Eden

Chapter 20

Major NSFW towards the end

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"Hi, Vincent,"

I looked back toward Devin, not really knowing how to react to seeing Cade. On one hand, I was really glad to see that he was alive and kicking even though I really wanted to hurt those motherfuckers who hurt him, while on the other hand, I was pissed as hell at him for not picking up his phone or at least giving us some sort of message to tell us that he we got to him.

"Why didn't you reply to our messages?" was the first thing I asked. Shitty of me seeing as his face was covered in bruises. They were all light colors, though. Not as dramatic as I had narrated them to be like before.

His face wasn't even as swollen as I had earlier thought, his top lip looking like it switched positions with its bottom counterpart.

"Vince, come on, you know I can't," he began defending.

"No, I don't, Cade!" I whisper-yelled so I wouldn't wake Devin up. "You're not telling me things, not even the ones that apparently puts even me in danger. Look, I just want to know that you're safe. Can you tell me that at least?" I begged. He looked at me for a couple of seconds before looking down at his shoes like they had suddenly become the most important things in the world.

I threw my head back and groaned before standing up from the seat, "Okay, then. What happened this morning? Why weren't you in school?" I asked.

"I can't answer that."

"What the fuck, Cade,"

"L-look, I didn't even think I'd be able to come here with the twenty-four-seven watch these people have on me, alright? This jacket isn't even mine. I exchanged it with some homeless person in an alley when I was sure they couldn't see me and told him to wear my face cap and keep walking in circles around a few blocks till I got on a cab and came here."

Gobsmacked, dumbfounded. Words that made up my face's constitution.

"What the hell do you mean by 'watched'? Are people threatening you, Cade? Have you gone to the police yet?" I asked.

"These aren't people I can go to the police for, Vincent," he reasoned.

"I don't understand, Cade, you're making it sound almost like you know who these people are," I asked. He paused for a bit and sighed.

"Look, I can't tell you everything right now, but you can know this," he came in for a close hug and pulled his mouth to my ear before whispering,

"My father got into some bad business with some fucking psychos. Now, the business went south under my father's care since he relapsed and stopped taking his depression meds, but the contract says that the deal and the access to the accounts would become null and void if my father were to die or become incapable of running the business."

"So, to avoid losing access to the account by killing my father, they are making me do some... work for them so they can pay the money into the account."

He dumped all that on me in the few twenty or so seconds that we hugged. I pulled back from him, "Why pay the money back into the account if your father can't do the business anymore, why don't they just allocate the funds somewhere else? And what kind of 'work' are they making you do? Is that why you have all these injuries? Is that why you leave every evening? And what does your father have to say about this, is he even trying to help you—"

"The fuck are you guys talking about that requires you to yell?" Devin's voice was groggy and dead sounding; a shell of himself. Cade sneakily tapped my shoulders before whispering, "Those questions are all questions that I can't answer." Before he pushed forward so he could sit on Devin's bed.