Page 58 of Priest

Priest told me his name, and a chill ran up my spine. When I turned over, I stared into cold, soulless black eyes.

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

“He’s goteverything that you asked for.”

“Cool. Set that shit up, and we can roll.”

“You trust meeting him on a dime like that?”

“I don’t trust shit. Give him three options where we can meet and have men on them before he approves the location.”

“What if he won’t agree?”

“He ain’t got no muthafuckin options. If he wants his daughter, he’ll do what the fuck we want. We call the shots in this bitch, not Morgan.”

“A’ight,” Sunny replied.

He pushed off my desk and headed out of my office. I sat back and contemplated the last few days. September had been quiet since Saturday evening, but so had I. She had hopped up after a while and went to shower in her room, and I remained in mine and did the same.

When I went back to check on her later, she was already asleep in her bed. Yesterday, she was reading most of the day, and I had been on calls and had held a meeting with the council at my cabin yesterday.

I had ordered takeout, and she had eaten, but I had been caught up with my men. Our attention was consumed with our plan to take Morgan out. He hadn’t begun to suffer yet. When I took September, I thought that would be the beginning of his suffering, but based on the reports of my men who had followed him, he didn’t appear to feel the pain of September’s absence. I didn’t think he honestly gave a fuck about her. He had offered her up to me too easily.

The last few days, she and I had moved around one another in silence. She had even cooked our last few meals. I was hesitant about the food at first because I worried that she had poisoned it, but she assured me she had done no such thing. She told me that she didn’t blame me for taking her. After all, her father had encouraged it. She shared that he was the one to blame for everything. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I was so deep in my head about my shit that I didn’t bother to dig further.

All the shit that I shared with September, I now regretted. I had never opened up and shared my life with a soul other than Sunny. But I had shared things with her that he didn’t even know. He didn’t know that I was chained to the heating register or that my mama had run up on that man’s job and begged for money.

The pain of reliving my sister’s death was more than I could handle, and the only thing I could think of was finding an escape. I wanted to find it between September’s thighs, but I knew that she couldn’t always be my escape. Besides, she had her own shit to deal with. Seeing her mother killed in front of her had to fuck with her head, the same way seeing Katrina killed fucked with mine. The difference was that she suspected her father called for a hit on her mother. I had no idea who my father was.

I didn’t bring her with me to the club today, but I did offer. She said she’d rather stay at the cabin. I knew that she didn’t want to be here after what happened Friday night when she’drelived her past, not to mention after she told me the story about what happened six years ago.

A knock sounded at my door.

“Come in,” I called.

The door swung open, and Cheekz stepped inside.

“Hey,” she greeted with a false smile.

“Hey, girl. Wassup?”

She sat down on a chair opposite me. “I’ve done some research, Priest.”

“About?”

“School.”

I nodded. “And what did you decide?”

“I want to return.”

“Doing what?”

“Social work. I want to help young girls who have options but don’t believe they do. I don’t know what led me down the road that I took. Some people have the excuse of being abused, but that ain’t my story, Priest.”

“I know.”

“I came from a good home and a good family, but I was always attracted to sexual things. I became addicted to using my body to earn money and to control men. Manipulating people doesn’t feel good, and I want to disassociate myself from all this and turn over a new leaf.”

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