Ares’ eyes stayed on me, sharp and proud, like I’d just reminded him why he kept me. Why I’d never be replaced.
And the truth was,I lived for it.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, voice low.
“You know why I love you, B?”
I tilted my head, a smile tugging at my lips. “Enlighten me.”
“’Cause you don’t just cover my shit… You make me feel good about it. You make it feel like winning.”
I leaned closer, making sure he could smell the five-thousand-dollar perfume he brought me from France. “That’s because itiswinning. Every nigga you’ve buried, every contract I’ve shredded… It’s all part of your plan. Crooked doesn’t mean weak, darling. It means we bend the rules until they break.”
His dimples showed then. He reached into his jacket and slid a thick envelope across the table.
I picked it up, weighing it in my hand. Heavy. Clean. No need to count.
“Five hundred thousand,” he said simply. “For handling that shit like only you could.”
I tucked it into my bag without blinking. “Appreciate you.”
He stood, came around the table, and tilted my chin up with two fingers. His eyes searched mine, dark and unreadable.
“You ever think about leaving me, B?” he asked softly, like it wasn’t a question but a warning.
I held his gaze, steady as stone. “No. Because I know what you are. And I know what I am to you.”
His thumb brushed my chin. The touch was intimate, but the weight behind it was heavier than sex. He bent down, his lips grazing my ear.
“Good,” he whispered. “Don’t ever forget that.”
Then he kissed my temple, soft but final, before walking out like a storm breaking in silence.
I just sat back in my chair, straightened my skirt, and smiled. Because in a world full of enemies, I was the one woman he paid like a partner and touched like a secret.
And that was more dangerous than love.
CHAPTER 5
Naomi “Nae” Carter
“I was the one who didn’t hate him.”
Ares had been chasing me since he was seventeen. Back then, everybody called him Lil Ghost, walking around in a black hoodie with his father’s dimples and his mother’s eyes, trying to look harder than he was.
I was twenty-three years old, a hood girl from Compton with clippers in my hand and rent due every first of the month for my one-bedroom roach motel apartment. I owned nothing but a chair in the back of my uncle’s dusty barbershop and a mouth crazy enough to keep grown men from testing me.
Ares would come in, sit in my chair, and flirt in French like he had a chance. I’d laugh, push him off, and tell him to come back when he had hair on his chest. But even then… There was something about him. Something in his eyes told me he wasn’t like the rest of these boys. Still, I stayed away from him. That wasn’t my thing.
For years, I treated him like a little brother. I poured his liquor when he was too young to buy it, let him crash on my couch when he couldn’t drive to his next destination, listenedwhen he pillow-talked about the girls he was chasing, the way he wanted to run Obsidian Records, the legacy he swore he’d build.
I knew every version of Ares. The angry teenager. The grieving son. The hustler with too many secrets. The boss in the making.
And somewhere along the line, he stopped being Lil Ghost in a hoodie and became a man I couldn’t ignore.
He invested in me before anybody else believed in me. He put money into my first shop, then my second, never asking for a dime back, never asking for pussy. Bought me jewelry, cars, and anything I wanted. I told myself it was his way of taking care of me, paying me back for being there when nobody else was. But I knew the truth.
He wanted me. Always had.
