50. Echo
ECHO
Tristian made himself at home after ambling in with a big ass smile on his face, reaching for Forever’s untouched plate like he hadn’t just eaten breakfast at his own house. His mother cooked every day.
This kid was something else, full of that typical Cannon confidence but with none of the baggage the rest of us carried. His eyes lit up at the sight of bacon and eggs, reminding me of what youth was supposed to look like. Something I never really got to experience.
“Can I have this, D?” he asked, already biting into a piece of bacon without waiting for my permission.
I nodded, watching him settle into the chair Forever had only just vacated.
“Aye, where you meet Forever at? I feel like I need somebody like her,” he said, talking with his mouth full.
His eyes gleamed with that teenage admiration he’d been showing since meeting my wife.
I leaned against the counter, lips quirked up but didn’t answer. Tristian had a way of getting to his point eventually if you let him ramble long enough. The kid was always looking for advice on girls, but that wasn’t why he’d come inside this morning. Not after what went down last night.
He took another bite, then set the fork down before touching the eggs, his expression shifting to something more serious. The playfulness faded from his eyes.
“Sorry I didn’t come to you about Aunt V sooner,” he finally said, looking down at the plate instead of at me.
“It was selfish of me. G had a stroke and Forever…” He shook his head as if he were trying to shake away the memory of something.
“Anyway, I also wanted to say I talked to my dad. He’s stubborn, still got an attitude about not having authority around here when you’re around, but he gets the bigger picture deep down. ”
I nodded again, still saying nothing. The pain in his eyes told me he was blaming himself for what happened with our aunt, like somehow her betrayal was his fault for not speaking up sooner.
He didn’t understand that her path had been set long before he noticed anything off, long before he was fucking born.
“My dad doesn’t show it, but he respects you,” Tristian continued, pushing the eggs around his plate. “Even if he’d never admit it.”
“Your pops and I understand each other,” I replied, meaning that shit. “He’s doing what he thinks is best for this family, same as me.”
Tristian looked up, studying my face like he was trying to decode whether I meant what I said.
“Can I shadow you more often?” he asked abruptly, abandoning the pretense. “I’m about to graduate next year.”
There it is.
The real reason for this early morning visit. I’d been expecting this conversation, just not this soon.
“Why you wanna do that?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. “How about you be a kid for a little longer?”
His jaw tightened, a flash of frustration crossing his face. “I am a kid. But I won’t be forever. I need to learn how all this works before—”
“Before what?” I cut in, pushing off from the counter to grab a bottle of water. “Before the world ends? Before someone else dies?”
“Before I’m thrust into it without knowing what I’m doing,” he shot back, an edge of determination I recognized all too well.
It was the same stubborn resolve I’d had at his age.
I studied him for a minute and then nodded.
“I’m not saying you can’t, Tristian. But I never got to be a kid, for real. You and Tank have that opportunity, and I want you to explore it for a little longer.”
His shoulders dropped, defenses down.
“If on your eighteenth birthday you still want to shadow me, I’ll allow it,” I added. “But until then, focus on school. Focus on girls. Focus on basketball. All the shit I never had time for.”
He didn’t argue, just lifted the fork again and began to eat.
“So, where did you meet Forever?” he asked after a while, smiling again.
I chuckled and left him sitting in the kitchen, refusing to discuss my wife with him.
A couple hours later, I kneeled on the rooftop I’d shared with Violet a few days back, adjusting the scope of the rifle I barely used.
I kept my eyes trained on the side entrance of the Fairchild building across the street. The private auction was happening right on schedule, buyers dressed in cloaks entered the building from all sides.
I wasn’t here to take a shot, just to watch and understand this part of the operation better. Knowledge was just as valuable as a bullet sometimes.
The brass token Eliel had given me was currently in Solei’s possession as she and Oliver accounted for the process on the inside.
The building itself was a dead zone structure, technically outside both Collective and rejector territories, which wasn’t a coincidence.
Solomon was smart about keeping his dirtiest business in neutral spaces.
My earpiece crackled to life, reminding me I had it in.
“I don’t think they’re keeping girls here,” Solei murmured, her voice low. “Going dark for now.”
I tapped the mic twice to acknowledge without speaking. If the girls weren’t at the auction site, that meant we were dealing with a preview event, not the main sale.
The sound of boots hitting the fire escape behind me echoed through my thoughts. I didn’t turn around, just waited for the invited guest to speak.
“You shoot?” Amal asked, stepping beside where I knelt.
Violet and Lucia were positioned strategically on the ground and an adjacent building, ready to take a shot if this second attempt at a family reunion went sideways.
“Little bit,” I replied, taking one more look through the scope before lowering the rifle and standing.
I chuckled at the dark bruising around his eye, from where I’d pistol-whipped him.
“Damn, your eye fucked up.”
He touched it and grinned, leaning against the raised ledge like he didn’t have a care in the world. But I noticed the way his eyes scanned the perimeter, the slight tension in his shoulders. He was just as alert as I was.
“Look, I only came here to say you can take a step back, little brother…” His eyes were filled with amusement, but I didn’t find shit funny.
“No need to rumble with niggas like Solomon when you got an entire family to look after. An entire community, really…” His gaze turned serious, any hint of teasing gone.
“You don’t know me, and I don’t know shit about you besides whispers.
We can walk around this bitch and pretend we don’t know what’s up, or you can become my ally and we shift the narrative. ”
I studied his face, looking at a version of myself that had taken a different path. Forever had been right to stop me from killing him at The Vault.
“You expect me to step back from something that affected my wife? Something that’s still hurting girls across this city?” I asked.
“I expect you to continue being smart about which battles you fight personally,” he countered. “You’ve got people. Use them.”
My earpiece crackled again, and Solei’s voice came through. “Jayden is here. I repeat, Jayden is here.”
There was laughter in her voice as she said it.
A smile spread across my face at that news. I’d forgotten all about him, let his irritating face slip from my mental list of niggas who needed to die.
At first it was about Forever, now it was about him actively going against what his mother was fighting to demolish. Both her sons were better off dead.
“You want to be my ally, big brother?” I asked, leaning into the joke. “Kill a nigga for me and I’ll think about it.”
Amal chuckled and turned to leave.
“Drop a name with Lucien and I’ll see what I can do.” He paused at the top of the fire escape. “And Solomon ain’t showing face at this auction. He’s linked himself with a fallen Albanian crime family from New York to expand his reach. Pretty sure you know exactly what family I speak of.”
The Albanian family I used to get close to the O’Sullivans. If Solomon was building those connections, he was playing a much bigger game than we’d realized.
I watched Amal disappear down the fire escape, then chuckled to myself and hit the mic to address Violet.
“You hear that, Moonlight? Your brother-in-law let a loose end slip.”
She didn’t respond, never one to waste words. But Finnegan’s voice came through the earpiece instead.
“Call her Moonlight again. And watch your mouth about my brother,” he threatened, though there wasn’t much bass behind it. “Don’t worry, we got shit handled in our neck of the woods. Worry about this creepy ass city you call home.”
That pulled a genuine laugh from me. Finnegan’s protectiveness of his brother was something I understood completely. Family was family, especially when they were solid. And Sean O’Sullivan fit the bill.
“Pull back,” I said, tapping the earpiece to address Solei. “And don’t engage with Jayden.”
She replied with an affirmative and I broke down and packed up my rifle, chuckling at how much slower I was compared to Violet before heading home to my wife.
I pulled into our driveway not long after, happy to see Forever’s car already parked there. She was home early as promised.
The house was quiet when I stepped inside, but the faint sound of running water from upstairs told me exactly where to find her. I stripped off my clothes after entering our bedroom, set on joining her in the shower.
For a moment, I just watched from the door. Mesmerized by the sight of her.
She really chose a nigga to be her husband. Twice.
I pulled the shower door open and slipped inside, earning a smile as she turned to face me.
“Hey, my echo,” she said, eyes traveling down my body and brightening when they reached my growing erection. “You kept your promise.”
Her echo.
I liked that shit.
“Of course,” I replied, stepping into the shower and closing the door behind me. “It’s my life’s mission to keep every promise I make to you.”
The warm water hit my back as I reached for her, pulling her against me. She pushed her hands up my chest and around my neck.
“Mmm, missed you,” she murmured against my lips before kissing me deeply.
I lost myself in her taste, in the feel of her tongue against mine. My hands roamed her body, squeezing her ass and pulling her hips tighter against me. She moaned into my mouth, the vibration traveling straight to my dick.
Then, without warning, she broke the kiss and dropped to her knees. I bit my lip as she looked up with those eyes that saw all of me.
“Let me take care of you,” she said, her voice dropping to that husky tone that drove me fucking crazy.
Before I could respond, her mouth was on me, taking me in deep until I tapped the back of her throat. I braced one hand against the shower wall, and the other found the back of her head, fingers tangling in her damp curls as my baby worked me good.
“Fuck,” I hissed as she hollowed her cheeks, creating suction that had my toes curling against the shower floor. “Just like that, baby.”
Forever hummed around me, the vibration sending sparks of pleasure up my spine.
Her hands gripped my thighs, nails digging in just enough to keep me upright.
I watched her take me deeper, her lips stretched around my girth as she spit dripped from her mouth.
Nothing in this world was more beautiful than my wife on her knees, eyes locked with mine as I fucked her mouth.
“I love coming home to you,” I groaned, guiding her movements with the hand in her hair. “Love knowing you’re here waiting for me.”
Her response was to take me deeper, swallowing around the head of my dick as it hit the back of her throat. My hips jerked forward instinctively but she didn’t pull back, just relaxed her throat and took all of me.
“That’s it,” I encouraged, feeling the familiar tension building inside me. “Take this dick, baby. So fucking good at this.”
Her hands moved from my thighs to my ass, pulling me deeper into her mouth as she sucked harder.
“I’m close,” I warned, giving her the chance to pull away.
But Forever never backed down from a challenge. She doubled her efforts, bobbing her head faster as her tongue worked the underside of my dick with perfect pressure. When she reached up to cup my balls, gently rolling them in her palm, I lost it.
“Fuck!” I groaned, the release hitting me like a tidal wave.
She swallowed everything I gave her, not missing a drop as she worked me through my orgasm. When I was finally spent, barely still standing, she released me with a pop and looked up with satisfaction gleam in her eyes. I pulled her to her feet and stuck my tongue down her throat.
“My turn,” I murmured against her mouth, fingers circling her clit.
She arched into my touch, a gasp escaping her lips.
“Bedroom,” she breathed. “I want to be beneath you.”
I reached behind her to shut off the water, then scooped and carried her into the bedroom, still dripping.
“I love coming home to you,” I said again, hovering over her, water droplets from my body falling onto her skin. “No matter what happens out there, knowing you’re here… it’s everything, my forever.”
Her eyes softened, hand coming up to cup my cheek. “I’ll always be here waiting for you.”
I lowered myself to kiss her again, slower this time, savoring the moment. Outside our walls, Everwood was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.
But in here, with Forever’s body beneath mine and her heart beating against my chest, none of that shit mattered. Long as I got to be her echo and she continued to be my forever, it never would.