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“Give me a kiss. I gotta go.” He grabbed my jaw and stuck his tongue down my throat. “Brush your damn teeth too. Damn.”

Law was a street nigga, but he handled business a little different. He went clean after his last stint in jail and opened up a family restaurant that his mama ran. He also had a mobile carwash and a twenty-four-hour gym where he taught boxing classes. It was his way of keeping the police off his ass. His drive is what turned me on the most.

I hit the alarm on my car as I made my way up to my apartment door almost an hour later. My roommate already sent the warning text that she had company, so that let me know not to bust in her damn room. I needed to take a shower and head to my mama’s house anyway. She let me use her basement as my shop until mine was up and running. As I put my phone on the charger and started stripping out of my clothes, my door popped open. My eyes squinted as soon as I noticed who the fuck it was.

“Trey! What the fuck you doing here?”

“I thought this was the bathroom. My bad.” He rushed out.

“I know damn well my roommate ain’t fucking my old nigga.” I walked to the door, but decided not to address the issue because he was a fuck nigga. All he did was fuck bitches and beg for me to take him back. She could have that headache.

The last I heard was Trey was living his best life in South Carolina with his new bitch. Why the fuck was he in my shit like he lived here? Jill had her fucking hands full with him, and if she wasn’t careful, she’ll be somewhere crying like a newborn baby with a shitty diaper by the time Trey got done with her.

Chapter Two

LAW

I planned to marry Summer, but it would be on my terms. We still had a few kinks to work out in our relationship. Every day wasn’t perfect, but we made the best of it. Her pussy was good as hell that it had my nose open than a muthafucka. She was a boss, and that’s what I needed right now. The girls here had agendas, and making their own money wasn’t on the list. Summer never asked for anything, but I gave her everything. From her apartment, car, and the clothes she wore, I bought. But the only thing slowing me down was her insecurity. After four years, I thought by now she would be confident, and sometimes she would but if a bitch looked at me too long, she was running down on them. It was a bad look for both of us.

“Law, get your ass up from that goddamn table gambling on that phone, and come help. What the hell you come up here for and you not going to work?” My mama fussed.

I didn’t come up here to work. I was really here to show my face before I went to the poker game. I had more than one way to make money. Besides my businesses, I ran a lucrative gambling house that nobody knew about but my mama. Summer didn’t even know about it. The less she knew, the better. I would hate for her to come and fuck that up, thinking it was a bitch in there. I put my phone in my pocket and took my ass up front to help work the registers.

“Never thought I would come up here and your fine ass was here,” Pinkie said, licking her lips.

Pinkie was a fine ass woman from the hood. She was older than me, but she was a baddie. All the younger girls hated her because she kept her face clean and didn’t have to thot herself out to get a bag. She was getting her own shit, too. She had one of the hottest clubs in the city. A few niggas could say that they had her, but they could never say they made her. Pinkie was self-made from the ground up. She came from nothing and made something out of it.

“What can I get you, Pinkie?” I asked as I ignored her advances.

“What would you eat from here if you were me?”

“I eat it all. It’s my mama cooking.”

“Well, I would like to have you, but I know you’re still tied down to your little girl and shit, so just give me the turkey wings with greens and macaroni.”

“That’s all?”

“Nah, but you ain’t taking the bait.”

“Stop flirting and pay your tab,” I told her.

She gave me a twenty and her business card. “I’m having a birthday bash in a few weeks. Come hang out with me and bring your bitch too.”

Pinkie wasn’t about to get a nigga like me caught up. Fuck I look like going to hang with her and we end up fucking right in her damn office? She looked like she would fuck some shit up if she didn’t get her way. Probably why her ass didn’t have a man now.

I took a few more orders before I headed to the gambling house for the day. My homeboy was already set up for the day and we were ready to run all bets. Niggas paid me just to come in there and lose all their bitch bill money. I’ve had nigga’s trying to give away their damn bitches to pay a debt. There was one rule in my gambling house: all debts had to be paid before walking out the door. Some niggas left without their souls, and some found a way to pay that money even if it meant their bitch had to beat their ass.

“Lj,” I yelled out as soon as my foot crossed the threshold. The house was nice, but it wasn’t new. I had the cheapest furniture placed in here because shit got out of hand at least twice a week.

“What’s good?”

Lj was my cousin but more like my brother. My uncle was fucking his mama when her husband caught them and killed her. The police caught him, but he only survived the first night in jail before he hung himself. Lj was about two years old when it happened, and my uncle felt like the shit was his fault, so he took him in. Many days, I still question my uncle about Lj. He was cool with me but I couldn’t help but feel like eventually Lj would kill my uncle.

“Everything is set up, and we’re ready to get shit popping.” He dapped me.

His dreads were pulled away from his face and you could see the long scar that left an ugly mark on his face. When we were about eight, we got jammed up trying to be a part of a gang. We tried to steal a car stereo out of a white man’s car but got our ass beat by him and his wife. Lj took a brutal hit with a tire iron and received his first war wound.

Ain’t shit easy in Savannah. You either make it, or you don’t. I had a few homies that’s either in prison or dead. The last of us that were still hanging around fought to be here. The younger niggas that were coming up were born killers. If you didn’t have a name in the streets, they didn’t respect you. Lj and I made a name for ourselves out of the gate. We didn’t have to worry about anybody running up in our shit or our family shit. It was all respect when it came to us.