Hard Candy Saga

Book 3: Hard Candy

by Amaleka McCall

Genres: African American Urban; African American Women's Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Candice Hardaway is the daughter of rising New York drug kingpin Eric “Easy" Hardaway, who has plenty of money and just as many enemies. When Candy arrives home from school and finds that her entire family has been murdered, she runs to the only person she can trust—her uncle Rock. Joseph “Rock" Barton is a reclusive first-class “cleaner" who performed hits for Easy and ultimately became part of the Hardaway family. When he takes Candice in, it's not long before she asks him to teach her the skills necessary to take revenge on the drug dealers responsible for killing her family. Candice, now known simply as Candy, uses her beauty and skills to get close to her father's enemies, and one by one, Candy attempts to exact her own dose of revenge. In the process, she uncovers some long-buried secrets that she was never meant to find out. Those secrets will destroy the only family member she has left. With Uncle Rock dead, Candy sets out to learn more about her father's buried past; but this time Candy quickly goes from being the hunter to the hunted, and more than one bounty is put on her head. Who will fulfill their need for revenge first—the people who really destroyed her family, or the hustlers that Candy wrongfully targeted? Will Candy be able to use her skills as a “cleaner" this time to stay alive, or will she ultimately need someone to save her from her enemies?

Release date: June 28, 2016

Publisher: Urban Renaissance

Print pages: 400

Sample

A raucous laughter erupted through the house. The strange men’s voices were muffled through the homemade ski masks they wore.

“Hold ya head up, nigga!” one of the men instructed, taking delight in his victim’s pain.

Easy did as told. His neck, snapping left and right as they took turns hitting him, was throbbing with an unbearable shooting pain. Another blow to the face caused something to crack at the base of his skull. It felt like a fire had erupted in his brain. The pain rendered him speechless with shock.

“You a tough guy? You ain’t gon’ try to scream, beg, ask for mercy or nothing?” one of the masked intruders belted out.

Easy felt the butt of a handgun connect with his skull. His pride wouldn’t allow him to budge. He was cut from a different cloth. From a rough childhood, he had clawed his way to the top of the drug game. His reputation in the streets preceded him, and he wasn’t going to show weakness now.

“A’ight, nigga, if you so tough, get up and save your family, motherfucker!” one of the masked men taunted, his breath hot on Easy’s nose and lips.

Easy continued to let his head hang, his blood dripping on the expensive Oriental rug that covered his living room floor.

“You gon’ die a pussy even if you don’t say shit. We gon’ teach you a lesson, since you think you’re invincible in the streets,” said the main instigator amongst the intruders. He wanted Easy to beg for his life.

Easy’s body swayed from the incessant blows, but he still didn’t lift his head or give the men the satisfaction of knowing they were hurting him. The high-pitched screams of his youngest daughter, however, penetrated his resolve.

“Daddy!” Brianna wailed from some distant place. “Daddy, help me!” she screamed again, this time her voice more high-pitched and frantic.

Easy opened his battered eyelids, turning his head painfully toward the sound of his youngest daughter’s voice, which grew louder as the intruders dragged her by her hair to Easy’s location.

“I want my daddy!” Brianna belted out again.

Brianna’s voice caused a sharp pain in Easy’s chest. Out of his severely swollen eyes, Easy could see his baby girl squirming and fighting, blood all over her face. His breathing became labored as a surge of hot adrenaline suddenly coursed through his veins.

It was the first time Easy felt nervous since the entire ordeal had begun. He had conditioned himself to believe that he would die in the game, so this end wasn’t totally unexpected. But he’d never thought that his enemies would come after his family like this, especially when everybody in the streets knew his creed was “no women and children.”

“Now, nigga, I think you gon’ change ya fuckin’ mind. I want you to whimper, beg, cry, like the pussy you are!” one of the men said.

Easy closed his eyes in anguish. He didn’t want to see them kill his baby girl. At that moment, he envisioned himself killing all of the intruders slowly, torturing them mercilessly.

“You gonna beg or what?” another man asked him.

These men were hard-pressed to get Easy to beg, but it wasn’t happening.

“Eric, please! Give them whatever they want. Please,” Easy’s wife, Corine, begged.

When the men had finished raping and beating Corine, they brought her to Easy’s side, bound with nautical rope that had cut into her soft skin and left rope burns.

Easy had been unable to look at his wife until now. The only man to ever have her sexually, it hurt him to even imagine another man touching her, much less having sex with her. Easy was being emasculated before his family.

Corine let out another bloodcurdling plea. “Eric, please! I’m begging you!”

Easy didn’t budge. He refused to open his mouth. It wasn’t pride or selfishness; this moment was like living an art-of-war principle for him. The one rule he was going to live and die by was never to give in to the enemy when they would kill him, anyway. That would be like giving them double satisfaction.

“Eric!!!” Corine screamed, attempting to break through his calm reserve, but her pleas fell on deaf ears.

The intruder who had been taking the lead said, “A’ight, the tough-guy gangster is not going to fold on his own, so we’ll fold for him.”

“Take off her clothes,” the man demanded.

The men were ramping up their act in a desperate attempt to get a rise out of Easy. When he heard the man’s words, he began fidgeting against the layers and layers of duct tape and rope that held him captive. His knees burned from the kneeling position he was in. Easy felt as powerless as the first time he had been beaten by his caretakers as a child.

“Daddy!!” Brianna let out another throaty gurgle, her ponytail swinging as she tried to get away from her captors.

The first man slapped Brianna with so much force, she hit the floor like a rag doll.

Easy watched as one of the three men stood over her and began unzipping his pants. He bit down into his jaw, drawing his own blood. The metallic taste filled his mouth and made him thirst for revenge. Easy could feel vomit creeping up his esophagus, his blood boiling in his veins, but he did not utter a word.

“You still playing hard-ass? Well, I’m about to show you real hard-ass,” the same intruder said. “Do it,” he ordered, and the other two intruders forced Brianna’s small legs open. The main man climbed between them and used his manhood as a weapon. The little girl let out an ear-shattering scream from the pain.

Easy rocked back and forth now, his fist clenched so tight, he was sure the bones in his knuckles would burst through the skin.

“Yeah, you ain’t so tough now, Eric—I mean Easy,” the rapist huffed as he banged into the little girl’s flesh.

Easy finally recognized the man’s voice. His heart began to pound, knowing who was perpetrating this heinous act on his daughter.

“Junior?” Easy rasped, blood dripping into his mouth and eyes.

“What, nigga? You calling out my fuckin’ name?” Junior said as he continued to rape Easy’s youngest child.

“Oh shit! Man, how the fuck did he know it was you?!” one of the other men asked nervously.

“Fuck him! You shoulda never crossed me, Easy,” Junior said evilly.

“You’re a dead man,” Easy said, his voice muffled.

“No, you the dead man, bitch nigga!” another one of the intruders said, leveling his weapon at the back of Easy’s head.

Candice sat up, and her heart racing. Sweat had drenched her sheets and her pajamas. She touched her face and realized she had been crying in her sleep. Using her hands, she wiped away her tears and took a deep breath.

She flopped back down on her pillow, realizing the nightmare was over. “This is getting ridiculous now,” she whispered to herself as she tried to shake the horrible images from her mind. The dreams had now become a regular occurrence in her life.

Although she wasn’t in the house when her entire family was massacred in cold blood, she was the one to find her mother, father, older brothers, and little sister. Candice had deduced that the killers had viciously raped and sodomized her mother and her eight-year-old sister. They had also brutally tortured and killed her father.

“I miss you, Daddy,” Candice whispered. Then she looked over at the pillow next to her and relaxed a little. “Y’all still here, boyfriends? Always down to ride to the bloody end,” she whispered, speaking to the two semi-automatic handguns—a. 40-caliber Glock and a .357 SIG Sauer that she lay next to at all times.

She immediately thought of Tupac’s lyrics and smiled. “All I need in this life of sin is me and my boyfriends, me and my boyfriends,” Candice mouthed, changing the lyrics a little bit. She laughed at how she’d butchered the song. It still wasn’t nearly as bad as what Jay-Z had done with Pac’s song when he had done a remake, as an ode to Beyoncé.

The joke didn’t last long enough to erase Candice’s pain. She covered her eyes with her forearm. She wanted to feel better about today—the four-year anniversary of her family’s murders.

Although she had a beautiful luxury apartment, high-end furniture, and flat-screen televisions in every room, she was lonely. Candice found that material things only made her feel better temporarily. Nothing could be a fix for the loss of her family. In fact, she often wondered what life would be like if her family was still alive. She envisioned her father hugging her and her baby sister as he showered them with gifts, his smooth Hershey’s chocolate–colored face plastered with a smile. “Here, sweet Candy Cane,” he would say. “This is for you from the only man who will ever love you.”

Now eighteen, Candice wondered if her father, a revered figure on the streets of Brooklyn, would’ve threatened whichever boy she brought home to escort her to her high school prom. She knew for sure her two older brothers, Eric Jr. and Errol, would have been very protective of her. Candice was a tomboy, playing sports with her brothers and challenging them on a regular basis. She also wondered about her little sister, Brianna, who would’ve been twelve today. Candice could see her sister’s moon-shaped face and tried to imagine what she would look like on her twelfth birthday. On her twelfth, Candice had gotten a Tiffany diamond pendant and necklace with the matching bracelet. Her father had also thrown her the biggest party that year.

A smile formed as she pictured her mother’s face, the color of butterscotch, smooth and milky. Candice didn’t always get along with her mother, but she knew her mother loved her just the same. If she was more girly, she was sure her mother would’ve been easier to get along with.

Candice could still hear her mother’s voice fussing with her about coming home late from basketball practice. “Candice, why are you so late? You think the sun rises and sets around you? Eric, you have to do something about that girl! We are not going to keep waiting for her to eat dinner and to get things started in this house.”

Candice’s father, of course, would jump to her defense. “Corine, you leave my little Candy Cane alone.”

The day her family was murdered, Candice was rushing home from basketball practice. As she exited the A train station at a feverish pace, her basketball shorts whisked back and forth in the wind, and sweat made her white tee stick to her athletic chest and abs. She whizzed past the usual corner and stoop hangouts in the neighborhood.

Candice just knew her mother was at home beefing over her chronic tardiness. It was Brianna’s eighth birthday party, and the family had gathered to celebrate. Though it was still the middle of the week, a large party for family friends was planned for the upcoming Saturday.

Candice slowed her sprint to a walk as she neared home. She could only imagine the spread her mother would have laid out. A grand birthday cake that looked more like a wedding cake, with purple and white frosting that would surely be the center of attraction. (Purple was Brianna’s favorite color.) There would probably be enough food to feed the entire United States military. The Hardaways never spared any expenses when it came to their children’s birthdays.

Candice had been told several times to be home on time. In fact, her father had told her that he would have one of his workers pick her up from the gym, but she protested, saying, “Daddy, I’m old enough to get home by myself. Getting picked up is for lames.”

Candice hated being treated like a little kid. She was fourteen and needed to be a little independent. Her dad didn’t agree with her taking public transportation, but she was the one person who could have her way with him. She was her dad’s first daughter, and his heart definitely belonged to her.

When she got to her brownstone, she realized her keys were in the pocket of her jeans, which were inside her gym bag.

Candice placed her bag down on the stoop and fished around in her gym bag until she located the keys. As she was about to insert the key in the door, she noticed something that looked like blood on the doorknob, but she couldn’t be sure. Confused, she used her shirt to try to wipe the substance off, twisting her shirt over the knob to clean it, and the door clicked open.

Candice knew her father would have a fit if he found out any of them had left the door unlocked. They all knew what their father, known in the streets as “Easy,” did for a living, and so did the entire city of New York. With Easy’s line of work came danger and high paranoia, so he’d always preached to them about locking doors, making sure the home security system was on, and being cognizant of their surroundings.

Candice pushed the door open cautiously and walked into the grand foyer, where she noticed a trail of bloody sneaker prints. She dropped her gym bag and covered her nose with her sleeve. The smell of raw meat gone bad made her gag. Swallowing hard, her heart began pounding as she moved forward slowly. Although there was loud music blaring around the house, she thought the house was eerily desolate.

“Daddy?” Candice called out as she continued to creep forward. Her legs felt like butter melting against the hot sun, and an eerie, unsettling feeling took over her stomach. “Daddy! Mommy!” she called out as the hysteria began to build.

She reached the huge wooden sliding doors that led to their living room. “Daddy!” Candice cried out in a shaky soprano voice when she noticed blood seeping under the door. A tingling sensation came over her body as she reached out and slid the doors open. An unknown force seemed to be propelling her forward, but her mind screamed, Danger!

Candice’s eyes popped and her mouth fell open at the shocking sight before her. Open, vacant eyes, dead and unforgiving, stared back at her. Urine ran involuntarily down her legs.

Candice began to cry again. Her fists were balled so tight, it caused the veins in her hands to pulse fiercely against her skin. The hot tears leaked from her eyes and pooled in her ears. These tears, four years later, made her even angrier than she was the day she’d discovered their bodies.

She pulled herself up out of bed and stalked over to her dresser. She lifted the family portrait off the mahogany wood and ran her fingers over each face, sucking in the sobs now. She would’ve given anything in the world to have her family back. After finding them all dead, she wasn’t even able to attend their funerals. That was too risky.

Whoever killed her family thought that they had taken out every member. The news had reported that the entire family, including all of the children, had been massacred, so no one knew there was one Hardaway still alive. Candice didn’t just lose her family, but her identity as well, as she was forced to begin a new life.

Candice used the pad of her thumb to dust off the glass that covered the photograph. Gently placing it back on the dresser, she looked into the mirror. Her eyes were dull and sad, but familiar. They were her father’s eyes. She swallowed hard. She contemplated observing this miserable anniversary by staying in bed all day long, sulking and crying, but she knew that wasn’t an option. She had a mission to carry out.

She walked over to the far left of her bedroom, where she had set up a mini office, complete with a computer, a small file cabinet, a safe, and a printer that doubled as a fax and scanner. Although she didn’t need to really work or go to school in the traditional sense, she had set up her bedroom like a college dormitory.

Before she sat down to check her e-mails, she looked up at the cork bulletin board that hung above the computer desk. Smirking, Candice examined all of the grainy pictures she had thumbtacked to the gauzy cushion. She looked each man in the eye and studied his features, as she had done so many times before.

Her heart thundered with excitement. “One by one, day by day, I’m coming for y’all. Y’all motherfuckers ain’t never met candy harder than this piece. Hope y’all niggas got a serious sweet tooth.”

Candice jiggled her key in the familiar old rusted door lock. “Why the hell doesn’t he get this shit fixed already?” She grunted in frustration. “Unless he got this shit booby-trapped again.” Finally the lock clicked. “Damn! About time.” Candice sighed and rushed through the door. She was glad she had kept her keys to Uncle Rock’s apartment after she turned eighteen and moved out.

Everything was in its usual place. The sun streaming through Uncle Rock’s old-fashioned metal blinds accentuated the dust particles on his dilapidated furniture. She shook her head. “He must really miss my ass,” she whispered. When she lived there, she dusted and kept the place clean.

“Uncle Rock!” Candice called out. She didn’t get an answer. “Uncle Rock, you here?” she called again. There was no sign of her uncle, except for the herbal tea packet on the table, which indicated he’d had his liquid breakfast.

She heard a noise coming from the small bathroom to her left. Placing her face up against the raggedy wooden door, she shouted, “Uncle Rock, you all right?”

No answer.

Candice knew something was wrong. She rattled the doorknob, but the door was locked. Candice’s uncle was a master locksmith and booby trapper, so getting inside could prove very difficult.

Candice was worried sick about her uncle Rock. She knew he wasn’t well but wasn’t sure what exactly was wrong with him. Lately he had changed. He didn’t exercise anymore. She remembered a time when Uncle Rock would ask her to load his back down with the heaviest books in his library so he could do push-ups with them on his back. An impossible feat it seemed, but he would execute it effortlessly. Not anymore.

Uncle Rock was a very private man, who didn’t complain when he was in pain; in fact, he rarely complained about anything.

Candice decided to wait for him to come out of the bathroom on his own time, so she resigned herself to the threadbare sofa that sat in the middle of the nearly empty living room. She placed her fist up against her cheek in sheer boredom because there wasn’t even a television in the apartment. Now that she thought back, she didn’t know how she had ever survived as a teenager living there with no electronic entertainment. Maybe that was why as soon as she got her own place, she purchased every gadget imaginable, including flat-screen TVs, Blu-ray DVD players, and iPods. You name it, she had it.

The one thing Uncle Rock did own was shelves and shelves of books. When Candice first began living with him, she was so bored, she read every book in his library, including The Art of War and The Anarchist Cookbook. Looking around the room, she remembered her first night at Uncle Rock’s house, four years ago today.

Faced with the massacred bodies of her family members, Candice bent over and retched up the contents of her stomach onto the floor. A fine sheen of sweat covered her entire body, and her legs and hands shook fiercely. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hands and stumbled toward the front door and down the outside steps.

Terrified, Candice fled her house and ran down her block. When she got to the corner, she was out of breath, so she leaned up against the base of a silver lamppost to get her bearings. She whirled her head around in several directions. Although there was no one behind her or even looking at her, she felt like she was being chased. Her mind was flooded with wild thoughts, especially, What if my family’s killers are looking for me right now? She didn’t know where to go or what to do.

Candice’s father had always taught her and her siblings to be wary of the police, so she never even considered calling 9-1-1. But then she remembered something her father told her one day, after she’d heard him arguing with one of his workers named Junior.

“Daddy, what’s wrong?” she had asked her father as he paced the floor, clearly fuming mad. She wasn’t used to seeing him so upset and angry.

Inhaling deeply, he walked over to her and stroked her head. Candice could tell he was fighting to keep his composure, since he didn’t like to display anger in front of his children.

He bent down and got on eye level with her and said gently, rustling his hands in her hair, “If anything ever happens to me or your mother, you and your brothers and sister run straight to Uncle Rock. He is the only man I trust with your life, Candy Cane, even if your mother thinks you’re hard like a boy.” Then he picked her up and hugged her tightly.

Candice could tell he was in a better mood already. “Daddy,” she said breathlessly as he held her tight in his arms.

“Yes, Candy Cane?”

“I can’t breathe.”

Candice faked like she was suffocating, and they both busted out laughing.

With the memory of that day flooding her mind, Candice fled to the one person her father had trusted with her life.

Gasping and sweaty, she banged on the door three times before Joseph “Rock” Barton finally pulled back the door to his tiny apartment. Candice’s chest was heaving and she was covered in sweat. Not only had she practically run the entire distance on foot, but it had taken her a while to remember the specific neighborhood and house where he lived.

Candice knew she looked half-crazed, her eyes stretched wide and wild, her body trembling with suppressed emotions. She looked up at Uncle Rock and opened her mouth, but no words would come out. She then jumped into his arms, which caught him completely off guard. If he wasn’t the master of balance and coordination, the jolt would have sent both of them tumbling to the ground.

Shocked and at a loss for words, he stiffly held on to Candice’s trembling form. Of course, Rock recognized Candice as the eldest daughter of his longtime friend and business associate, Eric “Easy” Hardaway. Candice was sobbing into his neck, while her long legs dangled from Rock’s rigid arms.

At fourteen, Candice was tall for her age, and she loved to play basketball. This much Rock knew about her, since he was a regular at the Hardaway home. Easy had always made him feel like a part of the family, even instructing his kids to address him as Uncle Rock, which he found deeply amusing.

Uncle Rock stood rigidly, holding Candice as she cried. This was the closest human contact he’d had in fifteen years, aside from the handshakes and shoulder bumps he shared with Easy whenever they met to discuss business. Candice finally moved her wet face from Uncle Rock’s neck and spoke through her tears. Rock’s ears were ringing, and his stomach muscles clenched anxiously. He knew he wouldn’t like what was about to follow.

“Daddy told me . . . that if... if anything ever... ever happened to him and Mommy that I am supposed to come to you,” she managed to blurt through gasps of breath.

Rock flexed his jaw so hard, his temples throbbed from the pressure.

But instead of continuing the explanation, Candice burst into more racking sobs.

Rock walked over to his raggedy couch and placed her down on it. Then he sat across from her in his favorite recliner, a beat-up, old-fashioned La-Z-Boy that looked as if it had been to Vietnam with him when he was in the Marines. The chair had holes everywhere, and the cushioning was spilling out in spots.

Rock looked around at the shabby décor, old moth-eaten curtains, scratched and chipped wood furniture, mismatched table chairs and worn-out couch and chair full of holes. For the first time, he felt slightly embarrassed about his home. He never had visitors, except for Easy, so he never paid much attention to such things.

“Candy, what happened to your daddy?” he finally asked, his voice cracking. He didn’t talk much, but when he did, it took a while for his vocal cords to work.

Candice looked over at him with her swollen eyes. “They are all dead! Somebody killed them. There was a lot of blood. All of them! Bri-Bri was naked and real beat-up. Mommy was tied up, and Errol had a cut on his neck. The birthday cake was still on the table, and Daddy’s head was busted open in the back. Eric Junior’s head was like, like almost missing. He was right by the door. There was a gun. And, and they all had tape and rope on their arms and legs!”

Rock listened intently, his face stoic, but his blood rushing hot in his veins, as Candice wailed, incoherent at times, describing the scene she’d come across. He was having an Incredible Hulk moment and felt like he’d just explode out of his clothes and turn into a monster. Her description of the scene was making him physically sick. Rock couldn’t help but think that what had happened was partly his fault, a residual effect of a hit he had recently carried out for Easy, killing one of Easy’s top workers, and an overwhelming sense of guilt transformed his mood.

He placed his head in his hands and squeezed his balding head. He felt off-kilter, like the room was spinning off its axis. Easy was his only friend and family. Rock was grinding his back teeth and didn’t even realize it. Feeling angry enough to kill someone with his bare hands, he gripped the edges of the recliner to prevent himself from bolting out of the chair.

“Can I please stay here with you?” Candice pleaded. “I don’t have nobody else.”

The question reverberated in Rock’s ears like a loud explosion. He knew he wasn’t equipped to take care of a fourteen-year-old girl. His lifestyle, his home, and his profession were not at all conducive to child rearing.

Rock stared at the helpless teenager, speechless. A self-proclaimed loner, he hated noise and relished quiet. He didn’t speak much and often stayed up all night long studying his craft and doing research on his marks. All he had in his home was a bed, recliner, couch, chairs, bookcase, refrigerator, stove, and very little food. He was a dedicated professional and spent nearly all of his time preparing for his hits.

Yet, something deep inside his chest stirred him to life. He wanted to be there for her, but he knew he had long since closed his heart to love or affection, which she clearly needed right now.

“Uncle Rock, did you hear me?” Candice asked softly. She could tell he was uncomfortable with the situation, but something in his eyes told her he would keep her safe.

“You’re here early,” Uncle Rock’s voice boomed behind Candice.

She jumped, startled out of her daydream, and turned toward his voice, and a sense of panic set in when she looked at him. He looked unbelievably thinner and older than the last time she’d seen him, two weeks ago.

She furrowed her eyebrows with worry. “Uncle Rock, are you okay?” she asked, noticing that he dabbed at his mouth with a rolled-up white towel. “I wish you would tell me what’s wrong. Since I moved out, you seem like you’re sick. Please tell me what’s wrong,” she pleaded, the corners of her mouth pulled down in dismay.

Rock walked over to his raggedy La-Z-Boy recliner and flopped down. He clutched the towel like Linus would his security blanket.

“Are you going to work today? Because, on a day like this, I think you should take off. It’s not like you need that job, anyway.” Rock was an expert at changing the subject to avoid questions about his health.

Candice rolled her eyes in frustration. “Yeah, I’m going in. I just came by to check on you. I wish you would tell me what’s wrong. You’ve been losing weight, and you haven’t been working out. We haven’t even been to the gun range in weeks,” she said, pressing the issue, concern lacing her words.

“I’m a big boy. You need to stay focused on taking that test and getting your diploma.”

Although Easy had left a trunk full of money behind in Rock’s care, which he had given to Candice when she turned seventeen, Rock still wanted her to get her high school equivalency diploma. He had spent years homeschooling Candice during the day after she had moved in with him. At the time, he believed that it was the only way to protect her. In Rock’s assessment, the killers assumed they had killed the entire Hardaway family, so Candice couldn’t risk going back to school.

Rock had made all of the funeral arrangements, since Easy didn’t have relatives and Corine’s had disowned her after her marriage. However, he’d made sure that Candice had a very private service prior to the public viewings and burials. Rock was amazed at how many of Easy’s own enemies had come to the services just to make sure he was really dead.

Candice sucked her teeth and stood up. She knew Uncle Rock meant well, but she wasn’t interested in taking the GED test. There was only one thing she was interested in these days.

“I gotta go,” she said. “I just came by to let you know that I’m okay with today. I know I usually fall apart on this day, but for some reason today I feel fine about it. I’m going to work.”

Candice had tried to convince Rock that she was working as a bartender during the evenings and studying for her GED during the day. But Rock knew better. He eyed her up and down seriously. He knew when she was lying and telling the truth. Rock knew exactly what had her preoccupied, and it definitely wasn’t a job or a test.

Over the years he’d studied Candice like she was one of his marks, watching her body language and listening for hidden meanings behind her words. Over the last four years, he had come to know her like she was his own child. He had actually started to feel like she was his daughter.

Rock knew when Candice was hurting or happy. He was there for her whe