Asad enters right behind me; his big body settles on the same seat as mine, and I inch over, again placing much-needed space between us. And I still feel crowded. Almost like I’m suffocating, though the vehicle could fit about ten more people.
“What is this? What are you doing here?” Michelle snaps, distaste dripping from the question. A stunning woman with long, dark hair, piercing eyes, elegant, almost elfin features, and a willowy, toned frame that could easily grace one of HoC’s catwalks, even the sneer on her face can’t take away from her beauty. That lump of calcified shit in her chest does though. “This is for family only.”
That dig is lightweight compared to all the other shit she’s said to me over the years. Must be the stress of the day getting to her.
Yet… the reminder that my last name might be Cross but I’m unwanted and unloved still hits its target.
I hate that for me. Hate that she can still manage to hurt me after all these years. Maybe Marcus’s death and my imminent emancipation will trigger the beginning of some kind of healing.
Or fuck healing.
I’ll just take Teflon-esque skin.
“Ask your son,” I say with a small shrug.
She leans forward, hate glistening in her eyes instead of tears for her dearly departed husband. “Bitch, I’m asking you. Get your sad, ugly ass out of—”
“Mom, please.” Kareem, ever the peacemaker, sets a hand on his mother’s shoulder, attempting to… what? Calm her? Stop the caustic, foul words streaming from her lips like acid?
A little too late to save me from that.
Thirteen years too late. As he well knows.
“Oh, stop it, Kareem.” Michelle swats his hand away, sucking her teeth at him. “You’re always playing Captain Save-a-Ho with thisthing.” She scans me from the top of my head down to the pointed toes of my special edition House of Cross stilettoes—the last design my mother created before she died. Anger flashes in her dark eyes, and her mouth tightens until it’s little more than a ruby-red thin line. “I repeat, what are you doing here? This is reserved for family only.”
I reach for the handle on the door next to me. “Fine with me.” It’s not like I want to be here. And I never claimed these muthafuckas anyway.
“Touch that door if you want to.” The silken yet hard-as-armor warning halts my movement, my fingers hovering just above the handle.
A latent bratty part of me itches to brush my fingers over the door, defying him. Pushing him. Just to see what the consequences would be. Though Asad was my biggest childhood tormentor next to his mother, the urge to needle him is as familiar, as prevalent, as the disgust and unrelenting curiosity. I glance at him, that big body with its broad, strong shoulders and thick thighs spread wide, knees slightly bent, and his aloof, almost bored expression that gives away nothing. Except for those eyes. A flicker in those silver depths promises retribution.
My belly twists, tautens. Flutters.
And I lower my arm.
“I told her to ride with us,” he says to his mother as he removes his cell phone from the inside pocket of his black suitjacket. He switches his attention to whatever is on the screen. Knowing him, it’s either destroying someone’s life or arranging a fuck. Y’know. Tuesday.
Something as inconsequential as his stepfather dying wouldn’t stop business as usual.
I’m envious.
I’d rather be in my lab or studio, working. Anywhere but here.
“Why, Prince?” Michelle demands.
That’s right. She calls her son “Prince,” as if it’s a title instead of his last name. Not far off since Marcus treated him like the son he never had—the son he wished I was. Asad was his second-in-command and not to be questioned.
He doesn’t immediately answer his mother, instead continues to scroll through his phone, and even type out something on it. A couple minutes of silence pass before he finally raises his head and fixes his unblinking gaze on his mother. He’s not even looking at me, and a small shiver trips down my spine.
But hell, I want to know the answer to her question as well.
“Because I wanted to.” His flat tone has Michelle straightening and leaning against the seat back. After a moment, she dips her chin and smiles, but the three blind mice could see that shit is forced. “And the gossip about the circumstances involving Marcus’s death has already started.”
Acidic bile races for the back of my throat at that reminder. I know about the nature of gossip and rumors.
The whispers of murder.
A man who attains Marcus’s level of influence and power can’t do so without amassing enemies. But murder? A part of my mind refuses to accept it. Maybe because of a latent remnant of naïveté that can’t believe someone would actually resort to that? Definitely not because Marcus wouldn’t incite someone to take that drastic action. On more than one occasion, I’ve wanted to commit a li’l bit of patricide myself. But those were just that—words, daydreams, fanciful thoughts.