Page 12

“Dammit,” he curses when he realizes what he’s doing.

Thumping back against the couch, he meets my eyes and tries to match my stare.

When I refuse to give in, refuse to look away, his shoulders slump with defeat.

“I can give you some money, Eden, but I don’t have any work for you.”

My pulse quickens a little and I try not to show it.

I never expected him to offer me money.

He’s notoriously cheap. So cheap, he didn’t even help my mother with my father’s funeral.

“How much?” I ask, hoping there’s no desperation in my voice.

Mickey lifts half his butt off the couch and pulls out his wallet. He makes a show of opening it and thumbing through the cash. “A couple hundred.”

That’s it? That’s all he can spare for me?

“A couple hundred?” I repeat incredulously.

That will last a week, maybe.

He shrugs and tosses the money on the coffee table. “Time’s are hard. The economy isn’t what it used to be.”

I scoff, my blood beginning to boil with anger. “Weren’t you supposed to pay my father a few bags for that last job?”

Uncle Mickey’s jaw tenses and he looks away from me for a moment before he says quietly, “You know that job didn’t get completed.”

“So?”

“So I didn’t get paid.”

Normally, I don’t consider myself a bitch. Nor do I consider myself entitled. If it was just me, I would walk out.

Fuck, I wouldn’t even be here.

I’d go hungry. I’d sleep on the streets until I could figure something out.

I’m used to suffering.

But Abel isn’t.

I don’t ever want him to go through even a fraction of what I’ve been through.

If there was another way, any other way to protect him, I’d do it in a heartbeat. But I can’t hand him over to family. Mickey and my mom are all that I have. And I sure as fuck can’t hand him over to the state. I can’t trust them to put him somewhere safe, with people who won’t hurt him.

I’m the only one in the world he has for protection.

If it means I have to become an uber bitch, so be it.

When Mickey jerks his chin at the money on the table, considering the matter done, I glare at him like I want to stab him.

“So?” I snap.

His eyes widen a fraction then his cheeks flush with color.

Flustered, he says, “It’s all I have.”