40. Bay
FORTY
bay
I wasn’t it.
I never was. The man in front of me is a nightmare walking. Someone that made me skittish for years and barely able to function.
Everything inside me freezes to a halt—just like before.
I can’t move.
The inside of my mouth is suddenly dry. And nothing in this world can make me feel better, in this moment, unless it’s Levi at my side.
Not the man who currently hates me with every fiber of his being.
“Bay, sweetheart. Why you gotta run my men like that?” His smooth voice slices up my spine like a whip.
The low, taunting nature of what is Matteo De Leon.
And it immediately sets into every nerve ending in my body, setting it aflame with shame, trepidation, and a little bit of irritation.
However, I don’t bother rounding Cairo’s body, because I think I’m going to get sick. He’s already set me down so that he could get a better handle on the more pressing issue at hand.
Nonetheless, I can’t help but appreciate that he’s hidden my body with his as a shield so I can try to mentally prepare myself for what’s to come.
Before I have to meet the man who broke me in half for almost three years, wondering what I did wrong for him to loathe me. The blight existence I lived in, that he created for me, emerging from the depths of my head is overwhelming and I begin to shake at the thoughts of it.
Swallowing down the forming lump in my throat, I hate that it even molded there in the first place. It’s been an additional four years since Matteo and I dated, yet it’s hard to forget your past when it’s written all over your body and brain. I have a few scars leftover from that asshole when he got too fucked up to realize that I wasn’t a man who couldn’t take a beating as well as them.
Cairo takes a step back, bumping into my body and subtly warning me that someone is approaching us.
Inhaling a deep breath, I move before I can think better of it, coming to Cairo’s side but far enough away to show that I’m not with him.
Matteo notices that shit.
He’s perceptive of everything.
“I miss you, Bay,” he mutters, deep and tight, right in front of his men as a silent warning that I’m off-limits at all times. “I didn’t expect you to be here.”
He’s so full of shit, it’s stupid.
Matteo De Leon was the first boy I ever fell in love with, if that’s what it was. I used him to get away from my mother, or Paisley, as much as he used me to get off. He treated me well for the first half of our relationship until he started to gain more position in his little gang and learned how to disrespect. His head grew too big, and my brain got way too small with the deep desire that I wanted us to be together forever.
Forever.
The thought of that with him makes me want to die.
Especially when I’m presented with the same murky brown eyes that took me a full year to get out of my head. His bronze skin clenches as he glares at me, a deep red scar running down the side of his right cheek, because I’m by a man—actually, man-handled by a man—who’s power he wants to wield.
“I’m always at a race,” I drive from my mouth, my tongue heavy and a sheet of sweat forming at the back of my neck. And if he was so street-smart, he’d know that. I’m not totally naive to believe that he’s never looked me up or asked about me.
“With company, I see.” His dark eyes steer to Cairo. “Is this how our fight’s gonna be? You runnin’ off?”
“You tryin’ to take me out before the Titan fight is lookin’ a little desperate,” Cairo says tightly. “Did you need your boys to help you accomplish that? There’s still time to call it off, De Leon. Better now than you being revealed as a weak piece of shit than you already do.”
Matteo smirks, causing my fingers to ball into fists.
It’s the first sign of him losing his patience and painting the picture that he’s fine.
He doesn’t think, he just does .
And that’s what makes him dangerous and inhumanly cruel.
“Come here, Bay.” With two fingers, he motions once for me to follow his direct order, and I find my feet moving until Cairo’s hand wraps firmly around my forearm.
I don’t want him to get hurt, not that he doesn’t deserve it.
However, Levi shouldn’t be far away, right? He’ll be looking for me.
“What’s this?” Matteo leers with knitted brows. “Have we replaced me already?”
The sudden uprise of more memories floods my brain. The way he used to touch and pinch me. The jagged knife he’d threaten and scare me with. Each and every single one of his and his men’s groans as they jacked off in front of me bare to them so Matteo could brag about what he got to fuck every night.
He was never going to share me.
Not then.
And definitely not now.
“You forget the English language?”
“Go fuck yourself,” I spit out, my temper surging forward to protect the kid still inside of me that’s terrified of him. All the times I had wish I stood up and left him. The stretch of gloom-ridden thoughts to make it all stop and take a whole bottle of my mother’s pills.
My ex’s solemn expression rises to the sky. “Is this what they’re teaching you in South Shore? How to be a disrespectful bitch?”
“The fuck do you want, De Leon?” Cairo barks out impatiently. “We were just leaving.”
Matteo drags his head back and forth. “Not with her, you aren’t.”
“Go ahead,” I mutter. “Levi will be here any minute?—”
“Shut the fuck up,” he leers underneath his breath. “And listen to what I say this time.”
“Why don’t you come back home, and I’ll give you more than all this.” My ex gestures to a street.
Whoopie-fucking-do.
Mindlessly, I shake my head. There is no happy abode with him in it. Just tainted abilities and years of recalling myself pulling my shit together and not wanting to end my life right there. I’ve never felt a deep depression the way I did then. I’m not even sure if that’s what it was. All I know is that not waking up the next morning, or driving my car off the nearest cliff, wouldn’t have been the worst thing that happened to me.
“What do you want?” Those four words escape my mouth as a violent shiver rolls up my spine in silent warning.
Questions and Matteo do not go hand and hand together.
“Many things,” he emits. “But that’s something we’ll discuss later. In front of better company.”
He’s stupid for even thinking there’s going to be an opportunity for that, and he’s sure as hell privy to what happened the last time he didn’t let me go.
Levi beat his ass so badly he couldn’t move off the bar floor.
“I’m not interested in gang life,” I deadpan, because that’s his life now. Mine is so much different with a family to support and a never-ending battle to get out of debt.
“I can keep you out of it.”
“No…you can’t. Last time I checked, you were still someone’s bitch.”
Matteo takes a step forward, his expression deadly as he stares back at me. “Someone’s bitch? Don’t go spewing that ugly shit. You know I don’t like it when you’re mean to me.”
I perk a brow and notice how he’s trying to loosen his shoulders, which is a clear indication that he remembers where he is and who’s around. He fucks with Cairo, then he has Torin and Reeve to deal with. “You mean when I stick up for myself?”
“When you keep fighting what it is— us . You left without saying goodbye. I haven’t seen you in years.”
“You don’t appear to have lost any sleep over it.”
“On the contrary. I’ve failed to find anyone better suited than you, Bay.”
“I can’t believe you dated this joke,” Cairo says under his breath, as though that’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve done since he’s seen me again. He wouldn’t be totally wrong, but he’s not the most menacing threat in this space right now.
“What do you want, Matteo?” I coax so we can be on our way. “It’s not going to be a good look for you when Levi gets here.”
Matteo smirks, his chiseled jawline hard as granite. He’s not totally put off but, you can tell by how he put on more muscles over the years. However, so has Levi, Juice, Hot Rod, and the others, always in prime readiness for a fight. “What makes you think I’m scared of Wallace? His boys don’t scare me.”
“Then you’ve failed to find the other half of your brain,” I retort. “All I gotta do is yell and one of my boys will be here.”
He nods to Cairo. “Is he one of your boys?”
“No.”
“Then why are his hands all over you?” I don’t answer because Cairo’s fingers on me are the reason I’m probably not freaking out right now. “Call ’em,” Matteo taunts, his voice dripping with that arrogant confidence that makes my fingers itch to slap him. “You know just as much as I do that I love a good fight.”
“I want you to leave me alone.”
“I already told you, sweetheart”—he closes some of the distance between us—“I miss my girl. And I came to win her back. I heard about your pa. Bad break, babe, but I can help you. I got the money. We can get him whatever he needs.”
The love I have for my only living parent calls out to me then. Fully aware of how much money I need to get Dad the help he needs.
A lot.
A physical therapist is costing me $125 an hour. And that’s not including the medications he needs, the hospital bills he’s already racked up, and how long he’s going to be needed for.
I really need the help.
Not only for Dad’s necessities but the credit card debt my mother left behind. I’m in over my head and that hole is only getting deeper with each passing day. However, anything with Matteo comes with a price and it’s not one I’m willing to pay.
“Don’t need it,” I force out, my stomach dropping at the rejection of what my family requires. “But I appreciate the fake authenticity behind it.”
“You’re pissing me off,” Matteo growls, face twisting with sheer rage. “I’m offering you more than any punta in these streets. You think because you have a hot ass, you can speak to me like that?”
“Like everyone else?”
A mirthless chuckle rumbles from his chest before he rolls his shoulders. “You just love to learn the fucking hard way, don’t you?”
I don’t answer that, because the obvious answer is no; however, it’s usually the only one that sticks.
“I told you a long time ago that I’d kill a motherfucker who put his hands on you. I warned you explicitly that I wasn’t going to share.” Those murky depths of eyes snap to Cairo. “I know that Torin Wildes touched what was mine all those years ago.”
“Let it rest,” I dismiss. “We’re not together anymore.”
“I don’t want to force your hand,” he replies, and he says it like he’s truly sorry it would have to be that way but it doesn’t reach his tone. “But you’re not leaving me many choices with showing you how serious I am.”
“Get lost. I’m not doing this again.”
Matteo blows out a sharp breath through his lips. “Well…if you insist.”
His next movements are so fast that I don’t register them as anything but I blur of color. The gun that’s raised and pointed to his left, my curiosity follows the end of the weapon as the roaring sound rings and that’s when it lands on Nessa.
All the air leaves my lungs as I watch her fall to her knees, hitting the hard, cracked cement. I advance forward, not thinking of anything else but getting to her when a strong forearm tugs me back and hurls me off my feet.
I think I scream, but the shouts of men mix in with the noise around me as I’m gaining ground with someone else’s movement.
Cairo’s.
His grip is hard enough to hold me but not aggressively to keep me from squirming away from him. He gets us behind a black car, dropping us down to the fender as the pinging of bullets ricochets off the metal.
“I need to get—” Cairo propels me back against the vehicle with his forearm, earning a huff of released air from hitting it so hard.
“You don’t move,” he instructs me, extracting a silver gun from behind him. “I’m not babysitting you and getting shot in the process.”
“That’s my friend,” I quickly enlighten him. “She’s?—”
“I saw what happened,” he grumbles, clearly not concerned. “You move, I’ll fucking sit on you, Little T. Don’t fuck with me right now.”
“Don’t worry yourself about me,” I clip back. “No one asked you to play the hero.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t give a shit what you want right now.”
Fuck this.
Crawling to the other side of the car, Cairo’s hand slides between my legs and grips tightly onto one of my thighs. “I swear to fucking God, woman, I will break something on you to get you to focus on something else.”
“I’d love to see you?—”
“Get in the car,” he hastily commands. “ Now .” He releases me and opens the car door, then a pair of keys are shoved into my palm. “I swear to God, you leave me, I’ll kill you.” I glimpse over my shoulder at him. “Can you get us out of here?”
“Yeah.”
“Keep your head down. Get in and hit the gas.”
I crawl inside, careful to keep close to the interior and console, and stick the key inside the ignition, but I don’t start the car yet. Noticing that besides the shouts and yells that seem a distance away from the fight that was brewing earlier, there are no more gunshots.
“Let’s go,” Cairo demands. “That motherfucker has AKs.”
“The gun ?”
“No, he bought letters of the fucking alphabet.” He smacks my ass that’s still hovered over the console, and I jolt forward, still keeping low and under the window with the slight stinging left behind.
Of all dudes, I can’t believe he just touched my ass.
Who the fuck cares, dude?
Cairo impatiently turns the car on, and with my butt in the seat and my head down, I hit the gas. The passenger side door is still open, but Cairo’s safely inside doing the same.
And that’s when the peppering of hot bullets rebound and hit off the car. I’m not that much of a fucking idiot to peek my head over the dash and find where I’m going, but with Cairo’s door open, I find the solid, yellow line of the road and hug it tightly to stay off the grass and small ditch below.
The car picks up speed pretty nicely, throwing yards between us and Matteo’s guys, but the car does take some damage.
“I need to find my sister,” I bark out. “We need to call 911 because Nessa?—”
“Obviously, Matteo doesn’t have her because he was too busy trying to win you over.” He doesn’t say that like he’s jealous, but unimpressed.
“She could still be hurt.”
“If you have this kind of faith in your man, Astor, you should dump him.” He slams the car door. “This shit was child’s play.”
I steal a look at him, watching him readjust himself in the leather seat and rubs the stubble under his lips.
“I need to go back and get my friend. She was shot, Cairo.”
“She was dumb enough to walk closer to us,” he mutters. “You really need to reevaluate your life.”
“Stop judging me and help.”
“I did.” Red outlines my vision because I want to slam the brakes so hard and watch him go through the windshield that I almost do it. “You’re not going back there. I’ll see if she’s still there.”
“Dude—” I don’t know how he knows what I’m about to do, but his palm slams on the steering wheel, keeping it still and on the straight and narrow.
“My ass isn’t going to be shot at again tonight,” he seethes in my direction, dark eyes glaring into the side of my head. “I said I’d handle it.”
“That doesn’t mean shit to me.”
“Well, that’s what it’s gonna be.” He confidently releases the wheel, giving me control of the car, and starts tapping away at the keyboard on his phone. “Go the The Grind.”
“The what?”
“Coffee shop on Halifax.”
“For what?”
Our eyes meet, his dark and lifeless when he says seriously, “I want coffee.”