Page 82 of Uppercut Princess

“What’s going on?” I hush out. “Shouldn’t you be helping Johnny? What about Big Daddy K?”

Why I’m asking that, I don’t know. I don’t give a flying fuck if that fucker got hit. He just shot someone in cold blood. Oh my God. My stomach revolts, and this time, I really do wretch. It’s been building and building ever since I first saw him in real life, in his skin. He shot Roza without a care in the world. Talking one second. Dead the next. Her eyes so wide as she went down. Surprise captured in a moment in time while she fell backward, dead before she even hit the ground.

“We need to get out of here,” Magnum says. “Johnny told me you were the number one priority.”

“Where is Johnny?” I ask, looking behind me.

Magnum shakes his head. My stomach plummets. I don’t know if he’s shaking his head because Johnny didn’t make it or if he’s shaking his head because he doesn’t know.

“Here. This car.”

Magnum jumps into the middle of the road, holding his hands out. He pulls the gun from his holster and points it in the windshield. “Get out of the car,” he orders.

The woman inside shrieks.

“Get the fuck out!” Magnum yells.

The woman scrambles out of the car, tears already running down her face. “Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot. I have kids. Please.”

Magnum waves the gun, telling her to get to the side of the road. With it still pointed toward her, he comes back over to me, yanking me up by the shoulder and shoving me into the front seat.

The woman falls to the ground, sobbing, shaking. I’m numb to her pain. I should be having a reaction to this, but I can’t think about anything other than what I’m leaving behind in the parking lot.

“Fuck!” Magnum yells. He jumps into the car and pins my head down. A moment later, the windshield in front of us explodes in fireworks of glass. Magnum presses on the gas, peeling out. “Keep your head down,” he grinds out, wrestling with the steering wheel.

We’re already at the end of the block when he finally reaches out and pulls his door closed before he takes a sharp right. I slide in the seat, tucking my head between my knees. I only know what’s happening by the way my body moves over the front seat. More shots ring out, but they must miss us because I don’t hear the explosion of them hitting their target.

The woman’s car is meticulously clean except for a receipt on the floor. It’s from McDonald’s. The print says “Happy Meal” in all uppercase letters. I close my eyes.

None of this makes any sense. I won the fight. Why would he kill her? What the fuck?

Within a few minutes, Magnum slows the car. He places his gun on the seat. “They’re gone but stay down just in case.”

“Where are they?” I ask, panic rising inside.

“I don’t know where anyone is,” Magnum says. I glance up. His eyes are sharp, calculating. His copper stubble disheveled. Before long, he pulls the car to the side of the road. No one glances our way, like people driving around with a smashed windshield is a regular occurrence. “Get out,” he says.

I slide out of the car, my knees wobbling. I try to stand, but my leg is still injured from Evan’s well-placed elbow. I hiss in a breath.

“Can you walk?”

“I can limp,” I tell him.

He slides the gun into the waistband of his pants. I lean on him as we walk to the Heights Crew building where Johnny and Big Daddy K live. When I glance up at it, he says, “We’ll be safe here. If Roza’s group reforms, they’ll come for us. This is the safest place.”

“Don’t they know where this is? We should go to my apartment.”

“You think they don’t know where you live?” he asks. “They’ve known about you since Big Daddy K threw you to the wolves. This place is engineered with so much security it’s basically impossible to penetrate. It would take a bomb to get to us and none of Roza’s guys are as smart as Rocket.”

My heart skids to a halt inside my chest. “You shouldn’t have left them.”

Inside, my heart splinters. Where’s Brawler? Where’s Oscar? Brawler wouldn’t know to come here. He’d head home if he’s alive at all. He was only there for me.

Wait. Did Oscar fucking know about this?

We make our way onto the elevator. When the doors open on the Penthouse floor, Magnum calls out before we step over the threshold. “It’s Magnum.”

Eerie silence meets us.

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