“Yeah.” I slipped my jacket back on, buttoned it, adjusted the collar. “Recital starts at seven. Zainab will murder us if we’re late, and unlike this situation, there will be witnesses and no cleanup crew.”
Justice stood from his chair by the door. Straightened his watch. Gave Mekhi a nod. No words needed. Twenty years of doing this together meant most of our conversations happened without speaking. Mekhi would handle the body. Zephyr would handle the car. The row house would be scrubbed by morningand listed for renovation by the end of the week. Mekhi didn’t just clean up messes, he turned them into investment properties. The man could gentrify a crime scene. Genuinely impressive if you didn’t think about it too hard.
“Tell little man I said play his heart out,” Mekhi said.
“I will.”
Justice and I walked out the back door into the alley. My Maybach was parked between a dumpster and a chain-link fence. A six-figure vehicle next to a dumpster that smelled like it had been composting since the Obama administration. If that wasn’t a metaphor for my entire life, I don’t know what was. The evening air was cool. Late spring in DC. That brief window between the last cold snap and the humidity that turns the city into a sauna. I unlocked the car and we both got in.
Justice didn’t say anything for the first few blocks. Just sat in the front seat staring forward. Processing the way he always did. Quietly. Internally. Carrying the weight without making a show of it. Justice was the best of us in a lot of ways. The most human. The most affected by what we did. But he never once walked away from it. I respected him for that more than I’d ever say out loud.
“You good?” I asked, merging onto the highway.
“I’m good.” He adjusted his seatbelt. “You?”
“I’m good.”
We both knew the other one was lying, and we both knew better than to push it.
Yusef’s recital was at seven. It was six-fifteen. If traffic cooperated—and DC traffic never cooperated, so this was really just wishful thinking dressed up as a plan—we’d make it with time to spare. I’d find a seat next to Prime and Zainab. Clap when it was appropriate. Tell the boy he did good and mean it. Give him the gift I bought, a Rolex. It would be his first.
I’d hug my grandmother and kiss her cheek. Let her fuss about whether I’d been eating enough, which she asked every time she saw me. I’d be the version of myself that my family needed me to be. The oldest brother. The CEO. The one who held everything together.
And nobody in that auditorium would have any idea where I’d just come from or what I’d just done. Because that was the arrangement. That had always been the arrangement. The suit stays clean. The hands stay steady. And the people you love never have to see the parts of you that make the rest of it possible.
I rotated my wrist, cracking the tension out of it, and drove toward the recital.
2
MEHAR
“You may walk in,” I instructed my pathetic masochistic client.
The dungeon was in the basement of a rowhouse in Dupont Circle. Unassuming from the outside. Street level was a lingerie boutique with lace and silk in the window, that was owned by a girl named Yandy. The top floor hosted a massage studio, owned by homegirl, Ayanna. In fact, she owned the whole building.
And I rented the basement.
There was a separate entrance on the side of the building, down a narrow staircase. There were no windows and I had painted the walls black. The air hit different the second you reached the bottom step—cooler, heavier, like the building itself knew what happened down here and minded its business accordingly. I’d had the concrete floors polished to a dark shine. Candles lined the walls in iron sconces because fluorescent lighting kills the mood and I refused to dominate a man under the same lights they use at the DMV. A red velvet curtain hung behind my throne complete with black leather, gold studs. I’d found it at an estate sale for two hundred dollars and had it restored for eight. It sat on a raised platform because anyone in my room needed to look UP at me. Always. This was non-negotiable.
The wall to the left had my tools which includes paddles, floggers, crops, restraints. They were all hung on hooks and organized by severity. I kept that wall immaculate. To the right was a St. Andrew’s cross bolted to the wall and a cage that was smaller than Thad’s but effective for clients who needed to feel contained. I’d had iron rings embedded in the concrete at intervals for chains, for leashes, for whatever the session called for.
The whole room smelled like leather and sandalwood and just a little bit of fear. That last part wasn’t a candle, that was just what happened when powerful men walked into a space designed to strip them of everything they thought they were.
I was on the throne in a patent leather catsuit and matching thigh-high eight-inch stilettos with a red lip and my hair pulled into a slick high ponytail. Dame CoCo didn’t do casual.
“My mistress…” he started.
“Uh uh. You know damn well not to speak to me before paying tribute. Have you lost your mind?”
He quickly pulled out his phone and CashApped me five hundred dollars. I looked down at the notification and shook my head.
“That is not enough for breaking the rules. Get out.”
He scrambled for his phone before CashApping me another five hundred. I looked up at his puppy dog eyes that were pleading for me not to turn him away. I knew I could get more out of him with my inevitable abuse.
But part of me didn’t feel like it this evening. Tonight was Yusef’s recital and my thoughts were all over the place. However, I needed the money. I had a few financial goals this year and being a findom was getting me there quicker than any other gig would.
Judge Timothy Baker. The Honorable Timothy Baker, to be specific. Federal bench, appointed for life. The man whosentenced people in a black robe on Monday mornings was standing in my dungeon on a Wednesday evening in his boxers with his hands clasped in front of him like a child waiting to be scolded.
