Page 42 of Cannon

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 myown 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.

Chapter 16

Queen