by Rebel Hart
Copyright © 2021 by Rebel Hart
www.RebelHart.net/Stories
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
1. Bryce
2. Mari
3. Bryce
4. Bryce
5. Mari
6. Bryce
7. Mari
8. Mari
9. Bryce
10. Mari
11. Bryce
12. Mari
13. Bryce
14. Mari
15. Bryce
16. Mari
17. Bryce
18. Mari
19. Bryce
20. Mari
21. Bryce
22. Mari
23. Bryce
24. Mari
25. Bryce
26. Mari
About the Author
Also by Rebel Hart
CRAVING THE DEMON
The Misterro Brothers
Rebel Hart
1
Bryce
Maybe it was just nostalgia, but something about cruising down the highway leading away from the Vegas strip with the sunset behind us and the lights fading into the distance was simply calming to me. The mountains rolling by reminded me of Colorado, painting astounding deep blue edifices against the multicolored array framing the fading sun. Far from the strip, the sounds of ringing casinos, murmuring crowds, and the constant boom of music faded away, leaving only the sounds of the wild desert animals in the sky.
At least until it was split open by the sound of flying bullets.
“Can you please focus? They’re going to get us if you don’t. I told you that you should have let me drive!” Next to me, my brother Baylor had a gun in his hand and had his head on a swivel checking out the rear window. “We’re not on a leisurely drive, you know?”
“We would be if I had let you drive,” I barked back. “Now you just focus on dealing with the Pucketts, and I’ll deal with getting us away.”
For as much as I loved the calm, rolling hills in Colorado and missed the way days could be spent just soaking in the still mornings and fresh air, there was a large part of my personality that feasted on chaos. We could only go so far in Boulder, and I frequently felt like it couldn’t keep up with me. Living and working on the strip was a constant test of how high and how far I could go.
It was perfect for me.
“Bryce!” Baylor yelled.
At that exact moment, a snap pierced the sky as a bullet hit the back window. It ricocheted off, making me glad I’d had my Aston Martin outfitted with bulletproof glass. My mom told me it was a waste of money, but I’d have a bullet through the brain right now if I hadn’t.
“Fuck,” Baylor growled. “They really aren’t backing down.”
“Then fucking shoot at them!” I snapped.
Baylor kicked a leg against the car frame in front of him out of frustration and started to roll down the window. The roar of my engine and of those following us filled the car as Baylor hung his body clear out the window. He rocked back and forth as he started to fire at our foes. A check in the rearview mirror showed me someone was leaning out of the car directly behind us, about to fire back, so I swerved to the left to keep Baylor from getting hit.
“Hey!” Baylor barked, glaring in at me. “Can you at least keep the car straight?”
“They were about to blow your head off!” I swerved again, inadvertently causing Baylor’s ribcage to slam into the frame of the car. He let out a yowl before curling back into the car. “My bad.”
He leered over at me. “I swear to god, I’m never going anywhere with you ever again. I hate ending all of my drinks and meals with a fucking high-speed chase.”
“Oh calm down, you baby. It’s fun!”
Screeching my tires as I did so, I whipped the car to the right around a corner. We were pretty much in the vast, open desert, but there were trees down this road that would make it a little more difficult to shoot at us. Plus, I knew the way to get to a road that would connect us back to the city. No matter how much of a vendetta our pursuers had, they weren’t dumb enough to open fire driving through the densely populated roads near the strip. We could lose them there and settle up later.
“Fun?” Baylor questioned. “Fun is gambling, drinking, spending the night with a gorgeous woman. Trying not to lose my life or get arrested is not what I’d consider fun.”
“We’re not going to lose our lives or get arrested, because you’re with me and I won’t let it happen.” I peeked over to the right where I could see the road in the distance that would lead back to the city. “I’ve got a plan.”
“No.” Baylor waved his hand. “Don’t take this back in. Mom’s already pissed at us for that shit we got into last week. If we’re going to settle this, then we need to do it out here where no one can see us.”
“Are you suggesting we pull over and end this?” I asked. “Violence isn’t usually the way for you, brother.”
He sneered at me. “No, it isn’t, but since we’re here. I’d rather just get this over with.”
“Now we’re talking.”
Cutting hard to the left, I dragged the car off the road and into the desert sands. Speckles of red and brown earth scattered up around the car, catching the sunset, and my heart started to race faster. This sort of thing was what I was made for. I’d never been much of a runner.
I pulled the car to a stop and jumped out, running around to Baylor’s side to duck behind the car just as he was clambering out. He already had his gun in his hand, and I yanked mine out of my waistband and turned off the safety, preparing to shoot. We could hear the grumble of the other car as it followed us off the road and eventually came to a stop, though both my engine and theirs were still roaring through the desert silence. At the last second, I yanked a hair tie from around my wrist and used it to secure my shoulder-length, dark brown hair behind my head in a messy man-bun. I didn’t like the look of it in the reflection of my car and started to redo it, when Baylor slapped my hand back.
“Can you please not worry about your appearance for five seconds?”
I rolled my eyes. “Hey, come on. At least if I’m the last thing they’re ever going to see, I should look nice, huh?”
“You make my head hurt,” Baylor quipped back.
“Oh, Misterro Brothers!” one of our pursuers called out. “Come on out, now. We’ll make this quick and painless for you.”
Immediately, I started to stand, but Baylor yanked me back down. “Don’t. We’re doing this my way.”
“You don’t have a way,” I argued, but he ignored me. He maneuvered himself forward until he was flat on his stomach and able to look under the car. He cocked his gun and fired, shortly thereafter eliciting a grunt and thud to the ground.
“Fuck!” the same voice screamed. “That hurt!”
“Foot shot?” I said with an upturned lip. “That’s your big plan? Shoot him in the foot?”
Before Baylor could stop me this time, I stood up until I was able to look over the hood. There were three individuals there. One of them was crouched down with blood pouring from his foot, while another had run up to him and was looking him over. The third had a gun out, trained forward, and when he noticed me pop up, he shot immediately. I just barely managed to duck down, feeling the heat of the bullet passing overhead against my skull.
I co
uldn’t hold back a laugh. “Whew. That was close.”
“Can you take this seriously, please?” Baylor snapped.
“Fine.” I said.
Swirling my leg around so that I could crouch around the front of the car, I quickly fired my gun into the leg of the man who’d just shot at me. He dropped to the ground, and the man who’d been tending to the one Baylor shot looked up and quickly fired at me. In his panic, he fired wide and missed, so I took the opportunity to fire my gun back. It hit him square in the chest and he dropped to the ground, dead on impact.
“Bay,” I called out.
Baylor’s gun discharged behind me, and I looked over just in time to see a fourth person who’d remained near our enemy’s car. He had a gun pointed right at me, but he was slumped against the car and slowly sliding down it, with a dark red spot growing larger on his stomach. My attention immediately diverted to him, when Baylor’s gun went off again. This time, the man who’d been shot in the foot had regained some composure and was about to fire at me, but Baylor got him first, hitting him in the shoulder. He fell to the ground screaming, short-lived. As I passed him, I pointed down at him and shot him straight through the skull, ending his life instantly.
The man I’d shot in the leg was scrabbling backwards trying to get away, but it was useless. He was now riskier to Baylor and me alive, and my tendency for mercy was always low when someone shot at my car, so I pointed out toward him and fired. It splintered against the ground, and when he turned to look up at me, I shot again, getting him right through the head as well, leaving him a motionless heap where he laid.
All that was left to deal with was the man groaning in pain near the car, and he was, ironically enough, the only man I recognized. He was the one who’d walked into the bar Baylor and I were drinking in thirty minutes earlier and tried to push us around.
He was the next in line for the Puckett Family, the old-school mob family that had previously been the rulers of Vegas before my family came in and took over. He thought that he could throw his weight around at Baylor and me and somehow scare us into backing down.
I supposed he was rapidly figuring out that this wasn’t the case.
Weakly, he attempted to lift his gun to point at me as I got closer to him, but I fired my gun at his wrist, forcing him to drop the gun. I kicked it off to the side and crouched in front of him and sighed.
“Now, Justice… We really didn’t want to get into a fight with you. We just wanted to drink and have a good time. It didn’t have to come to all this,” I said calmly.
“F-fuck you,” Justice hissed out. “I’ll fucking kill you.”
“Is that right?” I asked, looking over my shoulder as Baylor came to stand behind me. “Somehow, I don’t think you’re going to manage that.”
Baylor tapped my shoulder. “Come on. We may be outside the city, but someone had to hear those shots. Just drop this guy and let’s go.”
“Well he’s owed final words, isn’t he?” I said. “Don’t be heartless.”
“That’s funny,” Baylor said flatly, knowing I was easily the more torturous of the two of us.
“I’m thinking we leave him alive. Leave him here and see if he can get himself out of it. If we keep killing all of our opponents, who am I going to have fun with?” I asked. Baylor reached around me and fired his gun. I watched in irritation as the bullet plowed through Justice’s skull and he dropped sideways to the ground. “Hey!”
“You’ve caused enough trouble for one day,” he barked. “Let’s go.”
“I didn’t cause any trouble,” I argued as I stood up.
“You could have ignored him back at the bar, but no, you just had to puff out your chest and prove that you’re Mr. Big Shot.” Baylor ran a hand through his short dark hair. “All I wanted was a fucking drink.”
“I wasn’t just gonna let him have his way.” I frowned and crossed my arms, looking around the carnage we left behind. “Honestly, how any of these people controlled Vegas is beyond me. They’re all weak as hell. I miss Colorado. At least our enemies had some balls back there.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly why we had to leave and come here, because we all would have fucking died.” He looked me dead in the eyes. “If you keep on like this, we’re going to make more enemies we have to flee from instead of fight. I actually like Vegas. I need you to behave yourself.”
“I didn’t cause the problems with the Rumas in Boulder, and I didn’t cause the problem with Justice here. I’m just trying to live my life.”
“Yet somehow trouble always finds you.” Baylor started back towards the car. “Can we go?”
“What? We’re just gonna leave them all here?” I asked.
Baylor looked over the top of the car at me. “You gonna shove four dead, bleeding bodies into the trunk of your car?”
That was a good point, but… “Still, we can’t just leave them all here.”
“Justice is infamous here. When they see him with all these dead bodies, they’ll conclude that things just went wrong. I’ll lay some digital evidence when we get back home that supports the claim. For now, I just want to get out of here before anyone—”
And almost on cue, an ear-splitting scream sliced through the sky. Our gazes shot over to see a woman who had pulled her car off to the side of the road and wandered upon our scene. Most likely, she was just a friendly citizen who saw cars pulled off and stopped to help. Neither Baylor nor I liked killing innocents, and our mother was fiercely against it, but this woman was a risk to us. I bolted towards her with my gun out, and she backed up so quickly that she fell backwards into the dirt.
“Bryce! Don’t!” Baylor screeched. Ignoring him, because we didn’t have much choice, I ran up until I was hovering over her. I pointed my gun down and prepared to shoot.
Baylor got to me first and shoved me away. “Stop! She didn’t do anything!”
“She’s seen us,” I fought. “There’s nothing we can do.”
Though Baylor was the brains to my brawn, he was still sufficiently strong, and curled an arm around my neck and pulled. I probably could have broken free if I wanted to, but seeing the woman terrified and bawling was enough to give me pause. Baylor felt me stop fighting and pushed me in the direction of the car, before walking back over to the woman himself. He shoved a hand into his pocket and pulled out his wallet before taking out all the cash he had inside. He walked over to her car and opened the door, pulled out her purse, and then walked back over to her.
“This—” He held up the money. “—is a thank you for not telling anyone what you saw here today.” He fished a wallet out of her purse. He snatched her ID out and pushed the money in, then he returned the wallet to the purse and dropped it next to her.
“This—” He held up her ID. “—is in case what you saw here today ends up in the news and we need to find you, do you understand?”
Though she was shaking, she nodded her head, and Baylor accepted that as an answer and came back to my car. He climbed into the passenger’s seat with an angry expression on his face, and I knew I was in for an earful. I locked eyes with the woman one last time, hoping to truly communicate how lucky she was that Baylor was there, before I climbed into the driver’s seat of my car and screeched away from the scene.
“You should have let me kill her,” I grumbled. “She’s gonna call the cops.”
“You should have left when I told you to instead of playing with your food,” he snapped back. “If she calls the cops, it’s on you.”
“Fuck that. If she calls the cops, it’s on the Pucketts.”
Baylor crossed his arms and kicked the frame of the car in front of him again. “We’re so fucked when we get home.” Though I wanted to argue, I didn’t.
He wasn’t wrong.
Our family’s home was an estate just outside the Las Vegas strip. Though both Baylor and I did have our own homes where we tried to go as frequently as possible, because of our heavy workloads and how close our family was in general, we were often at th
e estate with my parents instead. Mostly subconsciously, I found myself driving there, but it wasn’t until I could see my mother looking down at our car pulling in from the upstairs living room window that I started to regret it.
“You think she knows?” I asked.
Baylor glared sideways at me. “No. That’s just her afternoon, stand-broodingly-in-the-window routine. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the racket we just caused.”
“Your sarcasm is noted.” I didn’t even bother pulling my car into the garage, because I did not want to stick around after being scolded, and instead pulled it around the cul-de-sac and parked right in front of the grand double doors that led into the house.
There were three steps leading up to the front door, and on the second of these steps was a sensor of my mom’s own design. It was ultra-security that measured everything from a person’s weight to their hair follicles in a matter of seconds to determine whether or not they should be allowed entry into the protected establishment. Both Baylor and I lingered here briefly, allowing the system to get a read on us, then we heard the front doors buzz and start to pull open of their own volition.
“Bryce!” a shrill voice called immediately from inside. “Get your ass in here.”
Baylor let out a sigh of relief. “Thank god she knows it’s just you.”
As we stepped through the front doors and they closed behind us, my father, Drake, wandered through the front room. I’d taken much more after him than Baylor had, with his long brown hair, graying in places, pulled back into a ponytail, and the same gray eyes I’d inherited narrowed into slits. He was clean-shaven, where I had a full goatee, but tattoos poured down both of our arms, making us very clearly father and son. He had a computer in one hand and some sort of VR system in the other. He lifted an eyebrow at me. “Don’t worry, son. I’ll make sure to get nice flowers for your funeral.”