12. Bay
TWELVE
bay
“Don’t!” She shoots out a hand at me, nude-colored nails spread as if it’s going to produce a force field to protect her. “Bay!”
I crank out two more bullets.
He’s dead.
He’s gone.
Good fuckin’ riddance to that asshole—that’s the part where Nessa really fucked up.
She made a shit move.
So did he.
Matteo.
“You stupid fuckin’ bitch!” I hear Nessa scream, but it’s not as cocky and self-assured as her voice was a second ago. There’s fear there. “You can’t kill me! I’m your best friend!”
No, you’re not.
I can’t fully bring her into my vision with the way tears blur it.
He’s dead.
He’s gone.
He’s fucking dead.
He’s not here anymore.
He’s gone.
Levi is gone.
“Bay…let me have the gun.”
Travis’s voice sounds miles away right now. All I can do is stand over Nessa with the 9mm in my palm and empty this motherfuckin’ thing.
“Listen to Trav,” I hear her mutter through a groan. “It’s not worth it.”
It’s not fucking worth it.
He’s not fucking worth it. That’s what she means to say. And she would say any-fucking-thing to save her own life.
“Bay, you love me—” My index finger yanks on the trigger in rapid succession. Each shot rings loudly in my ears as I feel the kick of the 9mm with each pull.
Then it clicks empty.
Yeah, I loved you, bitch.
To death.
“You killed her.”
My body jolts as my eyes fly open, darkness and the warmth of blankets draped over me.
Then, the feel of fingers along my hip, lightly squeezing and letting me know I’m not alone in bed.
“Bad dream, Little T?”
His husky voice spreads over me, wrapping me tightly in a cocoon of protection but not of sound mind.
It doesn’t erase what I’ve done and Nessa’s voice begging for pardon.
The words wanting to trigger slip my lips don’t make it out because it doesn’t matter.
She’s dead, and I’m glad she’s dead.
However, I’m not happy she can’t suffer the way I am. I gave her the easy out when I could’ve made her life so much harder.
“You wanna drink of water?”
I want you to go away.
Nonetheless, I shake my head and pull the comforter over my chest. I don’t want to deal right now.
I understand him being here. However, I know he’s keeping a close eye on me as well.
“What do you need?”
“Why are you in my bed right now?” I clip back, turning my head toward him and barely seeing the expression on his face. My curtains are closed, no light making its way through, and I just don’t want to be coddled. “My babysitters didn’t sleep in bed with me.”
“I’d hope not,” he mutters. “I’m just here.”
“You can go.”
“Do you really want me to? Because I will.”
Wow.
Look at me with options.
“I’d really like you to fuck off.” I pluck at his arm and drop it on his side. “You can sleep here, but just…don’t baby me.”
“Babying you has never been on my list of things to do, Little T. If anything, you need less.”
“Mhm.”
A few beats of silence go by when he says, “Mae was looking for you. I hope it’s okay I put her to bed.” My heart clenches that he’d do that. “You fell asleep on the couch.”
Right.
And I’m wide awake right now.
“I didn’t eat the Chinese food,” I blurt, hoping he fights with me so it gives me something else to think about. “I wasn’t hungry.”
“You did the best you could. Two bites are better than none.”
I look heavenward because, of course, he’d know that. “Does he tell you everything?”
“No,” Cairo immediately replies. “Just the things he thinks I’d want to know about.”
Whatever, fine.
“How’s the tattoo appointment going?”
My eyebrows clench. I know Levi and Cairo weren’t the best of friends, but I still can’t help but appreciate he’d ask about it. “Hurt like a bitch when he got behind my bicep.”
“Sensitive area. All the outlining done?”
“Yeah. Just need the shading and details completed. He did some, but…let’s just say, he watched Ozzy more than he did me.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
I shake my head. “No. I didn’t realize what time it was and…it was probably best we left. It was late.”
“Can I see it later?”
You can see it now.
Leaning over, I turn on my bedside lamp and sit up. My arm is lightly encased in clear plastic wrap, but I gently press on it so Cairo can see anything he wants as I spin on my ass to present my left limb.
Cairo studies it, lightly wrapping his fingers around my wrist to turn my arm back and forth. “Do you know what any of these mean?”
“Not off the top of my head. Levi was always…getting ink. Sometimes, it’d take me days to notice.”
“Shit’s dope, though.”
I bob my head, feeling a bit of waning emotions clogging my throat.
“He’d love it.”
My heart sinks at the past tense. “Not sure about that. I’m stealing.”
“I’m sure you stole all his shit,” Cairo emits, a bit teasingly. “This shouldn’t be anything new to him.”
I stare at the ink imprinted on Cairo’s fingers and ask, “What do yours mean?”
He glances down at them and then back at Levi’s tattoos. “My index finger has the Wadjet Eye. The Egyptian god of Horus. It’s to protect you from evil spirits and shit.”
“You believe in that?”
“Wouldn’t hurt to have it in case I needed it.”
“What about your middle?”
“The smiley face?”
I smile just in time for him to smirk at me.
“You know damn well why I have that one there.”
“I was never introduced to it.”
“Wanna be?”
I scoff with a small chuckle. “I’m sure I’ll get the opportunity.”
“You can bet on that, Little T. Sooner than later, I’m sure.”
“What about your ring finger? The crown.”
“For the one I was always supposed to receive. When I was adopted, my father wanted great things for me. He taught me loyalty and trust being the two most important things.”
“How about respect?”
“You get that with loyalty.”
“Not all men are truly loyal,” I retort softly. “They can pretend to be. Even women.”
Cairo falls silent, and then bows his head. “You gonna tell me one day what happened with that girl?”
“I’ll tell you now.” His dark eyes slice up to me, appearing a bit surprised at my openness. “She ratted Levi out to Matteo. I was…pissed, naturally. She had a gun on Trav… We were arguing.” I don’t remember the exact words. Only how unbelievably stupid I felt that I never sensed her slipping away from us. “Travis told me he…” Sudden tears burn the backs of my eyes, and I quickly skip over that part. “She wouldn’t shut the fuck up about it. She kept saying he deserved it. All because he didn’t want to fuck her or date her—I dunno. But she gloated about it. She knew exactly what she’d done. She didn’t care. She fuckin’ kept saying it. All because Matteo promised her Queen of South Shore, and she took it. She jumped at the chance to kill him. She told him where he was. She set him up and?—”
“I got it, Little T,” he mutters ever-so-softly, running the pad of his thumb back and forth methodically over my skin. “You stood on business. You handled it. I would’ve done the same.”
“You would’ve?” I’m having a hard time imagining that. “ You would’ve shot someone?—”
“Over you and my boys, yes.”
I gape at him. Unable to comprehend or allow his words to fully sink in because he included me in the equation.
“Did you think I said you belonged to me because I needed another pain in my ass?”
I mindlessly shake my head because he has plenty of those. I just…can’t believe he admitted it and keeps admitting it.
“Did you wanna know about this one?” His pinky shoots out, drawing my attention to the barbed wire wrapped around a skull. “Ozzy drew this for me. He used to get so pissed off at me worrying about him getting out of prison that he sent me this in one of his letters. Said it’s what he’d look like by the time he got out. Dead, apparently. The prick has a mean sense of humor when he wants to show it.”
“Was he scared?”
Cairo bobs his head. “I think, at first. He was fifteen when he went in.”
“Juvenile detention?—”
“Prison. The age you can be transferred due to your crimes.”
“What did he do?”
Cairo averts his gaze back down to my arm. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you. It’s that I don’t know if Oz wants to do it himself.”
“Vivian?”
He nods.
“Why have you kept her around? I mean, I get Muncy being up your ass, but…you have ways of getting past that.”
“Like what? You have some magic potion that will make her father forget he had a daughter?”
“No. But she got your brother locked up.”
“I know what she did.”
“I know that wasn’t okay with you. So, that means she has something on you.”
Cairo pushes his cheek out with his tongue and lifts his shoulders. “A little.”
“She’s a female, Sinatra. You push her away enough, she’ll out you.”
“That’s what I have you for, don’t I? I bet you have a few ways of keeping her quiet.”
I narrow my eyes. “I’m too pretty for jail.”
“I’d agree to that.” He blows out an exhale through his mouth as if he’s thinking about it. “But, damn, what I wouldn’t do to you on those conjugal visits.”
My hand lightly smacks the side of his head, which gets him to smirk wildly. “Listen, prick, I’m married. You wouldn’t get shit.”
“Sweetheart, money talks. And when I want something, I get it.” His eyes gradually descend my body. “But the last thing I’m worried about right now is Vivian and you catching a charge for her . I’d like you all to myself whenever I wanted you, so I’ll have to come up with something more creative.”
“Doesn’t sound like your strong suit.”
“Don’t underestimate me.” He looks up at me. “You think I’m some prick who just waltzes around with a crown and doesn’t know how the world operates?”
“I think you’re too merciful.”
He lifts his shoulders. “Maybe. But I’ve got her quiet for now, and I got another woman running around taking photos of dead people. See where my priorities lie?”
I slowly pull my arm from his grasp, needing it to wrap around my gut. It’s not who I did it to, but why I had to do it.
And what lies around it.
It didn’t do shit-all in the grand scheme of things. It didn’t change the world. Hell, it didn’t even make me feel better. I still have to live a lifetime in a world where Levi doesn’t exist.
“I don’t regret shit,” I mumble, peering down at my crossed legs. “I’d do it again. Just slower this time.”
“I don’t trust what he’s going to do with your evidence.”
My attention darts up to him. “Do you think I fuckin’ care? Let that bitch come. I want him to.”
“You’ve got to play the smarter game now, Little T. He’s banking on your temper and loyalty to Wallace. I don’t want you walking into a trap you can’t escape.”
“Isn’t that what I have you for? Or is that one-sided?”
“You know damn well it’s not one-sided,” he replies calmly. “I said I would give you his head on a silver platter.”
“I want to be the one taking his head off ,” I grind out, fists tightening. “I don’t want quick and easy.”
“No,” he says, leaning back against my pillows. “You definitely like hard and rough.”
My lips part with a retort when his phone goes off. Cairo reaches for it somewhere on the other side of the bed, then he glowers at it. “Wanna take someone else’s head off?” He doesn’t wait for my answer when he brings the phone to his ear and gripes, “It’s three o’clock in the mornin’, motherfucker. What do you want?”
I hear a man on the other line but nothing being said. Cairo’s expression softens, going from pissed to annoyed.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Cairo rebukes sharply. “I told you earlier you’re not cleared yet. I don’t give a fuck if you think you’re fine… Did you not live through this shit?… Because I said , Torin.”
My stomach drops again—for the millionth time—and…I can’t deal with this right now.
With what feels like a drain of energy, I unsteadily try to escape my own bed when Cairo’s fingers wrap around my forearm.
“I’ve gotta let you go, brother,” he says into the phone. “You’re fuckin’ up the vibe.”
Then he hangs up and pulls me to lie down, tucking my body against his chest and my face in the crook of his shoulder.
“Relax, Little T. He got his karma for what he did to you and then some.”
I didn’t want him to be dealt a hand. I wished I would’ve done it myself. “How bad?”
“Two surgeries,” he emits lowly. “He got shot twice in the stomach, once in the shoulder, and another in the thigh. Then there’s?—”
“He’s alive,” I cut in because a wave of anxiety starts to creep through me. “That’s all that matters.”
“If you say so.”
I know he’s trying to make light of the conversation. I’m aware Torin attempted to even save Levi and failed. I don’t blame him for that. I just want his balls in a jar.
“Tell me about your dad,” Cairo croons softly. “I only met him once.”
My eyes clench with the onslaught of threatening tears. I lost them both in the same year.
Within weeks.
“He told me I was too scrawny,” Cairo quips through my silence. “I remember wondering who the hell he was when he came to visit my dad one time. He said I was going to be in for one hell of a time. I just didn’t think he meant you.”
I rock my head back and forth. “He didn’t. You wouldn’t have made it a mile in my direction if he didn’t stroke out.”
“Then he shouldn’t have blatantly said your name. Because, even at seventeen, I was intrigued as fuck. Though, I had already met you before, hadn’t I?”
I nestle—yes, nestle —closer to him, welcoming his warmth and hard muscles. “Best night of your life.”
“I definitely looked for you again the next time I got locked up.”
Begrudgingly, I glance up at him from my temporary safe space. “You got locked up again?”
“I bet I’d give Wallace a run for his money with the number of times.”
I smile at him and go back to my sanctuary of his body. “You’re wrong. He was too good to get caught. You suck at this game.”