Chapter 3

"Leo what the fuck man!" Eddie yells, pushing my hand off his hoodie.

"Leo, what the fuck is going on?" Marc laughs in shock.

My head is pounding so hard right now I can't even pay attention to either of them.

God, she looked so upset and it took me right back to that day in front of my house.

"Fuck." I groan and run my fingers through my hair in frustration.

I need to find those two idiots and beat their asses until they agree not to tell Lan or more importantly Neoma that she's back in town.

"Where did those guys go?" I ask, reaching for my keys in my back pocket.

"What? Leo what-" Marc says, following after me as I walk to my car.

"Which fucking way!" I can't contain my panic anymore.

"Yo Leo, stop! What you gonna do huh? Stop!" Marc pushes me back at my chest and Eddie swoops in to swipe my keys out of my hands.

I reach for them but am reminded how he managed to get me on my ass our first time in the ring, the fucker is fast.

"Hey just talk to us man, okay?" He holds his hands up in surrender after dodging me again.

"I don't need to fucking talking. I need to-"

"That's Knives' twin sister." Marc states, grabbing my full attention.

"What? No it-"

"The girl from back when you were in school." He says and I'm confused at how he knows about her at all because luckily for me Lan has made Knives' entire life story pre fake death nonexistent.

"Wait, what girl? You caught up Leo? You promised no girlfr-"

"Shut the fuck up both of you!" I practically growl when pushing Eddie to the floor then bend down to snatch my keys back.

I feel bad hearing him grunt but my body's moving before my mind but as soon as I open the car door Marc slams it beside me.

"We're with you always but what's the plan here, Leo? You kill those assholes then what? Lan will hear about it and who knows what he’ll do? Probably come after Luther if we're thinking logically and then who knows." Marc's words having their desired affect by making me breathe slower and I take a second to think about my next move.

"I'm not going to kill them." I say

"Okay then let's go but I'm driving."

Moving around the car I see Eddie glare at me and open the passenger door "You get the backseat." He huffs before, getting in and I roll my eyes at his dramatics. Marc has been driving for a few minutes now after he told me he recognized those two fucks from a house party he went to once in the North.

"So we're not going to talk about what's going on?" Eddie's voice ruins the silence in the car.

"No." I say with finality but my friends aren't as scared of me as I'd like them to be.

"Okay so Knives has a twin sister that nobody knows about and you used to fuck her in High School." Eddie says and in a second I make the decision to aim for his arm instead of his face remembering that he is my friend, "Fuuuck man! Fuck you Leo! Goddamnit!" He growls, clutching his arm.

"Don't say that shit again to anybody." I warn, glaring at him through the rear view mirror.

"No, I would like to know what the fuck is going on!" He yells from the front seat and I release a defeated sigh.

"Yes, Knives has a twin sister and no I never fucked her. That's all you need to know." I answer, hoping to shut him up.

"Actually no it's not.” He turns around, still clutching his arm, “So why are we going all the way to to other side of town to beat some pricks up that bothered her at the diner if you didn't fuck?" He asks and I feel my anger boiling up inside me again at his words.

It doesn't feel right talking about Sunniva like this. She's a literal angel and in a way I feel like God will strike me down if this conversation continues.

"Because I owe her and she has no clue her sister is still alive." I say with definite finality because that's all they're getting out of me.

"Owe her what?"

One less broken heart.

"Doesn't matter so mind your fucking business." I grunt and I see him finally give up with a huff as he turns around.

I've known Eddie and Marc for 3 years now when they moved to Finridge to train at the Fighter's Nest. It took them a while to realize that an underground circuit was being run in town and that's when they met me for the first time, at eighteen trying to make enough money to move out of my house and never see my brother again which is ironic because in a way it was kind of his money that funded my emancipation.

I never made enough friends in my lifetime to have someone know anything about my life or where I came from better yet the few moments I felt human for the first time when I met Sunniva. Nobody but my brother and a selected few of his crew knew anything about the redhead girl.

“I've never really had any friends before." I whisper more to myself than to her.

"Well do yo- do you wanna be mine?" Her soft voice carries across the room and I look up at her big and endless brown eyes and the red hue underneath her brown skin and wonder why someone so pure would ever want to dirty themselves with me.

It's probably a bet they have going on at this school.

Who can befriend the little brother of the Big Bad Woo first? Well I'm done being a joke to these preppy fucks and I need to get out of this unnaturally clean and unnaturally yellow room.

"No." I say out loud breaking the quiet harmony we had by getting up , grabbing my book bag and stomping out of her room.

I turn around despite every working brain cell I have telling me not to and I see her eyes attached to where I was seated a few moments ago.

You'd think I just killed her puppy with the look she wore on her face.

She deserves an Oscar for this performance.

I turn back around and slam her door as I exit.

"I think this is it." Marc's voice from the front seat breaks me out of a memory I haven't had in years.

"You sure?" I ask, coming back into my body and trying to shake the image of her sulking face out of my mind.

"Yeah." Is all he says before getting out and we all follow.

He throws my keys my way when I slam my door and I lock the car when I take in our surroundings.

Dingy fucking North.

There's a man passed out on the front lawn as we walk down the brick walkway. Marc is the first one to get to the door and he moves aside for me. I bang my fist a couple times against the screen door.

"Who's banging on my damn door!" We hear a woman yell as footsteps approach.

A small and very pregnant women opens her door and her eyes go wide for a second scanning the three men at her door but she quickly regains her composure and glares at us.

"What you want?" Her pale blue eyes scan us but land on me.

"Donny here?" Eddie asks from behind me.

"What you want with Donny?" She snaps and I hear a slight accent.

"Is he here or not?" I grunt annoyed by this encounter already.

"Rex, where's Donny!" She calls out and the guy from the diner who still has his black bandana around his arm comes up behind her.

"Oh shit." He whispers under his breath but before he can bolt I slam the door open and move the pregnant women out of my way.

I see the man named Donny and another guy come up on my right in a rushed urgency.

"What th-" He pulls out his gun before he finishes his sentence and I see Eddie do the same out of the corner of my eye and point his gun at Donny which causes Rex to pull out his gun rather shakily and Marc follows after with more confidence.

"No fucking shootouts in my house, Donny!" I hear the women's shrill voice again.

"Gonna listen to the lady, Donny?" I ask, glaring at the asshole who looks between the women behind us to the gun Eddie has pointed at him, "Or you gonna make her watch my friend put holes in your body?"

"Fuck you!" He spits finally making me snap and reach into my belt to take out my gun. I shoot him in the leg in the same second. The sound of a bullet bolting through a wall and a man wailing bounces around the walls.

"I wouldn't fucking try." Marc says to the man beside Donny reaching for his gun.

His movements slow as looks between Marc and I before dropping his hand.

"Listen, Donny I didn't want to do that but you're starting to really fucking piss me off," I crouch down beside him, "I actually just came to talk. So will you and your buddies here let me do that? Or are you going to make me have to put the next bullet through your fucking head" I slam the butt of my gun into his cheek when he snarls at me.

"Decide now Donny!" I yell, hitting him again and see blood on his bottom lip.

He looks up at Rex and shakes his head. Understanding, Rex puts his gun down and in turn so does Eddie and the Marc.

"Thank you now...” I pick him up by the collar and drag him to the dining table in front of us and drop him on the floor beside a chair.

I raise my gun at Rex instructing him to join us, "You don't seem very smart boys so I'm just gonna have to be straight, that girl that you saw toda-"

"We didn't mean to mess with them, man. C’mon we're sorry we didn't-" Rex's words from the other side of the table are smacked back into his mouth by Eddie who then politely tells him to be quiet.

"As I was saying.. that girl you saw today, you never fucking saw her, got it?" I glare between the two fuckers and the fear in their eyes puts me at ease. This'll be easier than I hoped.

Moments like these remind me who I was raised by and I bite down on my tongue to control the nausea I feel.

"Yeah. Yeah sure man, we swear!" Rex's shaky voice starts up again.

"I don't think you guys are really getting it." I slam my gun down on the dining table looking directly into Donny's scared shitless expression, "If either of you so much as utter a word or are drunk off your asses and mention a girl who liked a little Knives I will find you and beat you to a bloody pulp." My words are slow and intentional.

I look between Rex and Donny and their friend too that leaves me questioning whether he's presence is going to be a problem.

He must see the hesitation in my eyes because he quickly lifts his hands, "I swear man I won’t- I don't even know what's going on but I swear I won't tell a fucking soul." He shakes and I turn my gaze away from him back to the dining table.

"Your brother will hear about thi-" Donny's smart ass starts up and I hit him across the mouth with my gun for the third time.

"My brother cares as much about you as he does me so don't comfort yourself by thinking you have any fucking protection from me," I snarl, leaning close to him, "because all you have now is my word that if you keep your mouth shut I won't put a bullet between your fucking eyes."

He gulps and I see it finally settling into his head that this is it, his only option. I don't like to kill people, it's not me at all and I've only ever done it twice but something tells me if I had left these guys alone they would've said something and someone else would've gotten hurt. Someone who I'd rather not risk getting in the middle of any of this shit because if I'm thinking clearly there are a lot of power hungry dicks in this town that want to get my brother and Knives' attention and I'd kill anybody trying to use Sunniva as bait.

"Okay, little Woo. I won't mention the girl, I swear." He says and I look into his eyes to see them bounce from me to behind me and his fear comes to the surface staring at the person who's obviously carrying his unborn child.

I grunt, putting my gun back into my belt and walk towards the door past the shaken up pregnant woman.

"Sorry about the blood on the floor Miss, try using vinegar with amino acid. It works much faster." I hear Eddie's voice as I step down the porch steps.

"You good?" Marc asks when I open the door.

"Yeah."

"Good. Let's get a fucking drink." He sighs heavily, getting into the car.

My friends unlike me have never killed before but because of me they have become accustomed to this life of occasional violence over the past 3 years and although they've never said anything I feel guilty knowing their lives are in danger because of me.

I try to remember this feeling of guilt and fear for my friends when my mind runs back to the image of Sunniva in that white dress last night, the same image that kept me up all night last night. I need to do as good a job keeping her off my brother's radar as I do keeping her out of my head. She's too angelic to belong to this town even more to the brother of the Devil.