Chapter 33
Zay
FOUR DAYS LATER
“She Chose The Wrong Side”
Iwatched Emily climb off me, and I stood with her to make sure she didn’t fall.
She had just rode my dick for damn near an hour and I knew her legs were jelly. Emily liked to act like she was stronger than her body most days. Especially now that she was on a herbal regimen that had her hormones through the roof.
Sure enough, the second her feet hit the floor, her knees buckled.
I caught her around the waist before she could tip forward.
“Easy, busy body,” I joked.
She burst out laughing.
A real laugh. Not the tired ones she gave doctors or family when they asked how she was feeling.
“Shut up,” she said, leaning into me. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you expected it.”
“I did.”
She rolled her eyes and swatted my chest, but she was still leaning on me while we made our way toward the bathroom.
The warm light flicked on as soon as we stepped inside.
Emily grabbed the counter and looked at herself in the mirror while catching her breath.
Her curly hair was wild. Her cheeks were flushed.
She looked alive.
And that meant more to me than anything.
“I gotta go out. I’ll be back tomorrow,” I said lowly, knowing she wouldn’t like it.
She froze.
Her eyes met mine in the mirror.
“What time is it?”
“Little after one.”
She nodded once.
Emily knew my life better than anybody. When I said I had to leave in the middle of the night and wouldn’t be back until the sun came up, she knew exactly what kind of night it was.
And she hated it.
Not because she didn’t understand it.
Because she did.
“You couldn’t get nobody else to do whatever you going out to do?” she asked softly.
There it was.
The emotion I didn’t need right now.
I stepped closer behind her and rested my hands around her waist.
“E.”
She exhaled.
I kept my voice calm but firm.
“I don’t need feelings before I walk out the door.”
She stared at me in the mirror for a second longer.
“Okay.”
She turned around and nudged my chest as she moved past me toward the tub.
“Just have your ass at my breakfast table by eleven.”
I chuckled. “Yes, ma’am.”
She gave me that little side-eye that meant she was still irritated but letting it go.
I turned the water on for her, poured in her favorite salts and bubble bath, and helped her step into the tub carefully.
The hot water started filling while she leaned back against her bath pillow.
Her body visibly relaxed.
That made me feel better about leaving.
I stepped into the shower and washed up quick, because I was twenty minutes late to meet Ares.
When I stepped out, I wrapped a towel around my waist and walked back over to the tub.
Emily was soaking, eyes half closed.
I leaned down and kissed her forehead.
“Don’t fall asleep in here. I promise I’ll be home before noon.”
She reached out and squeezed my hand.
Then she pointed toward the corner.
“Put my towel and walker there.”
I grabbed both and set them beside the tub where she could reach them easily.
She looked up at me again.
“Just come home untouched.”
I smirked.
“Always do.”
She watched me leave the bathroom but didn’t say anything else.
That was Emily.
She hated the life.
But she loved me enough to let me live it.
I dressed quick.
Black jeans.
Black hoodie.
Black jacket.
I grabbed my gun bag off the shelf in the garage and tossed it into the passenger seat of my blacked out Challenger SRT Scat Pack.
The engine roared to life and echoed through the concrete as I pulled out into the night.
I drove straight to the Laveau parking structure downtown and took the ramp all the way to the top.
Two cars was already waiting.
Ares stood beside one of them, smoking.
I stepped out and nodded once.
“What’s good?”
He flicked the blunt ashes off the roof.
“Same shit. Let’s go.”
We hopped into the unmarked black CLS parked beside his car.
It looked like something a rich detective would drive. Clean. Dark. Invisible to cops.
I pulled out and the city swallowed us.
By the time we hit the freeway, it was close to three in the morning.
We rode in silence for a minute, listening to O’Demon’s new album, before he lit a blunt and passed it over.
This wasn’t two rich niggas in a luxury car.
This was two Compton niggas going backwards for a night.
Ares was quiet at first.
Then the venting started.
Low.
Angry.
Dark.
I didn’t catch all of it because he was speaking French, but I understood enough.
My pops made me and Yuna learn French growing up because we were Creole.
Yuna took it seriously.
I didn’t give a fuck about being bilingual.
But I learned enough to recognize when Ares was talking about sliding on somebody.
Vale’s name kept coming up.
Lyric too.
Ares exhaled smoke slowly and muttered something under his breath.
“Je vais tous les tuer.” I’m going to kill them all.
He switched back to English.
“Found out Lyric never stopped talking to that nigga Vale.”
He kept going.
“Thought she was smarter than that.”
“Marcel let pedophiles carry our name. Gave me a list of muthafuckas putting smut on us to cover up sex crimes,” he muttered again.
He frowned.
“I’ll kill them too.”
I let him talk.
Sometimes that’s all a man needed before doing what he already decided to do.
We pulled up to Vale’s condo building twenty minutes later.
No security.
No cameras.
All that had been handled already.
Money and pressure solved most problems in this city.
We stepped out.
Masks on.
Gloves on.
Guns ready.
Inside the building it was quiet.
We moved through the hallway like we’d done this a hundred times before.
Because we had.
When we walked into his condo that was already unarmed for us, we heard it.
Moaning.
Loud.
Careless.
Ares looked at me once.
We followed the sound.
Bedroom door half open.
Ares pushed it.
Inside, Vale was fucking Lyric.
They never even saw us.
Ares moved first.
One shot.
Clean.
Lyric dropped backward on the headboard before the sound of the gun fully echoed.
Vale barely had time to get out the bed.
I fired once.
And again.
His body slumped across the bed beside her.
We stood there for a second.
Just confirming it was done.
We turned and left the same way we came.
Fast.
Back in the car, the city looked the same as it always did.
Like nothing had happened.
I looked over at Ares.
He was calm again.
Like the storm had already passed through him.
Lyric wasn’t supposed to be part of the problem.
But the second she chose sides, she made herself one.
We drove for a few minutes before I spoke.
“You flying back to France?”
“Yeah.”
He stared out the windshield.
“I got a wife to take care of.”
I nodded.
“I’ll come out there in a couple days to stay for a few weeks.”
He glanced at me.
“Wifey cool with that?”
“Yeah.”
I leaned back in the seat.
“Bringing her and my son. We’re going to stay with Yuna. Maybe seeing her nephew will help her.”
Ares nodded once.
We kept driving through Los Angeles like two ghosts who had already been there and left.