Page 16 of Love & Vendettas
I know that she saw me coming, but she doesn’t step out of the car or roll her windows down. I tap on her window with my keys before she finally slowly rolls the window down.
My breath catches in my throat when I see my sister.
“Did that fucker do this to you?” I shout, pointing my keys at her face.
Slowly, Riley nods.
“Fuck no!”
“Where are you going?” Riley asks as I rush back to the building.
“I’m about to fix your problem once and for all.”
“Bayleigh, come back. Bay, please,” Her shouts fall on deaf ears as I rush to my shop.
“Bayleigh, baby, everything okay?” Georgette asks as I storm past her and into my office.
I’m struggling to fight back the tears as I unlock my bottom desk drawer and remove my gun.
“Baby, what are you about to do?” Georgette asks, standing in my office doorway.
“Right some wrongs,” I answer, rushing past her again.
“Uh-uh, honey. This ain’t the way to do that.” Georgette grabs my arm.
I jerk away from her and say, “Georgi, I love you, but don’t get in my way.”
“Bayleigh. Bayleigh! Bayleigh, come back,” Georgette calls after me as I rush from the office once more and toward my matte black Audi R8.
Riley jumps out of her car and runs after me.
“Bayleigh, no!”
“No, that bitch wants to hit someone. Let him hit me!” I shout over the roaring of my engine.
“Bayleigh, please, you’ll only make it worse.”
“Worse? Have you seen yourself, Riley? Your face is fucked. Up!” I say, enunciating the last two words separately to emphasize my point. “I don’t even know how you could see to drive yourself over here with that swollen right eye. Your lip is swollen and hanging damn near to your chin, your cheek is enlarged and discolored, and—”
As Riley starts crying, I cut myself off. But damn. My sister looks like she’s morphing from Buddy Love to Professor Clump.
Riley is five-two, one-hundred-twenty pounds, if that, and soft-spoken. That bastard is six-one, two-hundred-fifteen pounds of muscle, and loud and aggressive as hell. I’ve always hated my sister’s husband, but as long as he didn’t physically harm her, I stayed in my lane.
I didn’t like the way that he spoke to her or gaslighted her, but she insisted that she was fine and she could handle him. My brothers, Quinton, and Chase, both had conversations with him before, but it seems like it didn’t do any good.
“Listen, I’m going to find him, and when I do, I’m about to pop one off in his ass.”
“Bayleigh, please don’t go over there. You’ll make things worse,” Riley pleads.
“What the fuck ever.” I pull my door closed and put the car in gear as she runs to her car.
I zoom past Georgette, who stands in the doorway of my shop, looking stunned as hell.
Riley pulls out of the parking lot behind me as I squeal onto the street, burning rubber.
I don’t make it to the red light at the corner before Georgette calls me.
I ignore her calls, but I do speak to her aloud in my car as if she can hear me. “Georgi, don’t you dare fucking call Z on me.”
