Vicious Hate (Westbrook Blues Book 2)

by Thandiwe Mpofu

  “Your dad teach you that?” He questions, prying into my business.

  “That asshole doesn’t know shit about football.” I grit out, thinking back to what happened a few hours ago. Noah bursts out laughing as Emmett and George walk closer, but it’s not a happy laugh. It’s hard and angry.

  “Yeah, well, as long as he doesn’t discriminate against your brother and leave every chance that he gets after making promises.” Noah says.

  He’s got daddy issues huh. . .interesting.

  “Of course, it’s nothing like having someone shove their stupid, ridiculous beliefs down your throat.” He continues.

  “Adults are assholes.” George says, watching the door, but I know he is looking around for his sister, maybe he knows that she is close by. Star is nosy.

  “Whoa, you cuss too?” Noah questions with a laugh.

  “I try not to do it in front of my sister. I won’t be responsible for teaching her that.” George says.

  “What’s wrong with your family? You all look happy.”

  “Happy? They think we are stupid but sometimes I think Richard is not my father and my mother can hardly tolerate my sister and I.” He explains.

  “Is that whyyy. . .she. . .loooks. . .after. . .you?” Emmett stutters but no one laughs, we all look at him like an equal because he lacks nothing to us. To be honest, he looks tough as nails, not someone you’d like to mess with.

  “Astraea? She feels lonely at times. Doesn’t fit in anywhere so she tries to create her own foundations, giving affection where she thinks it lacks. It was her idea to approach you all.”

  “She’s confident. I like that.” Noah says just as I catch a glimpse of Star’s hair by the window. She is watching us.

  “So, you are all comfortable just sharing your family joys with just about anyone?” I question, eyeing each of them.

  “No one is to be trusted.”

  “I don’t mind. I think we were always going to be friends. It’s just you are a hard pill to swallow King.” Noah says, eyeing me. “And Easton, you are too quiet at times. I never know what to make of you.”

  “And now you what. . .you are good with it?” I question.

  “For that spying girl thinking that we can’t see her? I will do anything.” Noah says. “And besides, George, you are a great guy and I desperately need friends to mess shit up with.”

  “Funny, that’s what Astraea said about me. Actually, that’s the same thing she said about each of you the day we moved in.” George says with a laugh. “Speaking of which. . .”

  “Raea, can you get me a bottle of water!” He shouts, without turning around. I guess he also knows that Star is snooping.

  She comes out carrying a jug of lemonade and a stack of plastic cups.

  “I have lemonade. Come get it!” She shouts back. It’s been hours of us playing makeshift football, we are all dehydrated so we walk over to where she stands by the little patio table.

  “I don’t use plastic cups, my mother said they’re not good for you.” Noah says as Star and George begin pouring the lemonade for everyone.

  “Oh suck it up, Noah. She isn’t here.” George says and passes Noah a cup who takes it with hesitation but drinks the juice anyway.

  I watch, trying not to be fascinated as Star pours a cup of lemonade then walks over to where I stand and extends it to me. She doesn’t say anything, she just stares at my bruise, then back at me. If she is looking for an explanation, she’ll be looking for a long time.

  She turns on her heel but before she can walk away, I grab her wrist. I need her to understand that I’m going to give her hell.

  “I’m going to break you.” I whisper, for her ears only but to my surprise, all she does is shoot me a look, her eyes twinkling.

  “I know you will.” She whispers back with a sweet smile that almost looks devilish.

  Confused by her, and feeling like I don’t really know what to do with her, I warn again.

  “You’re going to cry.” I whisper.

  Stars don’t cry is what I really want to tell her but I don’t. Somehow, I think she’s not ready for that yet.

  “As long as you wipe my tears away.” She whispers back, not taking her eyes off of me for even a second.

  I’m too young to understand that this moment sealed our lives. These were not just whispers between two enemies butting heads. These were heated whispers that shifted the dynamic of everything about us.

  I accept the lemonade from her then let her wrist go. She watches me for a second longer as I take a tentative sip of the lemonade she gave me. Knowing her, she might have poisoned it but it seems alright, then she turns around and looks at the boys.

  “You need a name!” She announces and her brother groans as if he knows that his sister loves doing lame things like that.

  “Raea, no. We literally just met. And we’re not a boy band.” George complains. Noah and Emmett agree but I just watch her.

  “A boy band? God no! You are too rough around the edges for that. And besides, you can’t sing to save your life.” Star retorts, rolling her eyes.

  “So why Raea? You can’t go around naming everything.” George tries to reason with her, but she ignores him, her eyes now locked on me.

  Chills run up and down my spine with that one look. Why it bothers me though, I have no idea.

  “Because putting a name on something makes it all real, makes it believable even. There isn’t much of a risk that it goes away.” She explains softly, captivating me and the boys all at the same time.

  That’s some deep stuff for a girl her age to say. Like I said before, she’s odd.

  “Besides, you guys have magic and something else. . .what is that word. . .George help me out.” She demands.

  “Chemistry.” He says with an eyeroll as if this happens all the time.

  “Yes! You have chemistry and magic! Which is why I’m going to give you the name that the rest of this rich and ugly place will always know.”

  “Why?” The question comes from Emmett, and I have to admit, it’s one that we all want an answer to.

  “Because you’ll not only play football together—but you’ll always be friends. Always.” She says, with a solemn energy about her that steals my breath away. It doesn’t sit well with me. Not one bit.

  I’m about to disagree and tell her this isn’t a fairytale but Noah beats me to it, who echoes my thoughts in a nice way. Besides, I think she actually likes him.

  “Says who?”

  “Says me! The one who brought you together. Now, you will be called the Blue Boys.”

  We all make disgusted faces, looking at her with horror. That name is just crap. No one will take us seriously with a name like that. Hell, I wouldn’t take me serious with a name like that. It just sounds wrong. Blue Boys? Seriously?

  “No.”

  “Yeah, that’s a horrible name.” Noah agrees after me.

  “Raea, please no names.” George says with exasperation.

  “Yeah, I don’t like it.” Emmett echoes.

  “I said Blue Boys! And you will keep it.” She stomps her foot hard, like a whining child who isn’t getting her way.

  “Okay calm down. As you say your highness.” Noah jokes.

  “I’m not a pretentious royal.” She says while cutting her eyes at me. I think she knew who I was when she spotted me.

  The son of the bastard that lives at the top of the hill. She, just like everyone else, knows the Kings.

  That alone irritates me all over again and I narrow my eyes at her but she raises a brow, obviously challenging me. But I don’t want her to know me based on who my father is. I have power in my own right and as we stare at each other, I make a vow to myself that one day, the entire world is going to bow at my feet, her included.

  Especially her.

  “Why blue?” Emmett asks after a pause. I like his silence. He never rushes or feels any kind of panic to fill in the silence, he just exists comfortably in it, not giving a damn if it bothers anyone
. I can tell he’s smart and very observant.

  But the way he looks at Astraea, as if she makes him happy after just knowing her for a few hours, almost makes me see red.

  “Because I hate the color.” She says, looking at me as she does. There isn’t a hint of a smile on her face nor her eyes, she doesn’t like me that’s for sure.

  “And so you want to give us a name you hate? Explain to me again how that makes any sense, Raea?” George asks his sister, running a hand through his messy waves, the shade much like his sister’s.

  “Because you all have this hate about—yes, you too George. I don’t know what it is though, but I’ll find out.” She declares with a glint in her eyes that makes me fist my palms.

  She knows nothing about hate, she knows nothing at all about pain. Who is she to talk?

  But that’s the thing isn’t it? She knew exactly what she was doing and knew that the boys would soon fall in line with her and what she wanted. And I hated her for it.

  I hated the way all three of them would rush to do what she wanted. I hated the tyrannical way she ordered them around but she would always take care of them.

  She would always check on me too, she talked to me like she has known me for a long time and I hated her for it and soon, she started hating me too for the messed up stuff I did to her as summer passed.

  During that same summer, the boys and I became really close. They told me why they hated me before but after noticing that Astraea considered me as part of her little empire family, we gave each other a chance.

  Besides that, there was a realization that our parents hated each other. My mother really disagreed with the fact that I was friends with Noah and Emmett but when it came to the Fields twins, she was livid about it. Constantly telling me to stay away from them.

  As for my father, he was under the impression that I was just following instructions not knowing that I was, in fact, hatching a plan of my own. Along with the boys that I soon learnt were all facing their own demons. It’s as if we were born with a curse that Westbrook Blues only intensifies.

  What we failed to realize, what I failed to see was, I had a weakness already. We all had a common weakness.

  It was in the form of this girl that one day became the reason why I bothered with life. The reason why waking up each morning was possible. She was all I wanted to see, obsessed with the need to be around her, wanting her attention on me.

  She was the reason why I fit in. I had found where I belong because of her, or more accurately, she had forced it on me. But whatever, I wasn’t done with her. Not by a long shot.

  But in the shadows, lurked eyes that were closely monitoring my interactions with her. Eyes that belonged to the devil who then took her away from me.

  Present day & time

  “Hell, I got rid of the other one too.”

  Denise King’s words echo into the silent, empty stadium like she just announced them through the loud P.A system that was just being used a few minutes ago during the game. They echo back to me and volley against my chest so hard that it feels like ey knocked all the breath in me, out of my system.

  “Denise!”

  I know that voice! It belongs to my mother, but I can’t be sure because suddenly, I can’t see anything anymore.

  I can’t feel anything. I can’t breathe properly and I feel like an eighteen-wheeler, Mack truck just smashed into me, and I was now the road kill.

  Because that’s what I am to Denise, her road kill and she will by all means hunt me down until I am laid bare—bleeding to death in the middle of the highway, like a bad surgery in Grey’s Anatomy.

  To complete the circle of life, as if that wasn’t enough, there is a heaviness pressing down on my chest. More like an elephant is doing some kind of dance on top of me and I’m all but an observer to my own destruction.

  I just can’t breathe.

  And it’s painful.

  “Oh, fuck off, Amanda. The girl has a right to know!”

  “It’s none of your business, Denise and nobody asked you any of this.” My mother’s voice is shrill, as if she can hardly catch a breath. Somewhere in my peripherals, I can see her waving a shaky finger in front of Denise who is all but unbothered.

  This can’t be happening right now.

  “Hell, I got rid of the other one too!”

  What on earth does Denise mean by what she just said? Fuck, what does she mean by everything she just said? Every single thing that just came out of her mouth from the moment she stopped me up until now, is nothing but fire from hell.

  Fire coming out of the devil’s mouth. . .

  My heart stops. I swear, it’s not beating at all.

  The ‘other one’ for me would have to be my twin brother. Fuck, George was my only ‘other one’ for so long that the deep hole in my chest will never be filled up. And this woman just confessed to getting rid of him?

  My head reels back as I stare at Denise, my jaw dropped.

  That doesn’t make any sense, Denise is just too smart to ever admit to murder. But then again, that malicious, evil glint in her eyes makes me realize something. . .anything is possible in Westbrook, where vindictiveness breeds like mosquitos in a hot, wet area.

  “What. . .?” I start but my voice is barely above a whisper.

  It’s hoarse and my throat is dry like I just swallowed a desert, my heart begins pounding like nothing else I’ve ever felt in my life.

  Did she ‘get rid of’ George?

  I know she doesn’t like me, hell, she just announced to everyone that she is the one who got rid of me before, but George?

  “Why?” I try to speak up again, but my voice breaks, no one pays any attention to me. No one hears me as there is screaming going on in front of me. Both women going toe to toe as if they are about to knock the Holy Ghost out of each other.

  But that’s just horse shit. On which planet would either one of them—Denise King the devil herself and my mother, Amanda Fields a whore by the admissions of the same devil—have something so divine and pure in nature?

  I want to speak up.

  I want to say something with my entire being. I want all this screaming to stop but there is an eerie silence about me. All I can hear, all I can feel, all I can think of is what Denise just said.

  “Hell, I got rid of the other one too.”

  “Mother.” Ace’s voice booms across the empty stadium, stopping everyone in their tracks, my heart included.

  I look over to him, noticing how his eyes are so damn dark, the blue is almost gone., but his face, it’s so damn expressionless, as if he isn’t surprised by what his mother just said.

  “Alex.” Denise stills as her gaze connects with her son, her eyes widening as if she wasn’t aware that he was there all along.

  And the Oscar of the century goes to. . .

  “You don’t want to say something that you’re going to regret.” Ace starts, staring down at his mother with a coldness that rivals the one that has since settled deep within me.

  “Oh Alex. . .” Denise starts but my mother cuts her off.

  “Listen to your spawn of a child, Denise! I never wanted him anywhere near my daughter. So you better shut up right this instant.” My mother shouts, her entire body trembling.

  “Oh if there’s anyone that should stay away from my son, then it’s your tramp of a daughter that you never wanted in the first place!” Denise seethes and I gasp, feeling like a fish out of water, about to die.

  Confusion rocks inside me as Denise’s words hang in the air like stench of road kill after a few days. I’m swaying on my feet, I feel like at any moment now, I’m going to collapse. But I don’t care about that. I care about what this bitch just said.

  The voices in my head are back again. They start whispering, buzzing around, adding to the confusion and the numbness I feel. Standing there like a freaking, swaying statue. Somewhere in my head is also an image of my brother, filtering in with all the madness blowing up like freaking popcorn on New Year’s Eve.
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  George.

  The other half of my life. Gone, and murdered in cold blood. . .at the hands of this bitch in front of me!

  “I told you to shut up!” My mother screams.

  “Amanda dear, calm down. Did you take your medication this morning?” Denise taunts.

  “I would slap your two faced, plastic face to hell but I don’t know which one to start with.” My mother responds with just as much vigor and ire in her voice.

  There is a screaming match in front of me, but behind me as well as around me, there is just pure silence and tense energy coming from three boys that should be stepping in. They should be angry by now. They should be demanding answers from this. . .this witch. They should be enraged like I am.

  But they are simply silent.

  I expect them to start grilling Denise, or at the very least, demand answers to what she meant by ‘I got rid of the other one too.’

  Those words are stuck in a loop in my head, demanding to be answered. I want the boys to step in and do something but all they do is just stand there, watching two women go at it like fucking chickens.

  What the ever loving fuck?

  I’m barely cognizant of Kim’s palm over her no doubt open mouth. Sometime between this craziness and the hell I’ve just been thrust in, while I’m completely in a state of absolute shock, Emmett moved and is now standing beside Noah, but no one says a single word.

  My mother and Denise keep screaming at each other but the boys do nothing. They just stare! They stare like they are not bothered at all by what is happening, or that the world just upended, knocking all meaning out of it.

  “For God’s sake, it’s going to come out anyway!” Denise screams at my mother, whose chest is heaving so fast I think she is going to give herself a heart attack.

  “You have no idea what you’re about to do, Denise.” My mother cries.

  It’s only now as I stare at them, then back at the boys that realization dawns on me.

  In that moment, I notice two things.

  One, Denise King just confessed to ‘getting rid’ of my brother. Which means she is responsible for my brother’s murder.