Page 30 of Kid
Nella
Kid shook me awake.
The nightmare I had been having was heart-wrenching. Usually, I would be able to wake myself, to pull away from the monsters howling around inside my subconscious.
The urgency in the way he told me to wake up immediately worried me. Groggily, I scrambled out of bed and followed him down the stairs, the nightmare still holding me in its grips.
I tripped over my own feet but managed to catch myself by bracing a palm to the wall before stepping out the door. I descended the front steps behind him and stopped at his car.
When I stepped around him, my heart fell to the soles of my feet.
I realized then I had been wrong.
At first, I thought Kid was angry. But as I stared at the damage in front of me, I realized what he was feeling was stronger word than anger.
Someone had taken a heavy object and something sharp to the sportscar.
They’d smashed the front, side and back windows. They’d used something sharp and scratched the living shit out of the paint. The white dragon on the hood of the Hellcat had been decimated. If we hadn’t known it was a dragon, we wouldn’t have known what it was supposed to be.
“Kid…”
He turned on his heels and stalked back into the house. When I found him, he was on the phone to one of his brothers.
“I need to borrow your cat,” he was saying. “Someone wrecked mine—the windows are out. They scratched the fuck out of the paint, and I want them dead. Don’t tell me to calm down! Someone went out of their way to fuck up my shit and I’ll return the favor. So, can I borrow the cat or not? Thank you.”
“Kid?” I asked when he hung up.
“Talk to your mother.” Kid didn’t face me.
“You think she did this?”
“I don’t care if she did it.” I told her. “She’s the only person who knows I’m helping you and where I live.”
“Kid, I don’t think—”
“Either you talk to her, or I will.” He faced me then. “And trust me, if I do it, you won’t like the conversation.”
The rage in his eyes terrified me.
But he did have a point.
I wanted to take her side. But she was crazy enough to do this or pay someone to. It wouldn’t be the first time and knowing her, it wouldn’t be the last. My mother often went out of her way to break someone who was close to me.
Kid left the room and when he returned, he handed me a small canister. The outside of it had no label and I arched a brow.
“If anything happens, hold it toward the attacker’s face, away from yours, and press here.” Kid pointed out. “Donotget it in your eyes.”
“What are you going to be doing?” I accepted the cannister.
“It’s better if you don’t know.”
The rumble of Mamba’s car pulled into the driveway not long afterward. Kid grabbed the drone with the remote and left me standing in the house.
The sound of the muscle car didn’t stay for long. I looked out the front window to realize Mamba had only picked up Kid and they were gone. For a moment, I stared at his damaged car while reliving the fury I’d seen in Kid’s eyes.
He’d been pissed—seething.
It dawned on me clearly then, Kid didn’t trust my mother.
