Uppercut Princess (The Heights Crew #1)(84)

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.

“Where are they?” I breathe out again.

Magnum runs a hand through his copper hair. He takes me into Big Daddy K’s suite and sits me on the couch while he checks the rooms like I’ve seen people do on cop shows. When he returns, he says, “No one’s here.”

“No fucking shit. I—” I stop mid-rant. Blood drips from Magnum’s arm, sliding off his fingertips in rivulets. “You’re shot.”

“I know.” He grimaces when he turns his arm to look at the wound. “Dick got me when we were getting in the car.” He pulls his shirt over his head and wraps it around the entry point. “I think he just grazed me.”

I watch him patch himself up, and my mind goes blank. It looks like he’s done this far too many times. This whole way of life is fucked up. “Why did he do that?” My voice signifying the barest grip I have on sanity right now. “I won the fight. I fucking won. No one had to die.”

“You’ll have to ask K.”

“If he’s even fucking alive.”

The barest of happy thoughts flits through my brain. If he’s dead, I can leave. I can put all this shit behind me. It would be a perfect ending to this mess. I can take Brawler and Oscar. We could get the hell out of the Heights. I have money saved up, and I’m sure my aunt and uncle would help us. They just love doing charity work. I’m their greatest charity of all. What are two more guys with horrific childhoods?

“Did you see what happened to any of the others?”

Magnum’s lips purse. He sits on the coffee table, his fingers still wrapped around his gun like a lifeline. “I watched you the whole time. You were my assignment.”

“So, they knew this was going to happen? They knew things were going to end up like this anyway.”

Magnum’s quiet. His gaze keeps tracking to the door. It’s like I’m not even here until he turns hazel green eyes on me. “You should leave,” he says. “I’ll tell them you got shot. They’ll never know. If you leave now, disappear, you can actually have a life, Kyla.”

Why does everyone want to save me? “I can’t leave.”

“Because of Johnny?” he asks, disappointment, confusion, and outright shock coloring his features. When I don’t say anything right away, he says, “Fuck that. Leave. I’ll wipe the footage of us coming in. I’ll tell them you got hit in the car in case that gets out, and then I’ll tell them I had to ditch the car, so it won’t come back on us. You can get the fuck out of here and have a new life.”

“I have a life,” I tell him. I have a whole other life no one even knows about, but I don’t want that fucking life. I never did. I wanted the one God sent me to Earth with. The one where I had parents.

Now, though, I know in my heart I have people here who will help me make a life. I can’t leave.

My heart rips down the center. Being here changed me. Even now, if I close my eyes, I can feel the memory of Brawler’s arms around me. I’m not going to just up and leave him. He’s had enough of that in life. And Oscar? He needs someone here who believes in him. Who tells him that he can play football if he wants. He’s not stuck. And hell, maybe one day, they both need someone to help them escape this shit.