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“You’re a terrible liar.”

“I’d never lie to you, Beautiful Belle.”

I bit the inside of my cheek, mostly to keep my face neutral, because the way he said it—easy, like he’d been calling me that longer than a day—was working on me more than I cared to admit.

“I told you I worked here.”

“Did you?” He frowned slightly, like he was trying to remember. The act was so bad it was almost charming. “That must’ve slipped my mind.”

“Your mind doesn’t slip.”

“No. It doesn’t.” He swirled his glass. “You never called.”

“I don’t call niggas.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

He nodded like he wasn’t surprised in the slightest. “So how does this work then?”

I looked at him.

Alarm bells should’ve been going off, especially after what Jody had told me about him. If this was Siani, I’d tell her to run for the hills. Don’t even let him sniff the coochie. But the Universe had delivered him to me on a silver platter, and as luck would have it, he was actually trying to figure out a way to get closer to me.

“Give me your phone,” I said.

He handed it over without hesitation. I put in my real number and handed it back.

“Don’t make me regret that.” I pushed off the couch and went back to work.

Siani cornered me in the back around 2:30 a.m. “Bitch. Did you give Cardez your number?”

“Don’t start.”

“La’Belle Mafia Evans, voluntarily giving a nigga her number.” She was cheesing so hard I wanted to flick her forehead. “I might have to go play the numbers.”

I rolled my eyes. “I gave him my number, not my hand in marriage.”

“Mmhm. That’s how it starts.” She scurried away before I could throw something at her.

The party started clearing out around 3:00 a.m. Tariq was drunk off his ass and had Siani in a corner, saying something that made her mush him.

Cardez watched everyone as they filtered downstairs before walking over and handing me a black card.

“Close it out.”

I ran it. All this had run him twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn’t even blink when he signed the receipt.

Then, he pulled a fold of hundreds out of his pocket and handed it to me. It was so thick, I didn’t need to count it to know it was more than what any section tip should be.

“That’s for you,” he said.

“Thank you,” I replied, taking it from him.

He held my gaze for a second. “Night, Belle.”

I nodded and watched him leave. I put the money in my pocket and joined Siani to clean up the area. We moved through the routine on auto-pilot— wiping down tables and gathering the rest of the empty glasses. The janitorial staff would do a deeper clean later tonight.