Page 28 of Stone’s Cage

"He raped my cousin. So good riddance to fucking bad rubbish." I said the words fast, as if I couldn’t hold them in my mouth long enough. Forgive me, forgive me.

"No shit. Well that's karma."

Something about skinny Juice saying "karma" makes me want to laugh, but I know it's just nerves.

"What's so funny?"

"I don't know. I just think it's funny that you said karma." I pause and then with a hand on hip ask again. "So who did it? Hooks or Wyrms?"

"You're a fledgling, so you don't get to ask those questions," he says taking a long pull on the cigarette.

"I'm new but I'm not new. I got skin in the game here. Who shot him? I want to go thank that motherfucker that did it." Again, those words came out in a rush. I have to steel myself, make myself say these things. It was the means justifying the ends. "They had no idea the trash they took out."

He blows smoke away from me now that he thinks we're friends. "Hey, he was sure painted a pretty boy in the newspapers. That other one, Monica, was a fucking hooker. But him. He seemed clean. Funny the cops didn’t think so. He was a fucking pretty boy."

"Yeah, he was anything but pretty boy," I say. "Believe me." He wasn't a pretty boy at all. He was a beautiful man, I want to scream at this asshole but instead, I turn to walk away. Bile heats the back of my throat. My brother. My poor brother. I'm afraid my face will give me away.

"You should probably talk to Shreves about it," he says. "Shreves knows who did him."

I rub my nose with a sleeve, turning around to face Juice one more time. "How can you be sure?"

"Because only two were packing that night on that corner. There were four of our guys on the street and the other two had knives. It was supposed to be an ambush."

"Why?"

"Punk kid called, made threats on Twitter. Said he'd made bank on Shreves. So, we were gonna take him down. Slice him, but he was with two other kids, all packing. And that Sam got in the way."

"So it was Wyrms?" I know I am on the edge of finding out. My heart lurches.

"Shit. I said I gotta go. Talk to Shreves," he says again. "No, it was Hooks. I told you, Shreves always has your back," and he says this as though he's exposing the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.

Chapter Fourteen

Stone

"Why do you throw fights?"

I'd just stepped out of the shower from work and had wrapped the towel around my waist. Wiping water from my face, I walk past Lily in the hall and step into the kitchen to make a protein shake.

"Just answer me. Do you? Do you throw fights just for the money? Juice says you throw fights and you get paid a lot."

The hardness in my voice is a measure of the secrets I need to keep. "What do you know about anything?"

"Well, I know you're not supposed to throw a fight. Isn't that against the rules?"

Lily stands there, touched by tragedy but so innocent of the world that has led her here. She's beautiful, sweet, kind, and calmly pets Tig as she puts me through hell.

Cramming some nearly slimy spinach into the blender with a cup of yogurt, I start scooping out an avocado and toss this in as well. "Listen, you don't know anything about any rolls. You didn't know about the dice. You don't know about anything on the street. You waltz in here. And then you start to, you know, judge me because I throw fights. I told you I did."

"When's the last time you did it."

"Two months ago. But I did it for someone else. I did it for me. For the money."

"And why does Shreves want you to throw the one tonight?"

I flip the switch up on the blender so I don’t have to see the disappointment in her face, and I can buy a minute before answering her. I flip the switch down.

"If I throw this fight, then it proves I'm Shreve's boy again, that I'm this," I touch my forearm where the tattoo is. "And the odds at forty to one. Pretty astronomical."