Chapter 32
Ares
“Die with him.”
The Valmont Gala was exactly what I expected.
Too much white marble. Too many fake smiles. Too many rich devils in tuxedos pretending the money on their wrists came from clean hands.
I adjusted the cuff of my black Tom Ford jacket and stepped out of the Rolls with Darius on one side and security trailing behind us. Cameras flashed the second my shoes touched the pavement.
That was the game.
They loved a billionaire from Compton as long as I looked polished enough to make them comfortable.
I gave them what they wanted.
A calm face.
A quiet nod.
One hand buttoning my jacket while the other stayed loose at my side.
The kind of body language that let everybody know I wasn’t there to impress them.
I was there because men like me had to keep showing up in rooms built for men who thought we never would.
Inside, the ballroom was full of politics, jealousy, and old money trying to look important.
Crystal glasses.
Black gowns.
Diamond earrings.
Men who built their empires on other people’s blood but liked to call it philanthropy.
I moved through the room.
People shook my hand.
Congratulated me on Forbes.
Told me my growth was inspiring.
All that fake shit.
I let them talk.
That was the easiest part of power. Smiling at people you could bury with one phone call.
I started glancing around the room and saw Lyric.
She was across the room by the bar in a black dress that hugged every damn thought I didn’t need to be having. Hair down. Makeup soft. Face set like she wasn’t there to enjoy herself.
She looked alone.
For a second, I almost respected that.
I didn’t stop walking. Didn’t let my eyes sit on her too long. Just kept moving, greeting a mayor on my left, some tech investor on my right, a judge who owed me a favor somewhere near the center of the room.
But I watched her anyway.
That was the problem with history. It didn’t disappear just because you needed it to.
Lyric wasn’t just one of my old girlfriends.
She was a piece of my life from before the crown got heavy.
She knew Lil Ghost.
Not the version the blogs talked about.
Not the billionaire they put on covers.
Not the man who had a French mother.
She knew the boy who used to come out of Compton trap houses with blood on his hands and no guilt on his face. She knew me when Malik was still alive. When we were all too young and too angry and too stupid to believe death moved that close to our block.
When Malik died, she didn’t lose just a brother.
I lost the only friend, next to Zay, who knew me before I had to become something bigger.
And Lyric had looked at me after that like I was all she had left from that part of her life.
I never asked for that.
I still took it.
That was probably the first sin between us.
I made my way deeper into the room, shaking hands, accepting praise, taking a bourbon from a passing server. My eyes found her again without permission.
Still by the bar.
Still too still.
I took a sip of bourbon and turned away from her again.
Then a man stepped up beside her.
My whole body went cold before my face did.
My enemy, Marcus Vale.
Of all the men in Los Angeles, she chose him.
I stood still for half a second, long enough to confirm it wasn’t some polite gala interaction. He leaned in too close. She didn’t move away. His hand brushed the bare part of her back as he kissed her neck.
My nostrils flared once.
That was all.
Nobody around me noticed.
I made sure of it.
Marcus was everything I hated in a room like this. The type of nigga who thought that because he never got blood on his hands, it meant he was smarter than men like me.
He wasn’t.
He just hid differently.
He came up in the same city. Moved through some of the same doors. Built his name around the same time I did. But where I built mine with instinct, force, and presence, he built his with backroom numbers and quiet manipulation.
His money was polished.
Mine had dirt on it with more weight.
That difference always bothered him.
Lyric had every right to hate me.
To be angry.
To feel played.
But standing beside one of my biggest enemies in a room like this?
That was a choice, not heartbreak.
Darius appeared beside me like he could smell the shift in my mood.
“You good?” he asked quietly.
I smoothed the front of my jacket. “Perfect.”
“You don’t look perfect.”
“I didn’t ask what I look like.”
He let out a quiet breath and adjusted his own cuff. “Your donation speech is in ten.”
“Good. I’m ready to get the fuck out of here.”
I headed toward the front of the ballroom without looking back at Lyric again.
Because if I looked too soon, I might leave this gala with a body count, and tonight wasn’t built for that.
Tonight was built for image.
And I wore mine better than anybody in the room.
By the time I got on stage, the room was quiet.
That always amused me.
Men with more degrees than street sense.
Women married to monsters.
Families who’d kill for influence.
All of them still knew when to shut the fuck up.
I stood behind the podium, one hand in my pocket, the other resting near the mic.
“I won’t keep y’all long,” I said.
A few light laughs.
“I know events like this like to make it seem like money changes the world overnight. It doesn’t. People do. Discipline does. Access does.”
I glanced out across the room.
“Some of us come from places where hospitals don’t look like this room, where schools don’t get donations unless cameras are attached. Where talent dies because nobody important ever bothered to notice it.”
Silence.
“Tonight, I’m donating twenty million to the Valmont children’s initiative.”
That got the reaction I expected.
Gasps.
Applause.
Phones lifting.
Marcus had to stand there and clap for me like everybody else.
That part felt good.
I let the room eat it up, gave them the smile they wanted, shook the hands I was supposed to shake, let three different photographers catch my good side.
After, I left.
Quietly.
Out the side exit with my bodyguards.
Back into my black Rolls parked beneath the valet overhang.
The door shut, and the world got honest again.
I loosened my bow tie, lit the blunt that Darius had waiting for me, and leaned back into the leather.
The first inhale settled me.
Not enough.
But enough to keep me still.
I blew smoke toward the ceiling and looked out through the tinted glass at the line of luxury cars, the security, the movement, the fake importance of it all.
Then I said, “Go get her.”
My bodyguard, Ashton, in the front, didn’t ask who.
He already knew. All my men knew the women who were and weren’t in my world.
He stepped out.
I kept smoking.
A few minutes later, the back door opened, and Lyric slid in, furious before the door even shut.
“What the fuck is this?” she snapped. “You don’t get to summon me like I work for you.”
I took another slow drag before looking at her.
My gift was still around her neck.
She looked beautiful.
That irritated me more than the nigga she was with.
“You done?” I asked.
Her nostrils flared. “No, I’m not done. You pull me out of a charity event like I’m still your girl, and think I’m just supposed to sit here?”
I tapped ash into the tray and finally turned fully toward her.
“You came with Marcus Vale.”
“So?”
“So don’t play stupid in my car.”
She laughed, sharp and ugly. “Oh, so now you care who I stand next to? That’s funny coming from a nigga who dismissed me with four other bitches and an NDA.”
I stayed quiet.
That made her angrier.
“I’m serious, Ares. You don’t get to act possessive now. You made your choice.”
I studied her face. She was hurt under all that fire. Anybody else might’ve softened.
I didn’t.
“That nigga is my enemy,” I said.
“Maybe I know that.” She raised her eyebrow.
“I know you know it.”
She folded her arms. “Then maybe I did it on purpose.”
I nodded once.
“I figured.”
I took another pull from the blunt. “So let’s skip the dramatics and get to the point.”
Her eyes narrowed. “The point?”
“The point is, you’re in Bianca’s lawsuit, and you hate that bitch. The point is, you let one of my biggest haters walk you through a room full of muthafuckas who would love to see me slip. The point is you’re either emotional or stupid, and I know you’re not stupid.”
She frowned.
“Fuck you.”
“No,” I said calmly. “Fuck your pride.”
She shifted in her seat, anger burning hotter now. “You think I owe you loyalty after what you did to me?”
“I think you know better than to stand next to niggas who want me dead.”
Her laugh was bitter. “Dead? Please. Everything ain’t always that deep.”
I looked at her for a long moment.
“It is with me.”
That quieted her for half a breath, but not enough.
“You know what,” she snapped, “maybe you deserve this. Maybe you deserve to feel the way you made me feel. Maybe Malik would’ve said the same thing if he were still here.”
That was the wrong card.
The second she said his name, something in the car changed.
She saw it too, because her shoulders stiffened, even though my face didn’t move.
I set the blunt down.
“Don’t do that,” I frowned.
Her chin lifted. “Why. Because I’m telling the truth?”
“No,” I said. “Because you’re using my dead homie to dress up bad decisions.”
Her lips parted, probably expecting more emotion than I gave her.
She wasn’t getting it.
Malik lived in my bones. She didn’t get to weaponize that because she was mad.
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, voice low and steady.
“I loved your brother. I don’t owe you shit because of it.”
Her breathing changed.
She looked away toward the window, then back at me.
“So what now?” she asked. “You about to threaten me? You’re gonna tell me who I can and can’t date like I still belong to you?”
I held her gaze.
“No. I’m warning you.”
She went still.
I let the silence do what it needed to do before I said the rest.
“Marcus is moving wrong. Bianca’s lawsuit is moving wrong. And you standing beside any of them puts you in a lane you don’t want to be in.”