This is my first "Four Brothers" fic and I only recently just saw the movie, so I hope you enjoy!

Smoking was my one vice. I didn't drink or do drugs, I didn't gamble or prostitute myself. I smoked cigarettes, and I took pride in doing so since I enjoyed it so damn much, which meant I had to roll my own cigarettes. Bali Golden Shag Rolling Tobacco inside Golden Wrap Strawberry Tobacco Paper, lit with a Zippo lighter decorated with the dancing body of Elvis Presley. Nothing else in my life took such meticulousness, not even my job. That should've been cause for concern, but it just wasn't.

I was smoking the night I heard about Evelyn Mercer's untimely death. I'd used my last strawberry-flavored rolling paper, angering me to my very core as I was known to wake up in the middle of the night craving nothing but that strawberry taste on my lips. As I smoked, I'd contemplated a trip to the 24 hour convenience store a few blocks over; a store that turned out to be the last place anyone saw Evelyn Mercer alive.

Lynda Manning -- former (she said) pick-pocket extraordinaire -- had been the one to give me the news. She came into my room without knocking; something Lynda'd never done before, something she knew I hated.

"Something happened," she said, standing in the middle of my room, breathing heavily. Her sapphire eyes bulged out of their sockets. I'd never seen her this way before unless she was running from Detective Green or that idiot sidekick of his, Fowler.

"Are you gonna tell me or do I have to guess?" I asked, irritated that she'd violated my privacy, weirdly hoping it was something important and she didn't just need to borrow some money or my car.

"Evelyn Mercer's dead."

At first I thought I'd heard wrong. Evelyn Mercer dead? Not possible. She was old, yes, but healthier than I. She couldn't have died from natural causes, which frightened me. I found myself praying next; praying that she'd died in her sleep or something equally pain-free and pleasant.

"What happened?" I asked, though I didn't want to know. I really didn't want to know.

Lynda looked down nervously, shifting her weight wearily as though she didn't want to tell me. Probably afraid I would lash out at her, which wasn't unlike me lately.

"She was shot," Lynda finally confessed. "At that store where you buy your tobacco and shit."

Shot? What? If there was one thing in the world that made absolutely no sense it was Evelyn Mercer: dead by gunshot. Those words didn't even belong in the same sentence.

"Tell me you're joking," I warned Lynda. "You know how I feel about jokes."

"I wouldn't joke about something like this!" she exclaimed, offended. "What do you take me for?"

I realized she wouldn't joke about something like this and I felt badly for insinuating that she would. No apology was needed, thank God, as I wasn't big on apologies. Anyone who knew me knew that.

"Shot," I whispered, feeling lightheaded as I went into shock. "What are you talking about?"

"They said two guys robbed the place and shot the clerk and Evelyn, too."

"Son of a bitch," I sighed, scrubbing a hand not so gently across my face. All I wanted was a cigarette. During the news delivery, I'd smoked the hell out of my last strawberry-flavored paper and dropped it out the window. I didn't even remember doing it.

"Are you okay?" Lynda inquired quietly. She hadn't moved from her spot in the middle of my room.

I didn't answer. Instead, I got up and proceeded to rummage through my drawers. I couldn't move things out of my quickly enough, so I ripped the drawers out of the dresser, throwing them to the floor. There was a pack of Marlboro Reds hidden in one drawer, I was sure of it, for times like this.

"What are you looking for?" Lynda asked, but she received no answer until finally I found the stray pack of cigarettes in the very last drawer at the very bottom.

"Evelyn Mercer," I breathed, taking the pack and returning to my seat on the edge of my window. "Son of a bitch."

Although it was Evelyn I should've been thinking about, another person crossed my mind. I hadn't seen him in years, but I doubted he'd changed much. I imagined his reaction and the inevitable ripple affect his reaction would have on probably all of Detroit. Deep down I hoped no one would tell him of his mother's death. A heartless decision, maybe, but not spiteful. He would only cause trouble, and I wasn't the only person who knew that.

"Are you gonna call him?" Lynda questioned.

I looked at her, wondering if this was the first time I'd looked at her during the entire conversation.

"Even if I knew how to get a hold of him, no, I wouldn't," I said. I lit a cigarette, inhaling, satisified.

"She's his mother," Lynda argued.

"Was," I corrected because I needed to get used to the fact that Evelyn Mercer was dead. "And you don't know Bobby Mercer, do you?"

I must've angered her because Lynda came back with: "Not as well as you, Abby."

A misplaced smile graced my lips. "You will."