“Rafe.” Lola’s voice thins as she points.
The Mack’s doors fly open. Black-clad figures pour out like spilled ink. Their faces disappear behind ski masks, but the AR-15s in their hands glint in the sun as they jog toward the back of the open truck. Where Bellamy lies with casino chips around her still body like a halo.
“Talk to me, brother,” Bishop’s voice grates in my ear.
A ski mask swivels our direction. The barrel of an AR-15 follows. The first bullet spiderwebs my windshield six inches from my face. The second punches through the hood with a metallic ping.
Lola’s forehead nearly cracks against the dashboard as she drops down, her knuckles white against the seat edge.
“Jesus Christ,” she hisses through clenched teeth. “What the fuck.”
The brake pedal slams to the floor under my boot, and the steering wheel burns against my palms as I wrench it sideways. Our tires scream against asphalt, the car’s back end swinging wide as we skid to a stop by the front of the armored truck.
“Stay down,” I snap, already reaching for the second gun tucked under my seat. The metal is cold, familiar in my grip like an old friend.
More shots tear through the air, the sharp cracks echoing across the empty highway.
Lola pops back up anyway, eyes wild as she stares toward the truck. “Bellamy?—”
“Stay the fuck down,” I snarl, shoving the door open. “I’m not getting you shot so your sister can kill me later.”
She flips me off immediately. “Like hell I’m staying in the car while you idiots get my sister killed.”
I don’t have time to argue with her. I gave her my warning, but she’s a fucking adult. I shove one gun in the back of my pants, gripping the other one in my right hand as I run toward the cab of the truck and my brother’s prone form.
Another gunshot cracks across the highway, and my heart threatens to stutter at the implication of what they’re firing at on the other side of this truck.
My vision narrows to pinpoints, my mother’s voice slithering around in the back of my skull.“Clean house, Rafe. Leave nothing breathing that threatens this family.”
TWO
RAFE
The civility sloughs offof me with every beat of my heart, leaving the jagged pieces of what’s left of my black soul.
The world sharpens into a geometry of violence. Every color, every sound, every molecule of air is weaponized and aimed at me, demanding I solve it or perish. I calculate options—angles, cover, the time it takes a thief in a mask to raise a rifle and squeeze the trigger—while my body moves before my mind can catch up.
It’s always like this. I hate that it’s always like this, the way my blood sings at the edge of carnage, the way it feels less like survival and more like a sick kind of homecoming.
I duck low and round the nose of the armored truck, keeping my profile tight to the battered fender, heat still radiating from the engine block. My eyes flick from the Mack’s open door to the bodies spilling out behind it, hands on triggers, legs pumping hard and fast. I can’t tell if they’re trained or idiots, but the way they move says maybe both. The dust shivers with each impact of their boots.
My heart hammers a new beat behind my ribs, faster than the bullets chewing through the car metal behind me. I risk a glanceup past the wheel well and snap off three shots—one high, two low, all warning. I’m not here to murder strangers unless they make me. But the goddamn urge is in me, right at the surface, just waiting for the excuse. The thieves scatter, using the Mack’s bulk for cover. The one closest to the back of the truck drops behind a wheel, but not before I clip his shoulder. Blood arcs in the sun, a spray of red against the scrub and dust.
“Fuck!” the thief bellows, voice high and bright with shock.
I don’t savor the hit. I’m already moving, sprinting to the driver’s side of the armored truck. The cab window is a shattered mosaic of glass, remnants of the windshield littering the pavement like fallen stars after the armored truck’s violent roll. Gage’s face emerges through the jagged opening, his head slumped at an angle that’s wrong, so wrong it makes my own neck twinge in sympathy.
Behind me, tires shriek against asphalt as Bishop’s engine roars, the smell of burnt rubber hitting my nostrils before his voice echoes in my earpiece, reverberating in the chaos around me. I can hear it behind me as if Bishop didn’t even bother to put the car in park before he leapt out, urgency fueling his every word. “You should’ve waited for me, asshole.”
“Cover me,” I call over my shoulder, not bothering to look back. Bishop and I could be at each other’s throats one minute, but the moment bullets start flying, I know exactly where he’ll be. Behind me, beside me, wherever I need him.
My brothers and I were forged in the same white-hot crucible: Coco Calloway’s special brand of parenting.
Gunfire answers immediately, sharp cracks ricocheting off metal, rounds pinging against the armored frame as I pivot mid-stride and raise my weapon, tracking the nearest threat without breaking momentum.
One of them pushes too far forward, closing distance with the kind of confidence that only comes from thinking they have control of the situation.
I fire once. The shot lands clean in his shoulder, the impact snapping him backward and breaking his advance, his body colliding into the person next to him, just enough to fracture their line and force them to adjust.
