4. TRUTH
TRUTH
The three blocks back to the bus stop didn’t feel as long as they had on the way there.
Maybe because my mind was somewhere else entirely.
Somewhere back in that office with a man who looked at me like he could see straight through every wall I’d ever built and decided to let me keep them standing anyway.
Amai Landry.
Even his name felt dangerous in my mouth.
I kept replaying the moment he’d leaned forward—close enough that I could see the gold undertones in his brown skin, close enough to count the precise lines of near his eyes, close enough to feel the heat coming off his body.
He was maybe thirty-eight, built like an athlete who’d never stopped training—broad shoulders filling out that expensive suit, muscular arms that I could see the definition of even through the fabric, hands that looked like they could break bones or hold something precious with equal precision.
But it wasn’t his body that had my heart still racing three blocks later.
It was the way he’d looked at me.
Like I was the only person in the world who’d ever asked him a real question.
Like my answer mattered more than the contract, more than the money, more than the biology.
Do you want a child or just an heir?
I’d asked it without thinking, and the way his entire face had shifted—jaw tightening, eyes going dark and deep and vulnerable for just a second before he’d answered.
Both. And I need somebody brave enough to know the difference.
I was still feeling the weight of those words in my chest.
The way his voice had gone rough. The way he’d looked at me like he was choosing me for reasons that had nothing to do with my medical history or my bloodline or the fact that I was desperate enough to sign.
He’d looked at me like I was real.
And I hadn’t felt real in a long time.
I reached the bus stop and immediately regretted every step I’d taken in these borrowed sandals. My feet were screaming. I sat on the bench—metal, hot from the sun, probably hadn’t been cleaned since Katrina—and tried to catch my breath.
Tried to stop thinking about the way Amai Landry’s presence had filled that entire office.
Calculated. Ruthless. Powerful in a way that didn’t need to announce itself because everyone already knew.
But underneath all that control, I’d seen something else.
Something hungry.
Something that recognized the same hunger in me.
I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t hear the car pull up until it was right in front of me.
A silver Nissan Altima.
My silver Nissan Altima.
The one Phillip had kept in the divorce because his name was on the title, and I’d been too tired to fight about it.
My stomach dropped.
The driver’s side window rolled down, and there he was—Phillip Dimitry, my ex-husband, looking exactly the same as he had two months ago when he’d handed me the divorce papers and told me he had already moved on.
“Well, well, well,” Phillip said, grinning like he’d just won the lottery. “Truth Renois. What you doin’ all the way out here in the Garden District, baby? You get lost?”
I didn’t answer.
Couldn’t answer.
Because the passenger window was rolling down now, and I could see her—Destiny Encino, 22 years old, makeup counter at Macy’s, the woman Phillip had been fucking for six months before he’d finally served me papers.
She was wearing my sunglasses.
The ones I’d left in the car.
“Oh, my God,” Destiny said, leaning out the window with a smile that was all teeth and cruelty. “Phillip, is that your ex-wife? The one you said was—what did you call her? Oh yeah. Broke and bitter.”
My hands curled into fists.
“What you doin’ out here, Truth?” Phillip asked again, still grinning. “You cleanin’ houses now? That where you was? In one of these big-ass mansions scrubbing toilets?”
“Fuck you, Phillip,” I said quietly.
“Nah, baby,” he said, laughing. “You already did that. And look where it got you—sitting at a bus stop in shoes that don’t fit, waiting on the 39 to take you back to your mama’s house.”
Destiny giggled.
Actually giggled.
And then she lifted a cup—a big plastic cup from Sonic, condensation dripping down the sides—and before I could process what was happening, she threw it.
Strawberry Fanta.
Ice-cold, sticky, bright red strawberry Fanta splashed across my chest, my face, and my borrowed sundress, soaking into the fabric and dripping down my legs.
I gasped—not from the cold, but from the shock of it.
From the humiliation.
Destiny was laughing now. Full-on cackling. “Oops! My hand slipped!”
Something inside me snapped.
I was off the bench and rushing toward the car before I even realized I was moving—hands reaching for the passenger door, ready to drag Destiny out by her cheap lace-front and beat her ass right on St. Charles Avenue in broad daylight.
But Phillip hit the gas.
The Altima lurched forward, tires squealing, and I stumbled back onto the curb as they sped away.
I could hear Destiny’s laughter even after they turned the corner.
I stood there.
Soaking wet.
Covered in strawberry Fanta.
Alone.
And something inside me just… broke.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just quietly, like the last piece of determination that had been holding me together finally gave up.
Phillip had taken everything.
And now this.
My dignity. My pride. The last bit of self-respect I’d been clinging to.
I sank back down onto the bench, sticky and humiliated, and felt tears burning behind my eyes.
I wasn’t going to cry.
I wasn’t.
But my hands were shaking, and my chest was tight, and I could still hear Destiny’s laughter echoing in my head.
Broke and bitter.
That’s what Phillip had called me.
And sitting here covered in soda at a bus stop three blocks from a mansion I’d never be able to afford, waiting on a bus that would take me back to my mama’s shotgun house where I slept in my childhood bedroom.
Maybe he was right.
I heard the car before I saw it.
A low expensive purr.
I looked up.
And my heart stopped.
A black Mercedes S-Class—sleek, pristine, the kind of car that I could only imagine owning—pulled up to the curb.
Right in front of me.
The driver’s side window rolled down.
And Amai Landry looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read.
“Get in,” he said.
Not a question.
A command.
I shook my head, trying to shrink into myself, trying to disappear. “I’m fine. The bus?—”
“You’re covered in soda,” he said, his voice flat. “And you’re sitting at a bus stop in the Garden District, looking like somebody just tried to drown you. You’re not fine.”
“I can handle it,” I said, hating how my voice shook. “I don’t need?—”
The car door opened.
Amai got out.
And suddenly he was standing in front of me—six feet of controlled power in a suit customized for that fine ass frame of his, looking down at me with eyes that saw everything.
“I’m going to say this once,” he said quietly. “Get in the car, Truth.”
“I don’t want to mess up your seats,” I said, gesturing weakly at the strawberry Fanta soaking through Soraya’s sundress. “I’m sticky, and it’s?—”
“I don’t give a fuck about the seats.”
His voice was still quiet.
But there was pressure underneath it—pressure that made it very clear that this wasn’t a negotiation.
“I’m offering you a ride,” he continued. “You can accept it with dignity, or you can sit here and wait for a bus that’s not coming for another forty minutes while you’re covered in soda and crying. Your choice.”
“I’m not crying,” I said automatically.
He raised one eyebrow.
And I realized my face was wet.
Not from the Fanta.
From tears I hadn’t even felt fall.
“Get in the car, Truth,” he said again.
And this time, it wasn’t a command.
It was something softer.
Something that sounded almost like concern.
I stood up slowly, my legs shaky, my pride in tatters.
Amai opened the passenger door and waited.
I hesitated for just a second—because getting in that car felt like crossing a line I couldn’t uncross, like accepting a kindness I didn’t have words for yet.
But I was tired.
And sticky.
And so fucking humiliated I wanted to disappear.
So, I got in.
The leather seats were cool and soft, and the air conditioning hit my skin like a blessing. Amai closed the door behind me, walked around to the driver’s side, and slid in with the kind of controlled grace that made everything he did look effortless.
He didn’t say anything.
And I sat there in his expensive car, covered in strawberry Fanta, crying silent tears I couldn’t stop, and realized something that terrified me:
I’d just learned that you don’t tell Amai Landry no.
And I wasn’t sure if that was the most dangerous thing that had ever happened to me or the safest.
He smelled like cedar and bergamot. Expensive cologne that probably had a French name I couldn’t pronounce. It mixed with the artificial sweetness of the strawberry Fanta still clinging to my dress, my skin, and my hair.
The contrast was humiliating.
He started the engine—smooth, quiet, powerful—and pulled away from the curb without asking where I lived.
I should’ve been alarmed by that.
But I was too tired to care.
The city slid past us—shotgun houses painted in fading pastels, corner stores with bars on the windows, people sitting on porches, trying to catch a breeze in the heat. My neighborhood. My world. Nothing like the one Amai lived in.
And here I was, sitting in a Mercedes that cost more than Mama’s house, covered in soda like a child who couldn’t handle her own life.
The silence stretched between us.
Heavy.
Suffocating.
I kept my hands folded in my lap, my eyes fixed on the window, trying to disappear into the leather seat.
“What happened?” Amai asked.
His voice was calm. Even. But there was concern underneath it—something sharp that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“Nothing,” I quickly said. Too quickly. “I was just waiting for the bus and—I don’t know, I guess I wasn’t paying attention and I?—”
“Truth.”
One word.
My name.
But the way he said it stopped me cold.