“I just want to tell you thank you, Mekhi. You probably saved my life, and I apologize for the way I acted.”
He stared at me for a few seconds, before turning his head. “We need to look for the car,” he said to Luca.
I felt my face flame at the way he had just ignored me. I mean, I may have deserved it, but I wasn’t used to anyone being that rude.
“Excuse me. I was talking to you!” I snapped at him, yanking free of Kera’s hold.
He shrugged. “And I was talking to somebody else. Wait your turn, shorty.”
I gasped at his audacity. “Who do you?—”
I stopped as he stepped away from his crew and into my face. “Look, your highness, I’m sure you used to the world revolving around your stuck-up ass, but I told you I was busy. Get the fuck away from here.”
My jaw dropped. No one had ever talked to me like that.
“Fuck you, Mekhi,” I hissed.
He looked me up and down before smirking. “No, thank you. Too much work for me.”
I was way past the point that insults about my weight bothered me but, for some reason, his words stung. I opened my mouth to tell his ass off, but Kera was pulling on me again, leading me away.
“See, that’s why I didn’t want to say anything!” I complained.
“You did the right thing. He just got other shit on his mind, Farrah.”
I wanted to tell her not to make excuses for him, but Kera damn near worshipped Mekhi. Anything negative I said about him was going to go in one ear and out the other.
“Can you just take me home?” I asked her.
She nodded, but it took us a minute to find the key fob she had dropped during the shooting. Finally, we were strapped into her Challenger. Before we could pull off, though, Seth was calling her name. She let down the window as he stalked toward the car.
“Fuck you think you going by yourself? You just got shot at!”
Kera sucked her teeth. “You know they weren’t shooting at me, Seth.”
“You’re my sister, Se’Kera. They might have been.”
Her eyes got wide like she’d never thought of that. I definitely hadn’t. Seth’s eyes moved to me.
“Farrah, I’ma get one of my niggas to take you home, okay?”
I nodded, climbing out of the car. I watched as Seth arranged for a guy named Steel to take me home. Chancing another glance at Mekhi, I was surprised to find his eyes on me. Stubbornly, I stared right back. Only the approaching sound of sirens took my attention away from him.Ugh!I really didn’t want to deal with the police.
As if he could read my face, Mekhi turned to Steel and said, “Hurry up and get her ass out of here.”
Steel nodded once before taking off down the street. I followed him, anxious to get away. He opened the door to an old school box Chevy for me, and I got in. As he walked over to the driver’s side, I peeked out the back window. Mekhi and Seth stood at the foot of the driveway as cars pulled up. Two were patrol cars. The other two were unmarked. For one minute, I felt bad for leaving them to face the music by themselves. My hand was actually on the door handle when Steel got in. His eyebrow raised.
“Maybe I should?—”
“They got it, shorty,” he cut me off.
I was still for a minute before finally nodding. They wanted to handle it. Who was I to stop them?
I keptmy face blank as the fat ass detective, Chris Royce, climbed out of one of the unmarked cars, hitching up his pants. His partner, Lawrence Turner, emerged from the driver’s seat a second later, chewing on a toothpick and smirking at me and Seth. Yeah, we knew these muhfuckas. They probably had jumped on the call as soon as it went out and they recognized the address. Turner straightened his tie and strolled toward us while Royce walked to the crime scene investigators’ SUV that had just pulled up.
“Venzant, Carter,” Turner called out to me and Seth. “I just knew this would be the occasion for some chalk and yellow tape. Too bad they sent such bad shooters, huh?”
He laughed like the shit was funny. I wanted to catch this nigga off duty in the dark one day. All I needed was a couple of minutes. But none of that showed on my face. Instead, I gave him half a smile.
