Her voice had a slight tremble to it. I leaned forward and pressed a hard kiss to her mouth, surprising us both. I just needed to kiss her.

“I need to get Mamma’s pain meds to the trailer park. She’s having one of her bad spells.”

“Okay…” Lexi said, and her eyes were demanding more.

Clenching my fist, I added, “There’s been a drive-by at the Heights. I gotta go check everyone’s okay.”

Lexi’s tiny hand slapped my bicep and her fingers dug in. “No! You can’t!” she shouted.

Ripping my arm from her hand, I snapped, “Yeah, I have to, Pix. That’s my family in there, like sitting ducks to the Kings!”

She didn’t say anything in response. I brushed past her to get to the door and instantly halted my step.

“Shit!” I spat out loud, and I heard Lexi behind me.

“What’s wrong now?” she asked tentatively.

“I need Rome’s truck. I need to get there like yesterday, and I haven’t got the time to catch three buses home.”

Lexi moved closer and, reaching into her purse, pulled out the keys to her Prius. I breathed a sigh of relief and went to take the keys, but Lexi snatched them back.

“I’ll drive,” she said forcefully.

Laughing in her face, I quickly lost my humor and replied, “I don’t f**kin’ think so!”

“You need to get your momma’s meds and, right now, I’m the only one who can get you there without you having to go explain your situation to someone else. And I know you’re not gonna do that. Rome’s with Molly. They can’t be disturbed. So I’m about all you’ve got!”

My blood boiled at her stubborn attitude. So I stepped closer to her, towering above her tiny frame, and met her eyes. She needed to get this ‘situation’, as she called it, straight in her head.

“You get that this ain’t no vacation park, don’t you, Pix? You get that two street gangs are fighting for turf and you could get shot. Shot! Drive-bys are real. People die. Are you getting all that?”

I caught Lexi’s long, hard swallow, but she tipped her chin and said through gritted teeth, “I know what your home situation is like. You’ve already told me, many times. But I wanna help your momma. I like her, and I’m the only one to get you there right now. So let’s go,” she said and walked straight out of the summerhouse, leaving me standing in the middle of the room like a dumbstruck pu**y.

Clenching my fists, I almost punched a hole through the glass wall. I never wanted Lexi getting anywhere near that part of my life. It was f**kin’ embarrassing. And her, a willing deer walking into a den of lions, she was taking that choice away from me.

But she was my only way there, and I had to get home.

Fuckin’ A.

This day was just getting worse by the damn minute.

As we drove slowly under the ancient and dilapidated Westside Heights sign—the shitty rectangular red metal hanging off its hinges at one side—ominous dark clouds rolled above us in the sky. Spots of rain began to splatter sporadically on the windscreen of the Prius, the wipers screeching as they automatically tried to clear them out of the way.

As I clutched my mamma’s meds in the white paper bag, I glanced across at Lexi. Her green eyes widened with horror as she took in the shitty, stunning sights of my childhood home.

A crack of thunder boomed above us, sounding like a bomb hitting the ground. Lexi jumped, her breath hitching, and, white-knuckled, she gripped onto the steering wheel with all the strength she had.

All I felt was a huge sense of shame at what she was seeing: rusting and shoddy doublewides lined up side by side, beat-up trucks in their masses, and old tireless muscle cars from the sixties up on concrete blocks. And just to finish off this dystopian paradise, used needles, syringes, and empty beer cans were strewn on the graveled ground, some floating in the muddy streams now flowing through the park. This place was a f**kin’ shithole, and I cursed myself for letting Lexi anywhere near this godforsaken dump.

Clearing my throat, I said, “Take a right up here. It’s the old cream trailer at the end, number twenty-three.”

Lexi’s eyes darted to mine in nerves, and I went back to scouring the site for any of signs of the crew. I wanted to get Lexi in and out of this place before Axel or Gio reared their ugly heads and saw she was here. It would only cause trouble. I was sure Axel had told Gio by now of the little Goth student who’d witnessed the campus deal, the rat that had been hauled in for questioning by the dean. Axel never kept vital information from Gio for long.

The usually busy east sector was a desert town—well, the outside was a desert. Several sets of curtains at the broken-down trailers’ windows were twitching with people nervously checking outside—the usual M.O. for the aftermath of a King’s drive-by. My heart was slamming in my chest as we approached my childhood home, but like everywhere else, it was silent and still.

“Stop here,” I instructed Lexi, and she pulled up alongside the trailer. Axel’s car was gone from out front. Grazie a Dio!

As the engine cut and the wipers stopped, the heavens opened and the rain began pelting down against the metal of the car. Flashbacks of my youth slammed into my mind. As a kid, I used to love being inside a car when it came to a storm. Someone had told me when I was six that the safest place to be in a storm was a car. Apparently, the tires act as an insulator from lighting, so even if you were struck, you’d be safe.