Page 79 of Gray Area

“Home now, trouble,” I say as I go up on a curb and almost hit a parked car.

“Would you like me to send your message?”

“Yes!” I shout as I pull up on the street behind my father’s house. I throw the car in park and run to the side of the house, where I find a screen on the ground and the window open.

I kick open the back door and hear a struggle across the house.

I move with quick, silent steps to the noise and find a large figure on Vivian. She is fighting with everything she has, and the figure is pinning her down and then he hits her. “Fucking bitch,” he hisses at her.

My vision goes red. I launch myself toward him and pick him up with both hands, then hit his covered face as hard as I can. He’s disoriented by the sudden movement, and I hit him again and again until he goes limp.

Then I turn to Vivian. I hit the light on the wall as I rush to her and look her over. “Are you hurt?” I ask her but she just looks at me, hyperventilating, her pupils wide. She is in complete panic. I want to shake her because I am just as panicked as she is and I need her to talk to me and tell me she is fine. But that isn’t what she needs, so I swallow and push my own emotions aside. “Vivian, Baby? Are you okay?”

Slowly she nods, but just then my brothers burst into the room and she grabs at me, clutching me and shaking. “No! No!” she calls out.

“No, Baby, it’s just Axel and Slade,” I console her. I turn my attention to my brothers. “Take that somewhere,” I tell them, and they grab the man on the floor and pull him toward our basement.

“Vivian, I’m here,” I tell her. “You’re safe.”

“Who is that?” she asks.

“I’m going to find out,” I tell her.

“Please don’t leave me,” she says, shaking with fear.

“Okay, okay,” I say gently.

“We should check on Roman.”

“Okay, let’s do that,” I say, standing with her and making our way upstairs, my hands on her hips the entire time. We find Roman out cold, and she lets out a breath.

“Vivian, I have to go and talk to that guy,” I tell her when we get back downstairs, and I see the panic rise in her again. “I’ll be right here, in this house.”

“Can I go with you?” she asks.

I think of my beautiful girl in the room with me as I “talk” to the guy who attacked her. It’s a hard no for me.

“No,” I say to her, “you don’t want to be there, Vivian.”

“Why? What are you going to do?” she asks me, her eyes wide.

I open my mouth, having really no idea what I am even going to say, but then Slade appears from the basement. “Hey, so our guest is ready to talk, but I just wanted to see Roman,” Slade says. He’s lying—I can tell he is—but Vivian has no idea.

“Viv, will you take him upstairs to see Roman?” I ask her. And I don’t miss the way she is looking at me, like I’m dangerous, like I hurt people. It’s true, but I hate that it’s being forced into her face firsthand. And she isn’t stupid. She knows what I am going to do, but she wants me to say it.

“Okay,” she says, and turns away with Slade close by her. I wait until she is upstairs and then I go down to our, as Slade called him, guest.

My girlfriend thinks I’m a villain. She has seen a side of me that I had kept hidden from her. Sure, I had told her, but her seeing it for herself, with her own eyes, has shaken something in her, and something for us. But I can’t focus on that now. I have to channel that energy elsewhere.

And the elsewhere is currently strapped to a chair in my basement.

I get to the last step and see Axel going through a wallet, presumably belonging to the man before me. I motion Axel over to me. “Jeff here brought his wallet to break into someone’s house,” he tells me.

I reach around to my back and take out my gun and go over to the fucker with his head hanging down. I grab him by the hair, jerk his head up, and bash him three times across the face with my gun. When I stop, I’ve split the side of his face open, and blood floods down. He glares at me with the one eye he’s able to open, and I stick the barrel of the gun I just slapped him with under his chin.

“What the fuck were you doing in my house?” I hiss at him.

“I was told to find paperwork,” the man says. He’s still glaring but he sounds hesitant.

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