“Axe, it’s taking all my f**kin’ willpower right now not to cut your throat for dragging him out there with you. But you obviously care for him some or you wouldn’t have took him to the ER.”

Rather than getting pissed, Axel lowered his head and nodded. It was weird to see my twenty-five-year-old brother hurting this way. It was the first time, in this whole damn mess we called a life, I’d ever seen a crack in his thick armor.

“Axe, I keep saying it, but he needs the f**k out! He’s fourteen. Four-fuckin’-teen, and the way he’s going, the way this turf war is going, he ain’t gonna live to see next year. He’s talented, got shit to offer the world. He’s being sold short by us. We’re ruining his whole f**kin’ life!”

Axe walked forward, dark eyes glistening as he stared at our baby bro on the bed, and he placed his hand on my shoulder. “Gonna be straight with you, kid. Mamma ain’t gonna see out the next few months. Wasn’t gonna tell you yet, let you focus on the championship games first. But it’s down to eight weeks, twelve weeks at best. Her respiratory system’s shutting down, and soon she won’t be able to breathe no more. This is it, kid. This is the road to the end.”

“Then why tell me now?” I asked, but I knew. I knew what was gonna have to go down. What I was gonna have to do.

Axel knelt beside me on the bed as we watched over our youngest sibling like two dark fallen angels hovering over our charge. “You know what you need to do, kid. Just for the next few months. Then we can figure shit out.”

“Christ. Axe!” I shouted and lowered my head in defeat. “I vowed I’d never go back to the Heighters. I don’t f**kin’ wanna go back! I got too much to lose.”

Axel scrubbed his hand across my head. “I know, kid. But sometimes life rolls this way and you gotta do what you gotta do for your family.”

My stomach squeezed at how f**kin’ unfair life is.

“And Pix? What the f**k am I supposed to do about Pix? I f**kin’ love her, Axel. I love her so much it’s crazy, and she needs me. You have no idea how much. I can’t be tied up in all this shit and take care of her too. I can’t put her in that kind of danger.”

Axel’s face frosted over, but when I stared into his eyes, he lost some of his venom. “Just gonna say it like it is. That bitch ain’t cut out for this life. She ain’t ever gonna understand what needs to be done for famiglia, for the crew.”

“I can’t leave her, Axe. I won’t do it!”

“Then let me ask you this. You gonna be okay when the Kings find out who she is to you and take her as bait? Fuck her up to get to you? You gonna put her through the worry of drive-bys and you hustling on the streets? You gonna let her be Gio’s new target? ’Cause he’ll hang the threat of hurting her over your head.”

Closing my eyes, I actually felt pain slice through in my heart. “You’re telling me to end things with her.”

Axel nodded. “You’re cut from different cloth, kid. Let her go and don’t risk making her a target no more. Just walk away. Walk the f**k away. Capisci?”

I thought of Pix’s face in my mind and how beautiful she looked as I came inside her. Her face as she confessed her disorder to me, her fears. Then I thought of what my life would be over the next few months, the danger I’d be in, the danger she’d be in. The stress could make her stop eating again, hell, it was already causing her to lose weight, and I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t be the cause of her relapsing. What lay ahead would be much, much worse. I had to protect her too.

She would never cope with what I had to do. The lengths I may have to go to for the crew.

All this made the decision easy. I had to protect her. To save her from this life. I had to walk away… from the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

Fuck. I wasn’t sure how I’d even do it. But I had to try.

Turning to Axel, I nodded my head. “Capisco.”

Closing my eyes, I saw all the shit in my life like a movie: my mamma crying in my arms, bed-bound and fading. Then, opening my eyes, I stared at Levi right before me, beat and bloodied, and everything fell into place. As I made the decision I knew was gonna change my life, I could almost feel the stidda on my cheek burning as I once more sold my soul to the Heighters’ cause.

I was officially back in hell.

But at least Levi and Lexi were officially out.

Chapter Twenty-One

Lexi

SEC Championship Winner’s Dinner

The Prince Plantation

“You doing good, Molls?” I asked as Molly sat beside me at our dinner table, scouring the crowds of people for Rome, her hand firmly on her slightly protruding stomach. She looked so happy even though this dinner was being held in Rome’s parents’ home.

Rome had been whipped away to talk football with some college boosters. Then five minutes later, Austin had too. The Tide had won the SEC Championship in Georgia and were heading to the National Championship in California. This dinner was to celebrate the win, but I felt like doing anything but celebrating right now.

How can you try and be happy when your world is crumbling?

Leaning over, and playing the role of ‘happy Lexi’ again, I rubbed my hand over Molly’s and grinned.

Molly sighed, and Ally and Cass leaned over to listen in. “I just can’t wait for this night to be over. Rome is on tenterhooks waiting for his psycho parents to say something to me, to us. But at least they’ve just ignored me rather than rip into me again.” Rome’s parents didn’t approve of Molly. They didn’t know she was pregnant. They were powerful and ruthless people. If they wanted you gone, they’d get you gone.