Page 49

RIOT

I knew she’d be back. Didn’t matter how loud she slammed the door or how hard she tried to make that goodbye stick, she’d be back.

Women like Allure didn’t just walk away from men like me.

Not because they were weak. But because the kind of bond we had…

it didn’t dissolve. It burned. And when it burned, it left a mark you couldn’t cut out.

Still, I hadn’t slept.

I’d stayed up staring out the window, watching the skyline turn from night to ash gray morning.

Puff after puff of the blunt in my hand, ash piling in the tray like a ritual I couldn’t stop repeating.

The air in the brownstone was stale with smoke and tension, and my thoughts kept circling the same fucked-up orbit.

Lionel Jones.

I didn’t feel bad about killing him. Not even a little.

The man was a threat to everything my family built.

Dangerous. Calculated. Ruthless in a way that didn’t play by old-school codes.

He’d tried to snake us more than once, fuckin' with shipments, bribing suppliers, threatening my mother.

The last time, he got too close. I heard he was plotting to assassinate my father.

This was before I knew that my father was a creep.

When he had gone missing, I figured he had to do something with it.

So I kidnapped him to show my brother that I was serious about finding our father. A bullet to his head like it was nothing.

It was business.

But now?

Now that I knew he had a daughter, and that the daughter was Allure?

That part hit different.

I didn’t know. I swear to God I didn’t.

If I had, I might’ve paused. But it happened well before I ever laid eyes on her.

So I couldn’t regret it. Lionel made his choices. And so did I.

And yet… her face.

The betrayal. The pain. The fucking shock of it when she realized who I was and what I’d done. That haunted me more than anything I’d done to him.

I raked a hand down my face and sat on the edge of the couch, elbows on my knees.

The night before replayed behind my eyes like a reel on loop.

Her breathy little gasps when I pinned her.

The way her body melted and rebelled at the same time.

The fight in her eyes even as she begged for me.

The moment she whispered please, Daddy like it meant something.

Goddamn.

I wasn’t built for soft love. But what we had? That was something else. Messy. Brutal. Real.

She pointed a gun at me.

And I still wanted her more than I’d ever wanted peace.

I stood and paced the floor. Every creak in the old hardwood dragged me back to the bigger problem: King’s Vine.

Blood still stained the gravel.

The press was on a feeding frenzy. The senator had issued a statement. Creed was trying to keep the investors calm. Abra was calling in PR company in the five boroughs. And me? I was supposed to be the face of it all. The legacy bearer.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about Allure. About her father. About my mother.

Tessa.

What if she knew?

What if all that shit she said about Allure—her attitude, her eyes, her energy—wasn’t just bitterness or illness? What if her lead-poisoned brain was trying to warn me the whole time, and none of us could translate the language?

My stomach twisted.

She’d said crazy things lately. About people trying to poison her, about ghosts coming back to finish what they started. Hell, she even muttered “Jones” once. I thought she meant the old accountant that ran off with our books in ‘08. But maybe…

Fuck.

I needed to talk to her. Needed to ask her before the cancer and the metal in her blood took the rest of her mind. Before I lost another piece of this already broken puzzle.

But first I needed to respond to Rollo.

My phone buzzed, dragging me back to the present.

Rollo: Pull up. We at the spot. Irina here too.

I stared at the message for a long second, then dropped the blunt into the tray and hopped in the shower.

The penthouse Rollo was posted in was one of his low-key spots in Midtown—bare bones, nothing traceable. I stepped off the elevator and heard voices before I even knocked.

Creed opened the door, his expression unreadable as always. “She’s in there.”

I walked past him without speaking and found Rollo on the couch, rolling a blunt like it was therapy, and Irina sitting across from him, legs crossed, a silk scarf tied around her head to cover the bandages. But I could still see the edges. Still see what her father had done to her.

“Damn,” I muttered, eyes flicking to the side of her head.

Irina looked up, and to her credit, didn’t flinch. “Still healing.”

She stood, smoothing her dress down. “I’m sorry, by the way. For how I came at Allure the last time we saw each other. I was… spiraling. Afraid. She triggered something in me, and I took it out on her.”

I gave a short nod. “She’ll be aight.”

Irina looked at me for a long moment, something softer creeping into her voice.

“I know my father’s a monster. I didn’t always want to believe it, but after what he did to me…

and the things I’ve seen…” Her voice trailed off before she forced herself to meet my eyes again.

“I want to help you stop him. Whatever you need.”

I studied her carefully. She looked fragile on the outside, but there was steel underneath. Still, I couldn’t afford trust, not like that. Not now.

“You can get us to him?” I asked.

She nodded. “He’s not at the compound anymore. After the girls were found, he moved everything. He and Avi are staying in a an old house in Queens. Security is light. He thinks nobody knows where he is.”

“You sure?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “He’s weaker now. Sick. Paranoid. He barely leaves the bedroom. I know the entry codes. I can get you in.”

I stepped closer, eyes locking on hers. “That’s good. Because if you’re lying, or if you try to fuck me over, I’ll feed you to a hyena.”

She blinked. Then let out a soft, startled laugh like she thought I was joking.

But I wasn’t.

And when she saw I wasn’t laughing, the air shifted.

“Damn, Riot,” Rollo snapped, standing up. “She’s trying to help. You ain’t gotta threaten her.”

I turned my gaze to him. “You vouching for her?”

“I brought her here, didn’t I?”

“Answer the question.”

He puffed his chest. “Yeah. I vouch for her.”

We were inches from each other now. Old tension rising. I loved Rollo, but sometimes he forgot who was running shit now. I was tired. Tired of being disrespected. Tired of losing.

Creed stepped between us before it could turn into something stupid. “Yo, chill,” he said, holding up both hands. “We all want the same thing. Take down Boaz. Clean up this mess. Ain’t no point in turning on each other.”

I exhaled through my nose, stepped back, ran a hand over my face.

Creed looked at me. “Listen, I’m sorry about the vineyard. You did a great job with that. Where are we now with it?”

I paced a few feet away, fingers tightening around the back of a chair. “Abra’s working on locking down a PR firm. Top-tier. Someone who can spin this winery mess into something clean. Get control of the narrative before we lose all business.”

Creed nodded. “That’s good.”

“It’s not enough,” I said, jaw clenching. “That shooting? That was surgical. Coordinated. And the motherfuckers who hit us…Boaz either paid them or made them. I know it.”

Creed crossed his arms. “We gon handle him.”

“I want Boaz gone,” I said flatly. “I want him gutted. I want to watch the light leave his eyes while he realizes a nigga like me came for him.”

Creed didn’t blink. Just nodded slowly.

“Aight. Let’s make it happen,” he replied.

“It was bad enough that he kidnapped my girl and held her all that time. But fuckin’ with my legacy is taking it too far.”

“You’re doing a good job,” he said.

I snorted. “Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not,” he replied. “You’ve stepped up. This vineyard? The growth? The plans you had for expansion and brand deals? That shit is real. You’ve built something. And it’s not over just because a few cameras caught a few bodies. We’ve cleaned up worse.”

I wanted to believe him. I did.

But the truth was, I didn’t feel like the man I wanted to be.

I didn’t feel like some polished boss about to grace the cover of Forbes .

I felt like a damn storm in a luxurious suit.

One who’d lost his woman. One who’d let blood stain the biggest business move of his life.

One who was still tangled up in war and revenge, no matter how many wine labels he printed.

I looked down at my hands.

There was always blood on them. Even when I tried to go clean.

“How am I supposed to be taken seriously when I can’t outrun the darkness?” I asked, not even meaning to say it out loud.

Creed gave me a long look. “You don’t outrun it,” he said. “You own it.”

I turned to him.

“You turn that darkness into fuel. You make it work for you. You don’t let it swallow you whole. That’s what Dad never got. He let the dark make him a monster. But we? We survive it. We learn to walk with it and still stand in the light.”

I didn’t answer. Just stared past him at the window.

The city was alive out there. Moving. Buzzing. Oblivious.

And I was in here, planning another kill. Trying to save an empire and chase a ghost in the same breath.

Allure was gone.

The winery was bleeding.

My mother was dying.

And still I had to keep going.

Because if I stopped now?

Everything we built would fall.

And I’d be damned if I let that happen on my watch.