“Where did you think you were you running to, Theory?” I asked quietly.
She glared at me, honey brown eyes blazing. “Away from you and this crazy idea,” she spat.
“Where? To your house to end up dead or tortured or made into a slave? Huh? Cuz that’s the type of time the niggas who broke in are on.”
Pivoting away from me, she made an exasperated little sound. I grabbed her chin gently and turned her face back to me.
“On Saturday, we getting married,milaya. That’s the end of that,” I said, tired of this argument.
She kissed her teeth. “Who the fuck do you think you are? I am not marrying–-”
“You are. You will. You will because you don’t want my family’s enemies annihilating your people. You will because you don’t want to see that beautiful farm your grandparents, your parents, your aunts and uncles have all worked so hard for burned to the ground,” I growled against her ear.
She tried to move her chin away from my palm, but I held on.
“All these hypotheticals. Ajani and Prime can handle –-”
“Ajani and Prime can’t handle the kind of shit I’m talking about alone. When it comes to you, Ajani and Prime can’t handleme. There is nowhere you can go that I won’t find you. I’ll always come for you, Theory. Nothing can keep me away from you,milaya. You gotta accept that you are mine, and I protect what is mine,” I vowed.
Her lashes fluttered. For a second, I thought she was about to soften. I was wrong. She didn’t melt. Her voice came out colder than I’d ever heard it.
“I don’t like when you say it like that,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m property. Like you can move me around wherever you want.”
I exhaled heavily. “You want to be protected. You want a provider. I’m saying you’re mine to protect, to provide for. You told me what you wanted?—”
“And you heard what you wanted,” she cut in. “You heard babies and a soft life and somebody leading, and you took that as permission to—” She stopped herself, jaw tightening. “Never mind.”
I leaned closer. “Say it.”
“To decide that you get to decide everything. I’m not doing that with you.”
I could see the hesitation in her eyes, the resistance in her body.
“I wanna do this the easy way. Please don’t make me show you the other me,malyshka.”
She swallowed. “Y-you won’t hurt me, remember?”
I hated that we kept coming back to that, hated that some part of her, no matter how small, still feared that I would ever lay a hand on her to harm her. One day, she’d realize I’d rather cut off my right arm than hurt her. For now, I didn’t mind reassuring her. I brought my face close to hers, so close, that her eyes fluttered shut, unable to focus. So close, that my lips grazed hers.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Theory,” I vowed.
She kissed her teeth. “Oh no. You’d just kill an innocent man.”
My reply was interrupted by a tap on the window. Juvie stood outside waiting patiently. I lowered the glass.
“What?” I muttered, the irritation clear in my voice.
He frowned at me.
“Slow ya roll, big dawg. I ain’t tryna interrupt y’all little rendezvous. Your cousin said to give you this,” he said quietly for once.
I looked past him to where Sasha and Monica stood on the sidewalk. Sasha gave a silent wave as Monica smirked. Opening my palm, I watched as Juvie lay her ring on it. Any guilt or hesitation I felt evaporated in a cloud of anger. I’d designed this thing in my head as I lay in a cell in sub-zero temperatures, and it meant so little that she left it behind in a store? My attitude hardened as I lowered my face near hers again. Cupping her cheek, I let my eyes bore into hers.
“Killing Malik is just the beginning. You know whose blood I want to shed, for real?”
