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I blink at him, almost disbelieving that he’s fighting me this much. I don’t want to sound like an argumentative brat, but I’m not backing down. “I’m going back.”
Magnum shudders out a breath. He shakes his head, and for the first time that I’ve noticed, sadness envelops him. Almost like it’s a cancer taking over him from the inside out. His whole body is rotting with it. “I’ve learned my lesson, Kyla. I’m not trying to be a dick about this, but the last time someone stayed in the Heights for me, I never saw them again. They don’t speak to me. I don’t exist to her.”
“Your mom?” I ask. I only know a little bit of his backstory. Just a tiny sliver of his whole life encapsulated by the house he showed me. The house he grew up in. The house his family lived in.
He nods. “I was mad at her, you know. I was so mad that she wanted to get out of the Heights. I knew she was leaving as soon as I graduated, so I made it easy for her. I don’t even think I knew that’s what I was doing, but I joined the gang because I saw the slow degradation of my mother, and I wanted the same thing you want so badly. A family. A life. Of my own. No one else’s. So, I get it, Kyla, and because I get it, I want you to stay as far from the Heights as possible.”
I place my palm over his cheek. He’s replaced some of his armor, but he’s still a different guy to me in that moment, letting the shields come down so I can see him. “And that’s the reason why I have to go back, so we’re going to agree to disagree here, Jacob. We all have to make our own decisions. You made yours. Your mom made hers. I need to make mine.”
His brows furrow. His lips purse. His eyes look as if they’re saying a million different things, but he doesn’t open his mouth for a long time. I have an inkling I’m only seeing a tenth of the war going on inside himself. Magnum is a strong-willed man. His quiet demeanor belays the storm always waiting underneath where death and destruction are close at hand.
“You’re smart for a kid,” he says finally, giving me a small, teasing smile.
I break into a grin. His humor is so out-of-place in the moment, but I’m also not naïve enough to think he’s just going to agree with me like that. “I’m strong,” I offer. “And I have four incredibly hot, incredibly strong, and incredibly smart men looking after me and looking after one another. We’ll get through this.”
Magnum’s steely expression slips back into place. “No matter how prepared you think you are, you’re not. Not for the amount of depravity waiting for us back in the Heights.”
“Then we’ll get through it together.”
“I’m serious, Kyla. You haven’t even seen K at his worst yet. Why do you think we’re trying so hard to keep you out of it? If you’re coming back to the Heights, we all have to get our shit together because one misstep can tear all of this apart.”
A solid brick lands in my throat. I can’t move it. I can’t swallow it away or wish it away. In Mag’s hazel-green eyes, I see the reality of the situation. He’s not saying any of this to frighten me. He’s saying it to prepare me.
I let out a breath and steel my shoulders. “I may not be ready, but I’m willing. It’s happening, Magnum. K is going down.”
27
Johnny’s livid.
It’s to be expected, but damn. I’m not staying behind while they go in there and do the thing I came here for in the first place. Like, fuck. No. Just fuck no.
We keep staring daggers at each other, which is getting me hot under the collar because Johnny’s dangerous look is dangerously fucking sexy. I never could withstand him.
“The problem is...” he says yet again. “I already told him you left. That we broke up.”
“You can tell him you dragged my ass back to the Heights because you want me, and you don’t give a flying fuck what I want.”
He scoffs. He can react that way all he wants, but it’s a good plan, and he knows it. It sounds exactly like something he’d do.
“Listen, I really don’t give a shit what you tell him but tell him something because I’m going back. I haven’t come all this way to wuss out now. I only left because you told me to. Because you wanted me to.” Honestly, that was all a mistake. He lied to get me out of harm’s way, but it was his reaction that threw me for a loop. I never should’ve left the Heights in the first place. I was too stunned to think clearly then come to find out, it was only because he was being overprotective. “I don’t care. Tell him you’ll make me pay for it and be done with it. Even better, tell him you got Gregory, and he might even forget that you told him you and I had a little fight.”
“So, you want me to take Gregory out?”
“Gregory is a fucking pig,” I grumble. The way he treated Oscar’s mother. Fuck, what he wanted to do with me. “Yes, of course, he can die.”
“I’m cool with that,” Oscar says, shrugging from the corner of the room with his arms crossed.
Johnny, Mag, and I are the only ones standing in the middle of the room. Brawler and Oscar bounce their stares between Johnny and me while Mag stays silent. Johnny already tried to get him on his side, but he just pressed his lips closed and shrugged. Thankfully. He knows I mean business.
Johnny moves forward. “I don’t know what he’ll do to you,” he says, his temper cooling for the time being.
I hate to see the fear in his eyes, but my fear of letting this go overcomes any of that. Overcomes rational thought. Sensibility. Fucking everything. I want K dead, and that’s that. I grab his hands, and he immediately pulls them up to brush a kiss against my knuckles. My words soften. “I know you’ll think of something, Johnny. I don’t care what you have to say, just get me back there. I’m willing to go through almost anything to get the end game.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“Which is why we’re doing what we’re doing.” I flick my gaze to the stoic Magnum. He already warned me that Big Daddy K is worse than I think he is, but I already know what the fucker is capable of. My imagination can run wild on that all night, which is another reason why I’m going back with them. I have to see it for my own eyes. I want to see the moment we get K. If I don’t, I’m not sure I’ll ever be calm inside again.
Magnum said he didn’t want murdering someone to change me, but I’m scared of the opposite. I’m scared of the steady demise of my sanity if I don’t do this. The constant fear and worry that he’s out there doing what he did to my family to someone else. That we’ll never be rid of him.