Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 129571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 648(@200wpm)___ 518(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 648(@200wpm)___ 518(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
I touched my chest. “No one told me either.”
“Not like you really wanted to know. And you were so happy to have whatever book that Mom or Benny bought, you stayed in your room with your nose in a story and mind far away from South End.”
“That’s not true, I tried to—”
“You kept your head in the shadows.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Vivian got up from the wall. “Let’s get back to why we need to call Chase and how it’s going to end this nightmare.”
“I think we should talk to Mom,” I said, predicting the expression that immediately fell on Troy’s face.
He scowled. “I thought I made a good case for why we should not trust her.”
“Who else understands Benny better than us?” I asked.
“But then who else has the most to lose if Benny is dead?” Troy added.
A skeptical look plastered on Viv’s face. “But if she has the most to lose, then why would she help Chase find Jasmine?”
“Maybe, she’s trying to kill Chase,” Troy suggested.
“Don’t even say that.” A shiver ran through my body. “I would fucking kill her. Mom or not.”
“Could you? You can’t even kill Benny.” Troy stared at both of us. “None of us can do it. In some twisted way, we love him.”
“And he loves us,” I said.
“Does he?” Vivian still wore her skepticism. “He’s not the man that I loved. In fact, he pretended to be that man. He was never my father. Those great childhood memories that I have of him left my mind when he tortured Dawn right in the same household we stood in. No, he’s not my father. He’s evil, and we’ve got to do what all people do in the movies, we have to take down the evil. I don’t even care if I mentally survive it.”
For the first time since being around both of them, Troy walked over to Vivian and held her in his arms. “You’ll survive it. I’ll make sure of it.”
Uneasy with their display of affection, even though it was innocent, I looked around to make sure none of Benny’s guards witnessed the simple hug. “We call Chase and we talk to Mom.”
“Naw.” He pulled Vivian closer to him. She buried her face into his huge chest, and a little bit of me yearned for that sort of touch that only the man you loved could give. “Talking to Mom is not an option. In fact, we can’t trust her. I want to talk to Sherman.”
“You paint him as Mom’s puppet. How’s talking to Sherman going to help?”
“True. Sherman would talk, but not much. He’s no thinker. He’s a follower, and Mom would’ve told Sherman to keep his mouth shut on certain details. But the shit that Mom never thought to tell him to be quiet on, that’s the stuff he’ll tell us. From there, we can figure out what’s her aim. Right now, her being involved makes me crazy uneasy. If she’s trying to take Benny down, then we can sit back and let the cards fall where they may, but ...”
Vivian didn’t appear to be leaving his hold anytime soon, and I couldn’t take anymore. I wasn’t a fan of any of my siblings’ public display of affection. For the past couple of months, I’d believed that Vivian and Troy were brother and sister. It was now hard to see them as unrelated.
“But what, Troy?” I put my back to them.
“But if she’s trying to get Chase killed, then we’re all screwed, and then we’ll have to think about not just getting rid of Benny. We’ll have to get rid of—”
“No.” I put my hands up. “Let’s just stop right there. I can’t even kill Benny. Now you want me to consider taking out Mom. We’re not the fucking mafia, Troy. You’re an ex-convict with bad luck. Vivian and I are out-of-work college students. That’s it. We’re not an army of murderers, we’re the people the military protects.”
“But our brother Sherman is something else. He’s what we need. He’s a murderer, and he loves it.”
I kept my back to him. “You think Sherman would help us?”
“As long as it doesn’t violate anything he has going on with Mom,” he said.
I twisted his way. Troy moved his hand off of Vivian’s butt and back to the center of her back.
Oh God. They’re like horny teenagers. Really? We’re in a church.
I coughed. “So you’re going to ask Sherman to kill Benny or at least help us, and if he says no, then the odds are that Mom’s interest isn’t in Benny being dead?”
“Yeah,” Troy said. “Then she’s working for Benny, and that’s not good for your fool in love. Let’s hope Chase is watching his own back.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, “let’s hope.”
Viv leaned away from Troy’s chest, and she did so in a way that seemed like it pained her. Her face distorted into a hurtful expression—mouth lowered into a frown, eyes half-closed with grief, arms limp to her side. “When are we going to call him?”