A Good Thing (Completed)

Chapter 26

"I know, I know." I nervously licked my chapped lips. "Things have just been a little complicated. When I left Ricky, I wanted to make sure that I was somewhere where he couldn't track me down. In his eyes; I had written Cairo off completely, so he would never think that this would be the place where I'd be hiding."

"Hiding?" Kevin's brow raised, "why would you be hiding from him?" he asked.

"Did he hurt you?" McKenna asked as well.

"Uh, let's just say that things didn't work out. We were both alphas and we wouldn't bow to each other, I found out he was cheating and had enough so we got into a fight and he ended up kicking me out. Ricky has done this before, so I know that he's probably out there looking for me, but I'm so done. I want a fresh new start."

"You sure you don't want us to handle him?" Kevin asked.

"Oh, trust me, that really isn't necessary. I'm fine with just being done." I swallowed the knot in my throat. I knew my brother wasn't joking and that was the scariest thing to me. I knew what the James family was capable of and at the snap of a finger, they could make shit shake. That's the side of me that I wasn't so proud of, the reason why my father was in jail right now.

We were originally known as the Mullers which was my fathers' surname and ours before my mother changed it due to the stigma it carried. We weren't a mafia, we weren't a gang, we weren't anything vicious or violent. At least on paper we weren't. However, we had people that did things for us, these people were normally the ones that couldn't afford to pay us but needed a favor done and everyone knew that we had connections in higher places. We were able to lessen sentences in jail, we were able to sneak people into the country and give them a whole other identity, we were able to make people go missing if requested of us. We would do all of these favors in exchange for money or expensive jewellery, anything that could keep the lights on without us having to work a 9-5. My father had built this whole brand up years ago when he was younger and, in a gang, he would be going in and out of jail for it and decided that enough was enough, so he soon started hiring others to do his dirty work for him. These people were normally homeless, drug addicts, runaways, young guys tryna prove their strength. He would either split the profit with them after doing this favor or he would in return do a favor for them, like the ones I had listed above. Some of these favors were even as small as just giving them a roof to stay under, or even a change of clothes. He would make it happen.

My dad's business grew into something so big, bigger than any drug or gun issue in America, his whole black market of favors soon took over the streets and everywhere and we as his kids were soon involved. Trained for if he was ever to get locked up, which we doubt but not too long after we were trained in the business, it happened. My father got locked up and charged with assault and domestic violence against one of his side chicks. This lady was one that he had gotten close to and trusted, but soon he grew to find out that she was nothing but a police informant. So, he beat her until she could barely breathe and left her for dead, by the time he walked out of that motel room that night, the place was covered and surrounded by SWAT team, the K9 unit, police armed and ready to shoot, helicopters, everything. He knew that he could fight it and decided that he would just pay his time. He should've been charged with attempted murder but, once again due to our connections; he was serving time for assault with a deadly weapon. That was all, it was his crimes in jail that got him the additional time he was serving now.

Like I said before, we were trained to take over and with Kevin being the now, big kahuna of the whole operation; it made me fearful to even mention anything to him. I was always different growing up though, I wanted to be more like my mother who was the opposite of my father. I wanted to go to church, have a nice little family, even some kids. I had a passion for modeling and making clean money. Although, I could've used my connections, I decided that I wanted to do it on my own. I eventually decided that I wanted out of my name sake and out of this whole lifestyle that we were trained to live. I was frowned upon by everyone including my father, but he knew from the day that he saw me that I would be different, I was originally named Axelle, that my mother later changed so that we wouldn't be entangled in his mess. Axelle meant peace and that's what he described me as, the peaceful one.