AllFreeNovel
Share Us
IMANI
Instead of going home or responding to Allie, like any good friend would, I followed Landon down the stairs and into the basement. I’d been so shitty to my best friend lately. I’d just been ticked off because of these assholes. But I would make it up to her and soon.
Mental note: book a spa day for us. We both needed it.
“Why is she still here?” João asked, glaring at me from a dirty couch beside Kai, who was inhaling smoke through a bong.
“I didn’t ask her to stay,” Landon said, storming right past them and into another room.
I went to follow after him, pissed off that he’d left me without acknowledging my question, but João snatched my wrist and pulled me back.
“You don’t get to see the merchandise.”
“The merchandise?”
Kai coughed and placed down the bong, red eyes hazy. “Cannabis. Weed. Whatever you want to call it.”
“What, do you guys grow it?” I asked, brows furrowed.
João released my arm, letting me walk to the couch. “That’s none of your business unless you’re willing to buy. But a girl like you doesn’t do shit like this.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that?” I snapped. “Why is it always, ‘a girl like you’? None of you assholes know anything about me. Matter of fact, I smoked weed at a party once. Don’t judge someone you don’t freaking know.”
Okay, maybe that was stretching it. I had inhaled some secondhand at one of Jace Harbor’s parties, thought about smoking it, and was offered a puff on a guy’s blunt. But … I never did it.
After I gave him a long scowl, Kai looked at me. “You want a hit?”
I swallowed hard, all the blood draining from my cheeks. “Not now.”
João sat on the other end of the sofa. “You’re full of shit, Imani. You haven’t smoked.”
“And you’re a fucking asshole,” I spat, crossing my arms and sitting closer to Kai than I’d expected to. Our thighs touched, goose bumps rising on my skin underneath my jeans. I didn’t know why I was still here, but it wasn’t like I could go home, so I sat back and closed my eyes. “So, you guys are expanding.”
João cut his gaze to me. “I don’t want to know what the fuck that’s supposed to mean.”
“You’re using Akio for hard drugs now,” I said, like I’d figured out something big.
I mean, maybe I could use this against them, too. Now, we both had something to hold over each other’s heads. But everyone already thought they sold hard stuff, so that idea was out the window before it even came to fruition.
Kai tensed beside me. “Did Akio tell you that?”
“No. I figured it o—”
João shot up from his seat, grabbed my jaw, and crushed it in his hand. “Don’t fucking get into our fucking business. Whatever we do isn’t shit to you, you understand me? You snoop again, and I won’t give a fuck what you are to us anymore. You’ll suffer the same as Akio.”
Eyes widening, I sucked in a breath and stared up into those big, devilish brown eyes.
“You got it?”
Though I couldn’t seem to get any words out, I nodded.
He shoved me back until I slammed into the back of the couch. I pinched my lips together, suddenly in absolute fear and pressing my thighs together.
“Where the fuck is Jace Harbor?” João said, pacing around the room now, fury radiating off of him in thick, heated waves. “I’ve been messaging him for the past three fucking hours. If he wants a fucking job done, then he should answer his goddamn phone.”
A phone on the table buzzed, and João stormed over. “That’d better be him.”
Kai glanced at it. “It’s your mom.”
