Her friend sighed. “I know.”
“You shouldn’t be getting involved either.”
An exhale. “Trust me, I know.”
Ola rubbed her forehead, feeling a headache creep in already. “Wait, am I on speakerphone?”
“No, of course not.”
“Okay. Are you doing this because of him? You don’t know him. You don’t owe him anything.”
A pause. “I know, Ola. We can talk about that one later. Just tell me if you’re going to help.”
Ola groaned. “You don’t know Daddy O, Souraya. It’s not that easy.”
“But you do. You know him better than most people. Just try, Ola.”
Fuck. She shouldn’t have brought Souraya with her. The girl couldn’t handle New Lagos; she was already trying to save people. Her and her useless soft heart. “Okay, fine. But I can’t promise anything.”
“Thank you! I really—”
“I have to go.” Ola cut off the call and fought the urge to throw the phone across the bathroom.
What a bloody mess.
She took a deep breath and went back into the bedroom, climbing up next to Daddy O’s body. Kneeling back on her heels, she looked down at him and thought about when she’d been a teenager too, when she’d first met men like him. The things they had done. The things they had done to her. There was a time when she’d been angry about it, but then she’d become rich instead and the anger had set into something cold and untouched. She had made it, made it out, made her life into what she wanted it to look like. Being able to do that, that was power. That was freedom. Justice wasn’t something she looked for or believed in, and how useful would it be anyway? People didn’t understand that. They wanted revenge; they wanted people to be held accountable in a world where that just didn’t happen. It was like expecting a rotten tree to bear edible fruit. It was never going to give you that.
It could give you other things, though, if you knew how to work the rot, if you weren’t afraid to touch it or use it. The rot could give you power. Souraya only played with the edges of that world nowadays, she didn’t enter it anymore the way Ola did, she didn’t remember that the thing she was asking for was ridiculous.
Ola stared at Daddy O and shrugged to herself. She’d told Souraya she would help, and she would the way that she could. The way that was real, not the way Souraya thought was possible. At least the boy would be alive at the end of it. She reached down and cupped the pastor’s balls in her hand, rolling them gently around as she drew him into her mouth and started to apply suction. When he started to moan as he woke up, she pulled him deeper and used her other hand to stroke him as he began to get hard.
Daddy O opened his eyes and looked down at her, her back arched and ass in the air as she worked on him. “Ah, you this girl. You neva tire?”
Ola pulled her mouth off and smiled at him. “I was thinking about that small boy you told me about in the car. I think I have a better idea of how you can deal with him.” She put her lips to his ear and whispered, her voice secret and suggestive as her hand kept stroking him. She felt his erection turn to burning iron as he listened to her. “What do you think?” she asked. He turned his head to stare at her as if he was just seeing her for the first time. They looked at each other for a moment, then the pastor grabbed her and flipped her on her back, rising over her like a wave. Ola shrieked and giggled, then cried out with pleasure as he drove into her.
“I always knew you were wicked,” he gasped. “I had no idea you were that wicked.”
“Always happy to surprise you, Daddy,” she replied between pants. He laughed and bent his head to bite her nipple. Ola smiled to herself and reached a hand up to brace herself against the headboard. She was going to have to charge him later for going raw, but it didn’t seem like he’d care. She closed her eyes and wrapped her legs around him. At least she’d done Souraya the favor she’d asked for. By the end of everything, the boy might still be alive.
nine
Saturday, 2:03 PM
Souraya danced in her hotel room to an Asake song as she put things into her purse—a tube of lipstick, a compact, a condom. It was just lunch, but you never knew, especially with Ahmed. The thought of being close to him again made her pulse stutter.
She opened a small vial of perfume, a gift from a client in Cairo, and dabbed it on her wrists, behind her ears, in the hollow of her throat. It smelled strange and decadent, bitter and full, something that pulled people in even as they tried to decide if they liked it. She’d worn it one night in SA, just the scent and nothing else. She wondered if Ahmed would remember. Souraya looked at her thigh harness lying on the bed, the delicate leather straps sprawled against the cover.
Maybe she didn’t need to wear it. It was only Ahmed, after all.
“Don’t be stupid,” she muttered to herself. “You know what it’s like here. You have to be ready.” She put her foot up on the bed and rucked her dress up, buckling the sheath against her upper thigh, the slim knife cold on the soft flesh of her inner thigh. It was better to be safe, to assume the worst. Her phone buzzed and Souraya snatched it up.
It was him. I’m downstairs.
She dismissed the notification, surprised at how nervous she was. It had been what—a few years since Joburg? Surely that was enough time to stop being haunted. Worse things had happened to her when she was young enough for them to be an atrocity—these recent memories didn’t even compare. They should’ve been neatly processed and tucked away in their appropriate files, but instead of smelling the fragrance she’d just put on her skin, Souraya’s lungs were filled with a cologne that couldn’t possibly exist, not in this hotel room. It had existed in that other one, yes, that horrible one in Joburg, but it shouldn’t be here. Damp hands grabbed at her thighs and she choked back a scream, pinching the skin of her wrist to bring herself back.
“Stop it,” she hissed. “You’re free. You’re free.”
She said it over and over, until it felt like her tongue swelled with the words. How would Ahmed look at her when he saw her? With the same stunned desire he’d had when they first met at the braai? Or would his eyes hold more complication, like by the time they’d fled from Joburg? Souraya could still remember his face at the airport, the cloaked pity that had knifed her in her gut. She’d made him promise to never reach out to her again, just so she never had to see him look at her that way, like she was a beautiful thing irretrievably broken.
If she came downstairs and saw pity on his face again, would she be able to stand it? But she had reached out and he had reached back. Her past was waiting downstairs for her even as nightmares nipped around her thighs.
Souraya turned off her music and grabbed her hotel key, slipping it into her purse as she closed the door behind her. In the mirrored lift, she reviewed her reflection, adjusting the cuffs of her dress. Thin gold bands wrapped around her upper arms, glinting under the sheer sleeves of the dress. She slid on a pair of large sunglasses as the lift reached the lobby, the last piece of her shield clicking into place. Souraya stepped out and walked into the hotel foyer, looking around for Ahmed. For a moment, she felt lost and scared, like a child in a crowd in the city she’d all but sworn never to return to, with its heat licking at her skin. Strange men turned at her entrance and slid their eyes over her, uncouth and hungry. If it wasn’t Ahmed she was waiting for, Souraya wouldn’t have cared, but she felt vulnerable because it was him. As always, he lured out a softness in her that Souraya usually kept closer to her chest.
Souraya adjusted her glasses, kept her spine straight and looked around the lobby, reminding herself of who she was. Men destroyed their families for a chance to touch her skin. Women wanted her and wanted to be her. She hadn’t been a trembling little girl in years.
Her shoes clicked on the polished floors as she strode forward. When she saw Ahmed leaning next to a large palm with his skin still as dark as a secret, looking down at his phone, her heart jumped a little. He glanced up as if he could feel her gaze, and their eyes locked. Souraya gave him a small smile and watched his almond eyes crinkle with pleasure as his mouth split into a wide grin. He was wearing a white tunic buttoned to the throat, dark mustard trousers, and white sneakers. A silver bangle rattled against his left wrist, and sunlight reflected off the signet ring on his right hand as he pocketed his phone and stalked toward her, his movements sleek and feline. There was no pity anywhere in his face.
He stopped directly in front of her. “Hey.”
His voice was exactly as gentle as she remembered it. Souraya stared up at him. Had she forgotten he was this tall, this attractive? Years ago, she had tasted his sweat on his throat as he gasped into her.
“Hey,” she said back.
Ahmed touched her elbow and leaned in, softly kissing her on one cheek then the other. Souraya let him, glad that he wasn’t wrapping her in his arms, that he was being cautious. One of them had to be. If she turned her head, would he taste the same?
“Should we go?” he asked, his hand still warm against her elbow.
She nodded, fighting the urge to sway toward him. As they walked out, Souraya took a few deep breaths, grateful that the hallucination of cologne from the hotel room had faded. Instead, Ahmed was wafting something cool and sharply fresh; a clean cut through the air. He smelled different than he had before, slightly more edged.
