Jay Crownover - Better When He's Bad

“For now. He’s in a federal holding facility while the feds decide who is who and what charges to level at all the players. They need you and Race to testify, and chances are they’ll cut a deal with Bax in exchange for his testimony as well.”

“I didn’t mean to kill him. I just wanted him to stop.” My voice was so soft, I wasn’t sure I actually spoke the words aloud.

“I don’t care what you meant or didn’t mean. I’m glad the bastard is gone. It’s the only way Bax has any kind of shot at living a seminormal life.”

“He never even told me Novak was his father.”

“Because he hated it. When he was a little kid, Novak spent a lot of time denying Bax was his. He called my mom a whore, pretty much ruined her. She was never great, but I think that made her hit the bottle even harder. When Bax got a little older, started getting in trouble, started boosting cars like it was effortless, all of a sudden Novak sees the heir apparent to his criminal kingdom. At first Bax thought it was cool. Guys like Benny handing him wads of cash and having anything and everything handed to him was addicting. It wasn’t until he got popped a couple of times and Novak kept pushing him to go harder, make bigger deals, take more risks, that Bax realized what he was doing. Novak never wanted to claim him as his son, but he sure as shit wanted to mold him into a carbon copy of himself. Novak hated that he could never fully control him. Honestly, Bax’s stubborn, go-to-hell attitude is the only thing that kept him free of Novak’s grasp, plus I think that’s why Novak wanted him so bad. Novak couldn’t handle his own kid’s defiance.”

We stared at each other for a long, tense moment. I flinched automatically when he reached out and brushed a knuckle across the pristine white bandage that was covering my entire chest.

“He talks about sometimes having to make the hard choice. I know you don’t want to let him sit behind bars for something he didn’t do, but if you care about him, if you love him like I think you do, then that’s what you’re going to have to do. Right now I’m ninety percent sure I’ll have him out in a week or so. If you go storming in and throw yourself on the pyre, he’ll do something stupid to try and save you, and we’ll never see him again.”

I gulped and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to believe what he was saying, but I could hear the logic and truth behind his words. Whatever issue Bax had with him, Titus really did have his younger brother’s interest at heart.

“Can I go see him when I get out of here?”

A bitter laugh broke out, and even behind his battered eyes I could see frustration and sadness.

“He won’t even see me. He’s locked up, back in jail; that’s the last place on earth he’s going to want you to see him. You’re just going to have to be patient, Dovie. Let this play out.”

I would have nodded in agreement, but letting Bax control the way it played out meant giving him the option of walking away from me. I knew it. He didn’t want me to see it—the violence, the vengeance, the vitriol, the vileness that worked in his life—but now I was going to have a giant V stitched across my chest to remind me of it every day anyway. I was just going to have to show him that that the V also represented victory, value, vividness, vitality, and maybe even virtue, which he would never believe. I was in love with him, both sides of him, and I wasn’t going to let him go.

“I won’t do anything stupid, but you better get him out, Titus.”

“I will. I promise.”

He told me good-bye and swore he would stay in touch. He also told me there was a federal agent posted outside the door, so if anyone else was planning on trying to kill me in the next day or so, it would be slightly more difficult. I think normally I would have appreciated his dry humor, but I was tired and I was sad and the only person who could make me feel better was so far out of reach that it made it impossible for me to think things were finally on the upswing.

I passed out as Titus was closing the door and didn’t wake back up until a nurse came in to check me over. She ran down a mile-long list of do’s and don’ts with the wounds on my chest. Apparently they were far worse than just a superficial cut on the surface. I had over a hundred stitches holding me together, and underneath the gauze and bandage, it wasn’t very pretty. Again she mentioned I was going to have to look into plastic surgery and I wanted to laugh and tell her I was from the Point, we didn’t do things like plastic surgery. We wore our battle scars loud and proud and showed the rest of the world they could try and take us down but we survived anyway. I wasn’t sure if it was the painkillers working through me or not, but I also thought a badass scar made it more understandable how a boy with a star tattooed on his face could love me back.

She told me I had a visitor waiting to see me. I assumed it was just Race checking up on me, so I told her to send them on in. She nodded and mentioned that the guard at the door would have to approve them coming in first, which I thought was odd since my brother was supposed to be under protective custody as well. I asked her to find me some food and she laughed and told me she would see what she could do about getting me fed.

I heard muted voices outside the door and rolled my head on the pillow when the door creaked open. I was stiff all over, and now that I was more awake and aware, I could feel the tightness pulling across my skin and the individual burn of the threads holding me together. I groaned and tried to get more comfortable. I balked in surprise when I saw that it was Reeve who came to stand by my bedside.

“What are you doing here?”

She wouldn’t look at me directly, but she reached behind me to adjust the pillows I was lying on until I found a more comfortable position to relax in. She was twisting her hands together, and even though I was still slightly doped up, I could tell she was out of sorts . . . distracted and fidgety.

“Reeve, why are you here?”

“You know how I know guys like Bax are bad news, how I know they can destroy your life without thinking?”

I scowled. “You don’t know anything about the kind of man Bax is. You have no idea what he was willing to do to keep me safe.”

If she was just here to try and talk me out of being with him again, I was going to find my way out of this hospital bed and smack her.

“My sister.” Her voice cracked and she had to take a second to clear her throat. “She’s a couple years younger than me. She was a straight-A student, class president, the apple of my parents’ eye. We were best friends.”

I couldn’t figure out what she was getting at, but I didn’t have anything else to do but let her tell me her story.

“Her senior year of high school she met this guy . . . a guy a lot like Bax. Good-looking, charming, and messed up in all kinds of really bad and dangerous things. He just overwhelmed her. It took a month for her to start skipping school, three for her to start ignoring me and start constantly fighting with my parents, and then six months in, she was doing drugs and stealing. By seven, she had dropped out of school, was working as a stripper, and I didn’t even recognize her anymore.”

She was crying silent tears and her hands were curled into fists at her sides. “He left her when she refused to start turning tricks for him, but he didn’t just dump her, he beat her to death. She died strung out and alone because of him.” She gulped loudly and stared intently at me. “The reason she didn’t want to prostitute herself out was because she was pregnant. He killed her and her baby because she wouldn’t fuck strangers for money. She was only eighteen.”