Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 109245 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109245 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Roz stopped two feet away, his thick brows turned down. “I got the alert my asset called in a liberty.”
Your asset. My everything.
Scar grinned. He couldn’t help it. Roz was easy to rile, and Scar had too much restless energy right now to pretend to be polite.
“Yep. He’s my date tonight.” Scar winked. “Don’t wait up.”
Roz stepped in close enough to make the intimidation real.
“If you hurt him,” he said quietly, “I’ll kill you.”
Scar’s grin faded. He leaned in too, not backing down, but not escalating, just meeting Roz halfway.
“Know this,” he said between clenched teeth. “You can save your threats, because I’d die before I let him get hurt by anyone, including me.”
Roz’s gaze seemed to search his for any hints of deception.
“You really think I couldn’t get to Gage when he was rolling with your crew?” he scoffed.
Roz narrowed his eyes.
“I always got my targets,” he said. “You know this.”
“Okay,” Roz murmured. “I’ll give you that.”
“You can’t think you were protecting him that good?” Scar frowned. “Back then, I knew where he lived, where his parents’ church was. I knew his whole fuckin’ weekly schedule.”
Roz clenched and unclenched his fists.
“If I had wanted him, I would’ve got him. You too, for that matter.”
Roz held his stare.
“But I didn’t.”
“Why?” Roz asked. “You sure as hell gave him enough shit.”
Scar swallowed. His truth was always complicated and too pride-swallowing to share.
“Because I never wanted to hurt him and hurting you would’ve hurt him too. I gave him shit because I couldn’t have him. Not for myself. And you did.”
The silence after his confession was too thick.
Roz didn’t move for a long moment, but something in his glare softened. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and grating.
“You know how I met Gage?” Roz asked.
Scar shook his head, but he damn sure always wondered.
“I met a girl named Shannon,” Roz said. “She used to come around my block with her church group to do outreach.”
Roz’s gaze shifted—unseeing—as if he was mentally going back to that time.
“She passed out boxed lunches, clothes vouchers, comforted families who were down on their luck. Praying for ’em and shit.”
Scar could already see where this was going.
“She was gorgeous,” Roz whispered. “And she was a Christian. Off limits to a thug like me.”
Scar could relate.
“Some guys on the block rolled up on her and her friends once and started giving her a hard time. I walked over.” Roz growled. “Didn’t say shit, just started beating them motherfuckers down.”
He said it with his chest—no apology or regret in his tone.
“I thought she’d get scared and haul ass, or call the police,” His throat worked once. “But she didn’t. She sat beside me on the curb, pulled out a little kit from her bag, and cleaned the blood and skin off my knuckles.”
Scar could only imagine what that’d felt like.
“Her touch was…” He paused as if searching for a word that wouldn’t make him sound weak. “She told her friends to go on. And she stayed right there with me, talking about…”
Roz laughed, but it held no humor.
“You won’t believe this shit, bro.” Roz glanced at him. “She talked about God. And that no matter what I’d done in the past, I wasn’t too fucked-up to be loved. Shorty had me believing it too.”
Scar nodded. “She made it sound good, huh?”
“Yeah. She did.” Roz’s mouth twitched. “But honestly, I could’ve listened to her talk about anything…tax law, or the history of drywall, whatever, and I would’ve paid full attention.”
Scar huffed a quiet laugh.
“Long story short, she kept coming back around, and I started asking her to meet me at other places. So the hood didn’t see her, and I could keep her to myself.”
Scar went still.
“She was too good for me, too good for the block, too good for my lifestyle.”
Roz swallowed, his eyes misting. “But she chose me. And I was ready to change my whole life for her, man. Hell, I even went to her church a few times. I sat all the way in the back and just stared at her up there in the choir stand, singing and sounding like a fuckin’ angel.”
Roz raised his head, revealing a flash of ego and pain.
“My shorty was pure. And I respected that. I never tried to fuck her…not once.” Roz turned and faced him. “It’s why I asked her to marry me.”
Scar held his breath. “Did she say yes?”
Roz nodded slowly.
“Her family said she was throwing her life away. But I was enrolling in school, and I was gonna’ get a good job…leave all the street bullshit behind.” Roz lowered his gaze again. “Anything for her. She was my one reason to do good.”
“I was taking her home one night from a date,” he said. “And a drunk driver hit us. Killed her.”
Scar’s stomach went cold.