The Fighter and His Tiger (Unexpected Love #1)

45. Sunday Week Eighteen

45. Sunday Week Eighteen

Although it seemed like a small defeat, in taking down Vincent, Dante had allowed for the Donatelli's to start attacking Mikael's networks from the bottom up.

Turns out, Vincent wasn't all that faithful to his father and gave up the locations of his stash houses and drug channels citywide — shocking that he was so disloyal.

It had been two days since Dante took in Vincent and the Donatelli's had attacked so much of Mikael's business that we were now just waiting to hear from Mikael so that we could negotiate.

Currently, I was sat in a booth at the back of Kasey's. Eli had asked me to wait for him after my work shift but it had been over 20 minutes since I had finished up and he had yet to show.

The telltale sound of my phone beeping with a text deepened my confusion as I read over the words Eli had sent me.

Boxer Boy

i've told them everything, tigru. even the stuff about me. you love them and you deserve to have them in your life

My brows furrowed as my gaze concentrated on my bright phone screen and my eyes scanned over the words repetitively as I tried to make sense of what he was saying.

It became clear though when I looked up to find Lana and Kins sliding into the booth and taking a seat my right with Tori and Kie taking a seat on my left.

"Hey," Lana uttered in a soft voice

"Uh, hi," I replied lamely which made her smile at me, "what are you guys doing here? I'm supposed to be meeting Eli."

Tori shook her head and I looked at her questioningly, "no, we spoke to him in school earlier this week and asked him to set this up."

"We've been going to your house, Rei," Kinsey informed me, "we feel so sorry for abandoning you."

Lana reached out and gripped my hand tightly in her own, "and we did abandon you Rei. Regardless of whether you were keeping secrets or not, we love you so much and we never should have walked out of that party like that."

Kinsey gave a sheepish smile as she looked at me, "that was mostly my fault, I was having a really rough night."

Slowly, I nodded at her, "yeah," I motioned to Kie, "I heard that things didn't go to plan with you."

"That's one way of putting it," Kie scoffed across the table and everyone chuckled lightly.

"We can talk about that in a second," Tori said as she reached out to grip my hand also, "we feel so so bad for what happened. Eli told us everything, Rei, as in he let us in on all the stuff that has been going on with you."

My eyes flickered to Kie and she nodded, "he told the whole group, Arik, Jasper, Kyle. We all know. He said that he was sick of lying and he didn't want to make you lie anymore either."

"But," I raised my hands to wipe at my moistening eyes, "I thought it was too dangerous for all of you to know."

Kie shrugged, "what's life without a bit of danger, babe."

I laughed at her response, "I've missed you guys so much."

"Oh, chica."

Lana wrapped her arms around me and I buried my head into the crook of her neck as I let every tear fall out of my body. I felt Tori hug me from behind but the awkward shape of the booth meant that Kinsey and Kie just had to hug Tori and Lana. I'm sure we made a comical sight as we sat there, hugging, laughing and crying in each other's arms.