My Bro's Hot Friend

Chapter V

6 years earlier...

Zack's POV

I haven't seen dad in a while. Instead, I have been having a hundred "stepdad's" a year ever since I was seven. They usually come through the kitchen window and don't talk to me. They go straight to my mom's room and stay there with her all night. Every afternoon before they come she says I either have to be sleeping when they arrive or I have to be listening to really loud music in my room, quietly, with the headphones she gave me some time ago.

I usually wake up with a strange man in his boxers leaving her room in the morning, leaving a few bucks on the kitchen counter. Sometimes they don't even have their boxers with them, but I have learned to stay in my room until at least noon so I can make sure that whoever came has left and I don't have any awkward encounters.

I remember once when I wasn't sleepy and I didn't put my music on. I was traumatized for life with all the grunts and moans I heard from the room next door.

I hated my stepdads. They never talked to me. They just wanted to fuck my mom for a night or two and then leave...

Mom was very liberal. She always let me stay out late in the street and rarely called me to see when I'd be home. My friends' parents were control freaks. They wanted them home by nine every night and would start calling them like crazy if they were late because they thought they had got themselves in trouble. But my mom was super chill. Once I only got home at one A.M. and she didn't even call me to see if I was alive. I remember getting home that night and seeing her passed out on the couch with a needle in her forearm. 

She was very sick, and she had to take her medicine every few hours, otherwise, she gets crazy... Her pupils get really big and she gets this really bad anxiety... She starts screaming at me for no reason and gets violent for some reason... She starts to puke and sweating a lot... It doesn't stop until she injects herself with the medicine again.

I don't live in a good neighborhood. I have woken up to the sound of a shooting happening outside my house, and almost got stabbed when I was coming home from school. 

This area of town is divided into groups. We have three gangs that are always waging war upon each other. One of them is mainly minorities who came here illegally. Mexicans, blacks, middle eastern... They are called the 22's as they are always wearing a baseball jersey with the number 22. They have tattoos with that same number... They own a strip club down the street where lots of drugs are sold. Mom told me there's a lot of prostitution there as well. A lot of gun deals are made there, and mom has also told me that a few men have been killed there.

Another gang that is really influent in here is the gypsy one... I don't know if we can call them a gang, since they don't classify themselves as one... They're just a really big gyspsy family that makes a lot of robberies around here. They break into houses and steal whatever they can, they point knives at people's throats and steal their wallets, phones, watches... Everything they can get their hands on...  They have loads of problems with the 22's, ever since one gypsy kid stole a pack of cocaine from one of the 22's... There was a nasty fight, that called the entire family and the entire gang... I remember hearing the shooting. Everyone in the houses near mine was freaking out. It was one of the scariest experiences in my life. Especially when a bullet went through my bedroom window and missed my head by a couple of inches...

Then we have the Italians. The Italians are really big and they don't just stick around with drugs, hookers, and guns... The Italians are really smart and have people spread out everywhere. They have a lot of information and lots of little headquarters that most wouldn't even suspect. Mattress shops, laundry places,  toy stores, coffee shops... They deal every single drug you could possibly imagine. They deal prostitutes and they even own a brothel. They kidnap kids and send them to Asia in cargo ships... And besides... They are contracted killers, meaning, that if you want someone dead, all you have to do is give them a name... And a fat amount of money...