Page 21 of Sinful Restraint

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

“I grew up in the mafia life. Even with my mom moving us to Georgia, I still couldn’t escape it, not that I wanted to. When you’re born a Crowne, you’re always a Crowne and it’s loyalty above all else. Betrayal is a death sentence, no exceptions. However, we don’t just kill our enemies. We eliminate who we need to in order to protect what’s ours. Honor is the currency we trade in, and the moment you compromise it, you’re as good as dead.”

He paused, letting the gravity of his words settle between us. “In my world, if you want to survive, you follow the code. You never question it, not even for a second. Because in the end, it will either keep you alive, or it will bury you.”

My breaths were coming out ragged as everything sunk in. I wasn’t blind. I knew the type of shit Cruz was involved in. Imagined him as the hero in every dark romance I read.

And with Rev, I always knew he fit in with that life even though we weren’t born into it. He was constantly hacking intoshit he shouldn’t, and I had caught him and Cruz selling weed on a street corner more than a few times growing up.

I even started to notice when Cruz seemed to get more clout in the streets because suddenly when they came home from college, one of his Crowne siblings or cousins would pop up in Georgia and hang out with us a bit before taking Cruz aside in a way that always looked like they were giving him orders.

And even here in Miami, people talked.

“Rev was murdered on a job, wasn’t he?”

His nod was slow. “He was.”

“Was he alone?” I asked, praying to God that he wasn’t.

“No,” Cruz confirmed. “Rev, Storm, Titan, and I were on a mission together. It was supposed to be a simple hit, and the target was involved in all kinds of fucked-up shit.” Exhaling, he dragged a hand down his face. “As soon as we eliminated the target, we were ambushed and bullets started coming from every direction. We’d eliminated any lose ends before we even staked out our target, so the shit ain’t make sense.”

He took a deep breath, but I couldn’t figure out how to breathe myself.

“We were almost in the clear when it happened. Ri, we weren’t lyin’ when we said we’re still tryin’ to figure out what the fuck went wrong. We were betrayed by someone who got wind of what we had planned, and we’ve been following any lead we got since Rev got shot.”

“So hewasshot on a Paradox mission,” I affirmed, needing to say it out loud for my own confirmation. “He wasn’t shot during a car robbery.”

Cruz’s eyes saddened before he lowered his head, the tension coming off of him in waves. “I held him until he left us,” he muttered, his words choked with sentiments that triggered my own.

I’d been emotional all day, yet I hadn’t realized I’d released any of the tears I was holding in until Cruz gently wiped them from my face, his hands moving quicker the more I cried.

It’s not fair, Rev.And while in my gut I felt like being shot was how he died, hearing it didn’t make the situation any less painful. He was my big brother. I used to tease him about our three-year age difference and said he would get old before I did, but that was because I assumed he’d actually be around to grow old with me. That we’d be in our nineties, arguing about who gave our parents more gray hairs. He wasn’t supposed to die.

Not yet.

Notfirst.

I thought we’d be the kind of siblings to die together or him after me since he would be better at managing his grief.

“I wish it had been me instead of him,” Cruz divulged.

“Don’t say that.”

“I mean it,” he said. “You deserve to have him here.”

Through my tears, I saw his own sorrow reflected in the guilty way he was observing me, every tear I shed causing him agony.

“Sorry, I hate crying.”

“Come here,” he murmured, uncrossing my arms from my legs and pulling me onto his lap. “You’re beautiful when you cry. Never apologize for your emotions. If you feel it, let that shit out. If you want to cuss me out, do it. Let yourself feel everything that you have to. If losing Rev taught us anything, it’s that life is too short to stress out and hold shit in.”

I sniffled back more tears. “I don’t know how to get through this.”

“We do it together.”

“I’m not as strong as you.”

“You’re stronger.” He placed a quick kiss on my forehead. “Ri, you’ve always been strong as fuck. Way more than folks giveyou credit for. But I think sometimes, you hold yourself back from releasing how you truly feel because you are worried about what it will look like to others, or you don’t want to disappoint your parents. When we were younger, I should have told you more that you ain’t gotta be anybody but yourself. Rev used to tell you that shit all the time, but you always said he had to say it because he was your big brother.”

---