Heartless Savage (Angels Halo MC Next Gen 7)

Rubbing at my forehead where a headache was already forming from lack of sleep, I flipped through my social media on my phone with my other hand. Ciana was already up and in her first classes of the day back in New York, but that hadn’t kept her from taking a selfie in her nursing scrubs that she had to wear to school every day. My beautiful cousin was going to make an amazing nurse, and she definitely knew how to rock the not-so-pretty green scrubs she and her fellow classmates had to wear.

Smiling, I loved her picture and kept scrolling.

The smile disappeared not ten seconds later when I saw a post by a girl I wasn’t familiar with. I frowned at the influencer’s name, wondering why she was in my feed…until I saw that my idiot brother had commented on her post. As I scanned what he’d said, my heart sank, and I tossed back my covers, jumping out of bed.

Not even bothering with a robe over my fuzzy Cookie Monster sleep pants and matching tank top, I stomped out of my room and straight into Garret’s. He was snoring away, blissfully unaware of his surroundings as I picked up one of his pillows and started pelting him in the face with it as hard as I could.

The first smack of the heavy pillow to his face startled him awake, and he started swinging his arms. But I’d had thirteen years to learn all my brother’s moves, and I stepped back before he could hit me, then swung and hit him again, knocking him back onto the mattress.

“What are you fucking doing?” he yelled when I connected again with a powerful hit to his mouth and nose. My only answer was to strike again. “Nova, stop!”

“You idiot,” I growled at him. “Do you think you can taunt Ramirez through his stepdaughter and get away with it? Are you so stupid that you don’t realize you are only baiting a pissed-off panther?” I hit him again just as he was trying to sit up, the force snapping his head back where it connected with the headboard—hard.

Good. Maybe it would knock some sense into his empty head.

I kept swinging the pillow until my arms got tired. Finally, out of breath and just too tired to lift the pillow again, I stood glaring down at him. “You think just because you go after his stepdaughter, no one will care? I don’t know what drugs you’ve been smoking and putting up your nose, but Ramirez adores his stepdaughter. He loves her more than he does his own son. You go after her, and he’s going to put a bullet in the back of your head.” My stomach cramped, and I tossed the pillow aside. “And if he doesn’t, Ryan will.”

Rubbing at his face that had red welts on it, he rolled his eyes at me. “I’m not scared of Ramirez or Ryan. Neither one of them has the balls to take me on.”

“Dumbass!” I screamed, slapping him in the face with my bare hand this time. “You’re not worried about Ramirez because you think Ryan will have your back. And you aren’t scared of Ryan because you know I won’t let him hurt you.” My palm was starting to sting from how hard I was smacking him, but that didn’t stop me. “Well, what are you going to do when you move to New York and I’m not there to get you out of trouble? I can’t always protect you, Garret!”

His arms caught hold of my wrists and tucked them back against my body before he rolled me beneath him so I was trapped. “I don’t need you to fucking protect me,” he snarled. “The world doesn’t revolve around you, Nova. I can take care of myself just fine without your help.”

I snorted. “Yeah, okay. Next time Ryan goes after you, don’t expect me to save your sorry ass, then. I’ll just let him kill you and then stand over your lifeless body, telling you ‘I told you so.’”

“What the hell is going on in here?” Dad’s voice boomed from the doorway. “Garret, let your sister go. Now.”

He rolled off me and got off the bed on the opposite side of the room from the door. “I was only protecting myself. She came in here beating on me.”

Dad’s green gaze scanned over Garret, his lips twitching when he saw the red marks on his son’s face and the scratch I must have made when one of my nails scraped over his cheek. “And what did you do to make her decide to beat your ass, boy?”

“I haven’t done shit to the little princess,” he grumped.

“Tell him,” I commanded through clenched teeth. “Tell him how you’re baiting Ramirez’s stepdaughter. How you told he

r you were going to do those vile things to her.”

I shuddered at the images that had entered my head as I’d read what Garret had posted. How he was going to tie her up, starve her, hurt her. Ramirez might have been the enemy, but the real evil was standing right there in that bedroom with me.

I couldn’t imagine my brother doing any of those things, but the fact that he’d threatened them in the first place told me that he wasn’t even worth saving.

“What did you do, Garret?” Dad’s voice was full of fury and steel as he took a step into the room.

Mutinously, Garret kept his mouth shut, glaring down at me like I’d betrayed him.

“Garret!” Dad’s roar shook the windows.

“I would never do it,” he said in a petulant voice. “It was just talk.”

“Nova.” Dad’s voice was softer now, but his eyes were locked on my brother, and the look in them was enough to have me jumping to my feet. “Get ready for school. Your mom will drop you off. It’s Max’s day to pick you up.”

I didn’t argue. I knew the schedule. Max was supposed to pick me up, but I’d also promised to go shopping with him after school. Not wanting to see Garret being murdered, I made a run for it back to my bedroom. Shutting my door behind me, I grabbed my phone off my bed where I’d dropped it in my rush to confront my brother.

The comment he’d made on Calista Ramirez’s post made me physically sick to my stomach. How could any man say such things to someone, let alone actually do them?

Just reading the words made me want to go back and hit my brother a few more times.

Maybe this time with a baseball bat.