Risk (Gentry Boys #2)(66)
Deck clapped his hands together all of a sudden. The sound was loud. “Let’s get some pizza, kids.” He elbowed me. “I’ll treat if you drive.”
I didn’t know what was up with Deck since he wasn’t a guy to beat around the bush, but he obviously had something to say to me and he didn’t want to do it in front of a crowd. Deck settled beside me in the pickup and as I swiveled to back the truck up I caught sight of his profile. I could swear I was looking at a darker-skinned Uncle Chrome. I didn’t bring that up though. Deck had a troubled relationship with his father. Chrome was gone more often than not, leaving Declan and his mother to carve out a meager existence smack in the middle of Gentry chaos. Since Chrome’s messy death several years earlier, I’d never heard Deck speak his name.
“So what is it?” I asked when we got out to the road. “You manage to track down those rumors?”
“I paid some visits,” he answered slowly. “I didn’t like what I found out. You’re not gonna like it either.”
Deck’s grim manner made was making me sweat a little. If Declan thought things were bad, then things were bad.
My cousin shifted. He smelled of leather. “This dipshit you’re going up against? Even before he got to that poor slob the other night, he was in the habit of killing. And these were no shanks in the shower, my friend. This was some messy shit. Well, somewhere along the way he scored a benefactor. He was locked up for Murder One and should be sitting up there for decades to come, yet here he is. Word has it he was turned loose on a legal technicality, but there are also whispers that it was something more sinister. Something orchestrated by people who can get something out of him.”
I grunted. This wasn’t welcome news but it wasn’t exactly surprising.
Declan wasn’t done talking yet though. “You know that f*cker who’s sponsoring you?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Gabe?”
“Gabe,” Declan spat. “He ain’t exactly got your best interests in mind. You think he’s backing you? It’s just a f*cking game show and you’re supposed to be the loser. Creed, they’re tossing you out there like a mouse being set before a snake.”
“Shit,” I swore, pounding the steering wheel, more incensed at my own stupidity than anything else. It had never crossed my mind that Gabe would be betting against me.
Declan looked as miserable as I’d ever seen him. “I’m sorry man. All the f*cking favors I’ve got in the bank don’t mean a goddamn thing here.”
“Not your fault,” I coughed. “Can’t expect you to swoop in and save me from my own recklessness.”
“I never had no brothers, “ Declan muttered. “At least none that I ever knew about.” He gave me an arch look. “I always thought of you three as my little brothers. I tried to take your place, Creed. I would have. Those men ain’t havin’ it though. They’re billing this shit as a battle of Aryan brawn and I don’t fit the profile. I’m not telling you this because I’m looking for thanks or for f*cking tears. I just want you to know that I’m in your corner.”
We were pulling up to the pizza joint. I turned the engine off and breathed deeply.
“So what the hell do I do, Declan?”
He didn’t mince words. “You gotta win, Creedence. By any means necessary. You gotta remove every shred of mercy and make it so there’s nothing left of that f*cker.”
My cousin is telling me I need to kill a man if I want to live.
“Would that even end it, Deck? Would it?”
He couldn’t answer either way.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Truly
The buzzing of my phone tore me out of a restless sleep. I fumbled for it in the darkness, my heartbeat quickening as my mind caught on to the fact that it was the middle of the night and no one ought to be calling just to say hello.
I looked at the phone and saw the words ‘Carrie’s Cell’. I sat bolt upright, my heart pounding. “Carrie!”
“Toooleee,” my youngest sister sang into the phone. It was how she used to pronounce my name when she was small.
“Baby, it’s four thirty in the morning. What’s wrong?”
I could almost hear her shrugging with a toss of her red hair. “Nothin’ at all. I saw you called last week one late night and didn’t leave a message. Why didn’t you leave a message, sweets? Anyway, I kept meaning to call you back but life’s just been a hot whirlwind.”
“I had just called to say hello. You on your way to class?” I asked, rubbing my eyes and remembering the time in Virginia was three hours ahead.
“Soon. But I want to catch up with my favorite big sister first.”
I smiled in spite of being vaguely annoyed by the hour of the call. Carrie’s ‘favorite big sister’ had always varied among Mia, Aggie and me. It depended on what kind of mood she was in or what she wanted. I never minded though. Carrie could be as sweet as she was demanding. There was also an element of shrewdness about her. Rather than suffer from being the last Lee girl remaining in Laura’s clutches, she’d managed to land a full scholarship to a country boarding school full of the South’s most privileged daughters. Carolina Lee would be a force to reckon with someday.