As soon as he saw me, he looked around asking, “Where Navy at?”
I poured some of the liquor in another shot glass and took a shot before telling him. “Nigga, did she come with me? That’s your job to watch her.”
Marv fell out laughing before he pulled out a tiny bag of coke, poured just a little on the back of his hand and sniffed it. He then pinched his nose and closed his eyes before opening them and handing the bag to the females. “Aight, you ladies go have some fun with this.”
They were more than happy to take the bag and scramble off. A lot of women were just some pretty ass coke heads. I gave Marv that look and shook my head. When I say he makes bad decisions, this was one of them. “I thought you were done with that shit Marv.”
He shook his head and stared off into the club. “I was Lev, but the pain that comes from being shot, man them meds ain’t enough. I’m grown; I got this.”
One thing I wasn’t here to do was argue with somebody who had a dick just like me. Navy didn’t know Marv had a dark side, and I would hope she didn’t find out because from the looks of it, she had enough shit going on. I simply nodded my head, pulled out my phone to reply to some emails, dapped Marv up, and left.
CHAPTER 15
Navy ‘Nay’ Prescott
The restroom door closed behind Lev, but I still couldn’t move. My back remained pressed against the wall with my phone clutched so tightly in my hand that the edges dug into my palm. My chest rose and fell beneath the business card he had shoved inside my dress, and even though the gun was no longer beneath my chin, I could still feel the cold pressure of it against my skin. Damn! I was caught and Eleven days was all he had given me to come up with fifty thousand dollars I no longer had.
The bass from the club shook the walls while women laughed and carried on somewhere outside the restroom like I hadn’t almost gotten my head blown off a few seconds ago. My knees finally gave out enough for me to grab the edge of the sink before I slid down the wall and embarrassed myself even more. When I looked into the mirror, the woman staring back at me looked exactly how Lev said she did. My eyeliner had smeared beneath both eyes, my nose was red, and mascara streaks ran down my cheeks.
I quickly turned on the faucet and wet a paper towel before rubbing it beneath my eyes. My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely clean one side without smearing the other, but I didn’t have time to fall apart. Marv was still outside waiting for me, and the last thing I needed was for him to see me looking like somebody had just threatened to kill me.
He would ask questions that I couldn’t answer without putting myself in more danger. I reached inside my dress and pulled out Lev’s business card. His name was printed across the front in black lettering beneath the name of his real estate company Empire, along with a phone number and an office address that probably cost more per month than my entire apartment. There was nothing on it that suggested the man carrying it would walk inside a women’s restroom and press a gun beneath somebody’s chin, but I knew better now.
I shoved the card inside the smallest zipper of my purse and checked my phone. Lev’s number sat inside my recent contacts without a name attached to it which was another reminder that he could reach me whenever he felt like it. For half a second, I considered deleting it, but there was no point. He had my number, and he knew where I worked. He probably knew where I lived too or could find out before I even made it home.
“Get yourself together,” I whispered, gripping both sides of the sink as I stared at my reflection. “Just go back out there and act normal.”
I shook my head as if my life hadn’t just been divided into eleven days. I cleaned the rest of the makeup from beneath my eyes, reapplied enough concealer to hide the redness, and added another layer of lip gloss. It didn’t completely fix the damage, but under the dark lights of the club, it would have to do. I ran my fingers through my hair and straightened my dress.
I wanted to stay longer but instead, I took one last breath, grabbed my purse, and walked out. The hallway seemed longerthan it had when I first came in. Every man I passed made my shoulders tense, and every time someone brushed against me, I had to fight the urge to jump. I kept my eyes forward until the music got louder and the crowd opened back up around me.
Marv was sitting at the table when I returned, but the three women who had been standing around him were already walking away the closer I got. He leaned back in his chair with one arm stretched across the empty seat beside him while his eyes roamed over me from my face down to my dress and back again. He wasn’t smiling anymore how he usually was and that made me slow down before I reached the table.
“You ready to go?” he asked.
There was no joke behind it and no attempt to pull me closer like he had been doing throughout dinner. His voice was calm, almost too calm, and for a second I wondered if Lev had said something to him before leaving.
“Yeah,” I answered, forcing a small smile as I reached for my purse strap even though it was already on my shoulder. “I think I’ve had enough for one night.”
Marv continued looking at me for another second before standing out of the chair. “Aight.”
That was it, no questions about why I had been gone so long. There was no comment about my makeup or the fact that my hands still wouldn’t stay completely still. He grabbed his phone from the table, slipped it into his pocket, and placed his hand against the lower part of my back as we moved through the crowd. The contact should’ve made me feel safer, but all I could think about was Lev asking if I had been using him and truth was, I hadn’t. At least, that wasn’t what this had started as.
When I first saw the money inside that hoodie, Marv had been another nameless trauma patient fighting for his life while I stood over a bag of belongings that nobody had claimed yet. I didn’t know he would wake up. I didn’t know he wouldremember me, or that he would somehow make his way into my life after I had already spent nearly every dollar.
I definitely didn’t know his cousin was the type of man who could threaten to kill me and walk back into a crowded club without anybody noticing a difference. Outside, the humid Miami night air hit my face as soon as we stepped away from the entrance and I just knew my hair would frizz up if I didn’t get home soon. The cars lined up along the curb while valets moved between them, calling out names and waving tickets above their heads. Marv handed his slip to one of the attendants before looking over at me again.
“You okay nurse?” he asked.
I simply nodded. “I’m fine.”
He studied my face like he didn’t believe me, then looked toward the street as the valet disappeared to retrieve his car. “You disappeared in there.”
“The liquor tore my stomach up,” I lied, placing one hand over my midsection as if that made the story more believable. “I knew I shouldn’t have mixed all that stuff.”
He finally laughed but it was something different about his eyes like he was paranoid or something. “I told you to slow down.”
I raised a brow. “No, you kept ordering shots.”
