Page 62 of Creole Kingpin
Instead, I wait until we’re outside, and then I let it rip.
“What in the fuck do you think you’re doing? You don’t own me. You don’t get to just come back after fifteen years and storm into my life and carry me out of somewhereI want to be. Do you hear me, Moses? This is not gonna fucking fly. I’m in charge of my own goddamned life, and I won’t be—” He yanks open the back door, and my words cut off when he flips me around to dump me inside. “Didn’t you listen to a single thing I just said?”
His greenish-gold eyes burn so intensely, they practically sear me as he slams the door.
My mouth drops open.Again.“Oh no. No, you did not just fucking do that.”
I wait for him to open the other door and slide inside the back with me so I can keep tearing strips off his hide and tell him exactly how hedoes notget to treat me, when the engine growls to life and we start moving.
“What the fuck?” The divider is up between the front and back seats, and I can’t see Moses, but I have to assume he’s driving. “Hey! I know you’re up there.”
When he doesn’t roll the divider down, I slap at the thing.
A moment later, it moves down several inches, until I can see his face in the rearview mirror.
“Give me five fucking minutes to calm down before I lose my goddamned mind over what I just walked in on.” Moses’s deep voice is so low, it’s barely audible. It’s more of a growl.
“What the fuck are you pissed about? It’s not like I was doing anything wrong.”
He brakes hard as we approach the rising gate he shouldn’t have been able to get past to get into the club in the first place, and I put up a hand to brace myself. Then he turns around and stares me dead in the eye.
“If you think you weren’t doing anything I’d be pissed about, maybe I don’t know you like I thought I did. And you sure as fuck don’t know me.”
The divider slides back up, leaving me alone in the back of a Rolls Royce, wondering what in the fuck just happened.
Thirty-Eight
Moses
“What the fuck are you pissed about? It’s not like I was doing anything wrong.”
Magnolia’s words repeat in my head as I drive back to the city.
Not doing anything wrong? Maybe not to anyone else’s way of thinking, butJesus Christ.
Chess was ours.
I still remember the exact moment I knew she was unlike any other woman I’d ever met.
* * *
Fifteen years ago
“You wanna play again? Really? Don’t you know I’m just gonna keep beating you?” Magnolia flashed me a megawatt smile as she settled onto the chair opposite from me and crossed her legs.
God, this woman was something else. The face of a siren, the body of a goddess, and the chess skills of a master. She was the whole damn package.
She didn’t care who I was or what I did. She was just grateful not to be alone, trying to protect her house from looters who might decide they wanted something more. Like the last ones ...
I thought of the men I killed. Their bodies were long gone, so at least I didn’t have to worry about anyone pinning that shit on me. The only thing I wished was that I could have made them suffer longer.
Maybe it was hypocritical, but I didn’t care. What they planned to do to her ... no real man ever did that shit to a woman. I thought of the orders I’d given right before I left Biloxi, and regret, something I’d never much felt before, trickled through me.
It didn’t make sense, but this woman ... she was changing me. I didn’t know how, especially this fast, but I guessed that was how shit worked sometimes.
I smiled at her across the table. “I’ll keep playing you until I win.”
She laughed, and it wasn’t one of those nervous giggles I was used to hearing from women. It was loud and throaty as Magnolia threw her head back.
