Aug grinned. “Gotcha.”
“Yeah,” Axl agreed, not grinning.
They turned to their respective doors and got out.
They then moved in unison across the street toward their destination: an apartment complex.
Aug did it talking.
“So essentially, it was a great date.”
Axl stopped dead on the sidewalk and leveled his eyes at his bud.
“I think you can now take it as proven Lottie knew what she was doing. Her picks for us weren’t random, brother.”
Aug looked toward the door of the apartment complex.
In other words: We’re not talking about this.
“We got shit to do,” Axl continued. “We don’t got time to stand and chat on a sidewalk. Just …you hear what I’m sayin’?”
Auggie looked back at him. “It’s not me, it’s her.”
“Yeah, and it wasn’t me, it was Hattie.”
“You’ve had one date,” Auggie pointed out.
“Right, then wait it out. Lottie’s picks turn to three matches, three wins, you need to get the lead out.”
“It’s not just Pepper, Axe. If it was just her, we’d be there already. She’s got a kid.”
Axl’s brows shot up in surprise. “You got a problem with her kid?”
Aug started to look pissed. “You know it’s not that. Again, it isn’t me, it’s her. She’s being protective.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, find out.”
Auggie’s head ticked, which Axl knew stated plain he was just ticked.
And he didn’t hesitate to share that verbally as well.
“All right, I see you ridin’ the high of one great date, but it was one great date. That’s it. You aren’t the poster child for relationship bliss. Get off my ass.”
As they all did in their crew when shit was important, Axl did not get off his ass.
“And Mag and Evie are engaged. Boone and Ryn are moving in and going into business together. Aren’t those poster children?”
“We gonna get this done?” Aug asked tersely, jerking his head to the complex, bringing them back to business.
Yeah.
They needed to get this done.
Axl answered his question by moving.
They walked into the apartment building and immediately were assaulted with a variety of smells. The sweet scent of pot was the high note, mingled with the unpleasant scent of cigarettes with underlying nuances of filth and possibly vomit.
They both ignored it and jogged up two flights of stairs, walked down the hall and stopped at the door they needed.
“I’d give you the honors due to your frustration, but you just pissed me off, so I get to do it,” Auggie announced.
Axl jutted his chin in assent and Aug immediately lifted his boot, landed it with no small amount of pressure right by the handle, and the door flew open.
Instantly, there was a flood of the dregs of humanity brushing past them.
A door bursts open, they assume police.
Oh yeah.
Brandi was home.
With the mass exodus, it was clear her minions had let her down with loyalty. Walking through the fetid apartment, it was also clear they let her down with cleaning.
What was unclear was why she had them in the first place.
They hit the living room at the back.
Oh, right.
That was why.
She sat her throne of an armchair Goodwill would turn down, long red dreads, raccoon eyeliner, pasty white skin that was not helped with copious contouring, massive gold bespoke hoops that said BRANDI across the circle at her ears, a variety of thick chains hanging around her neck, Gucci tee and track pants, Balenciaga color-block sneakers.
None of that was fake or black-market rip-offs.
Even the gold at her ears.
So, yeah.
A girl had to find the green to get her logo, keeping minions addled in narcotics was Brandi’s way.
How he grew up, Axl could do designer. And that was one thing he was down to take from his father’s teachings.
He’d been in Boss last night, with Mezlan shoes.
But he wasn’t sure about Brandi’s switch-up between Gucci and Balenciaga. He felt it flew in the face of appropriate sporting of logo wear.
What he was sure about was his distaste for Brandi appropriating Black statements.
That woman’s people had never been in chains.
Thank fuck he wasn’t partnered up with Marques today. As was his right, Marques had a serious issue with appropriation, not to mention the ability to share how he felt about that in a variety of ways.
“Fuck, how’d you find me?” she demanded while the last of the queen’s court scuttled down a side wall and made his escape.
“You’re on Hawk’s payroll, B,” Auggie told her. “And as such, Hawk expects, if you need to change scenes, you send in an updated address form.”
Brandi gave them nothing but a glare.
“Been a minute,” Axl noted.
“Sixty times twenty-four times about ninety-five days, maybe a few of them,” Aug added.
“Things got hot for me at my last locale,” Brandi spat.
“Hot how?” Axl asked.
“My business is your business only if I make it your business,” she stated. “That’s the deal.”
“Wrong,” Axl returned. “Your business isn’t our business unless you make it our business, in however we feel that might happen. And right now, ghosting us a couple of days after taking your last fee, you became our business.”