The Reinvention of the Rose - Christina C. Jones Page 0,58

she insisted. “I was cutting through back here to get home, and I saw you, and I … got so mad. You embarrassed me at my job!”

“You embarrassed yourself,” I countered, shaking my head. “Nobody told you to start any shit with me – you did that.”

“So you pull a gun on me?!”

“The gun is because you attacked me, bitch are you really this dense?!” I snapped, annoyed. This girl really had my adrenaline going, for no damn reason. “Get your dumb ass up.”

I watched as she scrambled to her feet, grabbing the purse she’d dropped too. For a moment, I believed I’d be able to let her walk away from here with a stern warning to leave me the fuck alone, but as soon as she slipped her hand inside her purse, I knew.

With my safety on, I smacked her across the face with the gun, sending her and the contents of her bag spilling to the ground again as she wailed into the night.

Ignoring her as she held her hands to her face, I scanned the ground around her, my eyes landing on the stun gun she must’ve been going for.

“That’s really wack, you know?” I called out, kicking it away from her. “I should shoot you for real, so I don’t have to worry about you coming back to be annoying.”

“Let it be, honey.”

I looked up to find Keem with his arms crossed, leaning against the atelier’s back door, watching us with a solemn look in his eyes. As I watched, he pushed himself off and approached us, bending to help Nya gather her stuff.

“Take your ass on,” he told her, pushing her bag into her hands. “Don’t lose more than you have to trying to preserve your pride.”

She opened her mouth to argue, then must’ve thought better of it when her gaze fell on me. She grabbed her purse from Keem and scrambled on down the alley while he stepped in my way, blocking me.

“What the fuck was that?” I asked, tucking the gun back in my waistband where it had been. “Her silly ass keeps starting shit with me, and you interrupted me making sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Keem laughed. “I think she got the message. She’s silly. Not a mark.”

Not a mark?

I already had my gun back in my grip, raised and aimed for a head shot, safety off, finger on the trigger, by the time he lifted his hands in front of him, gesturing that he meant no harm.

“No weapon necessary - you came onto my turf - not the other way around, remember?”

Since it was late, he was dressed much more casually than I was used to seeing him around his showroom - basketball shorts and a tee shirt. He stepped further into the light, pushing his sleeve up his bicep to show me what was inked there.

A ring of thorns.

“I knew the very first time I saw you,” he explained, letting his sleeve back down. “Could tell. At first I thought you were coming for me, but I’ve been out of the Garden for at least a decade… No reason for anybody to come for me now. So I figured you must’ve gotten away, somehow. I didn’t want to spook you, so I didn’t say anything.”

“The Garden doesn’t exist anymore,” I told him, and he chuckled.

“As long as you’re looking over your shoulder, it does. And you’ll always be looking over your shoulder. I still do.”

“But you decided I wasn’t a threat.” I lowered my gun, trying to decide if I was offended by that or not.

He grinned at me. “You’re definitely a threat. Just not to me.”

“Fair enough,” I answered, putting my weapon fully away now. If Keem wanted to kill me, he’d had ample opportunity over these months I’d been right next door. “So… You’ve been out for a decade?”

“Presumed dead. I’m a ghost, basically. I built myself a new life, but there wasn’t any real peace until the Garden was eliminated. Thanks to the Pelletier sisters.”

My eyebrows went up. “So… You knew more than you let on, about Dacia.”

“Something like that. Something neither of you needed to know.”

“But you’re outing yourself now. Why?”

“To keep you from being a murderer.”

I frowned. “I wasn’t going to kill her. I was about to kick her ass. And anyway, you say that as if she would’ve been the first.”

“She would’ve, right? Since you’re not that person anymore. Not a rose anymore. That life is gone, behind you. Unless I’ve mistaken this process