“You don’t get to be careless with kids,” La’Nova hissed, fist connecting again. “You don’t get to be lazy with lives you laid down and made, bitch.”
La’Nova delivered hit after hit. Each blow carried something heavier than anger. Luca saw it immediately. Some of his answers to the permanent sadness in her eyes had been answered. This ass whooping wasn’t just about the twins. This was something old.
Every punch came from somewhere deep and buried. From a place that remembered either being overlooked, forgotten, or even worse, taken. Each strike landed like she was trying to beat time backwards. La’Nova was in a trance, she ignored the sound of her own knuckles cracking. Her hands were now swollen, decorated with Tracy’s blood.
Each time, Tracy tried to guard herself, La’Nova followed up with an uppercut. Her hands moved like they were registered weapons.
Roy watched with his mouth slightly open; shock etched across his face. He saw plenty of women fight before, butthiswasn’tthat.
This was grief with muscle. Tracy dropped to her knees, hands up, and sobbing hard. Blood squirted out her top and bottom lip. She tried her very best to guard her face.
“Please! Stop!” She cried out frantically.
La’Nova grabbed her by the shirt and yanked her up just long enough to look her dead in the face.
“I’ve never met the twins…judging off of the way you got them living, and the way you don’t give a fuck about them missing tellsme that those innocent boys beg and cry out just like you doing now, and you don’t give a fuck.” La’Nova looked her dead in the eyes, voice trembling as she fought to allow air into her lungs.
“You don’t fuckin’ deserve them, and you won’t have them until you’re willing to do what the fuck you’re supposed to do as a mother.”
La’Nova shoved Tracy back hard, making her collapse on the bed next to her dead friend before Luca slowly stepped forward.
He remained silent as he observed Tracy’s swollen eyes, crooked nose and busted mouth. Luca’s dark eyes flicked over to La’Nova. He watched her pace back and forth, wearing the already worn-out carpet down. He didn’t interrupt her, but he could see it all now. The pattern, the reason she lived in a camper. The reason she didn’t trust walls or comfort or permanence.
Pain recognized pain.
“It doesn’t seem like she done yet.” Roy muttered under his breath.
La’Nova wiped her knuckles on her favorite purple sweatpants, blood smeared across her thighs. Her eyes stay locked on Tracy as she directed her words to Roy.
“Hand me your gun.” She held her right hand out, eyes still trained on the person that had her heated the most.
“Can’t kill… twin’s mom,” Luca finally spoke.
“I’m not going to kill her,” La’Nova stated calmly.
Luca and Roy’s eyes connected, and for the first time in a long time, Luca was undecided. For the first time since claimingLa’Nova as being his wife, he didn’t see her as something to protect. He saw her as something dangerous. He wanted her to trust him, already knowing on the backend he would have to eventually trust her.
After seconds long of deliberating in his head, he nodded his head for Roy to hand over his nine-millimeter. Luca placed his hands at the small of his back just in case La’Nova had other plans for him and Roy.
Without looking at the men, La’Nova fearlessly stepped to the edge of Tracy’s bed and aimed at her foot. She shot once then twice, ignoring Tracy howling out in excruciating pain. La’Nova lifted the gun once more and shot each one of Tracy’s shoulders.
“I need her hands…Nova Baby,” Luca rasped.
La’Nova’s finger rested along the trigger, close enough to feel the truth of what could happen next. She knew this feeling. That quiet right before you crossed a line you couldn’t uncross. Her chest tightened. Vision tunneled. The walls felt too close again, too familiar.
“I should—” She gulped down at fist full of emotions.
She could end everybody right now and run out to Luca’s Maybach and get far away from everything. She had enough money saved up to relocate and get back on her feet. Yet, something inside of her refused to do that. Tracy’s crying was too late to mean anything to La’Nova. She was already in killer mode, craving to taste the end of fucked up individuals that brought harm to innocent lives.
“You a lucky ass bitch,” La’Nova said flatly. “Because if it was just me? You wouldn’t be able to get back up at all.”
La’Nova still kept her finger on the trigger. Luca saw her internal battle and decided to move in on her calmly. He stepped into her space like he belonged there. Slowly, he reach into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out folded yet crisp papers.
“Look,” he whispered.
La’Nova’s eyes flicked to the papers without really seeing them.
“Guardian rights,” Luca continued.
