3. Bay
THREE
bay
It’s been over eight hours since I broke the news to Levi about my lineage before Mae strode through the kitchen, demanding all of his attention.
And, while I’m grateful for the brief recess on the manner, I’m ready to get this over with.
It takes Dad falling asleep, Ellie wanting me to paint her nails and pose for a few selfies together, Mae wanting four books read in specific voices, before Levi and I are forced to be alone.
This is literally worse than last night.
I mean, that’s ignorant as shit to say when the alternative could’ve been that I was brutally assaulted if Reeve wasn’t there, but the way Levi shoots me a look of betrayal and loathing, I’m feeling pretty small right now.
We silently agree to go outside, both of us aware that Levi’s voice doesn’t tend to be indoor volume level and enter the garage.
Dad’s Nova sits in the middle, along with the radio softly playing an oldies station in the background. I wish I could drop into the driver’s seat and drive away with him in the passenger seat, but this isn’t time for a joyride.
It was time for reality and all my deception to finally come to a head and for me to face the consequences.
Levi pulls out a cigarette and lights it. The flames from the lighter displaying the hard lines of his jaw as he slices his vacant green eyes to me. “Explain.”
Where to start?
I inhale, allowing one last full fill of my lungs before raising my chin and starting. “Emilio approached me one night at The Stowaway . I didn’t know who he was, but some entitled-looking prick with an expensive watch and suit. He ordered a drink, then he dropped Paisley’s name like it was nothing. Imagine my surprise and how quickly my guard went up with the mere mention of that bitch.”
Levi sucks in a hit of his cigarette but doesn’t speak.
“I, um…I didn’t feed into having any acknowledgement of her and claimed that I didn’t know who he was talking about. But then he called me out on it. Called me out by name and that he knew exactly who I was.”
“You’re telling me that Emilio Wildes walked into South Shore?”
I heave my shoulders. “Skipped, drove a bike, I didn’t ask for his mode of transportation. However, I did tell him to take a long walk…which he wouldn’t do. I was going to call for one of the bouncers, but then he warned me not to. Then, he dropped his name…and how I was his long-lost daughter. I…didn’t believe him. It made no sense. Everything was this ragey blur, and I just wanted him to leave. But when I kept shoving his bullshit away, Emilio admitted to sending those two men who broke into the house. He mentioned Dad, Ellie, and Mae…purposely hinting that he pretty much knew how to slay me in half if I kept denying that being his daughter could be a possibility. He also handed me hair samples to do my own DNA test.”
Levi exhales smoke through his nose and carefully watches me. “Then what?”
“Travis had one done in a lab up in Montana. It’s legit. I’m?—”
“ Travis is in this,” he grounds out, his countenance hard as his green eyes follow my every move and word. “And you still didn’t tell me?”
The disappointment in his question slaps all the wrongdoings of my actions and lack of apprise across my face and comes back to punch me in the chest.
This is karma—bright, colorful and bleakly stale.
“Yes.”
“Bay—”
“Emilio has reach,” I emit through clenched fists, ignoring the way my heart is racing and the sweat blanketing over the back of my neck. My guilt is eating me alive, and I can feel it gnawing away at my confidence to keep going. But I need my best friend to know that, even though I’m the spawn of Satan, I still love him and would never do anything to hurt him. “He threatened Ellie and Mae?—”
“I could’ve protected all of you.”
“I didn’t know who you were. I had no idea you were the King of South Shore. You were the first person he mentioned hurting. It makes sense now. You are my best friend, we’re together all the time. Fuck knows that he believes we’re dating or some shit, and I wasn’t called into the gang meeting when it alluded to that fact that you had the Nameless backing you.”
“It doesn’t matter if I had anyone backing me, Astor.” His voice dips, brimming with uncontaminated rage that’s seconds from unleashing. Not even the cigarette between his fingers is going to calm him down. “There would be no world in which I would allow Emilio to threaten you and live to tell about it.”
“And there’s no world in which I would permit you to die for me.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. I might not rule the universe, but I have the means to kill him before any of this could happen. Before you were dragged out in the middle of the street with Stanton and?—”
“Stop going back to that,” I chide. “It’s done , Levi. Emilio wasn’t going to do anything to his only daughter when he didn’t know which way I was going to turn. Either for him or still against him. I’d do that again.”
“Do what?” Levi’s face pinches, and it all comes down to this.
“Playing the daughter role until I find a way out of this.”
“You’re not strolling in his house like this is alright. Not with him. Not with Torin. Not with Reeve or Cairo?—”
“I already have.”
Levi is on me so quick that I gasp at the lightning speed he just performed to make his point perfectly clear. “Do you understand me when I say I will lock your ass up and figure this out myself? That you will never, ever be in the same room with him again.”
“Levi—”
“And what about me?” His features soften, but his voice is still hard. “How do I keep you free from harm when you hold things from me? How do I keep the girls safe? You can’t do everything alone, Bay. Not only will I not allow it”—he holds my gaze steady, but it’s still sharp—“but you’ve been tellin’ me for years that I’m family, and I’m feelin’ pretty outcasted right now.”
I rock my head back and forth. “No, of course not. You’re everything to me.”
“Then treat me like it, dammit.” His raised tone makes me recoil a bit as he runs a his large hand down the side of his face. “ Fuck , Bay…”
He pivots then, drawing another hit from his cancer stick and starts pacing back and forth.
I don’t speak then, offering him his space to think and digest what I’ve said.
“You’re related to my enemy,” he mutters outloud. “How did you think this was going to go?”
“I dunno.”
He stops in his tracks and turns to face me. “You didn’t think I’d turn my back on you?”
My stomach twists into a knot, but I still force myself to speak, “I was hoping not.”
“Let’s just say this doesn’t end well.” I swallow the lump in my throat and nod. “I run The Nameless and now they’re going to look at you as the spy. The one who got close to me to gain information.”
“You never tell me anything. I wouldn’t?—”
“They don’t know that. And then I’m going to be questioned with my loyalty if I keep you around. If I have the best interest of the group over you. But I can’t have you in the hands of my enemies because I don’t trust what they would or wouldn’t do. So where does that leave me, Bay?”
“I’d never betray you or South Shore.”
“You already have.” I drop my chin into my chest, the immediate burn of tears forming at the back of my eyes. “I could’ve dealt with this. But now they’ve seen the boys around, so that looks too suspicious.”
It does.
Like they were there to gain intel out of me or something.
“What do you want me to do?” I solicit, trying to regain the steady intake of my breathing. “Maybe I should leave town?—”
“You’re not leaving town,” he snarls back. The bite of his tone sinking its teeth into my chest and I feel the pain of everything transpiring through him. How he’s caught in the middle of being protective of me and staying true to the Nameless. “You don’t know what Ramsey is capable of if Emilio sends his ass off to hunt you down.”
“No.” I shift my weight. “But I know I’d pick your life over any of theirs.”
“That does nothing for me when he tears you to pieces and leaves them on my doorstep for abandoning you.”
I lift my head, finding him staring at me as though he’s unsure of what to do next. Of how we’re going to operate because I’ve kept the biggest thing from him yet and this changes things.
“Ramsey used to run through South Shore streets to taunt the Nameless just so he could spill blood. He jumped my ass at sixteen with all his buddies and almost took my fuckin’ head off with a drain pipe. I’ve seen him torture men just to find out the identities of the Nameless. He’s cut off limbs, burned people alive, just to extinguish them and do it all over again.”
Fucking great.
“And Torin…” Levi scoffs with a slight shake of his head. “I’ve never met someone as petty as that prick. He captured one of my best guys, Henry. He was runnin’ a job for me and got caught. Baby Wildes tore him up pretty fucking bad, ended up killing him and sending me the body parts.”
A cold shiver racks up my body, and I remain frozen in astonishment that Pretty Boy is capable of such things.
Pretty Boy.
The GQ model with an attitude problem.
I try to imagine him bloody and pissed—the latter isn’t hard. However, the whole severing limbs off and putting them in brown boxes seems to not fit the imagery of what I’ve fabricated in my head.
“What was the job?”
My best friend takes an extremely long drag of his cancer stick before replying with regret. “Spying. He was a spy for me.” I nod, not knowing what to say about that. “And in what capacity does Emilio think we are?”
“He knows we’re friends. And, in turn, hurting you wouldn’t work in his favor.”
He sizes me up when he asks, “And your plan is to…what? Take down Emilio Wildes and company?”
“Something like that.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.” I bite down on the inside of my lower lip to keep from disputing that fact, but Levi moves forward and takes one more hit before saying, “I’m going to go.”
My heart leaps from my chest at his dismissal of speaking of it any further. “Levi, I?—”
“Can you do me a favor?” I’m immediately nodding, because I’d give him anything right now just to not be upset about this anymore. “Stay the fuck inside the house. Is that possible? Can I have a day where I’m not worrying about you running off and landing in one of their hands?”
My jaw aches from keeping a broken sob from escaping my lips. “Yes.”
I expect Levi to have the last word—like he always tries to get—but he strides past me without another glance and down the driveway to leave.
Everything in me wants to stop him and apologize again, but it’s not going to get me anywhere. I backstabbed him and his trust.
And I may never get it again.