Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 75193 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75193 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
He’d been a part of my life, but only when he needed something.
Now, most likely, was another one of those times.
I hadn’t seen him since my wife had died and he’d graced me with his presence for the last fifteen minutes of her funeral.
That’d also been the night I’d beat the shit out of him because he’d had the nerve to ask if I was up for a trip to the bar with a couple of ladies he’d met the night before.
So, after all that had happened today, I now had to deal with my brother.
Fucking wonderful.
Taking the keys, I opened the front door and walked inside, not surprised to find every single fucking light in the goddamned house on.
My brother didn’t like the dark. He was a pussy like that.
“Where are you?” I yelled.
“Kitchen!” Connor yelled.
I growled low in my throat, knowing when I got in there all of my food would be fucking gone.
Perfect.
Not.
I moved with annoyance into the kitchen, freezing in the doorway when my brother’s face came into view.
And then other things started to make themselves known.
“Where’re your fucking fingers?” I asked him, surprised that he only had three.
My brother grimaced and picked his hand up, looking at it as if he’d never seen that half his hand was missing before.
“Got fucked up,” he shrugged and went back to the huge bowl of Captain Crunch cereal that was mounded in front of him.
I sighed as I picked up first the milk and placed it back into the fridge. Then followed suit with the cereal, putting it in its rightful place in the cabinet next to the fridge.
With my kitchen once again set to rights, I turned my attention to the other man in the room.
“What are you doing in my house?” I asked the two of them.
“Your brother got into a spot of trouble, and we’re here to ask you for your help,” the man said.
I crossed my arms over my chest.
“No,” I declined, not knowing why he was there to ask for my help and, frankly, not giving a flying fuck.
“Listen,” my brother’s handler said. “You’re all we have. If we don’t get you to do this, then all of Connor’s hard work goes down the fucking drain.”
I looked over at my brother and studied his face.
“You’re such a fucking asshole,” I said to him.
My brother gave me a thumbs up.
Or would have had he still had a thumb.
That or maybe it was his ‘fuck you’ gesture.
I couldn’t really tell, seeing as his fingers were missing.
“What’s needed of me?” I asked.
“Your brother was able to get into a gang and was sent down along with a few of the other brothers in conjunction for a crime they all committed. One orchestrated by your brother on purpose to get him sent down. There are a few choice people we need him to try to get in close with that belong to the club that are currently incarcerated. He was armed with all the necessary information to try to sway the informants to our side, but he was stabbed with a shiv in his hand on his fourth day in there; due to complications from infection, the fingers were removed about two weeks after he got stabbed. He’s still fighting a serious infection, and we’re needing this information as fast as possible.”
I looked at my brother as he finished up the last bit of cereal.
“It doesn’t look like he’s doing too bad,” I supplied.
Kelly, a man I thought I could trust, grimaced and stood up, walking towards me.
I’d met Kelly while in the military, and we’d crossed paths quite a few times since then seeing as we both covered the same area, albeit for different law enforcement agencies.
Last year he’d approached me about using my druggie brother—who already had the street cred needed—to approach a gang that they were trying to infiltrate.
Me, not caring about my brother or anything he did, gave him my permission, but made sure that he knew I wasn’t involved in any capacity.
“Can we talk?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at Connor, who was oblivious to Kelly’s question and what it implied.
“Yeah,” I grunted, walking out into the living room once again, then further until I reached the back door.
My sister and Apple were luckily gone, but that didn’t mean I wanted them to overhear what we were about to discuss if they showed up while we were speaking. In case things got heated and loud, I wanted to make sure she was protected from what she might hear.
‘Cause that would suck balls.
Once outside, I turned to him, crossing my arms over my chest.
Kelly sighed and then ran his hands through his hair.
“I should’ve listened to you,” he admitted, walking back and forth across the length of the back porch.
I snorted.
“You think?” I said. “And what exactly happened to make you come to this shocking realization??”