Page 12 of Hades

“You ain’t ever gonna have to go through what I went through,” he muttered to Dante, who stayed asleep in the warmth of his uncle’s arms.

As he gazed at his nephew, Hades thought about Harley. What were the chances that the woman he was forcing to stay in his house was the ex-girlfriend of the nigga who had been causing him and the Obsidian Riders issues with the law?

His motorcycle club was no secret, and they proudly wore their leathers, merch, and patches everywhere they went. They could definitely be a rowdy crew, and Hades’s reputation preceded him, so of course when crime spiked in Ellwood, people needed someone to blame. The Obsidian Riders were the obvious choice, and though Hades had wreaked havoc on the city back in the day, it had been over a decade since he did anything illegal. He always had a plan: Hustle in order to live the life he wanted for himself and his siblings. That was it. When he got out of the game, Lucifer got out, and they never looked back.

But in the last three months, heat had been coming down on him and his crew. Everything from drug distribution, aggravated assault, robbery, and there was even an investigated murder.

It didn’t take him and Lucifer long to figure out that someone who stepped into the streets well after he left was the one responsible for sending the cops his way. He and Drew had a few run-ins that ended in their crews brawling, but Hades quickly realized that each time The Obsidian Riders knocked off one of Drew’s crew, the police came knocking.

In Hades’s mind, Drew wasn’t a real street nigga. He wasn’t thorough at all, and just because he wasn’t snitching on men in the streets, he was still fake snitching on the Obsidian Ridersand working with the police. Hades didn’t doubt that Drew paid the police for their cooperation, and that was actual bullshit. Now he was under heavy scrutiny for no reason. He didn’t have shit to hide anymore. All he did was work at his custom motorcycle shop, kick it with his family, and ride through the city on his bike, but he felt like a setup was coming, and that kept him on edge.

The news outlets compared the spike in crime to the havoc the Ellway Boys caused in the city back in the ’90s. They were a group of teenaged boys that met their demise after they killed a young man in a robbery gone wrong. There had been a shootout when they got caught up in that, and the Ellway Boys didn’t make it out alive.

They were notorious in Ellwood, though, and their legend lived on. Hades had respected it for a long time. Those little niggas didn’t do anything but murder, steal, terrorize people, and spread drugs into the community, but Hades lived for that kind of chaos. His father made sure evil lived within him, so the legend of the Ellway Boys had always been entertaining to him.

That entertainment ended when he and the Obsidian Riders were compared to them because of some shit that had nothing to do with them.

His mind drifted back to Harley, and he wondered if he could even trust her. She seemed genuinely terrified of Drew, which told him she didn’t really fuck with him like that, but what were the odds that she landed in his house, and he and her ex were beefing?

The nigga was honestly lucky Hades didn’t close his eyes forever in Harley’s home, but over the years, he had learned to move a lot smarter than that. He knew he needed to come up with a solution, though, because there was no way Drew was going to let go of the way Hades put him to sleep earlier.Retaliation would definitely happen, and Hades knew he needed to be ready for it.

His thoughts scattered when a knock sounded on the door.

“Come in,” he said just loud enough for the person on the other side to hear him but not too loud as to disturb Dante. Eris had warned him that when he woke up, he would be hungry, and Hades wasn’t ready to give him up just yet. He needed a few more minutes of his innocence to help him clear his mind.

Lucifer poked his head in the door and chuckled when he spotted Hades sitting at his desk with his elbow propped on the arm of the chair, his chin resting in his hand, and Dante snuggled in the other arm. His legs were cocked, and he looked mannish and mean with a sleeping baby in his arm. Hades was for sure a walking contradiction.

“I still don’t understand how you call yourself stealing a newborn baby,” Lucifer said as he sat down on the couch along the wall of the large office.

“I ain’t steal him. His mama knows where he’s at.”

Lucifer shook his head and propped his elbows on his thighs as he leaned forward. “What’s on ya mind, man?”

It didn’t surprise Hades that Lucifer sensed something was on his mind. Lucifer was always the more empathetic of the two. That didn’t make him any less deadly, but he wasn’t as out of tune with his emotions or other people’s emotions as Hades was.

“Tink,” Hades finally said.

“You mean Harley?”

Hades shook his head but didn’t respond verbally to Lucifer’s correction. Instead, he said, “You know she used to date that nigga Drew?”

Lucifer seemed lost for a split second before his eyes grew wide. “Nah, man. Are you for real?”

“Put his ass to sleep at her house earlier when he popped up while we were grabbing her shit.”

“Permanently?” Lucifer asked.

Hades had to chuckle at his brother’s question. It was valid, but it had been a long time since he permanently put someone down. He thought about it often if someone pissed him off well enough, but he valued his freedom and was smart enough to know he had made it this far without getting locked up. If he kept moving like that, then he knew his luck wouldn’t last as it had been.

“Nah.” Hades sighed before filling his brother in on what happened.

When Hades finished, Lucifer sat back on the couch, stretching his arms across the back of it. “We already figured out that he was putting twelve on us because they needed someone to blame for the shit happening around the city. You know we could just call?—”

“Nah.” Hades knew what his brother was going to say, and he wasn’t about to go down that rabbit hole. He refused.

Lucifer sighed. “Aight, well, we had beef because Drew and his sorry ass crew keep blaming their shit on us, but man, you just made this shit personal. We have to do something before we end up in a full-blown war with them and some of us end up dead or in prison.”

“How did I make this shit personal?” Hades’s face frowned up as he mugged his brother. Drew popping up at Harley’s house wasn’t his fault. He did what anyone in his position would do. “He was in there talking crazy to Tink?—”

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