Page 40 of Cannon (King Family Saga #3)

Queen

I stared at Jupiter’s body as they zipped up the black bag, my vision blurring through tears I couldn’t hold back anymore.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not tonight.

Not ever. VIP parties were supposed to be safe, controlled guest list, high-end clientele, security at every entrance.

The kind of night where the money flowed easy and nobody got hurt.

But there she was. My best dancer. My hardest worker. Dead on my goddamn floor.

Jupiter’s son. Fuck. Little Elias was only seven. What was I supposed to tell him? That his mama overdosed in the dressing room of my club while he was sleeping at his grandma’s house? That she wouldn’t be coming home to make him breakfast or take him to school or see him grow up?

I wiped my face roughly with the back of my hand, smearing what was left of my makeup. The cops were still milling around, taking statements from the last of my staff. The VIPs had cleared out the minute the ambulance arrived. Rich people are allergic to scandal as usual.

“Ms. Davenport?” The detective approached, notebook in hand. “I have a few more questions.”

I straightened my shoulders, pulling myself together. “Go ahead.”

“Any idea who might have supplied the drugs to your employee?”

“No.” My voice was steady despite the hurricane inside me. “I run a clean establishment. My dancers know drugs aren’t tolerated,” I lied. I was feeling guilty because I didn’t fight Smoke harder on him allowing his crew to sell drugs in my establishment.

“Yet one of them just died from an overdose on your premises.” His eyes were cold, judgmental.

“I had no idea she was using,” I insisted. That was the truth. I’d seen Jupiter take a shot here and there but didn’t know her to do coke like some of the other girls.

He scribbled something in his notebook. “Well she was a stripper. They aren’t exactly the most moral of creatures.”

I wanted to slap the knowing look off his face. He didn’t know Jupiter. Didn’t know how she’d fought her way back from rock bottom, how she’d worked double shifts to save for her son’s college fund and her spa, how she’d been my rock when the club was struggling.

“We’ll need to review your security footage,” he continued. “And I should inform you that your establishment will remain closed pending our investigation.”

“How long?” I asked, already calculating lost revenue, bills coming due, dancers who lived paycheck to paycheck.

“Could be days. Could be weeks.” He shrugged like it wasn’t my whole life hanging in the balance. “Depends what we find.”

I was about to argue when I spotted Cannon striding across the parking lot, his muscular frame cutting through the flashing lights like a shadow. Even in this nightmare, something inside me steadied at the sight of him. His mysterious eyes locked on mine, concern written across his face.

“What happened?” he asked, reaching my side.

“Jupiter,” I said, my voice cracking. “Died of an overdose.”

His jaw tightened as he watched the coroner’s van pull away, taking Jupiter with it. “Fuck.”

The detective cleared his throat. “And you are?”

“Cannon Price. Head of security.” His voice was cool, professional, giving nothing away about what he really was to me.

“Where were you when this happened, Mr. Price?”

“Day off. Got here as soon as Queen…Ms. Davenport called me.”

The detective’s eyes narrowed, darting between us. “We’ll need your statement too.”

“Whatever you need,” Cannon replied.

Twenty minutes later, the cops finally left, promising to be in touch tomorrow to review the security footage. The parking lot emptied until it was just Cannon and me standing under the harsh lights of Sylk Road’s neon sign.

“You okay?” he asked, his hand finding the small of my back.

I shook my head, unable to lie to him. “Not even close. I could get my liquor licenses revoked for this. This could be the end of Sylk Road.”

“Let’s check those cameras,” he said. “See if we can figure out who did this.”

Back in my office, I pulled up the security feed on my computer while Cannon stood behind me, his presence solid and grounding. We watched as the night unfolded in grainy black and white, the VIPs arriving, Jupiter working the floor, everything normal until…

“There,” Cannon pointed at the screen. “Who’s that?”

A man I didn’t recognize approached Jupiter at the bar. Average height, newsboy cap pulled low. They exchanged words, then he slipped something into her hand. She looked around nervously before pocketing it.

“Fast forward to when she goes to the dressing room,” Cannon instructed.

I clicked ahead, my stomach knotting as I watched Jupiter slip into the dressing room alone. Fifteen minutes later, one of the other girls found her unconscious.

“Can you zoom in on that guy’s face?” Cannon asked, leaning closer to the screen.

I enhanced the image, but the cap obscured most of his features. “I don’t recognize him. Do you?”

Cannon studied the frame, his expression darkening. “No. Not one of Smoke’s crew.”

“You sure?” I asked, surprised.

“Positive. I knew every one of those motherfuckers. And they’re all dead now.” His voice was cold with certainty. “This is someone new.”

“Wait you handled Smoke?”

“That’s where I was tonight. We’re free of him.

“Thank you, so much.”

“Of course.”

“Well the cops will be looking for that guy,” I said, leaning back in my chair.

Cannon’s laugh was humorless. “Yeah, and I’ll find him first.”

“What are you going to do?”

His eyes met mine, blue ice that sent a shiver down my spine. “What do you think? He killed Jupiter. Got your club shut down. He’s a dead man walking.”

I should have protested. Should have told him to let the police handle it. Instead, I nodded, the grief in my chest hardening into something darker. “Good.”

We sat in silence for a moment, the weight of the night pressing down on us. Jupiter was gone. The club was closed indefinitely. And somewhere out there was the man responsible.

“I can’t believe this happened,” I whispered, more to myself than to him. “Jupiter of all people.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Cannon said, his hand squeezing my shoulder. “This isn’t on you.”

But it felt like it was. My club. My dancer. My responsibility. And I allowed drugs here because I was too much of a chicken to handle Smoke.

“Maybe…” I hesitated, surprising myself with what I was about to say. “Maybe it’s for the best that we’re closed for a while.”

Cannon’s eyebrow raised. “What do you mean?”

“I’m tired, Cannon.” The admission felt like letting go of something I’d been clutching too tightly. “So fucking tired. Running this place, dealing with Smoke’s threats, taking care of ZaZa, worrying about money… I’m exhausted.”

“So take a break,” he said, like it was that simple.

“The club is my life. My identity.” I gestured around the office. “Queen of Sylk Road. That’s who I am.”

“Nah.” He turned my chair to face him, crouching down so we were eye to eye. “That’s what you do. Not who you are.”

Something about the way he looked at me, like he could see past all my masks to the woman underneath. It made my throat tight.

“I don’t know how to stop,” I confessed. “I don’t know who I am without this place.”

“Then maybe it’s time to find out.” His thumb brushed a tear from my cheek. “But first, we’re gonna find the motherfucker who did this to Jupiter. Make him pay.”

I nodded, leaning into his touch. In the midst of all this darkness, Cannon was the one solid thing I could hold onto. And right now, revenge felt like the only thing that made sense.

“Let’s start with the guest list,” I said, pulling myself together. “Someone must have seen this guy come in.”

As we worked through the night, part of me was already accepting what I couldn’t say out loud, that maybe losing the club, even temporarily, was a twisted kind of blessing. A chance to breathe. To figure out who Queen Marie Davenport really was when she wasn’t holding up the world.

But first, we had a killer to find.

The sun was rising by the time we finished combing through the security footage and guest lists. My eyes burned from exhaustion, and my heart felt hollowed out. I’d lost a dancer, a friend, and possibly my business all in one night.

“We should get out of here,” Cannon said, his voice gruff with fatigue. “There’s nothing more we can do tonight.”

Cannon drove us back to my place in silence. I leaned my head against the cool window, watching the city blur past. The emptiness inside me felt vast and echoing.

When we got to my apartment, I kicked off my heels and collapsed onto my couch, not even bothering to turn on the lights. Cannon moved around in the darkness, setting my keys on the counter, getting me a glass of water I hadn’t asked for but desperately needed.

“You should try to sleep,” he said, sitting beside me.

I shook my head. “Can’t. Not yet.” I took a long sip of water, then set the glass down carefully. “You know what’s fucked up? A part of me feels… relieved. You know what I’d rather be doing right now? If I could do anything?”

“What’s that?”

“I’d own a quiet bed and breakfast upstate. One of those fancy farmhouse places with antique furniture and homemade bread at breakfast. Just me in a big white bed with clean sheets, reading books and watching the rain.” I laughed at myself. “Sounds boring as hell, right?”

“Sounds peaceful,” he corrected. “I’ll get you that.”

I snorted, the laugh coming out harsher than I intended. “Right. My knight in shining armor.”

His jaw tightened, eyes narrowing slightly. “You think I’m playing?”

“Cannon, come on. You can barely afford your apartment. I appreciate the thought, but…”

“I have money,” he cut me off, his voice suddenly hard. “I’m not some broke nigga you need to take care of.”

I blinked, caught off guard by his tone. “What are you talking about?”

“My birth mother left me money.” The words came out clipped, like they cost him something to say. “An inheritance.”

“Your birth mother?” I sat up straighter. “You never mentioned that.”

“I’ve known about it for months,” he said, his gaze fixed somewhere over my shoulder. “Since I was inside. Got a letter from her right before I got out. My half-brothers came and visited me.”

“And you didn’t take it? Why not?”

His laugh was bitter. “Because it’s blood money.”

I tried to process what he was telling me. “So all this time, while you’ve been living in that dump, working security at my club, you had money waiting for you?”

“Twenty million,” he said flatly.

My jaw dropped. “Twenty… million? Dollars?”

He nodded once, his face unreadable.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I stood up, anger surging through my exhaustion. “You’ve been struggling for what? Pride? Some misguided principle? That’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard!”

His eyes flashed dangerously. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know you’ve been eating ramen and sleeping on a mattress on the floor when you could have been set for life!

” I was shouting now, all my stress and grief channeling into this new target.

“You could have had anything you wanted! Instead you’re playing martyr over money from a woman who’s already dead! ”

Cannon rose to his feet, towering over me, his voice dropping to that deadly quiet that made my skin prickle. “You think I want handouts from the family that threw me away? That had my father killed? That set me up to go to prison? That money is soaked in blood.”

“So what changed?” I challenged, refusing to back down. “Why consider taking it now?”

“Because now I know what they did to me. To my brothers. I know the truth about Silas King. And you deserve a nigga that got something to give.” His hands clenched into fists at his sides. “That money isn’t a gift. It’s what I’m owed for what they took from me.”

“You’ve been broke by choice this whole time,” I pressed, too angry to stop. “Living like you had nothing when you could’ve…”

“You don’t know shit,” he cut me off, his voice like ice. “I don’t need you to save me or fix me or tell me what I should have done. I make my own choices.”

“Well, your choices are stupid!” I shot back.

Something dark and dangerous flashed across his face.

He stepped closer, his voice dropping even lower.

“Watch your mouth. You don’t know what it’s like to have your whole life stolen from you.

To have the choice taken away. That money might be my birthright, but it’s still my decision when and how I claim it. ”

“I know what it’s like to have life stolen from you, and if my raggedy-ass mother had millions sitting, waiting for me I would take that shit in a heartbeat.”

“You’ve been through enough tonight,” he said, the anger in his voice shifting to something colder. “We’ll talk about this when you’re thinking straight.”

“Don’t patronize me,” I snapped, pride making me push when I should have yielded. “I’m not some fragile little girl who can’t handle the truth.”

“The truth?” He laughed, the sound like breaking glass. “The truth is you’re standing here judging me for choices you can’t begin to understand. The truth is you’re so used to being in control that you can’t stand when someone doesn’t fall in line with what you think is best.”

Each word hit like a slap. I opened my mouth to fire back, but he was already moving toward the door.

“Where are you going?” I demanded.

“Away from here,” he said without turning around. “Before I say something I’ll regret.”

“Cannon!”

The door slammed behind him, cutting off my words. I stood frozen in my living room, the silence ringing in my ears, wondering how we’d gone from comforting each other to this in the span of minutes.

I sank back onto the couch, the silence pressing in from every corner. Jupiter was gone. My club was closed. And Cannon, the only man who had made me feel steady through all this, had just walked out on me.

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t sure which loss I could survive.