“Nah,” Stevelle shook his head. “Your pops’ death is not on your hands. Don’t say no stupid shit like that. This game is live or die. Everybody knows the price that you could possibly pay just by rolling the dice. You were young back then. And niggas know how to get exactly what they want. He cased you and fed you all the bullshit he knew that you wanted to hear.”
“Exactly. I fell for it, and that makes me stupid.”
“Nah, that makes you a genuine person. It’s not your fault that you expected the same in return.”
“My daddy called me green,” Tiara said, thinking back to the time that she walked into the house and spent the evening talking with her dad. “And back then, I was. I thought I’d gotten better. I didn’t think I would have to watch my back anymore. But at the end of the day, I am a Rogers, and I know now that I will never be able to run from that. I don’t know if you know anything about who my family is, but—”
“I know who your father was, Tiara,” Stevelle interjected.
Stevelle wanted to ask her a question but changed his mind when the question was at the tip of his tongue. He would let her tell him about her past on her own time. The last thing he wanted to do was pry. He opted to ask her something else, though.
“Why was he here? If he killed your pops, that means he got what he wanted, right? After all this time, what would make him come back for you?”
Suddenly, Mario’s words replayed over in her head, and Tiara’s blood ran cold. Her eyes opened up like saucers, and she looked into Stevelle’s worried face.
“He told me . . . He told me that my mother and my cousin Vincent sent him to kill me,” Tiara whispered. “She’s the one who signed me away and had me put into the facility with Elaya.” She stopped speaking to catch her breath. She felt a rush of anxiety come over her as everything Mario had said was coming back to her. She took another breath before she tried to speak again. “And I don’t know how he found me. But now I know that they won’t stop until I’m dead. The thing is, my father left everything he ever owned to me. With me out of the picture I thought it had all gone to my cousin Vincent, but apparently, that’s not the case. Unless I’m dead, they can’t touch any of it; which explains why they’re after me.”
“Shit,” Stevelle said, now understanding the severity of the situation.
He knew exactly who Vincent Rogers was. Ever since Blake had been killed, he’d been running the streets loosely. He wasn’t quite the businessman that Blake was and couldn’t be if he tried. No longer was the Rogers’s name connected with being the head of streets. Vincent had bowed to Rodriguez, and because of him, the entire Rogers’s estate was in debt. He had been Blake’s right-hand man; however, he was more of an accountant than a drug dealer. He didn’t know the first thing about flipping work the way that it was supposed to be flipped. It all was beginning to make sense why he wanted his niece dead. If Blake Rogers’s whole estate was left to Tiara, that meant she was caked up—beyond caked up. He glanced around her tiny apartment and back at her. She deserved so much more than that. She deserved the millions that she had waiting for her.
“So if your dad left everything to you, why haven’t you gone to a lawyer and taken it?” he asked.
“Because it’s not worth it to me.”
For the next thirty minutes, he sat there and listened to her talk about her goals and what she wanted for herself. After hearing that she had been brought up with security, a cleaning staff, and her own personal nanny, he was surprised that she didn’t turn out to be an uptight woman. She was actually very humble and somebody who put her best foot forward. For some reason, she kept getting knocked down, but something in him wanted to be the one to pick her up this time.
“No!” Tiara exclaimed. “It is too dangerous. I don’t want you getting hurt because of me.”
Stevelle took both of her hands in his and put his forehead on hers. “Listen, shorty, this ain’t up for debate. You might not have seen me or known me back in high school because I was too busy putting in work. I’ve been working for a long time, and my ranks have come up quite nicely in the streets. Ever since your father died, it’s pretty much been eat or be eaten in the streets, and believe me, I’ve been eating. I got my own little crew. We ain’t no cartel or nothing, but we gets down. Just say the word and we on they asses.”
Tiara gave a weak smile and removed her hands from his. She shook her head sadly and looked up at him. This man barely even knew her but was willing to go out on a limb and help her in her situation. The only thing he could say about her was that she was pretty and that he wanted to take her out. She felt embarrassed that he had witnessed another man inside of her. Her emotions were all over the place. She felt sad, angry, embarrassed, and confused about what to do. This man had saved her, and she would forever be grateful. As good as his offer sounded, she wouldn’t accept it. She couldn’t risk another life being taken because of her. Too many people had died already, and she didn’t think she could handle seeing someone die just because they had the misfortune of
