more than a bodyguard or errand boy for my brother in Orlando’s eyes.
“I don’t pay you to slack, nigga! What if he was shot?!”
“Well, he wasn’t, was he?!” I yelled in his face, tired of him giving me his ass to kiss, as if I asked to be born into this cursed family. I almost opened my mouth to tell him that I was the one who was shot, so that he could see me for once, but I knew he still wouldn’t care.
“I did my mothafucking job, and maybe you should do yours and try to find out who was stupid enough to even come for Hell!”
It was clearly a setup—a targeted attack. But like I told him, I did my job—which was to keep my brother safe as well as act as his second in command.
So, Orlando could point his finger all he wanted, but it was his duty as Hell’s father to find out who tried to kill my brother and deal with it.
Kelechi suddenly got in between us and pushed my father back.
“Pops, for real, I wouldn’t be standing here without Havoc. Little bro was not playing about me, and he put everyone down,” Hell chuckled. “Not even getting shot stopped him.”
“I trained him to shoot with both hands and have no fear, so I expect nothing less,” Orlando fired back. “But it was still too fucking close,” he snarled.
My jaw twitched, and I clenched my fists down by my side. No matter what, it still wasn’t enough.
“Just do your duty as a father,” I hit back, obviously meaning more than the situation with my brother.
Orlando just stood there, nostrils flaring, raging like an old bull as he peered into my face, eyes shining with fire. Although I loathed him just as much, I still grinned widely at him because I knew he hated even more that I had his whole fucking face!
Even if Orlando wanted to deny me or act like I wasn’t his own flesh and blood, I looked just like him—right down to our identical tall bodies and hazel eyes he inherited from his Colombian father. I was four inches taller though, standing at 6’5”. We shared the same almond complexion. I had more muscle than he did, but outside of that, we were twinning, and Iknewthat shit bothered him more than anything else. I was the bastard son; the reject walking around looking like Orlando literally spat me out.
Kelechi looked more like his mother than he did our pops, and he was shorter at six feet.
Giving my father one final glance, I turned away and rushed outta the room after bumping shoulders with Hell.
My mother was on my heels as she followed me out to my car.
“The hell you following me for? Why don’t you go run after that nigga since you care about him so much!”
Every time I turned around, she was always following behind him no matter how much he played with her emotions.
If only she knew I worked for him to keep her delusional ass safe!
My mother was so wrapped up in Orlando that she had no idea that he didn’t care about her, just like me. Once my training was over and Orlando let me know that he did all that just for me to work as my brother’s guard, I told him to suck my dick. Not because I had anything against my older brother—because despite how our pops dealt with me, my brother loved me. Butit was simply because I just didn’t want to work for that nigga. I wanted nothing to do with him.
But he quickly let me know that if I wanted my mother alive and safe, I would do as I was told, and so I relented. Every damn day I left my house, I was doing that shit for her—not for him. But she was too stuck on that fool and truly believed he wanted me to work for him because I was his son and he loved me.
Granted, Orlando had my mother living good in a nice, big house and more money in her account than she could count. But I knew all that shit was nothing more than control. It was Orlando’s way of keeping a leash on my mama and a hold on me. We were both things to play with, and she just couldn’t see it.
