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“You couldn’t get nobody else to do whatever you going out to do?”

I moved behind her and wrapped my hands around her waist. “E.”

She exhaled and looked at me through the mirror.

“I don’t need feelings before I walk out the door.”

She watched me for another second. “Okay.”

Emily turned around, nudged my chest, and moved past me toward the tub.

“Have your ass at my breakfast table by eleven.”

I chuckled. “Yes, ma’am.”

She gave me a side-eye that told me she was still irritated but wasn’t about to argue. I turned the water on, added her favorite bath salts and bubble bath, then helped her into the tub.

Once she was settled against her bath pillow, some of the tension left her body. Seeing her comfortable made it easier for me to leave.

I got into the shower and washed up fast because I was already twenty minutes late meeting Ares. When I finished, I wrapped a towel around my waist and walked back over to the tub.

Emily had her eyes halfway closed while she soaked.

I bent down and kissed her forehead. “Don’t fall asleep in here. I promise I’ll be home before noon.”

She squeezed my hand before pointing toward the corner.

“Put my towel and walker there.”

I grabbed both and put them close enough for her to reach without having to get out of the tub first.

Emily looked up at me. “Come home untouched.”

I smirked. “Always do.”

She watched me leave the bathroom without saying anything else.

Emily hated the life, but she loved me enough to understand that it was still part of who I was.

I got dressed fast in black jeans, a black hoodie, and a black jacket. Once I was ready, I grabbed my gun bag from the shelf in the garage and tossed it into the passenger seat of my blacked-out Challenger.

The engine echoed through the concrete when I pulled out.

I drove downtown to the Laveau parking structure and took the ramp all the way to the top. Two cars were already waiting when I got there, and Ares stood beside one of them smoking.

I got out of my Challenger. “What’s good?”

He knocked the ash from his blunt. “Same shit. Let’s go.”

We got into the unmarked black CLS parked beside his car. It was clean enough to look expensive but plain enough not to draw the wrong kind of attention.

I pulled out of the structure, and by the time we hit the freeway, it was close to three in the morning.

O’Demon’s new album played while we rode without saying much at first. Ares lit another blunt and passed it to me.

Tonight, we weren’t two rich niggas riding around Los Angeles in an expensive car. We were two Compton niggas going backward for a night because some shit still had to be handled the way we learned before either one of us had real money.

Ares stayed quiet for a while before he started venting.