I met the man glare for glare. This was a time when the consequences of my actions were staring me right in the face and I had to be accountable for the things I had done. I was the one who put all this squalor in motion all those years ago by letting the monster I was trained to be off the leash. Showing my true colors had pushed Key away and had sent this man’s son on a path of vengeance I couldn’t blame him for choosing.

“Your family deserves better than you.”

He grunted and took another tottering step toward me. “Get out of my house, Gates. I’ll see you in hell.”

That made me grin at him as I kicked my foot back so that it connected with a cluttered entertainment center piled high with garbage and other junk. The TV was the old tube kind that weighed a good couple of hundred pounds. I stepped out of the way just as the unit fell forward and landed right on the other man.

He screamed and went down to the grotesquely dirty floor with a thud, his entire lower half caught under the weight of the unit and the old television. He gazed up at me with unfiltered hatred as I bent over and put my hands on my knees to look at him with disgust.

“I bring perdition with me wherever I go, so you won’t have to look far. Maybe while you lie there, hungry, scared, worried if someone will find you in your own filth before you die, you can think about the fact that maybe if you had taken care of your own instead of perverting it, corrupting it, you would have had someone here to save you. You would have had someone around who cares if you live or die. Our actions define us and every move you’ve made from the start has been the wrong one.”

With his good arm he was shoving at the furniture trapping him to the floor. He was huffing and puffing in exertion but that didn’t stop him from telling me he wanted to kill me, and swearing vengeance and revenge with every other breath.

“What about your actions, Gates? What do they make you?” He indicated where I was going, leaving him pinned to the floor. “A pimp? A murderer? A fucking psychopath?”

Yeah, my actions definitely made me all of those things at one point or another, but they also made me a man that was taking care of his city, his business, and his woman. I wouldn’t apologize for that. My methods didn’t always lead to a perfect outcome but I had learned early on in life that the only way to get anywhere was to fight for what you wanted. So I would be accountable for the things I had screwed up and I would always fight and hopefully win. Even if that victory took years and years to earn.

I left the man on the floor, stuck and screaming after me. I sincerely hoped none of his neighbors got curious and went in and freed him. He deserved to die in the piles of his own filth. It was a fitting way for the bastard to go out.

It had been a waste of a night, considering that I now had a motive but still no location for Tyler, and I was annoyed that Key never texted me back. When I got back to my house in the woods, all I wanted to do was strip naked and scrub off everywhere I had been tonight. I felt like I was covered head to toe in the Point and the filthy atmosphere was suffocating me. I kicked off my boots before going inside and calling Keelyn’s name.

I scowled when she didn’t answer and worked my shirt off over my head as I headed up the stairs toward my room. My bed was obviously empty even though the lights in the room were on, and there was still no sign of Key. The suit I had asked Bayla to grab and take to the cleaners was in a heap in front of the closet, which was unusual. I added my shirt and the rest of my clothes from tonight to the pile and padded naked to the bathroom. I pushed the door open and came up short because Key was standing in front of the massive vanity meticulously placing all her different tubes and jars of makeup on the countertop.

She was humming under her breath and had earbuds dangling off either side of her face. She was dressed in nothing more than a tiny little tank top and a pair of stretchy yoga pants that were molded to her like a second skin while she wiggled and shook to the music only she could hear. I blinked at her like an idiot. Men used to pay hundreds of dollars a minute to get her to do that kind of show and here she was performing it in my bathroom for free.

I reached out a finger, hooked one of the buds, and yanked. “What are you doing?”

She whirled around and gaped at me. I wasn’t sure if it was because I surprised her or because I was totally naked, but either way her jaw dropped and her gaze skipped over my stomach and went right to my dick, which, as always, was really happy to see her.

“I’m moving in. Where are your clothes? You’re very naked.”

I grunted and moved around her so I could crank on the shower. “They need to be burned. Even in the Point there are some places that are worse than others. I swear I saw all of them tonight. What do you mean you’re moving in? Weren’t you already here?”

I looked at her over my shoulder as steam started to billow out of the glass enclosure. Her eyes were locked on my backside, and if I wasn’t mistaken she was licking her lips. I cleared my throat and grinned at her as she jerked her head up to look at me with a faint blush on her cheeks.

“I mean I moved in. My stuff is now with your stuff and you don’t get to kick me out when we fight . . . which we will.”

I scoffed at her and reached up to pull my hair down. “It took me too long to get you here. I would never kick you out.” I let out an “oof” as she slammed into the front of me and I had to put my hands on her waist to keep us both from falling back into the open shower. “And you told me it isn’t fighting . . . it’s foreplay.”

Her hands went up to my hair and started playing around with the tie that kept it trapped on the top of my head.

“I was dying to take it down as soon as you put it up.” Her words were laced with humor and her breath was hot on my throat. My cock reacted predictably but so did my heart, which started to bang and slide all around the inside of my chest, trying to find enough room to fit now that she had meticulously put all the pieces of it back together.

“I’m really dirty. You might want to wait until I clean up before you put your hands on me.”

She was combing her fingers through my now freed hair and gently working them through the parts that were tangled up from being tied up all night. She gave a delicate little snort and lifted up on her toes so that her lips could press into mine.

“A shower isn’t going to make you clean, Nassir. I’ll put my hands on you no matter what shape you come to me in, as long you get back to me in one piece. That’s all I care about anymore.”