Page 136 of La’Belle Mafia

I rolled my neck. “Watch your fucking mouth, Gideon.”

“Or what?” He chuckled. “My father is a sitting United States congressman. You put a hand on me and poof—” He made a motion with his hands. “Your whole shit goes up in smoke.”

Gideon was the type of nepo baby I hated. We both may have been born with silver spoons in our mouths, but this nigga had never been humbled. He never had to fight for his place in the world. Unlike him, my Pops made sure I earned my keep.

I sucked in a deep breath and blew it out my nose. “I can tell you ain’t never really had your ass beat before, Gideon. Maybe you got popped as a kid, but you ain’t never had a grown man put you on your ass before.”

The smile dropped off his face with the quickness. “There’s no need for threats, Cardez. Just give me my money and we can be done with this.”

“I thought about that,” I said. “But you’ve already been disrespectful by threatening Belle, so if I pay you, you’re gonna think you have something over me. And I can’t have that.”

“You about to kill me over a bitch who fucks men for their money? She’s a gold-digging slut, Cardez. Belle’s only fucking with you because you’re the biggest lick she’s hit,” he sneered.

I was up before I even realized it. I grabbed him by the neck and slammed his head against the table. “I told you to watch your mouth when you speak about my wife, nigga.”

He grunted in pain. His hands started scrambling against the desk to find leverage. I yanked him up by the collar and brought my fist across his face hard enough that it snapped to the side. Blood gushed from his nose as he stumbled back into one of the bookshelves.

“Cardez—” Gideon put his hands out in surrender.

“What was that about my wife being a slut, bitch ass nigga?” I was on him again, landing blow after blow to his face. He didn’t even try to fight back. Priest eventually pulled me off him.

Gideon was groaning in pain now. His nose was broken and one of his eyes had started to swell shut.

“I don’t want the money,” he panted. “I’ll leave Belle alone. I won’t say shit to anybody.”

“You was never gonna say shit to nobody,” I said, taking the Glock Priest handed me. “It didn’t even have to be all this, but you wanted to talk crazy about my wife like shit was sweet.”

“My father⁠—”

“Won’t be avenging you,” I said. “That nigga has been doing business with the Table for far too long and his hands are too dirty. Any investigation into your disappearance becomes an investigation into him. You think he’s sacrificing his career with a run for governor on the horizon?”

Something in his face broke, the last bit of hope that I’d bend the knee disappearing all at once.

I raised my gun and pulled the trigger, putting a bullet in his head. He jerked back before falling face-first to the ground.

“Call clean up. Have them drop his body in the vat. This place needs to be spotless. It needs to look like the nigga disappeared into thin air,” I told Priest.

Priest stepped over Gideon’s body as I pulled out my phone.