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I met him two years ago after Phantom League hired me to organize one of their wild label parties. The room had been filled with rich rappers, killers, executives, and groupies, and somehow I managed to make the whole thing look like a movie without anybody getting shot.

Ares noticed me that night.

His gaze followed me around the room the same way it had tonight. Before the party ended, he asked me to plan his upcoming birthday and offered me a million dollars to do it.

Everything between us grew from there.

At first, I told myself it was business and that I wasn’t going to mix my work with whatever Ares was becoming to me.

That became harder the longer I knew him.

Ares didn’t bring drama to my door or play games about what he wanted. He never hid the fact that there were other women in his life either. I saw the blogs and knew about the girlfriends. He never denied them or tried to convince me that I was the only woman he dealt with.

That was why it took me so long to agree to become one of them.

We spent almost two years flirting, stealing moments together, and having our quiet Sundays before I finally gave in six months ago.

I said yes to being his.

I also said yes to becoming the fifth girlfriend of a man who never promised me exclusivity. The only thing Ares ever promised was that whatever he gave me would be real.

I stayed because being with him gave me what I asked for. I told him I needed peace and enough space to focus on my work, and he respected that.

That didn’t mean seeing the other women never bothered me.

I hated the pictures of him walking red carpets with Leona. I hated hearing people call Naomi the original, and I damn sure didn’t enjoy watching clips of Lyric carrying herself as if she had already married him.

No woman wanted to swallow that shit and smile.

Ares never hid them from me, though, and he didn’t hide me either.

Tonight, I had been on his arm during one of the biggest moments of his life. Cameras saw me there, and everybody watching knew I belonged in his world too.

Maybe that was enough for me.

I eventually closed my laptop with half a glass of wine still sitting beside it.

I wasn’t stupid enough to believe the version of Ares I knew was everything there was to him. I knew there were darker parts of his life that I hadn’t touched yet, and sometimes I wondered if he kept those parts away from me on purpose.

For two years, I had been moving around the edges of his world, and for six months, I had officially been one of his women.

Maybe I was the fifth girlfriend, and maybe there were four women ahead of me who had known pieces of Ares longer than I had.

None of that changed who I was.

I was Amara Kevins, and I had never needed being Ares’ only woman to know my own name.

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.