Now Open Your Eyes (Stay With Me series Book 3)

by Nicole Fiorina

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but no. It had nothing to do with you.”

  “You know damn well it’s my business, or did you forget our deal?”

  The younger boys yelling match behind me became background noise as Dex stepped closer and puffed out his chest. “Remember your place. You work for me now. When and if I find Scott, I’ll let you know,” his tone was smooth and collected, and I fisted my sides to hide my agitation, “but until then, you don’t get to ask questions.” He punctuated his sentence with his pointer finger bouncing off my forehead. The ability to control myself from driving my fist into his face was unheard of, supernatural almost. But it didn’t stop my fists from clenching or my teeth from grinding, mustering restraint from places I’d never visited before.

  The fear of never finding Mia was what kept me back. I was already in too deep with Dex. I’d given him a week, and he had two days left.

  Dex patted my cheek and flashed a smirk. “Now, round up the boys.”

  Nerves ran wild inside the cabin of the car toward the rivalry’s drug house on the opposite side of town. Reggi drove, and I took notice in the way his hostile gaze drifted to James sitting behind him in the rearview mirror.

  “We’re not doing this until you guys hash out whatever has both of your knickers in a twist.” It was none of my business what the two were arguing about, but we needed to bust through the rival’s door as a team, so I made their business mine.

  “James is fucking my girl,” Reggi gritted out. “Caught the two of them. In my bed.”

  James chuckled. “We were just having a little fun.”

  Reggi slammed his palm against the steering wheel, jaw flexing.

  “Is this a girl worth losing a mate over, or is this mate worth losing the one over?” It wasn’t a question meant to be answered here and now, but something to think about. “We all have complications in our lives, but once the four of us pile into this car, nothing else matters but the job. James, Adrian, and me, we’re you’re safety net and priority, and vice versa. We’re going in together, and coming out together. This time, guns loaded.”

  The drug house we were busting belonged to the rivalry gang, BOGs, or Blood of Grays, controlling most of the drug trafficking in the surrounding cities east of London. Recently, the BOGs clientele had decreased in numbers, so their new drug has been spreading into the outside areas, rolling into Links territory. Fentanyl and heroin was a lethal concoction, taking the form of a Pez candy. The ideal packaging had become popular among the youth. The delivery was good marketing, but the only reason their numbers were decreasing was that the BOGs were killing their customers with overdosing amounts of fentanyl, and that was bad business on their part.

  Links only cared about taking back what was theirs, and though this operation was forced upon me because of the deal Dex and I made, at least I could do some good in the process and possibly save lives.

  We turned onto the street of our target location and parked out of sight a few houses down to go over the plan one last time. I had checked out the property the day before and walked the perimeter. The drug house was on a quiet street in an upscale neighborhood, a house no one would suspect. If they were smart, they would only have two—maybe three—blokes preparing and guarding the lab so not to raise suspicion, giving us the numbers and upper hand.

  There were three exit doors. I directed James and Adrian to barge through the front as I came through the end, Reggi guarding the side door in the garden leading to the detached garage space just in case. “There are no customers, and these blokes will have guns fully loaded,” I reminded them. “But this time, so will you.” Before, we were in a public setting with innocent lives on the line. I’d spent the last forty-eight hours teaching these boys everything they needed to know about a gun, down to taking the bloody thing apart and piecing it back together.

  When I was thirteen, a punter by the name of Gauge taught me one night after my mum passed out on the living room floor. I hadn’t shot it at the time, but he said since I was living this life, it was time I learned a thing or two about the weapon, and when I grow up, I should invest in one to protect myself and my mum. Guns were illegal and hard to come by, but they weren’t extinct within gangs. I never did get one and learned to fight instead. Firing a weapon was clipped, distant, and easier than bloodshed caused by your hands. I knew from experience. Maddie was the only life I’d ever taken, and I planned to keep it that way until I was face to face with Ethan Scott.

  James and Adrian took the front as Reggi, and I crossed the garden. He took the side door, and I waited at the back. The night was in the forties, clear open skies and dotted with stars with fierce winds. I lifted my head and pinned my gaze on the moon, and the thought of Mia breathing under that same moon washed away my nerves as voices boomed from inside the house.

  Swiftly and quietly, I picked the lock and entered the home. My shoes made little if any noise against the tile leading to the chaos. James and Adrian stood facing me with guns drawn, pointing to the two BOGs, who also had their weapons drawn in return. James and Adrian didn’t acknowledge me as I crept behind a BOG who had his back to me.

  He didn’t see me coming, and I gripped the wrist of his gun-holding arm, aiming the barrel downward, and jabbed my palm up against his elbow, breaking it.

  In seconds, the BOG was on the ground with a broken arm with his gun in my hand before the other BOG had a chance to turn. Now it was three against two, and painful memories surfaced when Mia had a knife against her throat. At that time, I had a disadvantage. Maddie had us fooled, and I had everything to lose.

  “Drop your gun,” I demanded to the other man who couldn’t decide on where to point the barrel, waving it back and forth. He knew it was over, but it seemed as if something else was holding him back. “Drop it!”

  “I can’t let you walk out of here with everything. They’ll kill us. Either way, we’re dead. I’d rather take a bullet from you than find out what they’d do to us.” The young BOG was scared. He’d rather die a quick and painless death than suffer the consequences of their failure from their boss.

  The gun in my hand was pointing at the young Blood curled up on the floor. James and Adrian had theirs aimed at the only one left standing, shaking with a pistol in his hand. The BOG wouldn’t pull the trigger or draw attention to the house. The last thing the gang needed was the police to know one of their locations. “James, tie him up.” I nudged my head to get him to start moving. Time wasn’t in our favor.

  James walked toward him and pressed the tip of the barrel against his temple as Adrian pushed his gun into his waistband before snatching a nearby wooden chair. I used my free hand to retrieve my mobile from my front pocket to send a quick text to Reggi, advising him to pull the car into the garage.

  After my men cleared the house and James confiscated all weapons, drugs, and money, I approached the two BOGs tied to the chairs. “Get out of this life,” I advised, throwing my fist into one’s jaw to show he took one for the team. The one with the broken arm growled as Adrian secured his ties. “You both are still young. You have a whole life ahead of you.”

  I left him with a swollen eye and a mouthful of blood.

  Before we made it back to Dex and his crew, I’d driven us down an abandoned alleyway. Neither of them questioned my motives for taking them here. At this point, all three of them already looked up to me, putting their lives in my hands, which was a hefty burden to carry.

  The car stopped behind the factory.

  We’d lived a few blocks from here, and on nights my mum brought a punter home, and Oscar was gone, I’d collect pebbles, climbed the scaffold, and threw them into the barrels below. On other nights, when my emotions got the best of me, I’d climb to the top until I’d made it to the roof with a book folded into the waistband of my pants. I’d spent many nights in the sky reading until reading turned in to writing. “One day you’ll look back and realize it wasn’t all for nothing,” had been my first entry. At the age of twel
ve, I still had hope.

  “What are we doing here?” Adrian asked beside me.

  “Stay in the car.” I exited the driver’s side and walked around to the back and popped open the trunk. One by one, I threw the bags of drugs into a rusty barrel.

  Despite my instruction, Reggi, Adrian, and James retreated from the car and stood off to the side, watching in an uneasy silence.

  “Dex isn’t going to like this,” James pointed out.

  The order was to bring everything back to him tonight, but I had other plans. These drugs were mixed incorrectly—deadly. Kids were overdosing on a single candy. I had to make sure to dispose of them.

  Wordlessly, I searched for my pack of cigarettes in my pocket and pulled one to my mouth, lighting it before throwing the match into the barrel. I didn’t have gasoline to speed up the process. The burn was slow, consuming, and together we waited until the fire died, and drugs turned to ash before we got back inside the car.

  “You burned all of it? The fucking money too?” Dex pounded his clenched fist over the counter before running his hands through his hair. It was no longer slicked back and stiff, but now falling off to the sides. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  Dex wasn’t alone when we arrived. The two men I’d seen the first night at Jack’s were here with him but had walked off into another room under Dex’s orders. He didn’t want them to witness this conversation until he understood how to handle it.

  “Yes, I saved your arse. Tell your boss you ordered me to destroy it. The drugs were bad, literally killing business. It was the Bloods mistake in the first place. The Links have something better. A reason to come back for more,” still drugs, but change didn’t happen in one night, “As for the money, it was more of a bitch slap. The Links made a statement. We don’t need their fucking money.”

  “How do I know you didn’t keep it for yourself?”

  “I have three witnesses. Go check the fucking car. It’s gone. I’ll escort you to the barrel where we watched it burn to nothing.” I did the right thing.

  “I have to make a call,” Dex gritted out before disappearing behind the back door out to the garden.

  James, Adrian, and Reggi took to the couch, already celebrating with a cheap bottle of vodka. Too bothered to sit, I waited in the kitchen, my elbows digging into the island, separating me from the three I grew a liking to. The night had started with Reggi and James arguing over a girl, and ended with smiles stretched across their faces as Reggi slapped his hand over his knee, laughing over, I’m sure to be, a terrible joke.

  Minutes passed, and Dex returned from his phone call in a lighter mood as well. A hand landed on my shoulder and squeezed. “Bossman likes your crazy arse,” he said through a chuckle with a cigarette between his lips. “And since you are making decisions of your own around here, needs you to approve this,” he held up a white pill between us, “the future.”

  Our eyes locked. “Hard pass.”

  Dex’s two other mates walked in from a room in the back and joined us in the kitchen.

  “Did you hear that, mate?” Dex laughed. “Baby Oscar believes he’s in control.” The men cackled. The pressure rose. And my eyes bounced between the three of them. Laughter rolled in from my boys in the living room behind us. “Take the fucking candy, so we can get this party started. You raided the BOGs, mate. Time to celebrate,” Dex pressed. His entourage popped the pill into their mouths and chased it with a beer. “See? Nothing dodgy here.”

  I took the pill from his fingers and said a silent prayer before putting it over my tongue. One of the men slid a beer across the counter. It stopped in front of me. I pulled it to my lips and swallowed the pill. “I’ll make a few calls,” Dex slapped his palm against my back, “Let’s have some music going.”

  More bodies crammed into the small space of the house. Someone had moved the plastic outside chairs indoors. I was sitting in one of them, my limbs heavy and hanging over the arms of the chair with a cup in my hand. Music thumped in my ears, an eccentric yet hypnotic beat, as girls danced in tight skirts in the middle of the floor. Although it took vast effort, I turned my head to face the boys who counted on me. Adrian’s gaze slammed into mine, and he leaned over and flicked ash from his cigarette into the tray sitting on the coffee table. Reggi sat beside him with his eyes glued to a girl’s arse as James enjoyed a lap dance from a pretty little brunette. Dex had already taken one of them into another room, I’m sure for a smash, and his two men were in the kitchen drinking.

  I’d managed to climb to my feet, but the living room swayed, and the crowd tripled. I needed to get out of here. I needed to make it to my car and pass out there. I needed to breathe.

  My mobile was no longer in my pocket, but my keys were.

  “Where are you going?” a girl at my side asked.

  I turned my head to see a familiar face. Blonde hair. Black eyes. A girl who reminded me of my mum. “What are you doing here?” She was an hour away from Surrey. Come to think of it, I had no idea where she actually lived. “You shouldn’t be here.” I knew what I was trying to say, but I didn’t know if the words were coming out correctly. On the tip of my tongue, they felt right, but she looked into my eyes as if I’d spoken a different language.

  With eyes glazed over and lips painted red, she transformed back to the drunken girl I’d met the first night with Jinx. Leigh grabbed my hand and led me out the front door. As soon as we stepped into the night, wind blew between us, sweeping her little skirt up to reveal her bare naked arse. It was then when I noticed her attire, miniskirt, and cropped shirt as her blonde hair flowed around her shoulders and down her back. She turned to face me before falling over the grass, giggling, and taking me down with her.

  “Your dick is hard,” she pointed out. I hadn’t noticed and didn’t know why. It must have been the drug. It was doing things to me I didn’t ask for.

  “Yeah,” was the only reply I could think to say because I had no control over anything else. Not moving my arms. Not getting back to my feet. I looked up into the stars and focused on the moon, wishing it could talk back to me. Where’s Mia? It was the only question I’d ever asked the round faceless circle in the sky. It only taunted me in return.

  Leigh straddled my hips, planting her bare feet on both sides. “Warm me up then.”

  My eyes dragged from the sky to her as she ground out a desperate rhythm against my pants. Another wind twisted her hair into its breeze, and my eyes followed the direction back to the sky. “We can’t,” I gritted out, arms heavy at my side.

  Her cold finger hit my lips. “She’s not here, Oliver. She’s gone, remember?” The same finger trailed down my chest until it hit the button on my jeans.

  My gaze stayed on the moon as I drifted in and out of consciousness. With my body sedated, emotions charged through me at her words, bringing tears to my eyes. I felt one slip from the corner, and it slid down the side of my face before it met the dying grass. I was fucked up and crying as Leigh relentlessly tried to dry hump me into submission, and I never felt so alone.

  “You’re just like your father,” mum seethed earlier with a stick between her lips. “I can’t even look at you. Eat your food.” She turned from the table, and I went back to spooning the porridge into my mouth, quietly. I didn’t mean to upset her. She was upset about the money spent on food this week, which I couldn’t understand because Oscar was gone, and it was just mum and me. But I told her everything would be okay, and she didn’t like that.

  But as I lay here under the windowsill, all I can think about now is my dad. Who is he, and why isn’t he here? Did I have his eyes, and does he like to read? I’m the only one with green eyes, so they have to be my dad’s, right? Why does mum hate him so much?

  There are no numbers in the kitchen. No clock. The electricity is out, and it’s dark. I use the street light coming through the window to read a few more chapters until mum finally comes through the door. Her heel broke, and she’s stumbling into the kitchen. The cupboards bang, drawers
slam, and I know it’s going to be one of those nights.

  “Where are my fucking cigarettes,” she mumbles, and a dish shatters against the linoleum. I sit upright, shove my book under my arse, and pin my back against the wall. She ripped up the last book when she was like this, and the lady with the brown eyes at the library gave me one more chance. “Did you hide my shit?”

  Mum’s in my face, her eyes look weird, cross-eyed, and her jumbled blonde hair smells horrid. I shake my head violently, afraid of what she will do next. I didn’t hide her cigarettes. She ran out. I make sure to count them. It’s the only way to prepare, but I’ve never seen her like this before—this angry. She’s leaning to one side, and her eyes grow bigger. Mum yanks me from the sill and throws me over the bed. Maybe I get to sleep with her finally. Perhaps she’ll finally hold me, keep me warm.

  “You worthless piece of shit,” she straddles me and shoves a pillow over my face. With her entire weight pressed against my chest, my stomach, my lungs, I can’t breathe. “I wish I never had you!” A force digs against the pillow and tears burn in my eyes, but they can’t fall. The pressure is too much, and I want to close my eyes, but I can’t. The pillow is blocking preventing me. I can’t close my eyes. I can’t breathe. I try to move my arms, but they’re pinned to my sides between her legs. I try to turn my head. If only I could close my eyes.

  Minutes past, and she’s screaming at me as my body is jerking for air, my chest begging for relief. My eyes can’t close, but it’s still dark. I don’t know what’s real anymore. My chest is burning. My lungs are burning. My brain is burning. I’m on fire.

  And then it all stops.

  It’s not dark anymore.

  There’s a light, but it’s brief before Mum’s terrified features replace it.

  “Come back! Oliver, come back!” Mum cries, jerking her head from side to side as she’s pulling back from my face. I gasp for air, and tears finally waterfall down my cheeks as I blink rapidly. “I’m so sorry,” she sputters through sobs. Mum lifts me from the bed and holds me in her arms. “I’m so sorry.”