Page 40 of Kissed By the Trillest Thug 2

I stared at the screen for a moment before shaking my head.

“Man…”

A humorless laugh escaped me. The nerve of him. The last time I saw Ryan, he gave me money for another play. Then everything with the bricks happened. One problem became another, and before I knew it, I had stopped answering his calls altogether. At first, I figured he’d eventually get the hint. Apparently not.

I started cleaning up around the house. My mom had been picking up so many shifts at work that she was barely home. When I finished cleaning up every single room, I lit a candle that was on the coffee table and then sat back on the couch. My stomach started growling, so I headed to the kitchen. I stood in front of the refrigerator and was pissed when there wasn’t much in there. I grabbed some milk and made a bowl of cereal. The day had gone by so quickly, and I was beat. I started yawning, and I felt like heading to take a shower and then going to sleep, but I thought about Ryan’s text.

“Shit,” I mumbled under mt breath.

As I sat at the island counter dipping my spoon in my bowl of frosted flakes, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked the time.

10:17 p.m

That was more than enough time. With a sigh, I grabbed my bowl off the counter and set it into the sink before heading toward my room to change my clothes. I wasn’t stupid. Whatever Ryan wanted, I doubted it was good.

By the time I left the apartment, my firearm was tucked securely into my waistband. Maybe Ryan just wanted his money. And that I didn’t have. Maybe he wanted answers. Either way, I wasn’t meeting anybody in a park at eleven o’clock at night unprepared. The basketball courts were nearly empty when I arrived. A couple of lights illuminated the area just enough to see, but most of the park sat beneath a blanket of darkness. Ryan was already there. He was sitting on the bleachers with his elbows resting on his knees like he hadn’t spent the last few weeks calling and texting me nonstop.

He was running me down worse than a bitch that just got some dick does. The second he saw me approaching, he stood. I didn’t stop walking until I was a few feet away.

“What?”

The question came out exactly the way I intended it to. I was annoyed as fuck, like I wasn’t the one who had taken this man’s money and disappeared. Ryan looked me over before letting out a small breath.

“I was starting to think you weren’t coming.”

I folded my arms across my chest.

“You got five minutes.”

A smile touched his face, and I immediately disliked it. The expression looked entirely too relaxed for somebody who was owed money.

“I gave you cash,” he said.

“You did,” I nodded.

“And I never got what I paid for.”

Giving him his money back wasn’t an option.

“You’ll survive.”

Ryan shook his head.

“I’m not worried about the money.”

That got my attention. For the first time since I arrived, I really looked at him because if this meeting wasn’t about the money, then why the hell was I here? Ryan reached into his pocket, and my body immediately tensed. Years of instinct didn’t give me a choice. Instead of a weapon, he pulled out a photograph and then handed it to me.

I looked down and, in the picture, there were bricks. Several of them. They looked exactly like the kind me and Trigga had taken from the auto shop. They were in the same clear wrapping stamped with a red Cocoa plant. The thing was, when I sold Ryan that work, it was already broken down, so this picture of this product had my mental knobs going. When I looked back up, Ryan was already watching my reaction.

“I’ve been doing a lot of homework lately.”

Ryan took the photograph back from me and slid it into his jacket. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out another item. This time it wasn’t a photograph. It was a folder, a manila one.

The kind that immediately made me suspicious.

“What is that?” I asked as my eyes narrowed.

Ryan opened it and pulled out several sheets of paper.