Hands curling into fists, he closed the space between us. “You going to tell us why we’re here? Or do I need to guess?” He glanced behind me, taking inventory of the shoddy apartments to my rear.
Then, he sneered.
“Faye lives here,” I said, knowing he’d recognize the name right away. “Planned on asking her if she knows where my woman is.”
I prayed she did.
Because if she didn’t…
Hell, I didn’t know what I’d do.
I pointed toward Tuck’s truck. “Now, get your no-listening ass back in the vehicle, so I can do just that.”
I would be damned if he followed me inside the apartment building. There was no telling what kind of trouble I’d find inside. But I should have known my kid wouldn’t listen.
Disobedience was an ongoing theme with him.
Temples pulsating with the rapid beat of my furious heart, I rocked back on my heels when he slammed his shoulder into my chest and then bypassed me as if I hadn’t spoken at all.
I turned, eyes finding his back as he moved with purpose toward the building. “This damned kid…” Nostrils flaring on account of a harsh exhale, I went after him; Tuck followed. “Hendrix, stop!”
My kid didn’t stop.
If anything, he moved faster.
Reaching the building’s entryway, he flung the front door open and stepped inside, disappearing from my sight. I caught up seconds later, only to find him standing stock-still near the entrance, his confused gaze locked on an open apartment door.
More than ready to give him a piece of my mind, I came to a standstill next to him as Tuck stepped through the door behind me, completing the three-ring circus we were starring in.
“Son,” I ground out. “You have got to start—”
My mouth snapped shut with an audible click when a heart-wrenching sob, one that sounded animalistic in nature, reached my ears, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Turning toward the place where it had come, I faced the same opened apartment door as my boy.
And that’s when I saw her…
Faye.
Sensing us standing there despite the grief consuming her, she looked our way from the place where she knelt on the floor, her scrawny arms clutching a ball of ratty fur as she allowed every ounce of the pain she harbored to pour out of her in the form of endless tears and harrowing screams that rattled me to the marrow of my bones.
My wide eyes went to the fabric she held.
I recognized it immediately. “No,” I mumbled, legs growing weak as I shook my head, denial setting in. “Fuck no.”
Watery, bloodshot gaze locking on my terrified one, she clutched Carmen’s fur coat even tighter as she rocked back and forth, her lips parted as one soul-crushing cry after another spilled out of her.
“Faye…” Grief choking me, I couldn’t force the words to come.
Hearing the question my heart whispered even when hers was busy breaking, she climbed to her feet and turned, facing me head-on. “Robina Hood…” she started, body quaking from the agony battering her entire being. “She’s g-gone.”
Buzzing filled my head.
She’s wrong, I told myself.
Denial dug in deeper.
My pixie isn’t dead.
“The g-girls too.” Her words crashed into me, breaking something deep inside my chest, something I’d never be able to fix again. “The b-bossman, he k-killed all of ’em.”
Shoulders hunching, she held up Carmen’s coat, allowing the fabric to unfurl and hang freely in the air, putting the blood staining the front of the fur on full display.
At the sight, my knees gave way.
Dropping to the floor, I kneeled just as Faye had done seconds before as my vision distorted, and the world around me slowed.
The love of my life was gone.
Along with her girls.
My brain couldn’t process such a truth, but my heart—it damned well felt every syllable that Faye had spoken as it cracked down the center and then splintered into a million irreparable slivers.
A bellow, the first of many, escaped my chest as anguish radiated through me, snuffing out every bit of happiness I’d found the moment the woman who’d both stolen my wallet and then claimed my heart had burst into my life, a beautiful, chaotic mess.
Losing her…
It was my end.
My body would continue living, but my soul died the moment her heart stopped beating. Before her, I had been nothing more than the living manifestation of the sins that would always stain my soul, and without her, I feared that’s how I would remain.
She was my heart.
My light.
My salvation.
Now she was dead, and it was my fault.
More than once, I’d promised to protect her and swore that I would save her. But like the fuck up I never ceased being, I’d done none of those things. Because of my weakness, a trait that led to my mother’s destruction, permanently scarred my son and caused me to break one of the most important promises I’d ever made, the other half of my soul was gone.
And she was never coming back.
One Hour Later
I was spiraling.
Sanity mere moments away from vanishing, I stood in my dark kitchen, tear-filled gaze locked on the bottle of unopened Jack that sat atop my fridge, coated with over seven years’ worth of dust.
Most wouldn’t have understood it, but I’d kept it there despite Gladys’s advice to pour it down the drain as a reminder of the mistakes I’d made, of the pain I’d caused, and of the scars I’d inflicted.
The sight disgusted me each time I saw it.
But right then, when I was falling headfirst into the fiery abyss, a place I’d called home for more years than my crumbling heart cared to admit, the amber-colored liquid called to me like a siren’s song, beckoning me closer.
It was a pull I couldn’t fight.
Dying soul wailing in both agony and disgust, guilt ate away at me, swallowing what bits my breaking heart hadn’t already consumed.
Needing to drown it all out, I
