The Love We Hate

CHAPTER 9

A grunt of pain slipped past his lips before he could even fully comprehend what was happening. Trey let go of Danielle and swayed to his left. Almost in slow motion his hand lifted and touched where he now felt like his head was being split in two. A mere brush of his fingers, and he felt a sticky wetness in his hair. s**t, I’m bleeding, he immediately concluded.

He quickly lowered his hand and tried to piece together what was happening. But even though his eyes were still open, he couldn’t see anything. The world around him was out of focus and getting darker with every beat of his now frantic heart. Dread quickly threatened to settle in his gut like concrete blocks. He knew he was screwed if he didn’t get out of there.

Beside him Danielle let out a gasp. Her shaky hands suddenly reached for Trey. He felt them brush his arms before they were just gone and he heard what he was sure was the sound of a hard slap and Danielle crying out.

Even though he stood no chance of fighting whoever had hit her and was obviously responsible for his own throbbing head, the rage in his blood was instant and it pushed him to blindly swing for the dark figure that stood in front of him.

Whoever it was easily stepped out of Trey’s reach before throwing a punch that caught Trey in his jaw.

Damn.

Trey was certain he felt his teeth rattle. The fresh pain to his jaw meshed with the blow he had already received to his head, and Trey went down like a sack of potatoes hard on his ass.

The man who had attacked them wasn’t above kicking Trey in the stomach while he was on the filthy ground. Trey clenched his jaw and refused to give his attacker the satisfaction of his cries even though the combination of all the pain almost made him puke his guts out. All the alcohol he had consumed that night churned in his stomach and rose to the back of his throat for a second before going back down.

“Chip!” Danielle shrieked, her voice laced with a heavy dose of fear.

Trey’s brain, thankfully, was still quick to process the new information. He had already hazarded a guess that whoever was trying to bash his skull to powder was connected to the Marvicks. Now he knew it was no other than the only surviving son of the devil himself. f**k, he should have been more vigilant, he thought, even as he tried to reach for his phone in his pocket.

Danielle dared to grab Chip’s arm and stop him from kicking Trey again. Everything had happened so fast. She didn’t even have a second to wonder how the hell he had found her, or what he was doing out of bed. She had left his angry ass in bed and had been sure he wouldn’t leave the safety of the shitty house they had been hiding in. Apparently, she had been dead wrong.

One moment she had been arguing with Trey and the next she saw her brother step out of the darkness like a demon with a metal pipe already raised in the air and ready to strike Trey to death.

She could already see blood coating Trey’s ear and neck even in the poor lighting of the night. There was no doubt in her mind that Chip would kill him right there in the middle of the car park if she didn’t stop him.

The slap he had given her made her cheek feel warm against the chilly night air, but she had no other option. She moved to stand between Chip and Trey when her brother stepped back as though planning to do something terrible and ensuring he had enough space to execute his plan.

“Chip, stop. We are in public!” Of course, that minor detail had meant nothing to her brothers in the past, but she hoped like hell it would give him even a second of pause.

And it did. Chip shifted his glare from Trey to Danielle. “You sneaked out of the house to f**k the enemy?!” he accused angrily. He then grabbed her arm and squeezed it mercilessly. The rage in him seemed enough to overcome the weakness he had been fighting for weeks since the shooting in the forest.

Danielle’s eyes popped wide at his words. “No!”

Chip bared his teeth like a wild dog. “Don’t you dare lie to me!”

Her head shook from side to side in denial. She was terrified for her life. “I swear,” she said in a shaky voice. “I came here with Khandi. He… he just ran into me in the club. Chip, I swear.”

It wasn’t hard to see that her brother wasn’t buying it. He looked ready to put a bullet in both of them. Maybe it was a good thing he only had a pipe in his hand, she thought. Although it was a small comfort. She had to convince her brother.

“Chip, I wouldn’t betray our family.”

That seemed to penetrate the haze of hate and fury clouding his head. He stared at her for a long moment, then gave her a nod and roughly released her before focusing back on the man on the ground. That’s when Chip saw that Trey had retrieved his phone and was struggling to do something with his shaky fingers even as he clearly struggled to stay conscious.

“f**k!” Chip cursed and stormed forward. He landed his heavy boot on the phone, missing Trey’s fingers by an inch. The screen of the phone was crushed with little resistance.

“Calling your friends?” Chip demanded with another kick at Trey’s stomach.

Trey coughed and tried to roll away from the assault. “f**k you!” he spat out, despite every cell in his brain screaming at him to not provoke the madman.

A dry, incredulous chuckle fell from Chip’s lips. “f**k me? You still have balls to talk? Dude, you’re f*****g dead.” Chip picked up the pipe he had dropped at some point. And advanced on Trey.

Danielle moved again to stop her brother. “Chip…”

“Danielle, get the f**k out of my way.”

She knew she should if she valued her life and wellbeing, but for reasons she couldn’t even explain, she just couldn’t. Her head was spinning fast, trying to come up with something, anything, to stop what was about to happen. Which was Trey’s brain beaten out of his skull all over the car park ground.

“Chip…”

Her brother’s patience snapped. He grabbed her by the neck and snarled in her face. “You are protecting this piece of garbage?”

Danielle’s head shook in denial. She wasn’t going to jump off the deep end like that. “No.” She licked her lips nervously before blurting out the only answer she thought would get through to her brother. “If you kill him here, you will put the heat on our backs. Chip, we are already in hiding. I know you want revenge, but you can’t do this here.”

She swallowed hard and waited. If that didn’t get through to Chip, then she didn’t know what would. Danielle was no match for her brother, even when he was still recovering from three gunshots. And when push came to shove, she would save her own neck before the man who was still on the filthy ground in the car park.

Danielle could see in her peripheral vision that Trey was trying to get back on his feet, but Chip must have hit him pretty good because it wasn’t happening.

Seconds ticked away. Chip still glared at her as though he blamed her for everything that had happened. Danielle couldn’t hold her brother’s gaze. She looked away.

After a beat, Chip stepped away from her and advanced again on Trey. Danielle closed her eyes. She had tried; she thought with sadness. There was nothing more she could do that wouldn’t bring the consequences directly on her head.

She waited for the sounds of her brother smashing every bone in Trey’s body with a metal pipe, but instead, all she heard was one more kick and then nothing.

Slowly, her eyes opened. She was shocked to see Trey unconscious, but still in one piece. Chip was staring at her. Without breaking his gaze, he removed his phone, dialed a number, and said into the phone, “Bring the car around to the car park.”

A cocktail of emotions washed over Danielle. She wasn’t sure if she had just helped the situation, or just made it worse.