Page 48 of Sinful Restraint

I felt Titan step closer, letting me know he was still here. Still present. Still ready to step in if I needed him. But the truth of the matter was, we were here for me to kill my brother. The very one who was an anomaly to me right now.

And Baarbie wasn’t just lookin’ at me. He was beggin’ for something. Not mercy. Not fear. But something deeper than all of that, like hewantedthis. Wanted meto be the one to take him out and end his life right here.

That shit stopped me cold. All leads pointed to him. One of the men who shot at us at the gym and had barely survived had been patched up by our personal doctor and taken to The Pit, an undisclosed place that we used for Paradox business. Once he was good enough for us to interrogate without him dying, he managed to tell us what we’d already suspected. That he’d gotten his orders from Baarbie.

I came in tonight ready to end him, no questions asked. But standin’ here, stuck in some silent war, my thoughts werescreaming louder than any bullet. There was a hollowness behind Baarbie’s eyes. Like he already made peace with death. A death that he wanted bymyhands,his ownblood. Which had me second-guessing what I thought were facts. Like maybe he wasn’t the enemy after all, but that someone had set me up to take the life of a man who had already lost the fight within himself, waitin’ on me to finish the job his demons started.

I shoulda pulled the trigger. Easy. Quick. Gave Baarbie what he wanted and us the peace we needed. But I didn’t. In my world, if I saw an ounce of disloyalty on my crew, I shot first and asked questions later. With this though, some shit wasn’t adding up. And now I was seein’ pieces of myself in Baarbie’s broken stare, like he was wearin’ a mask I knew all too well. One that I was finally beginning to understand now that I had my diagnosis. But Baarbie? He ain’t want to live to figure this life shit out. The drugs had been slowly killin’ him for years, forcing him to hide his truth in the shell of a crackhead.

Yet even a junkie had moments of reverence. Suddenly, a very important piece of the timeline of Rev’s killing came into focus in my mind as I quickly glanced at Titan and muttered, “He ain’t do this shit.”

Titan’s gaze hardened for a second, lookin’ from me to Baarbie like he was contemplating if he needed to take control. When he nodded, he was deciding to trust me instead.

Lifting my arm, I removed my Glock from Baarbie’s forehead, not seeing the relief in his eyes that I had hoped for, but anger instead.

“Just kill me,” he demanded, grabbing the Glock and placing it back on his forehead. “Whateva you think I did, just take me out. I can’t do this shit no more, man.” His voice cracked and his eyes watered. “I can’t, bruh. I don’t even know who the fuck I am anymore. I can’t do it, Cruz. I’ve done some shit I can’t comeback from. Seen some shit that always be in my nightmares. Just kill me, Cruz. Please, just do it.”

Baarbie repeated his plea several times, his voice going from frantic to a faint whisper as the tears streamed down his face, causing me to get choked up in the process.

When we heard a noise outside of the door, Titan told me he’d handle it and escaped into the darkness of the hallway.

“Baarbie, did you set up a crew to kill Rev?” I asked, watching him intently even though I had worked out the answer already.

“Nah,” he huffed, the truth in his eyes before he followed it up with, “Yeah, I did. Just kill me. Get justice for Rev.”

His confession was fake. “Death only seems like an easier penance because living is hard and takes work.”

He nodded in agreement, still clenching my gun against his head.

I placed my hand over his and uncurled his fingers from my Glock before putting it in the back of my jeans. Baarbie was my mom’s first child who she had before she had me and moved away from Miami. He was raised by his father, and I was raised by our mother. Neither of us knew about each other until our mom and his dad had passed away.

For me, I had The Paradox for support. I also had my frat brothers and my Crowne siblings even if I ain’t always talk to those fools. And I had …her. Ri. My sanity.

But Baarbie?

He only had me, abuelo, and Mekhi.

He was my responsibility. It didn’t matter if he was older. I was my brother’s keeper, but only now was I really understanding what that shit meant.

“Bruh, you ain’t done living yet,” I said. “You’re still here, breathing and accepting rehab. This shit aint over for you.”

Baarbie closed his eyes against his emotions. “Cruz, ion know if I can get betta. I’ve tried before and that shit ain’t work.”His voice cracked harder this time, full of disappointment and anguish.

Leaning down, I did something that I hadn’t in a long time. I opened my arms, pulled him into my embrace, and hugged my big brother as he cried into my shoulder. Half of the shit he was sayin’ wasn’t making an ounce of sense, but somehow, makin’ all the sense in the world.

“Starting now, we do betta,” I told him, wondering how the fuck shit had got so convoluted. “I’lldo betta. You got me in this shit wit’ you now. If you fall, I’ll be there to help pick you back up.”

When he relaxed in my arms and his cries turned silent, I felt the weight of that silence on my shoulders, the guilt eatin’ me alive that I’d even given up on him in the first place. Had it been Rev, Storm, or Titan, I would have been in the thick of it right by their side. But I’d failed my other brother, and for that I may never forgive myself.

It took a while, but eventually, he calmed down a little, two grown ass men clinging to each other as the heaviness of life weighed down on our brotherhood until we were drowning for so long, we ain’t know how to swim up for air.

When I made it back to the car, I was mentally and emotionally drained. Titan and I drove home in silence. Yet, when we returned, Storm was there waiting for us.

“What happened?” he asked. “Did you kill him?”

I shook my head. “At the last second, I remembered that one of me and Mekhi’s contacts had given us all the dates and times that my abuelo had gotten Baarbie into rehab under an alias so that media outlets wouldn’t get ahold of the fallen star athlete. Last October, he enrolled him for four months.”

Storm shook his head. “Baarbie was in there during those crucial months we were planning the attack on McAllister after finding him in Tennessee?”

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