Page 17 of Cannon (King Family Saga #3)

Cannon

The diner looked like it hadn’t been updated since the eighties, all cracked vinyl booths and sticky floors that grabbed at your shoes with every step.

I slid into the back booth, positioning myself where I could see both exits and every face that walked through that door. Old habits. Prison taught me that relaxing got you stabbed in the shower, and the streets before that taught me the same lesson with different consequences.

The waitress looked like she’d been working here since those same eighties, moving slow with the kind of tiredness that lived in your bones.

A few early-morning customers scattered throughout, construction workers grabbing coffee before their shift, a homeless man nursing a cup in the corner, a young couple coming down from whatever high had them up all night.

None of them looked like threats, but I catalogued each face anyway.

My body felt the weight of the night, the long hours standing, watching, being alert.

But my mind kept drifting back to Queen’s office.

The way her pulse had jumped under my palm when I grabbed her throat.

The shock in those sharp eyes that always had something slick to say.

For a second, just one second, I’d seen past all that boss bitch armor she wore.

“You ever speak to me like that again, especially in front of someone else, and I’ma bend you over this desk…”

My dick stiffened at the memory. The way her thighs had pressed together when I’d made my point.

She could front all she wanted, but her body told a different story.

Queen might run that club with an iron fist, but there was something in her that wanted to submit to me.

I could smell it on her like expensive perfume.

After touching her like that, I had decided she was going to be mine.

Fuck whatever dynamic we had. Me working for her was temporary. I needed to break her in the best way.

The bell above the door chimed, snapping me out of thoughts. In walked Smoke.

The construction workers looked up from their coffee.

The homeless man in the corner squinted through the haze of whatever was keeping him upright.

Even the tired-ass waitress paused her slow shuffle to stare.

Which was exactly what Smoke wanted, all eyes on him, everyone knowing exactly who just walked into their space.

He spotted me immediately, that gold-tooth grin spreading across his face like we were long-lost brothers instead of… whatever the fuck we were now. Former boss and former employee. Former partners in crime. Former friends, if you could call what we had friendship.

“Damn, Cannon,” he said. “I’m glad you decided to link with me. The fact that I’m just now seeing you after five years hurt my feelings.”

I ain’t give a fuck about a nigga’s feelings. But there was something in his eyes, something hungry that hadn’t been there before I went away. I knew his business was on the fritz. He needed something from me that he couldn’t get anywhere else.

“I been busy,” I replied, keeping my voice level, controlled.

The waitress shuffled over, pad in hand, looking like she wanted to be anywhere else. Smoke didn’t even glance at her when he ordered. “Coffee. Black. And bring some of those little cream things anyway.” Then he looked at me. “You eating, C? I’m buying.”

“Just coffee.”

“Two coffees,” he told the waitress, waving her away with one of those ring-heavy hands. She moved off, and Smoke leaned back in the booth, studying me like I was a puzzle he was trying to solve.

“Look at you,” he said, shaking his head. “Five years locked up and you come out lookin’ like you ain’t missed a beat. Most niggas get out looking broke down, defeated. You look…” He paused, searching for the word. “Dangerous. Like you been planning something the whole time.”

I didn’t respond. Let him talk. Smoke always liked the sound of his own voice, and sometimes if you stayed quiet long enough, he’d tell you more than you wanted to know.

“Working security though?” He leaned forward, lowering his voice like we were conspirators. “Man with your reputation, your skills, working the door at a strip club? That’s beneath you, C. Way beneath you.”

The coffee arrived. Smoke tore open three sugar packets, dumping them into his cup while keeping his eyes on me. He stirred slow, deliberate, like he was buying time to read my face.

I kept my expression blank. Stone. Whatever he was fishing for, he wouldn’t find it written across my features.

“You know I got love for you, right?” he continued, taking a sip and making a face at the bitter taste. “Despite everything that went down before you went away. Iono how you got popped but now that you out we can find out who did it and take care of it.”

My jaw tightened, but I didn’t speak. Not yet. I knew who set me up. It was Silas King but he had help with someone from Smoke’s camp. I knew it wasn’t Smoke because I was the glue that was holding his operation together. Since I’ve been gone he’s been losing left and right.

Smoke must have taken my silence as encouragement because he leaned closer, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper. “I got something for you. Something that’s gonna pay better than whatever Queen is giving you to stand around and look intimidating.

“I’m listening,” I said finally.

His gold tooth caught the light when he smiled.

Smoke took another sip of the bitter coffee, his eyes never leaving my face.

“See, that’s what I always respected about you, C,” Smoke said, stirring more sugar into his coffee.

“You don’t waste words. Don’t ask a bunch of unnecessary questions.

You just listen, process, make moves.” He paused, studying my face like he was reading a map.

“But I gotta ask, what’s really good with you working for Queen Marie? ”

“It’s work,” I said simply.

“Nah, nah.” He waved one of those ring-heavy hands.

“Don’t give me that basic shit. You’re Cannon fucking Price.

You used to run crews, move weight, plan operations that made us millions.

And now you’re checking IDs and breaking up drunk fights?

” He leaned back, shaking his head. “Something ain’t adding up. ”

“Unless…” His eyes narrowed, and I could see the gears turning in his head. “Unless you’re playing a longer game. Maybe getting close to Queen for a reason?” He smiled, that gold tooth glinting. “Now that would be the Cannon I know. Always thinking three steps ahead.”

The motherfucker was fishing, trying to figure out if I was running some kind of con. If he only knew how fucked up my situation really was, living on an air mattress, borrowing my sister’s car, working for a woman who paid me weekly like I was some regular employee.

I would never tell him that I had tens of millions of dollars sitting in a digital wallet somewhere.

“What you want from me, Smoke?”

“I want you to come back to my team. The money is callin’ ya name. I know you hear it.”

“I’m good.”

“Aight, this is my proposition.”

Smoke reached into his mink coat and pulled out a flip phone, one of those cheap burner joints you could grab at any corner store. He set it on the table between us, next to the sugar packets and stained napkins.

“There’s a nigga named Riot,” he said, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper.

My blood went cold at the mention of that name. What the fuck did he want with my brother?

“This motherfucker and his bitch. And the worst part is, the bitch is my niece. She killed her own brother,” Smoke continued, and I could hear the rage simmering under his controlled tone.

“Carmelo. My sister’s boy. Shot him down like a dog, then had the nerve to leave his body there for his mama to find. ”

I remembered Carmelo. Young, stupid, always trying to prove himself to his uncle and his father Lyle. The kind of kid who thought violence made you a man instead of just making you dead.

“What’s that got to do with me?” I asked, though I already knew where this was heading.

Smoke leaned forward, his eyes locking onto mine. “I want you to kill him. Clean, professional, no trace back to me. Half a million dollars. Cash. You always been my best shootah.”

The words hit me like a physical blow. Half a million to murder my own brother. I ain’t fuck with the Kings but I wasn’t down for that shit.

Inside, rage built like a storm. Not at Riot…at this piece of shit sitting across from me, offering blood money like it was a business transaction. At the circumstances that had me sitting in this grimy booth, desperate enough that he thought I might actually consider it.

But I couldn’t let any of that show. Smoke was watching my face like a hawk, looking for tells, for weakness, for any sign of what I was really thinking. One wrong reaction and this conversation could go sideways fast. And thankfully no one knew we were related.

“Half a million,” I repeated, keeping my voice flat.

“Half a million,” he confirmed. “Plus, it gets you back in the game. Shows people you’re serious about getting your hands dirty again. Opens doors that been closed since you got out. You take out a King and the whole world respects you.”

The manipulation was clumsy but effective. He was offering me money, status, and respect, everything I’d lost when I went to prison. Everything I needed to rebuild.

Everything except the one thing that mattered: I’d never kill Riot, no matter what he’d done, no matter how much money was on the table.

But saying no outright to Smoke wasn’t an option either. He hadn’t stayed alive this long by accepting rejection gracefully. If I turned him down, he’d see it as disrespect. Or worse, he’d start wondering why I was protecting someone who was supposed to be just another target.

“I’ll think about it,” I said finally.

The words tasted like ash in my mouth, but they bought me time. Time to figure out how to handle this without signing my own death warrant or betraying the brother I barely knew. I still didn’t want shit to do with those niggas, but blood is blood.

Smoke’s smile was wide, satisfied. He thought he had me.

“That’s all I’m asking,” he said, sliding the burner phone across the sticky table. “My number’s already programmed in. When you decide… and I know you’ll decide right…you call me.”

“Good seeing you, C,” he said, dropping a twenty on the table for coffee that couldn’t have cost more than three dollars. “Don’t take too long thinking. Opportunities like this don’t stay open forever.”

Then he was gone, walking out into the early morning heat.

The sun was just starting to break through when I left the diner. I gripped the burner in my pocket, that cheap plastic rectangle burning hotter than a Glock.

Half a million to kill Riot. My brother. He ain’t know the blood that tied us, but that didn’t make the proposition any less fucked up.

Smoke thought he was slick, dangling money in front of me like I was still that hungry nigga chasing paper. He didn’t understand, I’d already eaten. I just hadn’t collected my plate yet.

You’d think he would’ve taken the hint that I came home and didn’t hit him up. But he thought I was desperate.

I walked the few blocks back to my new spot, the city already alive again. Delivery trucks rumbling, street vendors setting up, tired faces shuffling toward jobs they hated.

The building I called home was a walk-up with cracked paint and a piss smell that clung to the stairwell.

I made it to the third floor, key sliding into the lock with a scrape that echoed loudly in the empty hall.

Inside, the apartment was damn near bare.

Four walls, an air mattress, a couple bags of clothes stacked in the corner.

Humble didn’t even begin to cover it. But after five years in a cage, even this felt like freedom.

I dropped onto the air mattress, stared up at the ceiling, paint flaking like scabs. My chest rose and fell slow, controlled, but inside my head the storm kept brewing.

I shut my eyes, letting exhaustion finally drag at my bones, but the last thought that burned behind my eyelids wasn’t about Smoke, or even Riot.

It was Queen. Her pulse under my hand. Her body freezing up when I told her to respect me. Her thighs pressing together like she couldn’t help herself.

She wasn’t mine. Not yet. But she would be.

And the second I drifted off to sleep, I knew one thing for sure: I had to handle Smoke. Which meant I was gonna have to talk to the fuckin’ Kings.