Chapter 3
Lyric Banks
“I was the one who knew him first.”
My brother Malik used to tell me not to follow behind him and his friends.
But I always did. That’s how I first saw Ares.
It was back when everybody just called him Lil Ghost, Ghost’s son, running wild through Compton, because his momma agreed to lower her standards as a mafia princess to be the mistress to a hood nigga.
And Ares made sure everyone knew he had something to prove. He and Malik were inseparable. They hustled together, fought together, bled together. Until Malik didn’t make it home one night. A drug war took him out before he ever got to see eighteen.
I was sixteen. Broken. Angry. Alone.
And Ares was there. He didn’t say sorry for your loss.
He didn’t hug me. He just showed up. He took me with him when he hit back at the niggas who did it, made me sit in the car while he handled business.
I watched him come out of that house, blood on his clothes, eyes darker than I’d ever seen.
That was the night I realized Malik was gone, but I still had someone.
I’ve been with him ever since. A decade in his shadow. A decade of him helping me build into a legitimate businesswoman. A decade in his bed. I had always been into fitness, so he bought me a workout studio, and I had been in business for six years, teaching Pilates.
So when I say Ares wasn’t new to me, I meant it. The world saw a billionaire. I saw the same nigga who used to sneak out Malik’s window with a pistol tucked in his waistband.
Tonight, it was just us.
The matte red bulletproof AMG Benz slid through wet LA streets low and mean, the kind of car you’d expect from a rich hood nigga, not a man Forbes just crowned a billionaire.
That’s what I loved about him. He never stopped being who he was.
No matter how high he climbed, he still touched the ground.
One hand on the wheel, the other massaging my thigh, he drove like a lunatic. Maybe he was. I leaned back, smirking at the way people’s heads turned when the Benz purred past.
We were supposed to be on a date. Wine, late-night food, maybe a blunt on the beach. But his phone rang, and that was it. Business. Always business.
“You rolling with me,” he said, no question.
“Always,” I told him. Because where else would I be?
We pulled up to a gated estate in Beverly Hills, the kind with marble columns and guards thicker than linebackers. I knew this wasn’t a regular meeting.
Inside, the air smelled like cigars and old money. Long mahogany table, crystal glasses, men in tailored suits speaking in sharp French. All of them were white men. All of them are Delacroix blood.
Ares walked in, black-on-black everything, dimples cutting when he smirked at his mom. Genevive was already there, sipping wine like the hood-mafia princess she’d always been. She spoke to me briefly and kissed me on the cheek. Genevive treated all of us like her daughter-in-law when she saw us.
The men looked at Ares like he didn’t belong.
But he made sure they knew he did.
He slid into the seat at the head of the table like it was carved for him.
“On commence?” he said, voice smooth. Shall we begin?
I sat beside him, quiet, legs crossed, nails tapping on my glass.
I’d been to these meetings before. I knew my role.
Watch. Listen. Be his shadow. I had been around Ares so much that I learned French.
He would teach me on drunken nights, thinking I wasn’t taking it in.
I even took an online class. I could understand it, but I sounded like an idiot when I spoke it.
So I wasn’t dumb to what was being said around me.
The talk turned fast. Money owed. Territory disrespected. A French cousin was trying to smooth things over, pretending the debt wasn’t serious.
Ares let them talk. Let them sweat. Then leaned back, voice low and cold. “Le respect n’est pas négociable.” Respect isn’t negotiable.
You could feel the tension choke the air.
One of the men, who was fat, pale, and arrogant, scoffed. “You think because your grandfather lets you sit at this table, you’re one of us? You’ll never be Delacroix. You’re just a nigger playing gangster.”
The room stilled.
Ares smirked. Slow. Deadly.
He pulled his gun out and put a bullet in the man’s head before anyone could blink.
Blood sprayed across the white tablecloth. The man’s glass toppled, red wine spilling.
Nobody screamed. Nobody gasped. Not even me.
Because that was Ares. He didn’t like fear around him.
He wiped the barrel with his napkin, set the gun back down, and leaned forward, eyes sweeping the table like the king he was. He loosened his tie.
“Quelqu’un d’autre veut parler?” Anyone else want to speak?
Nobody did.
I felt a rush of heat between my thighs, watching him. They could dress him in Armani, put him on Forbes, crown him Delacroix, but to me, he was still the boy who came out of a Compton trap house with his father with blood on his hands.
And I loved every piece of it.
The meeting went on after they dragged the dead man out, the whole meeting in French.
Later, in the car, the city lights flashing across his face, I leaned against the seat, almost falling asleep.
Finally, he broke the silence. His voice was calm, too calm.
I turned my head toward him, throat dry.
“What happened in there tonight…” he said slowly, eyes still on the road, “that’s what keeps this family breathing. That’s the shit that never makes it to the blogs. And it’s the kind of shit that sticks to you. Some stains don’t wash off.”
His face frowned. His dimples didn’t show this time.
“You’re the only one who’s ever seen me like that. Covered in blood. Pulling triggers. Breaking bones. Taking lives. And you never get scared. You never ask.”
He glanced at me then. “That’s why I keep you close. You know I’ll never be a regular man. That I don’t want to be.”
I swallowed hard, but I didn’t look away.
“You ever want to leave me, Lyric?” he asked, dark. “Say it now. Before I drag you deeper.”
I reached over, fingers sliding over his hand, the same hand he just killed with, and held it tight.
“No,” I said quietly but steadily. “I’m not leaving. I knew who you were before anything. I knew exactly who I was choosing.”
Something in his face shifted, a flicker of relief, or hunger, or both.
“Good,” he murmured. His hand left the wheel, slid up my inner thigh, fingers pressing into me until I gasped.
He pulled into an empty lot. Then he grabbed my throat, kissed me hard and brutally, his breath against my ear.
“Tu es à moi,” he growled in French. (You’re mine.)
And just like that, the car became our confessional, our battlefield, our bed.
“Nobody else sees me like this,” he whispered. “Nobody else gets Ghost. Only you.”
“Only me,” I panted, clinging to him as he fingered me roughly, thumb circling my clit until I shook.
He pulled his hand free, ripped my panties down, and unzipped himself. His dick was thick, heavy, already hard. He yanked me onto his lap, straddling him in the driver’s seat, the leather sticking to my thighs as I sank down on him.
I moaned seductively, the sound muffled by his hand clamping over my mouth.
“Shut up,” he muttered, grinding up into me. “You know I like it when you take me quiet.”
My hips rolled, bouncing on him, the car rocking under us. His grip on my ass bruising, him sucking on my neck, leaving marks like we were teenagers again.
“Say it,” he growled. “Say you’ll never leave me.”
“I’ll never leave you,” I gasped, clinging tighter, nails digging into his shoulders.
“Bonne fille,” he whispered. Good girl.
I came hard, clenching around him, crying out his name as he bit down on my shoulder. His thrusts grew rougher, faster, until he spilled into me with a growl that shook my bones.
We sat there in the dark, my head against his chest, his heartbeat slow and steady like he hadn’t just murdered a man and fucked me raw in the same hour.
That was Ares.
That was Lil Ghost.
And that’s why he’d always be mine.