Better When He's Bad (Welcome to the Point #1)(76)
I wound my way down the hallway that led to the open floor of the club. Had I not been so twisted up on the inside, I would have noticed something was off. There were no screaming bettors, no thumping electronic music, no smell of weed and booze, and the heavy desperation and greed that always seemed to perfume the air in the club was missing. By the time I made my way to the old factory floor, it was too late for self-preservation. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as I came to a grinding halt in the center of the floor.
The lights were on, so a swirl of neon slashed across Nassir’s face as he grinned at me.
“Fight’s canceled. Something came up.”
I snorted and watched as the man standing next to him grinned at me. When the red neon light cut across the harsh contours of his face, it revealed the fiend that he truly was.
“Nassir told me you were looking for some action. I think you have enough on your plate without looking for a fight, Bax.”
When most people think about a crime boss, a master criminal, a cold-blooded killer, they think of a guy who looked like Benny. A slick suit. Some flashy jewelry to let people know just who they’re dealing with clad in a pair of five-thousand-dollar shoes with blood on the soles. Novak was anything but. He was big—bigger than me. He had wavy black hair that was too long and fell into eyes that were the same hollow and endless black as my own. I had never seen him dressed in anything other than jeans and a T-shirt with boots on. He had the city in a chokehold and he looked like as much of a thug as I did.
I crossed my arms over my chest and forced my breathing to slow and my eyes to go flat. I could taste the need for his blood, for vengeance, burning up my throat. But Novak never made a move without thinking twenty steps ahead, and the fact that he was here and not hiding out, safe in his insulated compound, spoke volumes.
“What do you know about what’s on my plate, Novak?”
He laughed and crossed his arms over his massive chest. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Nassir take a few steps back and the same hallway I had just come down was suddenly full of Novak’s guys. Benny led the charge, the smile on his face enough to make my nerves start to shudder under my skin. Whatever was going on wasn’t good.
“Haven’t you figured out by now I know everything, son?”
I balked and felt my hands curl into fists that hurt at my sides. “Don’t.” My voice sounded like it was rattling through a bucket of rusty nails.
“What? This isn’t the family reunion you wanted? I was ready to offer you the entire world, and you spit on it. What kind of ungrateful bastard are you, Bax? Not one of my blood, that’s for sure.”
I tried to breathe through it, tried to get the pressure and the fury to go back in my gut, but they were pushing too hard and too fast to control. Before I could stop it, I lunged at him, ready to get my hands around his throat and never let him go. I was brought up short when Benny suddenly had the barrel of a gun shoved into my side. Novak shook his head and clicked his tongue at me.
“That’s always been your problem. You act without thinking, Bax. Really, it’s too bad. You have it in you to follow in your old man’s footsteps, to be even more ruthless than I ever was. I could have taught you how to be a legend.”
I felt the bile rise up and I reached down to shove Benny back. I wasn’t scared of him or of the gun.
“Be like you, Novak? I would rather die.”
His black eyes squinted at me. “That’s most definitely an option, son.”
“Stop saying that!” I was unhinged. My brain was going to break apart.
“I should’ve taken you from your mom the first time I saw you get behind the wheel of a car. You’ve always been able to make things run harder and faster than anyone else. I could have doubled the size of my empire on your back if you had been willing.”
“Willing to do what? Kill, maim, blackmail, extort, rape . . . I was already a thief, so what was pushing me just a little further, right? You wanted me to be tied to you in a way I could never escape, because blood was never thick enough to do it. I want to f**king kill you, but I won’t.” I let a breath out and felt my lungs deflate. “You can see what it feels like to sit in a cell and watch your life fade from one day to the other. It doesn’t matter what you do to me, Novak, but you, you’re done.”
He laughed and took a step closer to me. I shoved his hand away when he reached out to put it on my shoulder. I grunted when Benny cracked me over the back of the head with the butt of the gun. I felt the skin give and a trickle of blood work its way over my scalp and down into the collar of my shirt.
“The video? Come on, Bax, you know better than that. Do you really think I would have let Race live this entire time if I was scared of that video? Get real. Race is alive because of you, his sister is alive because of you, and your annoying cop brother is alive because of you, Bax. You get your stubbornness from my side of the family tree, but you get your foolish loyalty to those who care about you despite yourself from your drunk of a mother. My blood might not be enough of a motivating factor to keep you where I want you, but theirs is.”
Just then, a man in a patrolman’s uniform came down the hallway. Some of Novak’s muscle moved to the side and Benny walked over and squatted in front of Titus where he was forced to his knees by the hands of the obviously dirty other cop. His blue eyes were blazing as he looked up at the young cop standing behind him. I knew what it felt like to want to kill; I had no idea that my brother, in all his protecting of justice and what was right, was capable of that same kind of rage.