“Nah, I’m starting. Somebody left-eyed your shit, brodie. This is not a good look. The media gon eat this shit up.”
“This is Cassie, not somebody.”
“You need to put that hoe in jail this time. I’m telling Mama because this is getting out of hand.”
He was right, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of agreeing. He’d warned me about Cassie from the beginning. She’d been too attached, always too close. As my assistant, we’d built a professional bond that she wanted to take further after two years. I didn’t. She was a cute girl, but I made too much money to get caught up in some work-and-play type shit. I let her go after that because I couldn’t trust her anymore.
Turned out I should've done more than fire her ass. I knew rejection didn't sit well with everybody, but Cassie took shit to another level. First, it was the texts—hundreds of them, switching between saying she loved me and calling me everything but a child of God. Then she started showing up at my restaurant, my office, and the practice facility. She keyed my Ferrari, sent dead roses, and even called my sponsors, talking about some made-up scandal. The threats had been escalating for months, but in the last fewweeks, when she started mentioning my home and private spaces, I'd started taking them seriously. It was why I'd been staying at my other spot instead of here. Why I'd switched up my routine, moved in silence.
Clearly, I hadn't moved silently enough.
“I’ll handle it. I’m not fucking around anymore, and I’m done rearranging my life over this shit. I need to be focused on my fucking season.”
It was true, but even with that… right now, none of it mattered. Lieutenant Grant wouldn’t even let me thank her properly. She just turned and walked off, treating saving my house like another shift on the schedule, as if whatever sparked between us meant nothing at all.
A spark?
I was about to do something I’d never had to do in my adult life: chase a woman. But even more than that, a mean uninterested one, well, that’s what her mouth said, one that jacked my big ass up without a care in the world. I needed her in my life, and that was a fact.
The Fire Marshal approached, pulling me back into reality. Politics. Procedures. What happened, what they found. I listened as he laid out what I already knew, but hearing it confirmed made my shoulders tighten.
Someone had ‘left-eye’d’ my house by burning bleach and gasoline-covered shoes in the master bathroom. My shoes. My bathroom. Cassie knew exactly what she was doing.
“Mr. Bryns, detectives will be making contact with you shortly. Do you have any idea who might’ve wanted to do this?”
“I appreciate everything you’ve done here, sir. I’ll discuss all that with the detectives.” I glanced back toward where the engines were parked. “Right now, I’d like to personally thank the team that saved what’s left of my home. Specifically, the Lieutenant.”
A slow smile spread across the older Black man’s face. He’d been out here when my future wife put her hands on me, so he knew exactly where this was going.
“Son, I thought you’d want to press charges or get her fired.”
“Nah, no, sir. I couldn’t tell that story to our grandchildren.” I smiled, and so did he. He patted me on the back and led me further away from the crowd.
“Mr. Bryn’s today is your lucky day. It’s my twentieth anniversary, and my wife Lisa would have my head if I didn’t help two young love birds out.” He pulled out his phone, typed something, then showed me the screen. “Search the hashtag #FireAndFineShyt. After that, you’re on your own. Good luck.”
He extended his hand. I shook it, already pulling out my phone.
“Thank you, sir.”
The second Chance and I left the scene, I looked for the hashtag. #FireAndFineShyt had over two hundred posts.
“Damn,” Chance muttered, leaning over to look at my screen. “She’s viral and finer than a bitch. Sheesh.”
“Mind your fucking business,” I spat as we maneuvered through the streets. I was lowkey stressed the fuck out about my home being set on fire. I was stressed about the cause and the culprit, but watching her drag a grown man twice her size out of a burning building, mask on, moving with the kind of efficiency that said she’d done this a thousand times, calmed me down. I leaned back in the seat and let it play again.
The caption read: “Silverrun’s baddest firefighter said NOT TODAY.”
Comments flooded the screen:
“She’s HER ??”
“That ass though. I’m moving to Silverrun FYM.”
“Fine AND saving lives? Let’s get married.”
“A PROFESSIONAL! IKTR.”
“Another diversity hire ??”
