Page 76 of The Fire We Make

Curtis laughed.

“Crazy ass bitch, you must not know where you at or who I am. Get the fuck outta here,” he waved her off.

“Seems to me you ain’t shit but a lazy motherfucka who can’t do their job. Or perhaps a snitch?”

He nearly growled at that, taking a threatening step forward that Joy didn’t retreat from. “Bitch do you know I will kill you? Get the fuck on. Ace ain’t here to save you.”

The dismissal was the straw that snapped Joy’s control.

She stalked up to him, snatching the bottle out his hand and crashed it over his head, followed by a flurry of punches to his face.

Once she got him on the ground she placed her foot on his neck and pulled her baby eagle from beneath her skirt, placing it in his mouth.

Her blood thrummed from the power she felt. Part of her said she should stop. That normal girls don’t hold disrespectful men at gunpoint. But that part was too quiet to listen to.

The part of her who’d killed for less, who’d been taught that disrespect was a death sentence? She roared like a wild fire.

“A woman in this game without respect is a dead woman,” her father’s voice boomed in her head. His teachings coming back to her like ghosts of a past that wouldn’t let her go. “You make niggas feel you. Make em fear you.”

“Put something in my mouth motherfucka. You did all that talking. Talk now bitch,” she taunted, shoving the barrel of the gun as far down his throat as it would go.

He gagged and squirmed but his air supply was scarce with Joy’s stiletto on his throat.

“It’s taking every fiber in my soul not to drop yo bitch ass so get down on your knees tonight and say your prayers in thanks,” Joy gritted out. She removed the gun from his mouth then sent it crashing down on his face again making blood fly from his nose and a tooth pop free from his mouth.

“But don’t tempt me, hoe. The next time I come in this bitch, you better talk to me like you got some sense or I’ma send you ass to the upper room. Feel me?”

She didn’t wait for a response before she spit on his bloodied and blue face and rose, lifted her foot from his neck, watching him gasp for air.

She checked her clothes for blood splatter and placed her gun back where it belonged then strode out to the car, feeling lighter now that her need for vengeance had been satisfied, she couldn’t bring herself to be ashamed of the mini episode.

Not yet, anyway.

Ace stood beside the car where she’d left him with an unreadable expression on his face. “Ready?”

Joy nodded and climbed in. “Ready.”

“Did you get what you needed?” he asked as they slid into their seats and secured themselves inside.

Joy turned to him, nodding with a tight smile. “Yep. Best case scenario, we can take this to internal affairs to get the case thrown completely. Worst case, this is reasonable doubt in trial.”

She sighed, rotating her shoulders. “I’d keep my eye on Curtis if I was his boss,” she mused aloud. “He’s either painfully incompetent or a fucking rat.”

Chapter Twenty

The next day at the office, Ace studied Joy with new eyes.

When Joy had been gone too long, he’d followed her back into the warehouse to make sure she was okay. Curtis had been hostile with her in his presence so he could only imagine how he would be alone.

The last thing he expected to find was her pistol-whipping Curtis with that little gold gun and a foot on his neck. He’d gone back to the car before she could catch him watching but her display of power, violence, and rage stayed with him all day.

They stood together in the staff kitchen making coffee before they started their day and Ace couldn’t take his eyes off of her. With her back turned to him, he perused her athletic frame for evidence of another life.

The dainty way in which she poured the coffee and slowly stirred in the sugar and milk. Her rod straight posture and defined legs. The stealth grace with which she moved.

To the untrained eye, all were simply the signs of a woman of class. Likely years of etiquette lessons and practice but Ace knew better. The pearls around her neck and sweet smile on her lips were simply a distraction for the knife in her bra and Glock strapped beneath her skirt.

Ace’s intuition had never been wrong, and his told him that Joy Thibodeaux wasn’t who she tried to appear to be. Behind her shifty eyes was a fire she’d been trying to smolder but Ace saw straight through it.