Page 5 of Karrington

Ma waited until she was standing to answer me. “I’m going back to Chicago to be closer to my family. I can’t grieve and heal here. Too many memories.”

As much as I wanted her near, I knew she’d be safer away until I figured out who was behind the hit. Being with her gave me peace though. I felt like it would be even harder on me to not have either of my parents around, but a part of me didn’t want to tell her that and make her feel guilty.

“If that’s what you feel you need to do.”

She walked over to me and took my hands into hers. “If you tell me not to go, I won’t.”

A small smile lifted the corners of my lips. “You know I’m not going to do that, Ma.”

“Well… Why don’t you come with me? Let your uncles handle this business. You can come with me, and we can just… put this stuff behind us.”

“It doesn’t really work like that, Ma. Pops had already named me as his replacement. Besides, I owe it to him to find out who was responsible for his death.”

Her head hung as she squeezed my hands. “I can’t lose you too,” she mumbled. “If something happened to you, Karrington, I would kill myself. I would not want to be on this Earth without the two of you.” She sniffled. “Gio was my life partner. That will be hard enough to handle. I can’t take burying my child. It would literally be the death of me.”

“Hey,” I called softly, lifting her head by her chin. “Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

“You can’t promise me that,” she replied through gritted teeth as her tears fell. “I want you to come with me, Son.Please.”

The urgency in her voice caused my shoulders to slouch. I didn’t want to disappoint her by saying no, but there was no way I could leave. Cupping her cheeks, I wiped away her tears.

“I can’t, but I promise to be safe and visit you as much as I can. I’m going to miss you so much, Ma. I really don’t want you to go, but I want you to do what’s best for you. Plus, it’ll probably be easier for me to focus on the business if I didn’t have to worry about keeping you safe.”

She released a shaky breath. “I thought about that too. I didn’t want to be in the way.” Her head bobbed, as if she was accepting the plans she’d already made. “I will be back for your wedding and of course for the birth of your child. Hopefully by then I’ll be in a better place, and you will have found out who took your father from us.”

All I could do was nod as she took me into her arms. The tears came at the thought of her leaving me, but they still wouldn’t fall. It was like I was getting backed up with tears and I feared when they finally came that I would drown.

3

Eyela

I learnedthe healing power of music after battling lymphoma as a child. After battling my body four times, doctors told my parents the fifth time I wouldn’t make it. By then, the cancer had come back so repeatedly for a decade that I was used to being in the hospital more than at school and home. At fifteen, I’d given up hope. I was a candidate for surgery, but because my cell count was so low and my immune system was so weak, my parents didn’t want to risk it. There was a chance I would die on the operating table. Even though the doctors assured my parents the cancer had a 96 percent chance of never coming back if I had the surgery, they didn’t want to take the chance.

Their lack of faith gave me a lack of hope. The cancer spread, and we were told I only had six months to live. I accepted death as the outcome, but God had other plans for me. He sent me an angel—Samantha Irving. She was a music therapist and world renowned pianist. When she first started visiting me, we didn’t talk. She would just play her keyboard. My parents told her whatkind of music I liked, and she played songs by my favorite artists with some unfamiliar tunes in between.

Eventually, I started to look forward to her visits. Hope and excitement to hear her turned into hope and excitement to learn to play. That strengthened me. Out of nowhere, my cell count went up, my immune system strengthened, and I was cleared for surgery. The rest, as they say, is history.

Because of that experience, I devoted myself to music. I majored in music therapy in undergraduate and graduate school. In one week, I would be graduating with my master’s. As happy as I wanted to be, I was also terrified. Graduation day meant my wedding day would soon follow.

As the only daughter of Caesar and Phaedra Mitchell, it was my duty to not only carry on the family name by having children but also marrying into a second mafia family that would double our power. Some women were married off between the ages of eighteen and twenty one, but my parents showed me mercy because of my childhood and gave me until twenty five, or when I was done with school, whichever came first. Since I went to grad school, both were happening the same year.

A part of me wanted to try and find something to go to school for again to prolong the process, but my father had two prominent families in mind, and he didn’t want to risk them joining with another family. So as much as I wanted to pray him wanting to meet with me today wasn’t because he’d decided to go with the Lowe family, I was sure that was what he was going to tell me.

Karrington Lowe.

He was the top contender for my hand in marriage.

Let Daddy tell it, the marriage was already set in stone.

I wasn’t so sure because, Donovan AKA Cocaine Conner had been staking a claim on me since I was twenty-one. His familyhad been trying their hardest to get Daddy to join their family, and I honestly wasn’t sure which way he was going to go.

He didn’t know it, but for the past year, Cocaine and I had been dating behind his back. I loved him, or maybe I was enamored by him. Technically, he was my first adult relationship, but it didn’t feel like a real relationship since it was a secret. There was also the fact that we didn’t have sex. A part of having an arranged marriage was keeping my virginity until my wedding night. Cocaine tried to convince me that because he would be my husband, it was okay for us to have sex now. However, my intuition told me not to trust that.

If I could choose, of course I would choose Cocaine. I didn’t know anything about Karrington other than his last name. Cocaine and I already had a bond, and it would devastate me if because of my marriage to another man that it was broken.

The alarm on my phone sounded off, prompting me to stand, freshen up, then head downstairs. Daddy told me he’d meet me on the west wing of the house, where his office was located, to talk. His time was valuable, and I knew it was an inconvenience to meet me here just because I was practicing on my instruments, so I appreciated it and made my way through the estate as quickly as I could.

I knocked on his office door, and when he granted me permission to come in, I stepped inside. My eyes briefly scanned the space as it always did when I entered. He had a classic home office—cherry oak desk and side tables, leather chairs, large bookshelves, photos of people he admired on the walls.

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