“Alright.”
I ended the call before he could start sounding too much like our pops. Jalen had always been loud, extra as hell, and protective. He’d grown up rough. He ran the streets with his mom until drugs caught up with her. By the time we landed in the same foster home at twelve, he’d already seen more than most grown men. My story was similar, except I’d been in the system since I was a baby, given up at birth. Whoever my parents were, they dipped early and never looked back. The only real family I ever had was my foster family: Jalen, Mama Rose,and Pops. Mama Rose passed away from cancer when we were teenagers. After that, it was just the old man holding us together and keeping us out of trouble.
I flipped the lights on as I stepped inside. The generator kicked in a second later. Good. The power was still working. I made my way through the first floor, which was basically empty now. There was nothing there except a couple of desks and an old couch I’d pushed against the windows. This floor was covered in windows, which hinted at why it was taking me two days to board them all. It used to be some kind of office tower way back before the neighborhood went to shit, then it became an old gym. Jaylen and I used to sneak in here and train when we were teenagers. That was how I got discovered, so to speak. When I got my first taste of money from the underground fights, I bought the place cheap and turned the middle floors into my official training facility.
I walked along the boarded windows, pressing my shoulder against them, making sure they were solid before grabbing some loose plywood and my hammer and getting to work on the other half of the windows. The hammer rang through the empty building as I worked my way down the line, one window after the next. If I hadn’t been running up behind pussy yesterday, I would have knocked this shit out then, but I just had to go get my dick wet. By the time I hung up the last board, I was cursing myself.
Outside, the wind was picking up and rattling the building. Shit, the sky had turned an ugly shade of greenish gray. I needed to hurry before I got my ass stuck down here or some shit. Putting down the hammer, I headed for the stairs. The concrete steps sat right beside the back entrance and ran straight up the building. I took them two at a time, stopping long enough on each floor to shove the important equipment away from the windows and out of dodge of water. By the time I reached thefifth floor where the gym set was, the sight of the ring sitting in the center of the room stopped me for a second.
This floor had seen everything. The first day I learned how to wrap my hands right. The first fight I ever won. The nights I trained until my knuckles split open. Everything. Underground fights built my name. Surviving three bullets and fighting my way back after surgery got the right people paying attention. A couple of promoters came knocking after that, pulled me out of basements and into real boxing rings, but it all started here. I glanced around the room. There were no windows, nothing to be concerned about, just concrete walls. I turned off the lights and headed up to the sixth floor.
The sixth floor was where I kept the small apartment setup. It was equipped with a fridge, sink, a futon, and a couple of cabinets. It was where I crashed when I didn’t feel like going home or couldn’t make the drive. I moved through the space, checking the boards on the windows and pressing my hand against them, making sure they held, because the wind was picking up, and the rain was coming down hard. My shoulder throbbed in the process. Two bullets in the arm would do that. Bad weather always made sure I remembered the fragments that remained in my shoulder and wrist.
I stepped back, gave the room one more look, then headed down the hall toward the supply closet to get the leftover chain I’d used to rope off the front door. The way the back door had swung open when I came in, I knew I needed to secure it. Hurricanes brought out the looters, and I didn’t want them coming up in here messing up my shit. I made it to the hallway supply closet, opened the door, and reached inside. I pushed past a box of old hand wraps, gloves, and mouthpieces until I spotted the chain. I yanked it up, pulling it free, when something hit the floor with a soft tap. I frowned and glanced down as a small gold hoop rolled to the tip of my Timberlands.
“Damn,” I whispered under my breath. I knew that earring. It was a part of the pair I’d bought for Lyrius. The first real gift I ever gave her. They weren’t anything too crazy, just a pair of yellow gold diamond earrings. She’d smiled hard as hell when I handed them to her. She said it was the nicest thing anybody had ever bought her. Shit, they were the most expensive gift I’d ever brought any female, but Lyrius was worth it. At least that was what I’d thought. I bent over and picked it up, letting it twirl through my fingers.
Five years later, and I was still finding pieces of her in my space. Every time I thought I’d cleared her out, there she was again. There was always a reminder that she’d been here. That she’d changed a nigga, came in my life, and loved me like I wasn’t hard to love, which made finding out it was all a part of a setup hurt like hell. After the surgeries, when I could finally move without feeling like my body was gonna fold on me, I drove past her place, and everything was gone.
There was no sign of her car, no furniture inside. It was like she’d never existed. For a while, I looked for her. I didn’t know if I was looking for answers or payback, but I couldn’t find her. The crazy part was everybody else got found. Every last one of them. Jaylen and I spent months making sure the people responsible for setting me up never got another chance to do it again. Bodies dropped, and that little organization got quiet.
But somehow, Lyrius disappeared. I checked her socials, her old numbers. I looked at missing persons sites. Hell, I even checked the damn morgue at one point. Nothing ever changed. I didn’t tell anyone the truth about any of it either. I told them we got into it after the match, and she left before everything went down. I kept it simple. I wasn’t about to tell anybody I got played. I wasn’t about to say I let a damn woman get close enough to set me up. My pride wouldn’t let me admit that shit. Not even Jalen knew the truth, and I told his ass everything.Lyrius was the part of my past I never wanted to rehash. As far as I was concerned, she played her part, then she disappeared. It was that simple.
Thunder cracked outside, louder this time, shaking through the building and pulling me back away from thoughts of her. I tossed the earring in the trash, finished grabbing the chain, and shut the closet door. The wind slammed against the walls hard enough to make the lights flicker again. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out and glanced at the message.
FLASH FLOOD WARNING.
SEEK HIGH GROUND.
“No shit,” I muttered, shoving the phone back into my pocket as I headed back for the stairs, chain in hand. Once I chained that back door, I was gonna get the hell out of here. Halfway down the stairwell, a loud thud echoed through the building. Then another.
“The fuck?” My hand slid under my shirt before my brain caught up. Somebody was here. I pulled my Glock and hurried to the second floor so I could have more of an advantage. I listened for voices, but all I heard were small footsteps. Then a small head appeared. It was a kid. Little brown-skinned boy. He had wet curls stuck to his forehead, a rain poncho hanging off his shoulders, and a superhero backpack strapped to his back. He froze when he saw me. I kept the gun trained on him. History taught me not to trust shit that looked harmless.
“Mama,” he called over his shoulder. “Somebody up here.”
“Dae-Dae! Stay right there!” The familiar voice ripped through me like a punch, and then suddenly, a nigga couldn’t move. Then she stepped onto the landing behind him, soaked from the storm, breathing hard, and everything inside me went cold.Lyrius.I blinked once. This couldn’t be real.
Lyrius couldn’t be standing in my building, looking the same way she did five years ago. She was a little thicker, had a littlepooch and a few rolls that weren’t there before, but she was still beautiful. Still rocked her natural curls in a high ponytail and was still coated in brown skin that glowed even without the sun. Shit, she was still fine enough to make hating her ass for disappearing and leaving me bleeding out on my living room floor complicated. I’d spent five years trying to make peace with what she’d done to me, and now here she was.
What the fuck?
I felt him before I saw him, like my body had been waiting for us to exist in the same space again. The air in the room tightened, and my lungs suddenly forgot how to breathe. My eyes flew up to where he was standing.
“Dakota.” I whispered his name under my breath as my eyes scanned him like he was about to disappear. He still towered over me with broad shoulders and tattoos that climbed his arms and disappeared underneath his T-shirt. He looked older and harder than he did the last time I’d seen him and more relaxed than he did in the clips I’d seen on social media. My eyes swept over him. He had a gun hanging in his right hand, his hand placed casually on the trigger.
“Dae-Dae.” I grabbed his backpack strap and yanked him back against me. My arm wrapped across his chest instinctively, and my body shifted in front of him. KO’s eyes snapped to us, like he was scanning for threats, like I was one. His gaze hit my wet hair and shaking hands and then dropped to Dae-Dae’s. For a split second, I almost blurted the secret I’d been holding on to. I almost told him he was a father, that his son was standing right here, but I couldn’t. Not right now, not like this. Not while his eyes shot daggers into me.
“You got a lot of nerve,” he said, and my throat tightened. I’d spent the last five years trying to imagine what he’d say to me if I ever showed back up around here. No amount of imagining could have prepared me for how cold he sounded.
“We just need shelter,” I said. The words came out fast, too fast. “The shelters are full. The roads are closed. I thought this place was abandoned.”
“And you picked here?” His jaw flexed, and the building shuddered. Dae-Dae flinched, and I tightened my grip.
“They told everybody to get to higher ground.”
KO looked past me down the stairs, then back at my face like he could see every lie or half-truth I’d ever told.
“And you chose my building?”