note before letting it fall on the bed. She was a little upset that they wouldn’t be able to grab breakfast together, but duty called. Ahli knew what that meant. The day before was the first day off either one of them had in six months, and just like that, it was over. Since Brayland had driven and was now gone, she figured she would just call a driver to take her back to the mansion.
Ahli got out of bed and went to the desk her phone was charging on to check for any missed messages or calls. There was nothing on the screen when she looked, but still she decided to shower and get dressed. In her realm of work, it was better to be ready instead of having to get ready when someone summoned her. She unsnapped her bra, letting it and her lace panties fall to the ground as she walked to the large bathroom. She turned the water in the glass-enclosed shower to the hottest that she could stand and got in.
Placing her hands on the wall in front of her, she allowed the water to run from her hair to her toes. Her eyes were closed, and the events from the past three years passed on the backs of her lids. If someone else were to tell her story, Ahli wasn’t alive in it. She and her sister, Rhonnie, supposedly died three years ago at the Opulent Inn in the clutches of Madame, the woman originally in search of Vita E Morte. Ahli’s mother and father had hidden the formula, but Madame never stopped searching. In fact, the risk their parents took cost their father his life. So when Sadie Thomas, a leader of one of the biggest drug cartels in the United States, saved them and killed Madame, it wasn’t hard to say goodbye to their lives from before. They were able to fall completely off the grid, although both refused to get new names. Technically, on paper, they didn’t exist anymore, but Ahli was all right with that.
After the untimely death of her father, Quinton, and the horrific events that followed, Ahli didn’t know what her purpose was anymore. Her mother had died years before that, and Rhonnie was all she had. Ahli was a thief trained in combat with nobody to rob and nobody calling the shots. It wasn’t until Sadie rescued them that she found a new purpose, and that was protecting the head of The Last Kings at any cost. Sadie hired both Ahli and Rhonnie to be her personal security detail after seeing what they were capable of, and she gave them a second chance to live.
Ahli stood up straight and finished washing herself before turning off the water. She stepped out of the shower and wrapped one of the white towels around her body. Her long, wet hair hung loosely around her face when she exited the bathroom. She almost jumped out of her body when she saw a woman sitting with her back to her on the hotel bed.
“What the fuck,” Ahli breathed when the woman turned her head to face her. “Sadie, you scared the hell out of me.”
“We thought to call, but then we figured the element of surprise would be better,” Rhonnie’s voice sounded, and she rounded the corner from the small kitchen in the suite. “So, surprise!”
Rhonnie held her hands up and wiggled her fingers. She was dressed in a nice tan suit with a blazer and red heels. Her hair was pulled up into a ponytail broadcasting her cheekbones and chin definition. She looked so ridiculous moving her fingers around that Ahli almost laughed, but she was too busy trying to figure out how they’d gotten in her room. Actually, she wanted to know how they even found her.
“Your credit card is attached to my account, remember?” Sadie said, seeing the look of confusion on Ahli’s face.
The smile on Sadie’s face was kind, and Ahli shook her head sheepishly. For the most part, Sadie gave both women their privacy. So much so that Ahli had forgotten that their entire existence was attached to hers.
“I didn’t think you would need us until later today,” Ahli said, pulling a black suit and some lotion from her overnight bag, “but Brayland said you called him into work.”
“About that.” The smile on Sadie’s face turned into a serious line. “I sent him on a few runs, just as extra muscle. But honestly, I just needed him out of the way.”
“Out of the way for what?”
“I called a meeting for later, and I only want the two of you to attend it with me,” Sadie answered. “I want to make sure everything goes smoothly. Nothing like what happened yesterday.”
Sadie shot Rhonnie a look that made Ahli look at her too. Rhonnie shrugged her shoulders, but Ahli could tell by the malevolent smirk on her face that she’d done something ridiculous.
“Do I even want to know, NaNa?” Ahli asked with a raised brow, calling her sister by the nickname she’d given her when they were younger.
“I didn’t even do too much this time. I just used a machete on one of the dudes rolling with Cam, that’s all.”
“So you’re Madame now?” Ahli asked, making a face as she reflected on Madame’s killing methods. “I would have thought that after what happened, you wouldn’t want to play with knives.”
“Maybe if Sadie hadn’t paid for my complete facial and body reconstructive surgery, but now I’m good as new!” Rhonnie ran her hand down the side of her face.
Just by looking at the two of them, a person would never be able to tell that their bodies had once been covered in several cuts and gashes. They had to undergo a few surgeries, but in the end, there wasn’t even a blemish that stood out. Ahli just rolled her eyes at her sister and let the towel drop to the ground, not caring that she was standing there naked.
“It sounds like this is an important meeting,” she pondered aloud as she applied lotion to her body. “And if it’s so important, why are Rhonnie and I the only security detail you want to have? Usually you roll a few trucks deep to important things.”
“This is so important that I only want the two I trust the most with me,” Sadie said while she and Rhonnie exchanged a look.
“And why is that?”
“Vita E Morte is ready to be placed on the market,” Rhonnie answered.
Ahli stopped rubbing lotion on her leg mid-stroke. “W . . . what?” Ahli’s eyes were wide as she looked from Rhonnie to Sadie. “I didn’t think it would be ready so soon.”
“So soon?” Sadie asked, furrowing her brow. “My scientists in the lab in Azua have been working day and night for the past three years to perfect the drug. It’s finally ready. I’ll be presenting it to potential buyers today.”
“Are you sure it’s the right time?” Ahli asked, getting dressed into her form-fitting suit. “I mean, I thought business has been doing well.”
“If there’s one thing you should know about me by now, it’s that there is never such a thing as too much money,” Sadie told her and eyed her suspiciously. “Are you good, Ahli? You can be honest with me about whatever you’re feeling.”
“Yeah, I just . . . I guess I never thought of how I would really feel when Vita E Morte was ready. I mean, my mother hid it for a reason. I can’t help but to think, what if she was right? Maybe it isn’t supposed to be on the streets.”
“Shit, crack wasn’t supposed to be on the streets. But you see fiends buying eight balls left and right,” Rhonnie butted in. “I’m with Sadie on this one, sister. I mean, this is going to be big. Probably bigger than the crack epidemic, and it’s ours. And Mom had a whole life that we never knew about. How do we know what her real reasons were for hiding the formula?”
Ahli chose to be quiet because to that she didn’t have a rebuttal. She finished getting dressed and went back into the bathroom to brush her teeth and pull her hair up into a bun. Her thoughts were all over the place. Just an hour ago, she had been in pure bliss, but now she had an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. However, she had to remember that it had been she who told Sadie where to find the formula, and it had been she who gave Sadie the okay to use it. Ahli sighed in the mirror and rubbed her hands over her small waist. She hoped that she wouldn’t have to ruin another work suit at the meeting later. She’d just replaced an entire closetful.
“You all right in here?” Sadie appeared in the doorway.
“I’m just finishing up,”