Malik’s eyes dropped to my feet. “You need a coat and some real shoes on. It’s cold out here.”
Seething, I yelled, “Fuck you!”
I turned and stomped off to my car. I tore the door open, hopped in, and took off.
The whole drive to Reek’s spot, I was shaking with anger. I knew where to go because I had heard Saint talk of their routine enough. I knew the trap Reek liked to be at during certain hours.
By the time I got to the block and hopped out, every security guard standing outside looked oddly at me, my belly and house shoes.
I stormed by them, pushed through the front door, and went straight inside. The trap smelled like weed and chemicals. A couple of men looked up when I came in, but I scanned the room until I found him. Reek stood at one of the tables bagging up work with a scale and stacks of little baggies spread out in frontof him. He had on a black hoodie and gloves, looking so fine that it pissed me off more.
The second he saw me, he stopped what he was doing and came around the table. “What the hell are you doing here?”
I walked straight up to him, screaming, “What did you do?!”
When he just looked at me with sympathy in his eyes, I knew I was right. He had killed Kam.
Tears came to my eyes. “I asked you not to do it! You don’t want me to be happy!”
That got everybody’s attention. A couple of the men near the back slowly found reasons to mind their business, but I knew they were still listening.
He walked towards me, casually telling me, “You shouldn’t be here with The Crown lurking.”
“I don’t give a fuck about The Crown right now!” I snapped. “What did you do to Kam?!”
Reek glanced around the room, then reached for my elbow. “Come here.”
I snatched away. “Don’t touch me!”
He ignored that and led me toward the back anyway, not rough, but firm enough that I knew I had no choice.
Once we got a little farther from everybody else, I cried, “What did you do?”
Looking into my eyes, he told me, “I didn’t kill him. I made you a promise, and, though everything in me wanted to bury that nigga, I didn’t. I gave him a choice—"
“A choice? What are you talking about?”
“I gave him a choice between you or leaving the building with enough product to make a lot of money, and he didn’t choose you. That nigga chose the money, and if he was really about you, he would have chosen you.”
“Well, neither did you,” I shot back. “You didn’t choose me either. I guess I’m not good enough for a nigga toeverchoose me.”
Sympathy poured from his eyes as he watched my tears. “That’s not true.”
I looked away, but he reached out and gently grabbed my arm anyway.
“That’s not true,” he repeated.
The tears came harder. “Let me go, Reek!”
He didn’t, he held me enough to keep me right there while he insisted, “That’s not true.”
I yanked my arm again, hating how soothing his voice sounded. “You had no right! You don’t get to keep doing this to me. You don’t get to control who’s around me, who wants me, who talks to me, who comes into my life, putting cameras in my condo, while refusing to give me what I want. That’s not your right!”
He stared at me, saying nothing for half a second too long.
“That’s what Mercer used to do,” I said, voice shaking now. “He’d decide what was best. He’d decide who got access to us. He’d decide what we needed, what we could handle, what kind of lives we should live, and then everybody was supposed to be grateful because it came wrapped up in money or protection or his sick version of caring.”
Reek’s grip loosened some, but he still didn’t let me go. “I am not Mercer.”
