Page 34 of 10,000 Hours With A Rich Menace

“I like the dark, Wonder… calms me.”

She nodded her head and looked around the room. “Your home is very beautiful.”

“Appreciate it.”

“Like a fortress… nobody is getting in here.”

“I take protecting myself seriously… I have a soon to be wife to protect, too.”

She smiled. “Yeah, right.”

“What’s on your mind, Wonder? I can hear your thoughts way over here.” She pulled the covers off her body and sat on the edge of the bed until she got up and walked toward the windows.

She hugged herself as she looked out the window, as I took in the cami pajama set that she wore. Witnessing her ass in those shorts made me happy that I was still in the dark because I was about to fucking drool.

As she remained quiet and stared out the window, I observed her. My job was to observe women, make sure they were up to the standard of Case House. Observing them wasn’t just physical, either. I had to mentally get inside these women’s minds, and learn who they were. I was a good judge of character, and now with so many women under Case House, I wasn’t as hands on as I used to be.

Hence why I allowed some thieves in my camp, and it was really fucking with me that I couldn’t kill two of the people involved. The Case House women that thought they were slick were no longer breathing.

I didn’t sit around and wait for shit; I moved on things the minute I found out about the shit. The only reason Raye and Priscilla weren’t stinking, was because of the beauty in front of me. She was the person holding their lives in her hands.

“All I wanted was a vacation. It’s been so long since I’ve been on one… not since my mother passed away. Life has been so up and down… I have my high moments and then the low moments are so low that it makes me think what is life for anyway,” she rambled.

I removed myself from the chair and walked across the room, standing beside her and taking in my massive backyard, and view of Staten Island. Whenever I took in this view, I always felt like the king looking down on its subjects. I would never say that shit out loud, but the shit made me feel like royalty.

“Why the fuck would you do some dumb shit like transferring money into your account?” I asked, and she was caught off guard by the question or I guess how blunt I was.

Her head snapped in my direction before she turned to look back out the window when she realized I wasn’t going to apologize for the way I asked the question. “She’s my friend, I didn’t think she was doing something that could come back to kill us.”

“Was.”

“Yeah… was,” she sighed.

I slipped my hands in the front pocket of my robe and picked with the seam as we both took place in the window. “Look, I trust Jeffie with my life. There’s not much I do without getting her advice and she seems to think this shit is a good idea for the both of us. I need a wife, and you want your father and ex-best friend to live. The other side of this is that I kill them and you don’t marry me… and I really want to kill them.”

“How would this work?” she finally turned and was staring up at me. “Are we allowed to have relationships outside of this, you know, because this is fake. Do we continue to live together… I have so many questions.”

“Wonder, the minute you let another nigga touch you is the moment you gonna see why they call me Menace.”

She raised her eyebrow, skeptical of my statement, then folded her arms. “I’ve seen how you get down… earlier in that stinky warehouse.”

I laughed. “Nah, baby, that was light compared to how I come… not many can speak about it because they’re no longer with us.”

“So, you’re allowed to have relationships and I’m not.”

“Never said that.”

“Then we’re supposed to be miserable in this house without companionship… I mean, I’m not looking for anything right now, men kind of suck… especially Cornell,” she rolled her eyes and muttered to herself.

“Tony… Cornell… who the fuck are these people?”

Her head snapped up when I mentioned Tony. “How do you know Tony?”

“Wonder, you mentioned it at the warehouse.” I looked at my watch, and then over at her as she watched me.

“You and Jeffie always look at the time… what is so important that you need to know the time of the day at every second?”

I yawned. “You hungry?”

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