Page 94 of Riot

I turned to face him. “The fuck are you talking about?”

“Mama’s not right, man. You know that. Her mind’s slipping, and she’s carrying all kinds of shit she doesn’t know what to do with. This anger you’re holding—it’s not gonna change what happened.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“I think you need to stop punishing her for shit that was out of her control.”

My laugh came bitter and short. “Out of her control? No. Turning a blind eye ain’t the same thing as powerlessness.”

Creed didn’t flinch. “Maybe not. But she loved him. And when you love someone like that, you make compromises you don’t even realize until it’s too late. I’m not excusing it. I’m saying, it broke her. Just like it broke us.”

We stood there for a long moment, nothing between us but silence and breath and years of pain layered too thick to scrape clean.

He stepped in closer. “And that thing with Malia? Let it go, bro. She’s dead. I know what she did was fucked up but you still carry it like it happened yesterday.”

I loved my brother but he didn’t understand. No one really did.

But he wasn’t trying to school me. He wasn’t trying to win. He was just telling the truth.

And the truth was?

He was right.

I blew out a breath, long and hard. “Yeah. Alright.”

He clapped my shoulder once and turned back toward the house.

I stood there for a while, watching the wind whip through tree standing in on the massive property, trying to quiet the war still raging in my chest.

But only Allure could to that.

Chapter 30

ALLURE

Since Boaz and his crew were still waiting for their bail hearing I’d spent the entire day walking through the city. It was a bit intimidating but I needed to do this for myself.

New York had always felt like a mythical land to me. It was this sprawling, chaotic place people chased dreams and lost themselves in. I was mostly raised in California and when we moved out here, I lived in Jersey but didn’t come to the city much.

When I was living with Boaz I used to visualize it from my old bedroom, dreaming about the day I’d walk these streets freely. Back then, it felt so far away. Almost impossible.

But today… I was here. Free. On my own.

I wandered through the MET for hours, lingering in the costume institute longer than I intended, studying how garments told stories without a single word. Fabric was memory. Texture was emotion. I found myself sketching mental silhouettes in my head. Flashes of color and structure, inspired by freedom and absence, by grief and grace.

After that, I weaved through SoHo, popping into boutiques that looked more like art galleries than clothing stores. I ran my fingers over silk blouses, vintage denim, hand-stitched leather. Each piece whispered a different kind of possibility. I didn’t buy anything, I wasn’t ready for that yet, but I wanted to see what moved me. What tugged at my eye. What felt likeme.

I was learning to trust my own taste again. To find myself again.

And now, as I stood outside a small café tucked into the edge of Harlem, I was trying to breathe through the nerves in my chest. Because in just a few minutes, I was about to see my brother—Carmelo—for the first time in over a decade.

I scanned every face that passed, my fingers tugging at the sleeves of my cropped jacket. The closer the time came, the tighter my chest felt. I didn’t even know what to expect. Would he look the same? Would he even recognize me? Would he believe it was me? Or had I changed too much?

Then I saw him.

And he saw me.

He froze on the sidewalk, phone in hand, mouth slightly parted.

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