Page 171 of Hate to Love You
“What? What’s wrong now?” I ask, my blood pressure immediately spiking.
“Oh fuck! What is that? Is that…blood?” He shouts to someone that isn’t me. “Holy shit! Is he shot?!”
“What?!” I shout into the phone. “Who? Who got shot?! Lev? Lev!”
But the call goes dead. And all I see is red.
“I just have one question,” I snarl menacingly to the young man staring up at me, his eyes wide with fear. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
“Um,” he hiccups, leaning slightly to the right. “I…I don’t think so, I just—”
“And what the fuck happened to all of your clothes?”
“Um, well, the sun was really hot, and I just thought—”
“You weren’t supposed to think,” I hiss. “You were supposed to obey. That was my instruction.”
“I know,” he says, hiccupping again. “But I thought—”
“There’s that word again,” I snap. “See you thinking, Pasha, is the problem here.”
There’s a shuffling behind me and Lev approaches carrying a handful of clothes. Angrily he slams them down on the sand in front of me, glaring at Pasha.
“Noah is gathering the rest, but now that you’re here Roman, I’m going home to ice my ankle.”
“See if the guys working on Wesley have an ice pack before you go,” I bark at Lev.
He rolls his eyes before begrudgingly limping over to the ambulance that has driven out to meet us.
Thankfully, the bullet my idiot brother drunkenly fired at Wesley had missed any vital organs, hitting him in the ass cheek instead.
But it has still hit him, meaning that he was injured, and now I have a royal mess on my hands.
I glare down at my brother, who sits with his legs crossed in the sand in front of me, his hand covering his genitals.
“Look, I know that you’re mad,” Pasha says, squinting at me in the blazing sun. “But do you think that maybe I could put on some clothes now? I’m kind of getting sand up my ass.”
“I don’t fucking care!” I roar at him. “Did I not explicitly tell you exactly what I wanted you to do, and exactly what not to do?”
“Yes, but—”
“This was supposed to be a simple fucking transaction, Pasha! Just one!” I roar. “So please explain to me little brother how that instruction translates to two fuckheads drinking absinthe and playing fucking war games on the dunes with the man you’re supposed to be buying guns from?”
Pasha opens his mouth several times but says nothing.
“Answer my fucking question!”
“Well, I’m confused because to be fair, you’ve asked me more than one question, Ro,” Pasha says, lifting his hand to block out the blazing sun.
He smiles at me, probably hoping that like so many times before, I will forgive him simply for being my little brother.
But no. Not today.
I kick him straight in the balls, sending him toppling over, coughing into the sand.
“You’re a fucking idiot!”
“Look, Roman, I…I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean—” My terrified brother says, as he sits on the ground next to the ambulance.