18. Hayat
Chapter Eighteen
Hayat
While Abi people-watched, I glanced around again for any signs of Ky, Sparks, or Jamie. When I didn’t see any of them, I pulled my phone from my pocket. Jamie had sent a reply to my earlier messages, letting me know they wouldn’t be able to join me until later.
Disappointed, I took a gulp of what was basically a strawberry smoothie, wishing Nate would have at least added something hard to my drink. My birthday wasn’t too far away. What was a few more months and the legality of consuming a little alcohol? I missed all three of my guys. I hadn’t even heard their voices all week since all we’d done was text because I was so focused on Abi.
“Two-thirds of the Terror Trio walking around this place. I’m scared, Damien.” I didn’t immediately turn when I heard Mason’s voice. My cousin was six years older than me, but he mostly hung out with our cousin Damien, who was only a few months older than me.
My mood determined how I felt about the two of them. All the entertainment media wanted to do was compare the two of them to their dads. Uncle Drake, who was Damien’s dad, and Uncle Shane, Mason’s dad, were brothers. They were also the guitarist and bass player for Demon’s Wings, my poppy’s band. According to rumors, Drake and Shane were wild for decades. I wasn’t sure how much truth was in all the stories, but my instincts told me that they were not overembellished. But then they’d met their wives and calmed down.
It was hard for me to imagine the men I knew as the degenerates the media portrayed them to have been. They were old men now, with grandkids and aching joints.
When I didn’t hear my brother’s voice, however, I quickly turned my head toward the two cousins. Evan would have been easy to spot. Six-ten and still growing, he stood above most of the people in the room, except for the few NBA players walking around.
I glared at Mason. Evan had told me earlier in the day that he was going to be out with Mason and Damien and would meet up with us later. “Where is my brother?”
“We’re not Evan’s keeper,” Damien grumbled, getting defensive. Leaning back against the bar top, he had that stupid scowl on his face as he glared at everyone around us who dared look our way. He thought he was intimidating, and maybe, to anyone else, he was. But to me, he was just the boy I slapped on the back of the head when he said stupid shit. “He ditched us for Bentley.”
“They went to a party without you?” Abi asked, her brows raised.
“Fuck if I know.” Damien kept up that same grouchy tone. “Bentley rolled up outside, and Evan jumped in the back with Ali.”
Every muscle in my body went stiff while Abi whisper-shouted at the idiots in front of us. “My sister is hanging out with Bentley and Evan? Was Sixx with them?”
“Didn’t see him.” Mason finally spoke up, ignoring Abi’s ire to signal Nate for a drink.
“Shit,” Abi groaned, while my stomach turned to lead. “What are they up to?”
I wished I knew. Bentley and Sixx were best friends, but Sixx and Evan? Nope. They barely tolerated each other on a good day. And the sole reason for the animosity between them was Ali. She was blindly in love with Sixx, but when it came to Evan, he was only her friend. Evan might have let himself fall for Ali, but he wasn’t dumb enough to do that when he knew she would never see anyone but Sixx.
Evan hanging out with my sister without Sixx shouldn’t have been an issue, but Sixx was a deranged possessive asshole when it came to Ali. It didn’t matter that Evan was more like a brother to her than a friend. The two boys had gotten into so many fights over Ali, I’d lost count. And those fights had only gotten bloodier as they’d gotten older.
A basic giant, my brother might be, but he was gentle. Not the psychotic nutjob that Sixx could turn into with the flip of a switch. His temper was nuclear, especially when it came to Ali. Sixx had aspirations of going into MMA when he got older. His mom wasn’t a fan of his career goals, but there wasn’t much she could do about it once he turned eighteen.
But that was still two years away.
“You let my brother get into a vehicle with Bentley and Ali, but you didn’t see Sixx?” I hissed at the two dumbasses before me. Damien’s scowl only deepened, and Mason’s shoulders hunched up a little in defense. “And neither of you saw a problem with that? Your spidey senses didn’t go off and tell you that was a bad goddamn idea?”
“If Sixx has issues with his best friend hanging out with other guys, then he should grow a pair of balls and claim her,” Mason said dismissively. “Besides, if it comes down to it, Evan can take Sixx. He’s a fucking beast.”
“Idiots,” Abi growled at them, already pulling her phone from her back jeans pocket. She swiped her finger over the screen, and I saw her connect with Ali. “Where are you?”
I didn’t hear what her sister said, but Abi’s voice was almost shrill when she spoke again. “Ali. Tell me where you are. Hayat and I will come get you… Ali, don’t hang…up.”
Abi went from zero to sixty in the blink of an eye as she stabbed her finger into Damien’s chest, getting in his face without fear, a snarl on her beautiful face. “If anything happens to Evan, I’m holding you two responsible.”
I felt slightly sick, wondering what state I would find my brother in once we got to him. If Sixx was in a bad mood, he might hurt Evan. All my brother wanted to do was play basketball. One leg injury could risk all that.
Throwing some cash on the bar top, Abi grabbed my hand, glaring at Mason. “Older obviously doesn’t mean smarter. All those good looks, but not a single working brain cell in your head. Pathetic.”
Mason flinched. “I didn’t have time to stop him. One minute, he was beside us. The next, Bentley slammed his brakes at the curb and was yelling at him to get in the vehicle. What should I have done, Abi?” Remorse flickered over his face as he realized he should have done something . “Where are they? We’ll come with you.”
“Fuck off,” my friend snarled at them, pulling me toward the exit.
As we rushed outside, I tried to call my brother, but he wouldn’t answer. At least he hadn’t turned off his GPS, unlike Ali. Fuck. Abi screenshotted the address of where they were on her phone, before waving down a cab. Given the line that was waiting for valet, it would have taken forever to get my car. And from the sick sensation in my stomach, I couldn’t risk waiting that long.
I was still trying to call Evan, but he continued to ignore me. “Answer your fucking phone,” I shouted when it went to voice mail while Abi pushed me inside the waiting cab.
Closing the door, she read off the address to the driver. He slowly turned to look at us in surprise. “Are you two girls sure that’s where you want to go?”
“Of course we are!” I cried.
“Why do you ask?” Abi asked, unease in her voice.
He shrugged. “Just didn’t figure you two for the warehouse fights. Well, not you. You’re too delicate-looking,” he said to Abi, before looking straight at me. “Havoc might fit in, though.”
“Warehouse fights?” Abi and I squeaked out.
Nothing about those two words sounded good at all, and then there was the whole thing with the driver knowing I was Havoc.
I felt like I was going to puke, imagining Evan and Ali at some dirty, underground fighting warehouse. I barely heard Abi when she screamed at the driver. “Oh my God, drive. Please, hurry.”
I’d lived in SoCal all my life, but I’d never been to the warehouse area where the driver dropped us off. Getting into the building was easy enough, finding my brother and Abi’s sister, not so much. Over a thousand people were stuffed into the building.
Lights flashed overhead in time to the music being played from a platform that was hanging overhead, while a DJ mixed songs that had my blood thumping in my ears. Or maybe that was the fear. I didn’t scare easily, but fuck if I wasn’t terrified then and there.
This was gang territory, and I knew that because I was seeing some shit that didn’t just suggest it but screamed it loud and clear. Like the guy with the word “Lunatic” inked across his forehead, waving a gun around his group while appearing to laugh maniacally. I wasn’t sure, because all I could hear was the music and the buzz of voices that blended into a bad symphony of chatter. All the people around him were dressed in gang-specific colors, which, according to the snippets I’d gotten from the news over the years, meant they were the worst of the worst.
Trying to put distance between ourselves and Lunatic, I desperately looked around for my brother, hoping to see his mop of curls above everyone else. But an hour later, we still hadn’t seen anything but a lot of shit that was going to give me nightmares later.
As we squeezed through another group, getting closer to the center of the warehouse where the fighting was taking place, the lights flashed over a face that had me stopping in my tracks for a moment. I blinked, the nausea in my stomach churning faster. That couldn’t be…
Sparks wouldn’t be at this place.
I shifted closer to the man, his arm tossed around a girl with dark hair slicked into a high ponytail. She looked up at him with unfocused eyes, but I was more caught on him. When he shifted again, he kissed her, and my knees went weak. Stiffening them, I locked my spine, ready to tear the ponytail off that bitch’s head.
But then I caught sight of the guy’s ink, and the jealous, possessive monster that had taken hold of me calmed down. Not Sparks’s tattoos. Although there was one that was all too familiar. Just like Sparks’s face, but an older version of it. Like the hands of time had fast-forwarded, showing me what he would look like in ten years.
As if he could feel my gaze on him, the older version of Sparks turned his head, his eyes finding me in the crowd. A frown pulled at his brows as our gazes stayed locked. Every survival instinct within me screamed to run, but I was frozen in place. The ink on this man I’d seen, the same tattoo that was on my Sparks, wasn’t the same as what was branded on the gang members. This was different.
Warning bells were going off in my head, but still, I kept my eyes on the man.
With a blink of his brown eyes, his brow smoothed out, and he smirked at me. “Havoc.” I watched as his mouth shaped the name, and I whimpered.
Something told me that my guys would not be happy that this man knew my name, even if it was just my social media persona.
Jamie was going to spank me so hard for this.
That thought barely formed, causing me to shiver in a blend of fear and excitement, before I spotted Sixx.
“There!” I shouted at Abi, pointing. He was on the fighting mat. Leaner than the other opponent—but at sixteen, that would eventually turn into a mass that rivaled every other fighter in the building—he was dominating the other guy. “There’s Sixx!”
Abi looked over at them, shook off my hand gripping hers, and started running. I lost her in the crowd, but I was too desperate to get to the mat to worry about her. The closer I got, the more people I recognized. Bentley and Evan stood with Ali, the two of them trying to hold her back as she screamed at Sixx to stop.
“Sixx, you don’t have to do this. We’ll figure it out. Please!”
Finally reaching my brother, I saw relief fill his face when he realized I was there. “What the fuck?” I shouted at him over the roars of the crowd around us trying to amp up the fighters. A glance at the mat showed me that Sixx was destroying the other guy. Fuck, he was brutal.
For all of two seconds, I was relieved that he was beating the shit out of someone else and not my baby brother. Then the reality of the danger they had put themselves in, had dragged Abi and me into, hit me.
And where the fuck was Abi?
“Abi!” I shouted, trying to crane my neck to find the redhead.
Ali almost got free from Bentley, and I grabbed on to her, keeping her off the mat as she struggled like a wildcat to get to Sixx. She was smaller than Abi, but Ali fought the three of us like her life depended on it. As the people around us grew more and more excited, Ali became more ferocious. The lights kept flashing around, highlighting the splatters of blood that Sixx was beating out of his opponent.
And then the music stopped. Stark silence was filled with only the sounds of flesh pounding against flesh, and the groans of the man Sixx was beating into unconsciousness.
When the lights went out, I had a moment of true panic hit me.