Carlton ✔

39| The Crumbling Faith

My eyes fell down shamefully, feeling his dominance over me. I felt like a child being scolded. Maybe that's what Caden considered me...a child. "Jovan is here to take Breanna away so I would go with him to our Father."

"First of all, that man is not my father," he glowered at me and turned to Jovan. "And you can take your sorry ass back to Theodore Hargrave and tell him that Carlton is now under my supervision. And if he wants anything from him, he can talk to me first. Personally. Not through some third-party street rat. Now fuck off."

The colour had faded from Jovan's face. He stared right back at me with wide, vengeful yet miserable eyes. "We had a deal."

"Get the fuck outta my house!" Caden's raged, his voice reverberating in the empty rooms. One by one, Jovan and his men walked out through the broken windows, kicking the already broken furniture.

After silence washed over us, Caden gestured his guards to leave the room too. His glare was falling everywhere but towards me. And I was readying myself for a mental beating.

From the corner of my eyes, I saw Breanna shuffle out from behind the couch. She gave me a sympathetic look and left the room as instructed by Caden.

Caden finally looked at me. He crossed his arms, his long hair falling sloppily over his face  showing clear signs of heavy hand combat. "You made a deal with who? Jovan of Detroit?"

It was so weird, to have been a free bird all these years and suddenly have someone assert this type of dominance over me. I didn't know how to react. Was this supposed to be some sort of brotherly love? Or him just being a dick? "It was nothing-"

"You know why they call him that dont you? He betrayed his gang in one of the biggest illegal arms deals in Detroit. His name stems from betrayal and you made a deal with him?"

I knew that. But Jovan had always been nice to me. He treated me like his own. "Father wanted me home."

"Then you're doing all of this for what? Just to go back into that rathole?!" He meant my Father's house. "You know that if you go now, you might never be able to come back out?"

Surprising. I was actually afraid of my elder brother. "I-I think it's important, since he's calling me home with such urgency."

He straightened when I said that, searching my eyes to find sincerity. "It's either him or me, Carlton. You really just fuckin' did all of this to go back there like a dipshit?"

He rubbed his face with fatigue, walking away from me, endeavoring to suppress his emotions like he always did. But he failed. When his eyes met a few guards still in the room, he yelled at them furiously. "What're y'all lookin at?! Fuck off! Get out!"

Caden seemed upset. Really upset.

It's either him or me, Carlton.

Perhaps what was making him upset was that I didn't chose him immediately.

I was just standing there like an idiot, frightened to go closer to him. To my surprise, he looked back, a little bit calmer now. "Get some rest."

He left the room, leaving me staring at his back in awe.

For several minutes after that, I stood in one place, contemplating. I had no idea what the hell was going on anymore.

I was separated from my friends, Dylan was shot and I couldn't even see him, I was almost killed, Jovan came for Breanna in the middle of the night, Caden almost killed Jovan because of me, and now he knows that I was planning to go back home.

And when he indirectly asked me to chose him over my Father, I was silent.

He probably won't even help me any more.