“And you don’t get to come into it and yell at me like you own the fucking place!”
“I do when your goddamn safety is on the line!”
Her bedroom door slammed open, and there stood King, glaring at me with a fury. “You wanna tell me why the fuck you’re yelling at my sister?”
I turned toward him, rolling my shoulders back and balling my fists up at my sides. “You wanna tell me why you’ve made your own goddamn sister’s home a fucking target?”
His jaw ticked. “Her and I talked it over with my crew. We decided?—”
“It is not for you to decide!” I bellowed as I stormed toward him. “Webroughtyouinto this, not the other way around! You are not in charge! You don’t get to make decisions on?—”
King puffed out his chest. “This is my crew, my territory, and my sister. I get to make any goddamn decisions on it that I fucking want. And when Anna came to me?—”
I saw red as I reached out and shoved him into the hallway. “And when Anna came to me, you what? Rolled over and decided that sacrificing your sister was worth the other lives of everyone wrapped up in this? Huh? Is that what you thought!?”
“King, no!” Anna exclaimed.
It was the only thing I heard before his fist connected with my jaw. And then, I blacked out.
It was never good when I blacked out.
“No!”
“Brutus!”
“Get off him!”
“Hey! Knock it off!”
“The fuck’s happening!?”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Knock it off, you two. Knock it the fuck off!”
“Get King! I’ll get Brutus!”
But it was Anna’s voice that pierced through the blackened haze that had overcome me. “Bee! Please! You’re hurting him!”
When I zoned back in, King’s bloodied face was beneath me. His nose crooked on his face. Blood poured from a gash in his cheek. I felt hands on me. Lots of hands. All the hands.
On deck.
Memories of my time in the service flashed through my mind. The men I’d beaten to death with my bare hands during missions I had no business talking about, much less reliving. I allowed them to pull me off him. I stumbled backward, my back touching against the wall as a blur of hair and tears whipped in front of me.
“Hey, hey, hey,” I heard Charise’s voice coo. “You okay? I heard yelling, and I got scared, but?—”
“’M fine,” King grunted as he tried standing.
Then Cap was in my face, and I’d never seen the look that he had in his eyes. “Explain. Now.”
I stared right back at him. “This isn’t a safehouse.”
He blinked. “What?”
I pointed to Anna’s bedroom door. “This is her home. This isn’t a safehouse.”
That disarmed my president. “It’s what?”
