Event planning wasn’t just a job for me. It was the one place I felt powerful, calm, and needed.
If everything around me looked beautiful and balanced, maybe the world couldn’t collapse around me.
And then there was Ares, who came years later, when I didn’t even know I needed a man like him in my life.
I’d met him two years ago, when a record label calledPhantom Leaguehired me to organize one of their wild label parties. A room full of rich rappers, killers, execs, and groupies, and somehow, I’d made it all look like a movie without anyone getting shot. He’d noticed me then, his eyes tracking me the way they had tonight. Asked me to host his upcoming birthday, offered a million dollars, and it was history after that.
At first, I told myself it was business. That I wouldn’t mix work with…whatever he was.
But Ares wasn’t like anyone else.
He didn’t bring me drama. He didn’t play games. He didn’t even hide the fact that he had other women. I’d seen the pictures on the blogs, the gossip about his girlfriends. He never denied them, never pretended I was the only one.
That was what made me hesitate. It took almost two years of stolen moments, flirtation, and quiet Sundays before I finally agreed. Six months ago, I said yes. Yes to beinghis. Yes to being the fifth girlfriend of a man who never promised me exclusivity, only intensity.
And I stayed because being with him felt… different.
I told him I needed peace and to focus on work, and he gave me that.
Did I like seeing the blogs? No. The photos of him on red carpets with Leona, the whispers about Naomi being “the original,” the clips of Lyric acting like she was already married to him? No woman wanted to swallow that.
But he didn’t hide them, and he didn’t hide me either. I was on his arm tonight. The world saw me on his biggest night. The world knew.
And maybe that was enough for me.
I closed my laptop eventually, wine glass half-empty, and leaned back in my chair.
I wasn’t stupid. I knew Ares was more than what the world saw. I knew there were darker layers I hadn’t touched yet.
But I also knew something else.
For two years, I’d been orbiting his world. Six months official. And in that short time, I had felt morealivethan I had my entire life.
So maybe I was the fifth girlfriend. Maybe I was one of many.
But I was also Amara Kevins.
CHAPTER 2
Leona Vega
“I was the one he built from the ground up…”
The camera loved me.But not like he did.Flashes went off in every direction, the photographer barking orders, stylists adjusting my hair, someone oiling down my legs to make me “glisten.” I wore a red, silk Versace slip that barely covered anything, red stilettos, and a diamond choker Ares had bought me last month.
My truth, he had saved me long before the blogs started calling me “Obsidian’s First Lady.”
Before him, I was just a girl trying to sing my pain out in a hole-in-the-wall club, half-drunk most nights, running from things I never spoke about. I left home at sixteen and never looked back. My stepfather’s hands still haunted me. His voice still lived in my nightmares. I swore nobody would ever have power over me again.
And then Ares walked in.
That night, I was on stage with a busted mic and an old head crowd that wasn’t listening. He didn’t clap. He didn’t smile. He just stood there, watching, like he was stripping me bare withhis eyes. After the set, he told me, “You have a voice the world would pay for, but only if you let me own it first.”
I should’ve been offended. I should’ve walked away.
But instead, I followed him out of the club.
He gave me a contract, two million in advance money, a stylist, and a platform. He gave me a name people finally wanted to say. And somewhere between the studio nights and red carpets, he gave me himself.
