by Kiki Swinson
The sun was setting and the dinner crowd was milling toward the door. Eli sported a pair of seven-hundred-dollar jeans, a crisp white shirt, and a pair of aviator glasses. As he glanced around, the hostess asked whether he had reservations. He gave her a distracted shake of his head while his gaze took a second lap around the spacious restaurant.
Where in the hell is she?
“There’s a forty-five-minute wait,” she told him, smiling. “What’s your last name?”
“Um, Mitchell,” he lied with the first name that came to his head. “Can you tell me where your bathrooms are?”
The hostess pointed to the back of the restaurant. When he strolled off in its direction, his gaze took its third lap. She’s not here. Eli’s chest muscles tightened. Where in the hell did she go?
Instead of hitting the men’s room, Eli burst into the women’s’ room and caused a minor riot. “Sorry, ladies. Excuse me.”
“What in the hell are you doing in here?” one woman demanded.
He ignored her as he bent over to check the bottom of the stalls for the expensive blue pumps he’d seen Blake sashay around town in all day.
No such luck.
“What the fuck?”
“Hey, asshole. Get out of here,” an indignant middle-aged white woman yelled.
Without a word, he rushed back out as the restaurant’s manager closed in. He held up his hands and flashed his best smile to preempt the dude from going off. “Sorry, man, but you didn’t happen to see a tall African American woman, stacked wearing a light blue dress, did you?”
For a moment the man looked confused. “Sir, there have been some complaints, and I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Yeah, okay. I just need to know whether—”
“Sir—”
“Goddammit, ANSWER ME!”
The manager jumped at Eli’s thunderous roar. “I . . . um . . . no. I haven’t seen—”
“Fuck it.” Eli shoved the man out of the way and stormed back toward the door. One look at his hardened face and muthafuckas scrambled out of his way. Where the fuck could she have gone? He rushed over to the parking lot and found the spot where Blake’s Jag had been parked now occupied by an Aston Martin.
“What the fuck?” He spun around. Was he completely losing his shit? Maybe she slipped out while he was searching the ladies’ bathroom. That had to be the only explanation.
Eli turned and raced back to the Mercedes he had parked across the street. Chances were she had either returned to her office or was headed home. “Goddammit.” Now he had to roll around town, trying to play catch-up. If something happened to this chick because of this fuckup, Mafia Don would have his head.
He jerked open the door and hopped in behind the wheel, but before he had the chance to start the car up, he heard the click of a gun a second before cold steel was pressed against the back of his head.
“Who the fuck are you, asshole?”
4
Blake’s heart skipped a couple of beats when she finally took in the sheer size of this man. In a lot of ways, it felt as if she were pressing her .38 up against the back of a mountain. When their gazes crashed in the rearview mirror, danger charged every atom in the SUV and made every hair on her body stand at attention. It also could’ve had something to do with dude being fine as hell. There was also a sudden thumping in between her legs that she was strugglin’ like hell to ignore.
“I don’t have all night,” she hissed, pressing the barrel harder against his skull. “Who sent you? Why are you following me around?”
Dude didn’t speak, but his glittering black gaze told her that he didn’t appreciate her ass getting the drop on him. Maybe the shit had never happened before.
Blake thought of the plan after her business meeting. She hid out in Spargo and called her assistant to catch a ride down. She made Perri wait despite her string of questions, hoping the man tailing her would eventually go into the restaurant to check out what was taking her so long. When he did exactly what she expected, she forced her assistant to take her car while she broke into dude’s backseat and waited.
Now they were at a checkmate.
“Don’t fuck with me,” she hissed when it was clear he wasn’t inclined to answer her questions. “I’m not afraid to use this.”
Still unfazed, he remained mute.
Blake whipped the gun from his head, fired a muffled shot into the glove compartment, and then returned the weapon to his skull. “Try me if you want to.”
Finally a smile crept onto the corners of his lips, and his onyx gaze twinkled with amusement. “Like father like daughter.”
The simple phrase sent a shock wave through her entire system. “What the fuck are you talking about? My father is dead.”
“I’m not talking about the one your mama had you calling Daddy.”
“That mutha—”
“Ah, ah, ah. That’s no way for a lady to talk.”
“What?” Who in the hell is this muthafucka? Blake twisted her face as if the man had crawled out from under a rock. “I don’t fucking believe you. I don’t have anything to do with that . . . criminal.”
“Said the woman with the gun pointed to my head.”
“I have every goddamn right since you’re the one stalking my ass.”
“And a fine ass it is,” he said with his smirk growing. “Now do you mind moving that shit from my head before you have an accident?”
“Trust me. If I fire at you, it won’t be an accident.” She narrowed her gaze, but it only tickled his ass more. For a fleeting moment, she wanted to pull the trigger just so she could wipe that annoying smirk off his face.
“Why in the hell would he send you to follow me?”
His smile disappeared. Instead of feeling satisfaction, her heart skipped a beat. “What it is? Spit it out already.”
“Mafia Don sent me because he believes that your life is in danger.”
“Mafia Don,” she chuckled, and then eased the gun from his head, but it remained pointed at him. “Look, I don’t want anything to do with any of that street bullshit. I have my own life, and I can take care of myself.”
“Clearly.”
“I got the drop on you, didn’t I?”
His jaw twitched before he said, “It will never happen again.”
Blake smiled. “You’re almost cute when you pout.”
There was another twitch in his jaw before he growled, “Blake, I’m only here for your protection.”
“It’s Ms. Scott to you, and I don’t want or need your so-called protection. So run your gangster ass back to dear ol’ Daddy and tell him that.” She pulled out her cell and texted her assistant. “If not, if I ever spot you in my rearview again, the shit won’t end so amicable. You feel me?”
Perri pulled her Jag up next to his dark-tinted GL550.
“It was nice chatting with you.” She clicked on the safety and then reached for the door.
“You don’t understand the situation,” he said.
Blake rolled her eyes, pretending that the nigga’s voice wasn’t like warm honey rolling over her body. “Please. You can miss me with all that ghetto drama. I don’t know and I don’t want to know. So get ghost.” She hopped out of the backseat and crammed her piece into her purse before slamming the door. As she walked around the front of the SUV, she could feel the driver’s dark gaze follow the seductive roll of her hips. Hell, he better. It took her years to perfect her walk.
She opened her driver’s side door, and Perri climbed over into the passenger seat.
“Is everything all right?” Perri asked, still sounding chipper but looking confused.
“Everything is perfect,” she lied, sliding on her shades, shifting the car into drive, and jamming her heavy foot onto the accelerator.
Perri clutched the dashboard while her eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “Um, Ms. Scott, maybe you should slow down.”
“Buckle your seat belt,” Blake said flatly while her mind raced. What the hell was
her gangsta daddy thinking sending a nigga like that out there to stalk her every move? When his ass showed up at her mother and stepfather’s funeral, she thought she made it clear that she wasn’t interested in anything he had to offer.
She might deal in some dirt in her own industry, but she didn’t want to have anything to do with a man who dealt poison on the street. Now, she’d blaze some trees from time to time, but that hard shit? Blake shook her head. She lost her stepbrother to that game. Coke, crack, heroine, Jayson didn’t care as long as he could smoke, snort, or inject the shit; he was always down to take a flight.
Drugs destroyed their once-close-knit family. The lies, the stealing, the constant run-ins with the law. Her teenage years were hell and were punctuated with Jayson’s death on his nineteenth birthday.
It was dealers like her biological father who fed her brother’s addictions. How her mother ever hooked up with a muthafucka like Mafia Don was beyond her.
“Ms. Scott, are you crying?” Perri asked.
“What? No. Don’t be ridiculous,” she spat, and swiped the moisture from her face. They flew the rest of the way in silence.
Once they returned to her business office off Santa Monica Boulevard, Perri bolted out of the car and looked ready to kiss the ground.
“If you don’t need me for anything else, I think I’m going to head home.”
“Fine. Whatever.” Blake climbed out of the car and headed toward her building. She still had a long list of shit she needed to take care of before she called it a day. But once she was nestled behind her desk, her mind refused to focus on work.
Damn. She didn’t need this shit. She glanced at the phone, not so she could return any of the two dozen messages waiting for her but to contemplate placing a call out to the East Coast.
I don’t want to talk to him.
But if she didn’t, she knew damn well that sexy-ass Goliath would ignore her outburst and become her new shadow. “Fuck. Let’s just get this shit over with.” Blake grabbed her purse again and dug for the card Mafia Don had given her at the burial.
She couldn’t find it. Hell, it was probably in some landfill by now. “I gotta get out of here,” she announced, bouncing back onto her feet. There was no way she was going to be able to get any work done until she could find that number and give her father a piece of her mind.
Storming back out of the office and into the parking deck, Blake’s mind tumbled over other possibilities where she could have placed Mafia’s Don’s phone number. When she was halfway to her parking space, the sound of a gunning engine and screeching tires forced her attention back to her surroundings. By that time, a black Range Rover was barreling toward her at lightning speed.
Wide-eyed, her brain frizzed out and she had mere seconds before impact.
Then out of nowhere, a muscular body flew toward her from the right while pumping a large gun that looked like a cannon.
POW! POW! POW!
Blake and her Terminator-sized protector kissed concrete while the speeding vehicle swerved again. The putrid smell of burnt rubber singed Blake’s nose. When she jerked her head away from the bed of muscles that was this man’s chest, it was just in time to see the SUV crash head-on into a pillar of cement.
BAM!
The impact nearly blew out what was left of her eardrums. Still, she was unable to process what had just happened.
“Are you all right?” that deep honey voice rumbled from above her.
Shit. She had no idea whether she was all right. But the brother wasn’t about to wait while she performed a six-point inspection on herself. He jumped back onto his feet with his gun still cocked and aimed at the smoking Range Rover. He offered only one hand for her to use as an anchor to stand. That was when she felt the pain in her legs, ass, and back.
But all thoughts of complaining about it were put on the back burner when a second set of tires screeched into the parking deck.
“You got to be fucking kidding me,” she hissed.
“Let’s go. Let’s go. MOVE!” His one hand now locked on to her arm as he forced her to start running.
“Wait! What’s going on?” she cried, running the best she could with one heel on and one lost somewhere and clutching her purse for dear life.
“I told you earlier,” he barked. His long legs carried them across the deck in Olympic speed.
“Who are these guys?” She raced along and drilled for answers at the same time.
“The people you claim not to need protection from!”
They reached the stairwell and jerked open the metal door. From there they plunged down the staircase at an even faster clip. Two flights down, she was tempted to end this madness by stopping and yanking her arm back before he pulled the muthafucka out of its socket. Hell, she didn’t know this brother any better than the ones trying to mow her ass down. However, a door banging open above them told her to keep her mouth shut and to keep moving.
“Get that bitch!” a man barked.
Me? They’re trying to kill me? Why?
Blake got a second wind or some shit because she finally kicked off that one shoe and took off past this bulky muthafucka who was blocking her way. On the bottom floor, she bolted out the metal door and took off running toward the main street.
“Blake, wait up!”
Shit. That brother could eat her dust. She had to get the fuck out of there.
When she dashed out into the busy intersection, cars honked and screeched, trying to avoid hitting her. It was a miracle they didn’t given how dark it was.
“BLAKE!”
She kept hoofing it. However, her illusions of getting away from this gangsta gladiator were dashed the moment her foot reached the curb on the other side of the street and she was jerked straight into the air as if she weighed nothing.
“If you want to stay alive, you need to stick with me,” the man growled, practically tucking her under his arm.
“Let go of me!” She clawed at his steel-like arm, but it was useless.
“Calm the fuck down,” he yelled, running.
Once again her protests were cut short when a shot rang out and something hot grazed the side of her head. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” This couldn’t be happening. But it was. Nothing brought it home more than when more bullets started whizzing around.
POW! POW! POW!
“Shit. Shit. Shit.”
“You said that already.”
Blake wrenched her neck around to level him with an incredulous glare. “What, are you fucking with me?”
Instead of answering, her real live action hero turned with his cannon and started pumping bullets at the niggas chasing them.
One of the men hollered out before falling. He didn’t quite touch the ground before a speeding car slammed into him and launched his body a good ten feet into the air.
Blake watched the shit like it was some type of 3-D film. Suddenly, he made a hard right and rushed into a shopping center lot.
“Help me find an open door on one of these cars,” he said, releasing her.
“What?” She wobbled around on her shaky feet. But when another round of bullets slammed into a Lexus that she was standing in front of, she got moving again.
As luck would have it, the doors to the first vehicle her bodyguard tried opened. “Come on, come on. Hop in,” he ordered.
She didn’t hesitate and before she was even fully in the seat, he had the engine roaring to life. Great. Now she was involved in some Bonnie and Clyde bullshit. “Where are we going?”
“Does it fuckin’ matter?” he snapped, shifting the car into reverse and jamming his foot on the accelerator almost at the same time. However, the moment he peeled off, a new series of bullets punched the front windshield.
“Fuck. Goddamn it,” Blake screamed. Would this nightmare ever end?
In response, her driver continued to gun straight toward the muthafucka who was trying to empty his entire clip into the car.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she yelled, diving onto
the floorboard.
“Saving your hardheaded ass. What does it look like?” he said, sounding calm as a muthafucka.
Next there was a thump and a man hollering out in pain.
Blake climbed up from the floor in time to see the dude through the back window as he fell back to earth again. Mouth wide open, she cut her gaze toward her maniac driver.
“You’re welcome.” His black eyes met hers as he swerved onto the main street.
The last thing she was going to do was thank his ass. “Who in the fuck are you?”
5
Eli smiled—not because he found their situation amusing but because he wanted to alleviate some of the fear that was plastered all over her face. “I told you. I work for your father.”
“What does my father have to do with this shit that’s going down right now?”
“Look. Let me just get you to a safe place and we’ll talk,” he countered, jerking the steering wheel to the left.
A series of loud horns blared, but Eli kept his foot jammed to the floor.
“You’ll take me home is what the fuck you’re going to do. Then I don’t want to see you or these crazy muthafuckas chasing you ever again.”
He cut her a look. “C’mon. By now you’ve been able to put two and two together and know that I’m not the one they’re after.”
Her wide eyes resembled globes of green fire. “Why the hell do they want to kill me? I don’t know these bastards.”
Elijah didn’t want to have this conversation like this. She was angry and scared and clearly prone to hysterics—three characteristics he’d rather not deal with. “I said that we’ll talk later.”
Awkwardly, Blake jerked open her purse and dug for her .38. In no time, she had the cold steel pressed against the side of his head.
“What—You’re going to shoot me while I’m driving?” He laughed. “You really do have a wire loose.”
She clicked off the safety.
“Well, baby girl, you do what you have to do. Until then, I’ll do what I have to do.”