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Most of it came out low and angry, with him switching into French whenever he got pissed enough. I didn’t understand every word. My pops made Azaria and me learn French growing up because we were Creole, but Azaria was the one who took that shit seriously. I never cared about being bilingual.

I knew enough to understand when Ares was talking about killing somebody.

Vale’s name kept coming up.

So did Lyric’s.

“Je vais tous les tuer,” Ares muttered. I’m going to kill them all.

He switched back to English. “Found out Lyric never stopped talking to that nigga Vale. Thought she was smarter than that.”

He took another pull from the blunt.

“Marcel let pedophiles carry our name too. Gave me a whole list of muthafuckas putting smut on us while they covered up sex crimes.”

Ares looked out the window.

“I’ll kill them too.”

I let him talk because sometimes that was all a man needed before handling something he had already made his mind up about.

Twenty minutes later, we pulled up near Vale’s condo building. The security and camera situation had already been handled before we arrived. Money and pressure could solve most problems in this city if you knew who to pay and who to scare.

We got out, put on our masks and gloves, and made sure our guns were ready before going inside.

The building was quiet when we entered. We moved through the hallway without speaking because neither one of us needed instructions at this point. We had done enough together to know how the other moved.

Vale’s condo had already been disarmed for us.

The second we got inside, we heard moaning coming from farther down the hall, loud as hell too. Ares looked at me before we followed the sound toward the bedroom. The door was halfway open, and when he pushed it farther, we found Vale in bed with Lyric.

Neither one of them saw us coming.

Ares fired first.

One shot hit Lyric before she had time to understand what was happening.

Vale tried getting out of the bed.

I fired twice.

His body dropped across the mattress beside her.

We stayed long enough to make sure there was nothing left to handle, then left the condo the same way we entered.

By the time we got back into the CLS, Los Angeles looked exactly the same. Cars still moved through the streets, lights stayed on in buildings, and people went about their lives without knowing what had happened upstairs in that condo.

I looked over at Ares.

All the anger he had been carrying on the freeway was gone from his face.

Lyric wasn’t supposed to become part of the problem, but she chose a side. In our world, choices came with consequences.

We drove for a few minutes before I spoke.

“You flying back to France?”

“Yeah.”