“Where have you been staying?”
“I got a place.”
I could feel her staring at me. “That fast? So, you didn’t plan on coming back?” I could hear the disappointment in her tone.
“It’s been a few weeks, Kiandra. It’s not like I got a place after two days. I have to live somewhere.”
“You could have just come back home. Were you that unhappy with me? I thought things were good between us.”
Running one hand over my waves, I found myself wishing that Scrambled was closer. “I just need some time to myself. Maybe some space is good.”
“I don’t get why we need space. There wasn’t even a real reason for us to be arguing. I was just trying to be supportive. I told you that you could leave but moving out? That’s a bit extreme.”
She was right. Because as far as she knew, I was happy. I always felt like the truth would hurt her, but keeping the truth from her was going to end up doing just as much harm. “Kiandra, you’ve been nothing but loyal to me since the day I met you. I owe you a lot, and I never want to hurt you. At this time in my life, I’m just not sure I want to be in a relationship. I just need some time. Maybe we should both just enjoy being single and see what happens.”
“I don’t want to be single,” her voice rose a few octaves. “I can’t believe this. After my parents and friends constantly tried to tell me not to deal with you, I always chose you. There was nothing anyone could have ever told me to make me leave you. And for no reason, you just up and leave me. I don’t understand.” Kiandra began to cry just as I pulled into a parking space at Scrambled.
With a deep sigh, I got out of the car, rounded it, and opened her door. Using the pad of my thumb, I swiped a tear from her cheek. “Come on, Kiandra. Your people are waiting for you.”
I heard the loud sounds of an engine. Looking over my shoulder, I saw a metallic gold Hellcat, and I cursed under my breath. This was the fuckin’ brunch that Breezy’s car club was hosting. Fuck! My eyes darted around the parking lot and sure enough, I saw her car. I had assumed that Kiandra was meeting her family or friends. Her sudden obsession with The Hellcat Barbies couldn’t have come at a worse time.
Kiandra sniffed and got out of the car. The streaks the tears made let me know that she did have on makeup. She peered into my eyes. “I want to finish talking about this. Please,” she tugged at my shirt while pleading with her eyes.
“Yeah, they’re in the car. I’m about to get them.” That voice made my blood run cold. Breezy was behind me. She had come out of the restaurant.
Kiandra’s orbs darted in Breezy’s direction. “There’s your tutor.”
“Kiandra just go inside and hit me later, okay?” I didn’t even want to look at Breezy. Maybe she wouldn’t care that I was with Kiandra, but something was telling me she did.
With a nod, Kiandra walked away. Breezy walked past briskly, and I observed the nude strappy heels on her feet, the crème tube top and matching shorts. Her hips swayed, and her sharp heels stabbed the pavement with every step that she took. It wasn’t my day at all, but I couldn’t see her and not speak.
“Breezy.” She kept walking, and I wasn’t surprised.
I watched her until she yanked her car door open and pulled out a large gift bag with her lips set in a hard line. I wanted nothing more than to fuck the scowl off her face. Even when she was pissed, she made my manhood harden. With the bag in hand, she sauntered across the parking lot, eyes straight ahead.
“Breezy.” She didn’t even stall. More members of the car club and regular patrons were pulling up, and I didn’t want to do too much. She ignored me and kept walking to the door.
The decision to let her go wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t the time or the place to get into heavy conversations. Getting back in my car, I sat in the parking lot and rolled a much needed blunt. Kiandra wanted something that I didn’t think I was capable of giving her any longer. In my eyes, I had paid my debt but in doing so, she fell in love with me, and that shit was my fault. Trying to be a stand-up guy and shit I did her more harm than good. That was on me. Breezy said she wasn’t pressed for a relationship, and I believed her. But only days after I promised her, I wouldn’t hurt her, I ended up wiping tears off the face of my ex. Shit was blowing me. Add in the fact that I still had so much hatred and bitterness in me from losing Tyler, and my emotions were bubbling over like hot lava in a volcano.
I hated that shit. I wanted to be numb. To not feel anything. My mouth damn near salivated when I thought about the coke I’d sniffed that night at Maino’s house. It made me numb to the emotional discomfort of my brother’s death, but it also made me even angrier and more hot headed than I already was. If I went that route, I might end up catching another body. After grabbing a lighter, I picked my phone up from the arm rest and checked to see if I had any missed calls or text messages. I had to meet Maino. He said he had a business proposition for me, and my interest was piqued.
Since my real estate venture was on pause, I needed to do something to keep money coming in. Yeah, I had done the little robbery, but I now had two sets of bills to pay. I wasn’t going to just stop paying Kiandra’s mortgage with no warning after I’d been doing so practically the entire time she lived in the house. She could afford the mortgage, or she wouldn’t have gotten approved for it. In the beginning, I paid it as a courtesy but once I moved in, I paid it because that was what a man was supposed to do. Kiandra was smart, and she didn’t spend her money on a bunch of material shit, so I knew she had money saved. Still, I was going to keep paying the bills there at least for a little while.
In my grief, I hadn’t been caring too much about bringing money in, but it was going out. A nigga was really tweaking when I did a damn presidential suite for a week. When I pulled up in front of Maino’s house, I saw the same female from the night I was there coming out of the house. Depending on how one looked at it, Maino could either be considered lucky as hell or unluckier than a muhfucka. Maino was born breech and somehow, someway, the doctor that was delivering him broke his arm. His parents not only sued the hospital and got a huge settlement, money was put into a trust for Maino that he couldn’t touch until he was eighteen. When he graduated fromhigh school, the first thing he did was buy a house. He also bought some birds to flip along with a Range Rover.
Maino hustled for a few years before selling his house and upgrading into something bigger and more expensive. Two months after he moved into the new house, he was on his motorcycle, and a woman ran a red light and hit him. Maino was luckier than Tyler. He almost died, but he didn’t. He was fucked up for months though. It took a year for the doctor to finally release him from physical therapy. Maino had a metal plate in his hip, and he had bad ass back issues still. A three-week hospital stay, two surgeries, and a lot of physical therapy got him a settlement from the woman’s insurance. I had no clue how much it was for, but Maino’s house and three cars were paid for. He sold weed on a big enough scale to keep money in his pocket, but my nigga was set. He didn’t need the money that he made from selling weed, but as long as he sold it, he didn’t have to touch the money from the settlement that he had left.
Maino must have been near the door because one second after I rang the doorbell, he was letting me in. “What up my G?” we bumped fists, and I crossed the threshold of his home.
I had just finished smoking, but when he passed me the blunt he had burning, I happily took a toke. As soon as we sat down on the couch, Maino got down to business. “Aight so check it, shorty that just left, Amoure, she works at that fancy ass art museum on Oberlin. She knows a lot about art, and she has some connections on the black market. Long story short, some Nigerian nigga is coming into town with some kind of authentic painting that he’s hoping to sell for $8,000,000. We rob his ass, let her sell it on the black market, and we get $2,000,000 each.”
My brows hiked at the mention of $2,000,000. Two mil to rob a nigga was crazy. Of course, I knew there were some rich people in the world that had the kind of paper that I couldn’t fathom, but if someone could afford to buy a painting that costeight M’s, how much were they working with total? Got damn. Of course, I was in, but I was leery of anything that sounded too good to be true.
“It can’t be that easy to hit a lick for two mil. What’s the scoop on this nigga, and how does she know him?”
“Like I said, she has connections. The person buying the painting would rather give her $6,000,000 than give the Nigerian nigga $8,000,000. He doesn’t want to lower the price, so the art dealer is on some grimy shit. She turned Amoure on to the lick.”
“And you trust Amoure?”
