Sweet Fall

  My eyes widened at his state… What?

  The motherfucking drive-by.

  Flopping back in my seat, I almost choked on the rage clogging up my throat. Lifting my foot, I used that rage to kick the dash, Axel snapping his head to me in shock.

  “What the fuck, kid?” Axel shouted, and I turned in my seat to face him.

  “What the fuck? I’m pissed; that’s what! You, you stupid motherfucker went on the drive-by last night to the Kings, didn’t you? You couldn’t just leave it alone! Even after everything…” I sucked in a long breath, trying to calm, and said, “You promised me! Told me you would stay with Mamma and Lev so I didn’t have to come back. You were meant to protect them!”

  Axel’s eyes narrowed and his foot pressed harder on the gas pedal, lurching us forward until we were almost flying down the highway.

  “I did protect them! But while you were fuckin’ your bitch, I had to take care of some urgent business, as usual!”

  “Drive-bys ain’t urgent business, Axe!”

  “They are if you get word the King’s are preparing to come down to the Heights to finish what they started.”

  A pain ripped through my chest and I stilled. “Christ!” I shouted and turned to my brother. “Ever thought of what Mamma will go through if you die before her? She should be peaceful in her last few months, not stressed to all hell.”

  “Kid, it was urgent business. You think the Kings wouldn’t have targeted our trailer? They want me and Lev dead. This war has to be won for all our sakes. Without that turf, the Heighters lose coin. Without that coin, Mamma don’t get her meds—”

  Axel smacked his hand against the wheel and roared, “Why do I have to keep explaining this shit? You know the score, and you’re good with it when you’re not being a self-righteous pussy!”

  “Fuck you!” I replied, my fists clenched. Axel caught the movement and laughed without humor.

  “Keep that rage, kid. You’re gonna feel a whole lot more in about twenty minutes.”

  Unable to speak through the red haze in front of my eyes, I didn’t even bother asking what the hell he meant. So, sitting back in my seat, I stared out the window and watched the rest of the world go by, really wishing I was someone else.

  “Get in there, superstar,” Axel said the minute we pulled up in front of our trailer.

  A bunch of the Heighters were outside, sitting around in chairs, guns in their hands, and I felt like spitting at the whole lot of them.

  Getting out of the truck, it didn’t take me long to enter the old trailer, and I immediately froze at the door. Towels dripping with blood were piled up in the sink. The strong smell of rubbing alcohol almost made me gag, and I quickly headed for Mamma’s room.

  As soon as I entered her bedroom, Mamma’s eyes set on mine, but her head didn’t move. Couldn’t move.

  Fuck, she looked terrible.

  I roved my searching gaze all over her body, but there was no blood that I could see. Rushing to her side, I lifted her weak hand and almost recoiled at how weak she was. It’d only been a night since I’d seen her last, but it looked like it could have been months.

  Is this what Axel brought me here for? To say good-bye?

  “Mamma, stai bene?” I asked softly, feeling almost sick with nerves.

  Her brown eyes were overflowing with tears and her breath was shallow, wheezing like a fuckin’ whistle in her chest.

  “Mamma, talk to me,” I pushed, fighting back emotions.

  Mamma closed her eyes and tried to calm herself. I watched her swallow, the simple action we all take for granted now as monumental a task as climbing up Mt. Everest.

  Nodding my head, I encouraged her to try and speak. “They took him… last night… so hurt…”

  Frowning, I tried to catch what she was saying through her breathy voice. But I was confused. She was speaking nonsense.

  “Went wrong… I can’t… I can’t…” A tortured cry ripped from Mamma’s throat, and her body began jerking, but for her, more like twitching, as she tried to move off the bed. Only her fingers were moving. I could see the pain on her face, the strain as she tried to lift her limbs, and she sobbed as her brain didn’t connect to the nerves. She sobbed so hard that when she eventually flopped back down onto the mattress, a heavy sweat coated her thin, wasting body.

  I was now crying too. The tears were silent, but I broke watching my mamma unable to move barely an inch. Broke at how much it took just to lift her fingers.

  “I hate this, mio caro… I want to move… I can’t… I can’t…” She trailed off, sobbing once more. Gathering her in my arms, weighing no more than a feather, I pulled her to my chest and rocked her like a child.

  “Hush, Mamma, it’s okay, it’s okay. Don’t cry. Be strong,” I whispered.

  “But I… not strong… Hurt… in trouble… I am caged… I am no free.”

  As I tried to swallow the lump in my throat at her incessant mumblings, my mamma slid her hand over mine and whispered in her thick accent, “I am ready… I want to go to God now… but can’t… My boys… no good… I worry… you are no… in good place…”

  An absolute gutting pain sliced through my heart at her words. I didn’t want her to die, but I couldn’t stand seeing her like this… so broken… so weak… so confused but still thinking about us boys.

  “I promise to make it all better, Mamma. Lo guiro,” I assured.

  “He needs out… ti prego…”

  “Who, Mamma?” I asked, my eyebrows pulled down tight as I tried to catch what she was saying.

  Mamma fought to keep her eyes open, too tired from crying, fighting… worrying, and in seconds, her labored breathing evened out.

  Making sure she was comfortable, I backed away from the bed, only to see Axel at the door, clutching a rosary, his fingers moving along each bead, his mouth uttering a prayer.

  Without saying a word, he moved to Mamma’s closet and removed a scary-looking mask contraption. He moved to where she lay and, in moments, fixed it over her face. All the time, I watched him in silence.

  With the flick of a switch, a low rumbling sounded and oxygen began pouring through to Mamma’s mouth and nose.

  After kissing Mamma’s lifeless hand, Axel stood to face me. “Her mask came today to help her weak lungs. She ain’t breathing right no more.” He whistled low. “Dropped another couple ’a G’s on this mask alone. Ain’t got much left now, even for food, kid.”

  Tipping my head back to the ceiling, I asked, “Where the fuck did all the blood come from? And why is she in such a state, talking about wanting to die and shit? What the hell’s happened?”

  Axel flicked his thumb toward Levi’s room and immediately dropped his eyes. There was sadness there but a whole load of guilt too.

  My stomach tightened in apprehension.

  “Fuck, Axe, what’ve you done?” I asked, not wanting a reply, and pounded through to Levi’s tiny room, almost splintering the door on his wall as I pushed it open.

  “Lev!” I shouted and flew to his side.

  There, on his narrow bed, was Levi. Fourteen-year-old Levi—pale, battered, and bruised. His eyes were almost swollen shut and crusted with dried blood, his fair hair matted with sweat and dirt. But what got my attention more was a wide bandage across his stomach. A wide bandage seeping with blood.

  Fuck. He’d been knifed.

  “Lev,” I said and, dropping to my knees, gripped his hand. Levi moaned in pain in his sleep and tried to move, but his breathing soon calmed as he fell back asleep.

  “We needed numbers last night for the drive-by. We knew if we didn’t act first, we’d be sitting ducks. After you took your bitch home, we decided to take two cars. Blitz the fuckers. Lev was needed, kid. You know the score. Every 9mm helps.”

  My jaw clenched and my teeth gritted until I swore they were gonna crack. I couldn’t say shit in response for fear I’d lose control and end up attacking my own flesh and blood.

  “When we got to the Kings’ turf, the fuckers we
re waiting. Well, six of them were; there was only five of us. It’d been a setup. False information. As soon as they saw us, they started shooting the rear car’s tires to hell until it rolled to the side of the road, where they dragged the guys out onto the street. Lev was in that car with Alberto, and Barton, the leader of the Kings, drew out his knife. I didn’t get there quick enough, and he sliced Lev across the stomach as the other guys wailed on him with feet and fists.”

  Axel drew out a long breath. “I threw him in the car as quick as I could and split. I got him checked out at the ER. They patched him up, and I got the fuck outta there before the cops were called. Used the last of Mamma’s med money getting him stitched up.”

  “And who stitched that shit show on your cheek?” I asked.

  “Got old man Brown from trailer twenty-one to do it. Gave him a few rocks of crack as payment.”

  I glanced down to my hand in Levi’s and pictured Pix here, soothing him, caring for him while my mamma wished she were dead in the other room for not being able to offer him her affection.

  “Axe, it’s taking all my fuckin’ willpower right now not to cut your throat for dragging him out there with you. But you obviously care for him some or you wouldn’t have took him to the ER.”

  Rather than getting pissed, Axel lowered his head and nodded. It was weird to see my twenty-five-year-old brother hurting this way. It was the first time, in this whole damn mess we called a life, I’d ever seen a crack in his thick armor.

  “Axe, I keep saying it, but he needs the fuck out! He’s fourteen. Four-fuckin’-teen, and the way he’s going, the way this turf war is going, he ain’t gonna live to see next year. He’s talented, got shit to offer the world. He’s being sold short by us. We’re ruining his whole fuckin’ life!”

  Axe walked forward, dark eyes glistening as he stared at our baby bro on the bed, and he placed his hand on my shoulder. “Gonna be straight with you, kid. Mamma ain’t gonna see out the next few months. Wasn’t gonna tell you yet, let you focus on the championship games first. But it’s down to eight weeks, twelve weeks at best. Her respiratory system’s shutting down, and soon she won’t be able to breathe no more. This is it, kid. This is the road to the end.”

  “Then why tell me now?” I asked, but I knew. I knew what was gonna have to go down. What I was gonna have to do.

  Axel knelt beside me on the bed as we watched over our youngest sibling like two dark fallen angels hovering over our charge. “You know what you need to do, kid. Just for the next few months. Then we can figure shit out.”

  “Christ. Axe!” I shouted and lowered my head in defeat. “I vowed I’d never go back to the Heighters. I don’t fuckin’ wanna go back! I got too much to lose.”

  Axel scrubbed his hand across my head. “I know, kid. But sometimes life rolls this way and you gotta do what you gotta do for your family.”

  My stomach squeezed at how fuckin’ unfair life is.

  “And Pix? What the fuck am I supposed to do about Pix? I fuckin’ love her, Axel. I love her so much it’s crazy, and she needs me. You have no idea how much. I can’t be tied up in all this shit and take care of her too. I can’t put her in that kind of danger.”

  Axel’s face frosted over, but when I stared into his eyes, he lost some of his venom. “Just gonna say it like it is. That bitch ain’t cut out for this life. She ain’t ever gonna understand what needs to be done for famiglia, for the crew.”

  “I can’t leave her, Axe. I won’t do it!”

  “Then let me ask you this. You gonna be okay when the Kings find out who she is to you and take her as bait? Fuck her up to get to you? You gonna put her through the worry of drive-bys and you hustling on the streets? You gonna let her be Gio’s new target? ’Cause he’ll hang the threat of hurting her over your head.”

  Closing my eyes, I actually felt pain slice through in my heart. “You’re telling me to end things with her.”

  Axel nodded. “You’re cut from different cloth, kid. Let her go and don’t risk making her a target no more. Just walk away. Walk the fuck away. Capisci?”

  I thought of Pix’s face in my mind and how beautiful she looked as I came inside her. Her face as she confessed her disorder to me, her fears. Then I thought of what my life would be over the next few months, the danger I’d be in, the danger she’d be in. The stress could make her stop eating again, hell, it was already causing her to lose weight, and I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t be the cause of her relapsing. What lay ahead would be much, much worse. I had to protect her too.

  She would never cope with what I had to do. The lengths I may have to go to for the crew.

  All this made the decision easy. I had to protect her. To save her from this life. I had to walk away… from the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

  Fuck. I wasn’t sure how I’d even do it. But I had to try.

  Turning to Axel, I nodded my head. “Capisco.”

  Closing my eyes, I saw all the shit in my life like a movie: my mamma crying in my arms, bed-bound and fading. Then, opening my eyes, I stared at Levi right before me, beat and bloodied, and everything fell into place. As I made the decision I knew was gonna change my life, I could almost feel the stidda on my cheek burning as I once more sold my soul to the Heighters’ cause.

  I was officially back in hell.

  But at least Levi and Lexi were officially out.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Lexi

  SEC Championship Winner’s Dinner

  The Prince Plantation

  “You doing good, Molls?” I asked as Molly sat beside me at our dinner table, scouring the crowds of people for Rome, her hand firmly on her slightly protruding stomach. She looked so happy even though this dinner was being held in Rome’s parents’ home.

  Rome had been whipped away to talk football with some college boosters. Then five minutes later, Austin had too. The Tide had won the SEC Championship in Georgia and were heading to the National Championship in California. This dinner was to celebrate the win, but I felt like doing anything but celebrating right now.

  How can you try and be happy when your world is crumbling?

  Leaning over, and playing the role of ‘happy Lexi’ again, I rubbed my hand over Molly’s and grinned.

  Molly sighed, and Ally and Cass leaned over to listen in. “I just can’t wait for this night to be over. Rome is on tenterhooks waiting for his psycho parents to say something to me, to us. But at least they’ve just ignored me rather than rip into me again.” Rome’s parents didn’t approve of Molly. They didn’t know she was pregnant. They were powerful and ruthless people. If they wanted you gone, they’d get you gone.

  Cass tutted and threw her hair back. “I’ll kill the fuckers if they dare. I swear it, Molls. You stick with me!”

  Molly laughed at Cass, but Ally hadn’t joined in the humor. As Rome’s cousin, she knew what his parents were capable of. If her searching eyes were anything to go off, she wasn’t letting Molly out of her sight either.

  The whole gang now knew she was pregnant, but what surprised me was how little interest Austin had taken in it. He’d been distracted. Had barely been around campus except for training, and, worst of all, he wasn’t seeing me… at all.

  Since we made love, he’d never been around, he’d barely called me, texted me, and we hadn’t once been back to the summerhouse like he’d promised.

  I just can’t understand what I’ve done.

  It is because he is disgusted by you, Lexington. Did you think once he fucked you that he would not find flaws all over your body? Did you think he would want you again when you could not even take off your clothes?

  With my stomach rolling at the voice’s words, I stood and decided to go for a walk. Molly grabbed my arm in concern. “You okay, Lex? You seem a little down. You’re worrying me, sweetheart.”

  Leaning down, I kissed Molly’s head and patted her growing stomach. “I’m good. Just need a drink and a little fresh air.”

  Molly went back to t
alking with Cass and Ally, and I wandered off in the vast plantation’s landscaped gardens until no one was around. As I found myself walking toward a huge water fountain, the sounds of hushed voices pulled my attention, and curious, I followed the voices around a long row of high hedges.

  Peeping my head around the corner, my heart sank. Austin stood against the hedge with his hand in his black suit jacket’s inner pocket, and he was taking out packets… small plastic packets… filled with white powder.

  No… no… no…

  “Thanks, man,” said a student I didn’t know as he took the packet and walked off through a gap in the hedge. I watched as Austin began counting notes, put them in his pocket, and leaned back against a stone garden statue, running his hands down his face.

  My feet were moving toward him before I even noticed. “You’re dealing?” I whispered, devastation in my voice.

  Austin whipped his head in my direction and stood straight, his expression changing from guilt to forced indifference.

  “Pix, you need to get the fuck out of here… now.” Austin was cold and really kind of aggressive. Just like he was at the quad when we first met months ago.

  Standing my ground, I folded my arms across my long black dress and said, “I will not go away!” I reached out with my hand and pulled on the sleeve of his jacket. “You’re dealing drugs, aren’t you? That’s why you haven’t been around.”

  Austin looked all around us and, gripping my arm, pulled me into the cutout spot in the hedge. We were completely hidden from view.

  “Keep your fuckin’ voice down, Pix!” he whispered loudly, anger distorting his usually beautiful face.

  I reared back. I didn’t recognize this person before me.

  “Don’t you dare speak to me like that!” I snapped back, and I saw the flash of guilt ghost across his face. Stepping closer still, inhaling his rainwater scent, I asked, “How long has this been going on? Why haven’t you spoken to me about this? Why haven’t you spoken to me, full stop?”