Page 38 of City of Gods

“I don’t fucking know.” I moved his hands away from the drawer and pulled it open all the way. “I felt something shift at the top of the drawer. Then something fell down,” Eli explained. When I saw what had fallen, my eyes nearly bulged out of my head.

“Eli, is that what I think it is?”

“Fuck,” he grumbled before pushing out a huge sigh.

Our mother had a lot of fucking explaining to do.

Nine

“Idon’t normally shift my schedule like this but since you saved my life, I made an exception. It won’t happen again,” Junior said quietly. “What did you fellas want to talk to me about?” He spread a dark gaze between me, Maasai, and Hakim.

“I’m gonna cut right to the chase,” Sai began. “We have intel that may or may not be true about you and your men wanting to destabilize the Temple’s neutrality.” A line etched between Junior’s dark brows before he turned to the man on his left side who had an almost identical face.

My guess was they were brothers. I didn’t get too deep into the family structure of Temple patients. I knew him as Daniel. He was one of the men going crazy at the Temple the night Sanai shot Junior.

“You think I want to put you and your brothers in my pocket?”

“Yeah, that’s what was told to us. We weren’t going to come to you at all with it until we got attacked last night inside the Temple by men we’d never seen or treated before but that had Temple memberships.” Junior looked at me and flared his nostrils in response to my words.

“I told you, Breeze, you saved my life. You have my loyalty. I don’t know of anyone who wants to destabilize the Temple and it’s for damn sure not me or my men. I’m working too fucking hard to keep my product distributed in the streets to worry about taking on another stream of income. Especially one that I’d have to strong-arm my way into. That’s not my style.”

“So we’re supposed to believe that?” Hakim asked, his scowl unmovable.

“I don’t give a fuck what you believe. I told you the truth. I didn’t send anyone to attack you and I’m not trying to take over the Temple. If that were the case, I would have come to you with an offer. It wouldn’t be on no territory shit. If you got attacked last night then whoever is after you wants your spot. Not your neutrality.”

For some reason, Junior’s words burned in my ears like lava. The rest of what he said faded into the background while I replayed the most important part on a loop over and over.

Someone was after our territory. Not our neutrality.

When I snapped out of it, I looked at Junior from across the table. “Any idea about who could be after the Temple?”

“Location-wise? Nah. I can’t figure out who would want that particular spot. It’s a fucking church.”

“We can keep our ears open,” Daniel said from beside Junior. “We can’t sit here and chop it up with y'all all evening, though. I got me a lil date.” With that, he stood and so did Junior. My frown was immediate once I realized that Daniel was Junior’s right-hand man.

I cleared my throat and feigned a smile. “We’re not going to hold y’all. Where you headed tonight?” I asked casually.

“Restaurant on the pier,” Daniel answered. He eyed me suspiciously, but I pretended not to notice.

“Sounds nice,” Maasai interjected. We all slapped hands and then the Haitian brothers went on their way. My brothers waited until we were alone to stare at me disapprovingly.

“Nigga, tell me that question ain’t have shit to do with Sanai,” Hakim said, tossing his hand in the air.

“What question, specifically?” I asked, lifting a curious eyebrow. Hakim scrubbed his face with his hand and groaned.

“Let me guess, that’s Junior’s right-hand man that she knows?” Maasai quizzed.

“Probably. I haven’t confirmed.” I shrugged my shoulders and both of my brothers laughed at me.

“Nigga, you haven’t confirmed? Who the fuck are you talking to right now? We’re your brothers.” Maasai shoved me to the side, and I sucked my teeth, snatching away from him. “We can tell you and Sanai…”

“We know y'all fucked,” Hakim said with much less decorum.

“Y'all don’t know shit but how to get on my motherfucking nerves.”

“Whatever. Stop being professional. You know you’re about to run your ass over there to the pier and crash the hell out of that date.”

They were right.

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