Chapter 223
CHAPTER TWO HUNDRED TWENTY-THREE
AKIO
“Was that girl in my house?” Mom growled a few days after Nicole had slept over.
I grabbed my keys from the front room and opened the door. “No.”
“Akio! Don’t you leave this fucking house. You have some explaining—”
Before she could finish her sentence, I slipped out the front door and ran to my car. I didn’t want to deal with her trying to convince me to do her dirty work again. She had barely said a word to me all weekend, and now this?
Once I locked all my doors and started the car, I pulled out my phone to text Kai.
The one person who hated me the most in Redwood.
Me: Can we talk?
Me: It’s important.
While I wanted to protect both Nicole and Imani, I didn’t have time to teach Imani how to behave around my mother. And I really didn’t have time to keep up with Mom’s bullshit. Nicole was still hiding the truth from me, and I had a suspicion who was hurting her.
But I couldn’t act on it until I knew that Kai could handle Imani and my mother.
Me: It’s about Imani and my parents.
Me: Please.
A moment later, my phone buzzed.
Kai: Warehouse. In forty minutes.
Me: Which warehouse?
Kai: Guess.
After gritting my teeth together, I peeled out of the driveway and headed down the road.
Darkness lay like a blanket on Redwood tonight, and I was so thankful for it.
It was barely six o’clock, and everyone was already at home from school and work, the biting cold too intimidating for anyone to come out.
Once I circled Redwood like a madman for thirty minutes, not wanting to be late, I spotted a motorcycle parked behind one of the abandoned warehouses in the slums. I rolled up beside Kai’s sportbike and shut off the engine.
I hopped out of the car and knocked on the back door, not knowing if he wanted me to just come in or wait out here. I glanced up to see a camera posted above the door, no doubt Poison’s property.
The door swung open, and Kai stood on the other side. “I can’t believe you’re fucking here,” Kai said through gritted teeth.
“Me neither.”
“Get in before someone sees you.”
With caution, I walked into the warehouse and stomped the light snow off my boots near the door. After stuffing my hands into my pockets, I walked through the spacious warehouse and stopped where there was a small puddle of blood.
No doubt Principal Vaughn’s.
This must’ve been where they had beheaded him.
“This is where it went down, huh?” I asked myself. “Where you killed him.”
Instead of answering me, Kai pressed his lips together and walked over to me, his hands suddenly reaching into my jacket, running down the seams, probably to check if I had a wire or a hidden camera on me.
When he didn’t find anything, Kai stepped back and nodded. “It’s where I’ll kill you one day if I find out that you’ve touched Imani. One wrong move, one fucking finger on her body, and I’ll make sure your death is far worse than Vaughn’s.”
I nodded and swallowed hard. “I know.”
“Let’s get one thing straight.” Kai stepped toward me, arms crossed over his chest, and clenched his jaw. “I’m only here this one time because you saved Imani the other day. If it wasn’t for you, she’d be dead.”
“She would be,” I said, which meant that I had some leverage on him.
“What do you want?” Kai growled.
I paced back and forth in front of him and rubbed my palms together. “You shouldn’t have recorded killing Principal Vaughn. People know that you guys did it. They know, and they’re going to target you.”
“They would’ve known anyway,” Kai said. “Nobody has the balls to do shit like that.”
“You don’t understand,” I said, pushing up my glasses. “People are going to target you. And by you, I mean that they won’t target you, but the people you all care about. Who does that leave?”
“Imani.”
“Yes, Imani, and I—”
“Who is targeting her?” Kai asked.
After tightening my jaw—because he had to know that my mom and her posse had it out for Imani ever since that day Imani had told her off—I nodded. Kai flared his nostrils and tightened his hands into fists.
“Your parents gave you that,” Kai said, nodding to my face. “Didn’t they?”
I reached up and touched the slightly swollen eye that Mom had given me this afternoon because I hadn’t returned one of her calls yesterday. But I didn’t care. If she was preoccupied with me, then she wouldn’t have time for Nicole or Imani.
“Listen … you can’t tell anyone that I told you,” I said, thinking about the conversation I had overheard after she sucker-punched me.
“They were talking about getting rid of her and her family if things get much worse. They know you have shit on them, and they don’t want to risk anything with the Feds. ”
Kai grabbed me by the collar. “If you find out that they plan on killing her, you tell me. I don’t care how the fuck you do it. You make sure that I’m the first fucking person to find out. Do you understand me? You get me anything you can on them.”
I nodded. “They don’t have any plans that I know of yet, but I will let you know. I don’t want Imani to get in the middle of this. All she’s trying to do is get out of Redwood. If she can get through the rest of this year alive, then she’ll be safe.”
“Why are you fucking doing this?” Kai asked.
“Because I don’t want Imani to get hurt.”
“Why?”
“Because I care about her.”
“Do you like her?”
“As a friend,” I said. “Nothing more, Kai. I swear. I like someone else.”
“Who?”
I furrowed my brow, not wanting to tell him because he had seen what I did to Pick the other day. That was his bike speeding down the roadways, and if he found out that I liked Nicole, I didn’t know what would happen.
“Nobody,” I said. “You don’t even know—”
“Who?” Kai asked, hand behind his back, probably clutching his gun.
“Nicole,” I said, turning away. “Okay? I like Nicole.”
Kai scrunched his nose. “The cheerleader?”
“Yes, the cheerleader.”
Suddenly, he curled his lips into a smirk and laughed.
And then just as quickly as he chuckled, his expression dropped.
“If you withhold any information about your parents, I’ll torture Nicole in front of you.
” He glanced down at the blood by my feet, then back up at me.
“And you know I’m not fucking around. Get me information, Akio. ”
Now, I was off to find Nicole.