“Thank you for what you did for me tonight, but I can’t accept your offer,” she told him. “I can’t ask you to go to war behind me. You can leave now.”
“Why not? And you never asked me for anything. This is all my idea. This is all my doing. I’m just a man trying to do what’s right.”
“How do you know this is right? This will start a whole new war. Not just with the Rogers, but Rodriguez will come after us too. Just like they did my daddy. I don’t know how many people my cousin has at this point, and I don’t know too much about Rodriguez, but if he was bold enough to go after my father, he must have a pretty strong army behind him. If you really only have a small crew, then we are already outnumbered.”
“One, don’t underestimate my niggas. We’re as gutter as they come. This pack of wolves has entered a lion’s den and came out victorious, you feel me? Two, you ain’t really got a choice. After seeing the shit that went down tonight, ain’t no way I’ma leave you wide open. I’ll kill a mothafucka who even thinks he can come close to you.” His deep voice boomed and made Tiara’s lip quiver.
“But . . . But why? Why are you willing to do all of that for me?”
“Because I see something in you.” Stevelle shrugged. “People done hurt you all your life. My granny always tells me that hurt people, hurt people. But now that I’ve met you, I don’t think that’s too true anymore. And plus, you owe me a date. I can’t take you out if you’re dead.”
* * *
After a while, he left her in the bathroom so she could take care of some of the bruises on her face, and he went into the living room. As she took a step forward, she heard voices that she didn’t recognize.
“I paid that nigga downstairs five Gs to keep him quiet,” she heard a male voice say. “I grabbed all the security cameras too.”
“Cool,” Stevelle responded. “But it don’t even matter. She ain’t never coming back here anyway.”
“You gon’ take her to your spot?”
“Yeah, for now.”
“Man, that’s Blake Rogers’s daughter for real, bruh?” a new voice said, that one a female.
“Yeah,” Stevelle said.
“A’ight,” the woman said. “Blake helped my family out a lot back in the day. His mom and my granny was real cool peoples growing up. As a kid, I never wanted for anything. That nigga had gwap for days and always laced my granny. I don’t get it, though. Can you please tell me why the fuck Blake Rogers’s daughter is living in a place like this? This whole apartment should be the size of her room.”
Tiara turned off the bathroom light but remained standing in the doorway, wanting to hear what Stevelle would say next as his response. Although she had been content in her apartment, the girl was right. Tiara’s room at her father’s house was way bigger. She guessed after being cramped in that room at the facility with Elaya, anything was better than that.
“They stripped her of her crown,” Stevelle replied. “And to keep it a buck fifty with y’all, I ain’t just call you here to move a dead body. I called y’all here because I need you to help me help her get it back.”
Tiara held her breath, waiting for a sudden uproar of protests. She was sure his people would keep it real with him. She was positive they would tell him he was stupid for offering to help a girl he barely knew and that what he was saying was crazy. She just knew they were going to tell him he was out of his mind.
“A’ight, I’m down,” the man’s voice said.
“Aye!” the girl said, sounding like she’d just had a revelation. “Nigga, she can make us her personal bodyguards!”
Tiara stifled a laugh and put her hand to her mouth, but it was too late. They had heard her. Stevelle came around the corner and looked down the small hallway to where she stood.
“Eavesdropping?”
“Y’all was talking about me,” Tiara told him. “I don’t think that qualifies as eavesdropping.”
“Come in here,” he grinned at her. “Come meet a couple of my peoples.”
She followed him back into the living room, glancing toward her bedroom where Mario’s body had been. It was gone, and the only thing that remained was a small pool of blood.
“This my nigga Keys,” he said, nodding toward the female. “She’s the realest in the game, I promise. A mean-ass shot too.”
Tiara hid her shock. The woman he pointed to looked more like a nigga than some of these “real” dudes that she’d see out in the streets. Keys’s hair was styled in a fade, with braids and a small bun at the top of her head. She was light skinned with hazel-colored eyes and freckles sprinkled neatly across her button nose. She rocked an all-white fitted True Religion hoodie, light blue jeans, and a pair of Legend Blue Jordan 11s on her feet.
“What’s good, shorty?” Keys smiled and nodded her head at Tiara. “I heard that nigga tried to come in and off you. Glad my bro got here when he could. These niggas don’t respect royalty these days.”
Tiara returned her smile, and Stevelle pointed at the other person in the room.
“And this is Mook.”
Mook was as tall as Stevelle but way bigger in weight. He wasn’t fat at all, though. He looked like he was made of solid muscle. You could tell this guy could probably knock anybody out with just half of a punch. He too wore a hoodie. His was black, with a pair of tan pants and a pair of all-black Huaraches. Mook stepped forward and kissed her hand in greeting.
“Nice to meet you, Princess.”
It had been so long since somebody called her that to her face that she was taken aback. She let his hand go and
