Page 50 of 10,000 Hours With A Rich Menace

He removed the gun and handed it over to Duke, grabbing my hand and pulling me behind him. For a man I thought was going to kill me, I felt safe while holding his hand. We walkedthrough the cemetery past all the dead people that I may or may not be joining.

He stopped when we got to a mausoleum with a crest on it. “I told you I was taking you on a date.”

“To a fucking cemetery? What in the fuck, Mitchell?”

“My fucking name ain’t Mitchell, Wanda.”

I paused. “My name ain’t no fucking Wanda.”

He used his key and opened it, and that’s when I backed away. “We’re having lunch with my folks.”

“Menace, are you alright?”

He stopped messing with the lock and looked at me. “Yeah… the fuck you ask that for?”

“’Cause you took me on our first date to meet your dead parents. I mean, I get it… I would love to schedule some time for you to meet my mom, but she’s fucking dead and in the ground.”

“You wanna meet them or not?”

He was serious as hell, and I was now thinking back to hearing Skyler talk about how odd he was. Maybe that was why she was skeptical in the first place. This man took me on a first date to meet his dead parents in a mausoleum.

I leaned on him as I peered on the inside and he had it all set up with candles, and takeout bags on a blanket. Honestly, it wasn’t as creepy as I thought it was. “Mitchell, this is strange.”

“Yeah, get yo’ ass inside,” he replied and slapped my ass.

I jumped and smiled on the inside. Why did his touch send a damn jolt of electricity through my entire body? Menace helped me onto the floor, as he removed his shoes to avoid creasing them and sat across from me.

“Do you visit here often?”

“When I get the time… haven’t been in a few months.”

I nodded and looked around the inside and there were pictures of him and who I assumed was his parents. There werefamily portraits with his siblings, trips of them skiing in Aspen, and so many more pictures.

I read the law degree on the wall that saidZoya Caselliand smiled. “Wow, this feels really special.”

Now all of a sudden, I felt bad for overreacting the way that I did. He was showing me a piece of him so I could understand him better. Menace wasn’t a man of many words, so I assumed this was his requirement.

He wanted me to know him.

It was him showing me that this wasn’t a business arrangement to him. “It is…when Kora and Zoya were both sworn in, I made sure to bring their pictures here.”

“They’re proud.”

“How you know?”

I shrugged. “I just have a feeling that they are. The burden of the oldest sibling isn’t the easiest to carry.”

“Ain’t you the only child?”

I folded my arms. “How the hell you know that?”

“I know everything, Wonder.” He grabbed the bag of food and opened it while he continued to take everything out.

“Well, just because I don’t have any doesn’t mean I don’t know the burden of being everything to someone. Were you young when you lost your parents?”

“A teen.”

“I’m sorry.”

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