But my mind was already racing.
Because Cherish didn’t just start a war.
She aimed it straight at my blood.
And this time?
There wasn’t gonna be no mercy left in me. This wasn’t about saving my brother, this was about her playing with my heart.
I was still strapped to this metal chair in the middle of this dusty ass warehouse, wrists on fire, jaw throbbing from the duck tape stretched across my mouth. And the fucked up part? I wasn’t even shocked.
I knew my brothers would hunt me down eventually. They were hunters…born and bred for this shit. Just because I was their brother didn’t mean anything to these niggas. And if you knew them, then you would know that. I didn’t follow clear orders and that landed me here. It was always just a matter of time before they figured out I let Cherish breathe when she should’ve been six feet deep years ago.
She was a walking threat to everything my brother stood for. A liability that could burn Grim to the ground after what he’d done to her family. And yeah, she should be dead off the strength of that. But I couldn’t pull that trigger. Not then, anyway. Cherish was supposed to have been my mark, but instead, she made mehers when she used the fuck outta me, then left my ass like I was never nothing to her.
As I looked around at my current situation, tied in this warehouse, I had to laugh to myself. Savage wouldn’t dare try me like this any other time. I was his big brother. He respected me as such. But when it came to Gremlin? All that respect that my baby brother had for me went out the window.
Grim was his idol, his blueprint, the nigga he wanted to be when he grew up. He used to look up to me before, but when he realized I wasn’t like them, that shit changed. While I was out here trying not to be the monster our parents created, my brothers wore that shit like a crown. They loved being feared. Loved the bloodshed. Loved the chaos and the pain they bring.
I’d done unimaginable shit—shit that kept me up some nights—but deep down, I wanted out. I wanted a better life than being known as a fuckin monster, and I told my brothers that shit years back when we were still youngins and they laughed in my face. Gremlin threw my past back at me, reminded me of every body I dropped, every line I crossed, every soul I sent to hell. Like I had a choice. Like I wasn’t forced into this life from the moment I could walk. The nigga never wanted me to change, he wanted me to become more ruthless so that he could feel better about his evil ass self.
Still, wanting something different made me the black sheep of my siblings. It pushed Savage closer to Grim, gave him a life of destruction to look forward to. And me? It made my baby brother look at me as some lame ass nigga, while looking at our oldest brother as his savior.
Savage wanted to be just like Gremlin—cold, merciless, untouchable. I didn’t want that for my baby brother. I wasn’t nosaint, wasn’t trying to act like I was clean, but I damn sure wasn’t out here murking families and destroying lives just cause I woke up in the mood to kill some shit. I’d never killed a muthafucka that ain’t deserve the shit. Grim didn’t give a fuck. He’d wipe out an entire bloodline for no reason and then go home to sleep like a baby.
Now, I was the reason Grim got snatched. All because I didn’t smoke Cherish when I had the chance. Savage hated me for it. The way he had his people to snatch me up and bring me here, he made that shit clear. He loved Gremlin more than his own damn life, and I put that nigga in danger, so now I was the enemy to my own blood. Again, my baby brother never played about his oldest brother. Now, I was the enemy.
So here I was. Tied up like I was nothing and nobody, left to rot. Savage ain’t even have the decency to feed my ass since I’ve been tied up in this dusty muthafucka. I didn’t know how, but I was gonna make that lil nigga pay for this.
—
I wasn’t usually the nigga to get surprised, but I never thought that Cherish was out there plotting. Nah, in my head, I convinced myself she ran off to start over without me. That she left because I came on too strong, talking about leaving the country, building a life together while she was grieving her family. Hell, after all, I was the nigga sent to kill her. I thought that maybe she couldn’t get past that fact even though I had allowed her to keep her life.I was sent to finish her, so I assumed that was something she couldn’t live with.
I was in my feelings so deep, I rewrote the whole story. I had come up with any scenario that I thought made sense because she left like a thief in the night with no explanation of shit. But now that I’m in this situation, I have a better understandingfor what everything really is, and always was. She didn’t leave because she was scared or overwhelmed.
She left to prepare for war. She left because she never planned a future with me, or running off. She had always planned to kill the nigga responsible for killing her family. And if that meant that she had to pretend to love me just to keep her life, that’s exactly what she did.. Could I blame her? Nah. But in this world that I lived, she was never supposed to have lived a day longer than her family did. As fucked up as that may seem. It was reality.
Now I could see it clear as day. My dumbass made it about me when it was always about revenge. She played me from the start. Every kiss, every whispered promise, every moment I thought was real—it was all a setup. And yeah, I regretted ever thinking about leaving my life behind for her. I’d never been the type to catch feelings, and the one time I did? She made me look like a fool. A damn fool.
That betrayal turned something off in me. I swore I’d never let it happen again. That situation didn’t just hurt me—it made me colder than I’d ever been.
—
Things stayed quiet for years. Memories of her faded into background noise. I moved on, stacked bodies, built my own name outside of my family, drowned myself in violence to forget. But I always knew we’d cross paths again. A broken heart and bruised ego? That’s the most dangerous combination you can leave a man with. It makes you vengeful. Makes you want to burn the whole world down just to watch her choke on the smoke.
What I didn’t expect was for her to make this move.
That was the dumbest move she could’ve made. She saw firsthand what Grim did to her family. She watched him execute her pops in cold blood, then her entire family. She watched him burn her whole world to ash. And she still thought she could touch him and live?
I’d been around killers my whole life. Marcellus Senior. The Caldwell family, hell.. especially Deuce. All of them were monsters. But nobody—and I mean nobody—was on Grim’s level. That nigga had a darkness that clung to him like a second skin. You felt his darkness when he walked into a room. Grown men got chills. Killers second-guessed themselves. Our parents broke all of us, but Grim? They shattered him into something inhuman.
Cherish saw that up close and still made this move. Either she had a death wish or she was crazier than I thought. But I knew she had fire in her. No way her pops raised her not to be ruthless. What he didn’t teach her was when to fold. When to walk away. Went to know that your life was more valuable than revenge that you may not live to enjoy.
She sent Savage a message, taunting him, daring him to come find her if he wanted Grim back. Big mistake. My brothers didn’t play games. They ended them.
She’d been planning this. Waiting for the perfect moment to strike. And somehow, she caught Grim slipping. That alone told me everything—she’d been watching him, studying his moves, waiting for him to drop his guard. Grim was always the hunter, never the prey. For her to pull this off? She had serious muscle backing her. And with her father’s name still holding weight in these streets, I knew she could’ve called in favors anywhere.
Life was a twisted joke. Nothing shocked me anymore. Cherish was grieving when we met. Processing. But she was also plotting.
