Page 297 of Chaos Kills

Bay continues to stare at me. “Anything, huh?”

“Anything.” I lean in and place a chaste kiss on her lips. “I’m here. I promise you on my life, Little T, I just want to be sure. And if I’m wrong, you can punish me any way you see fit for filling your head with the idea.”

I see a ghost of a smile play along her lips. “I like that idea.”

“I figured you would.” She hums but doesn’t clap back with anything else. “Do you believe me? I need that from you, Bay. Because…” My next words fall flat. They lodge in my throat and continue to remain there.

“Because, what?” Bay softly whispers, coaxing my thought from my lips and setting off every alarm in my head in warning.

That’s how it’s always been with her.

I open up, there’s the possibility she’s going to fall through with everything I ever thought she would.

She destroyed Torin and Reeve and I’m lying in bed with her like she never did anything.

Like she was mine first.

She was mine first.

In that jail cell with her wild raven hair and livid blue eyes.

I thought about her for weeks after, but came to the realization I would never see her again.

Until I did.

It was fate, karma, or just being at the wrong place at the wrong time—I’m not sure.

But I’m still unable to get Bay Astor out of my head.

My phone buzzes off Bay’s bedside table, making me give up that little prison I just made for her.

Torin’s name appears, filling my chest with immediate guilt, but I’m quick to answer because hope fills my chest that he found Reeve, and we can get his father handled.

“Hey.”

“Get your fuckin’ ass down here!” he shouts over other voices in the background. “Wallace is down!”

I shoot out of Bay’s bed, legs swinging over the edge as I quickly get to my feet. “Where are you? What the fuck happened?”

“Ran into him…fuck!”

“Torin, whereareyou?” I swipe up my pants from the floor and mindlessly make my way out of her bedroom.

He sucks in a pained inhale that sounds like it is through his teeth and my stomach immediately drops. “The fucking Landings. Off South Breeze…where Reeve?—”

“I’m on my way.” I pull the phone away from my mouth and yell for Ozzy, then return to ask, “Are you hurt?”

“Fuck, yes,” he leers. “That motherfucker De Leon did a fuckingdrive-by.” My blood turns stone cold, but I keep striding through the house to get into my SUV parked in the driveway and yell out for Ozzy again. “Cairo, I think…he’s dead.”

I stop on a fucking dime.

My immediate thought is Bay. How she just buried her dad. How I just told her that she might be pregnant, and her best friend went out looking for my brother to ease her mind.

“Where is he?”

“Face down in a pool of blood on the sidewalk. Few feet away…he took a lot of shells, man.”

“Wildes!” someone yells in the background. “Get behind that car. They’re rollin’ back.”

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