Luxe
I jumped up from the sound of my phone going off. It was muffled, but I could still hear the alarms. I tossed the cover back and searched underneath the pillows. Ghost sat up and rubbed his eyes with his fists.
“What’s going on?” he questioned me.
“I’m not sure.” The pads of my fingers finally touched my phone, and I pulled it out. On the screen was several notifications from my alarm company. “Something’s going on back at the house,” I told him as I unlocked the phone and went straight to the application.
“What?”
My eyes bucked as I stared at the masked men moving through my house. They were knocking over everything glass, yanking my paintings down off the walls. “Hey! That was fifty thousand dollars!” I yelled at the phone.
“What’s going on?”
Ghost snatched the phone away from me. A frown formed on his face as he glared at the screen. He tossed it back into my lap and then grabbed his own off the nightstand and climbed out of bed.
“Where are you going?” I asked him and turned my attention back to the phone.
By the time I looked, they had found my shotgun hanging in the pantry.
“Put it back!” It was my favorite. Daddy had bought it for me for my twentieth birthday.
Fumes seeped from my ears. They were really pissing me the fuck off at this point.
Ghost ignored me and continued out of the room. I turned on the intercom and said, “If you don’t put my shit back and get the hell out of my house.”
One of the masked men stopped and stared up at the camera in the kitchen.
He gave me the bird finger. I noticed this tattoo on his wrist, so I zoomed in on it and screenshotted it.
Whoever he was, he damn sure was gon’ regret ever strolling his ass into my fucking house by the time I was done with his ass.
“Wheels up in an hour,” Ghost said when he came back into the bedroom. He had clothes in his hands and headed straight into the bathroom. This wasn’t how I was expecting my lil trip to end.
Back in Montgomery
The jet pulled into the hangar, and I jumped to my feet. I needed to make it back to the house so that I could see just how much damage they caused and what was stolen. Ghost stepped out in front of me. He wasn’t about to allow me to get off this plane before him.
We got off, and he took me over to the truck.
“Wait right here,” he said when he opened the back passenger door.
I slid into the seat and sat there, waiting for him to load the truck.
It wasn’t like I could go anywhere. He had the keys.
Now, if the truck was already running, I probably would’ve pulled off and left his ass.
Once we were done, he hopped into the driver’s seat and pulled out of the hangar. It was when he made a left at the light that I realized he wasn’t going in the direction of my house.
“Uh, where are we going? I don’t have time for any detours. I have to go check on my house.”
“That’s something you don’t need to worry about right now. Your house is handled.”
I frowned. “Says who?”
“Says me,” was his only response.
“That’s not good enough for me. I have to check on it myself. I need to make sure they didn’t take all my stuff.”
“We already had someone go by the house to check on it. It’s fucked up pretty bad. For now, you’re going to have to go home with me.”
“With you?” I stared at him as he whipped through traffic. To his house? That was unchartered territory. “What about my things?”
“While you were in The Bahamas, I had some of your stuff moved over to my place.”
“Oh . . .” I poked the tip of my tongue into the inside of my jaw. He was plotting shit behind my back and leaving me out the loop. “You thought you were slick with that one, huh? I’m not going to your house without my collection.”
“Your collection?”
“That’s what I said. I need to go home and get it. Hopefully, it’s still there.”
“Luxe, after what happened at that house, you’re not going anywhere near it, and that’s the end of the discussion.”
“Well, you’re going to have to go over there and get it. I won’t be able to sleep unless I know that it’s safe.”
“Fine,” was the last thing he said before turning the music up on me. I knew he only did that because he wanted me to shut up, so I punched the back of his headrest and relaxed against the seat with my arms folded over my chest.
Ghost pulled up to this building downtown that wasn’t too far from my office. He punched in a code at the parking garage and then drove inside it. We stopped on the fifth floor next to some matte-black vehicles. He got out the truck and opened the back door for me.
“You’ll be safe here,” he said as he grabbed our suitcases from the trunk.
I still felt like I would’ve been okay back at home, even though it probably would’ve been a war zone every other day.
My garden damn sure would’ve been thriving.
With how exhausted I was at the moment, I wasn’t even about to argue with him about it.
I was going to go inside, take me a nap, and then work on finding the fucker who stole my damn shotgun.
I followed Ghost over to the door. He used a key card to get inside. At least you had to have a key to access everything. It probably wouldn’t be as easy to get in here and get me, but surely not impossible. If people wanted me bad enough, they’d do whatever to get me.
We stopped at a metal black door. All the other doors near this one had friendly welcome mats and outside décor. Meanwhile, Ghost’s was just plain—empty. That should’ve been expected from someone like him.
He unlocked the door and stepped to the side for me to enter. His home even smelled divine. From the scent and the décor, you could tell that a man stayed here alone. Everything was dark and boring. There wasn’t a touch of color in sight.
“You need some color around here,” I told him as I moved through the living room, taking in everything, being nosy.
“I haven’t been here in I don’t know when.”
I swiped my index finger against the end table and rubbed the dust against my thumb. “I can tell,” was my response.
“I’ll get someone to come in and clean tomorrow.
I probably should’ve did it while I was gone, but I didn’t think about it.
This is where you’ll be sleeping,” he said and stepped toward the hallway, so I followed.
He brought me to the first bedroom. Everything in there was black and gray.
I hated looking at it, but there was nothing I could do about it.
This wasn’t my home, and I wasn’t about to change something in here to be more pleasing for the short time that I’d be here. Too much work for me.
As I stepped further into the bedroom, I noticed a lot of my things already placed around it. My feminine products were on the dresser. Two of my robes were resting on the back of the chair in the corner of the bedroom. I opened the closet to see that it was filled with most of my clothes.
“And who exactly did you talk to, to get all my stuff? My mama . . .?” I shook my head. I knew Ma wouldn’t have agreed to all that. Plus, she didn’t know most of the things I liked anyway. “No, . . . it was Sol. I know she’s the one who did this shit. Trader.”
“Just be happy that I tried to make your ass as comfortable as possible while you’re here.”
My eyes rolled heavenward. “You didn’t do all your homework because you left my most prized possession back at the house. And it better still be there or else I’m raising hell. Ain’t nobody gon’ be able to sleep in the city.”
“Just tell me what I need to get, and I’ll make sure that I get it.”
“I’m going to have to give you details on how to access it, and you’re going to have to do exactly what I tell you. Just make sure you bring everything back to me.”
Ghost nodded and exited the bedroom.