Chapter 9: Blood & Broken Glass
The red bandana was a knot in her pocket all morning. Anaijiah felt its weight as she stirred her coffee, as she scrolled through design ideas on her tablet, as she tried and failed to sketch a new phoenix design. Nevaieh’s scent was still on her sheets, a phantom claim that made her own condo feel like occupied territory.
The car hadn’t come at eight.
By ten, the anxiety had morphed into a low-grade irritation. She checked her phone for the hundredth time. No messages. Nevaieh’s world operated on a different clock, one governed by threats and shifting loyalties, not business hours.
She went to the shop. The normality of it felt like a costume. Dove was wiping down the counters, her movements jerky with nervous energy. Kayla was on the phone booking a client, her voice too bright, too loud. They all moved around each other carefully, the unspoken tension from the party still hanging in the air, now mixed with Anaijiah’s own distracted silence.
“You good?” Kayla asked after hanging up, her eyes sharp.
“Fine,” Anaijiah said, setting up her station for a walk-in. “Just tired.”
The lie was thin. Kayla let it hang between them, a visible strain.
The afternoon bled into evening. The shop hummed with the low buzz of tattoo machines, the soft reggae playing from Malik’s speaker, the occasional burst of laughter from Dove as she practiced her line work on a fake skin pad. Anaijiah lost herself for a few hours in the meticulous shading of a client’s sleeve, the familiar focus a temporary balm.
She was just wiping down her station, the client gone, smiling at their satisfaction, when the world exploded.
It wasn’t a sound first. It was a change in air pressure, a sudden, violent inhale of the city. Then the front window detonated inward.
A cacophony of shattering glass erupted, a thousand crystalline pebbles rained across the polished concrete floor, skittering like malevolent hail. The neon ‘INK & IRON’ sign flickered and died. A brick, clumsy and final, thudded onto the reception desk.
Anaijiah stumbled back, a shard grazing her cheek. Dove screamed, a short, sharp sound cut off by Malik yanking her behind a workstation. Kayla dropped to the floor behind the piercing cabinet, her braids swinging.
Five figures clambered through the jagged maw of the window. They moved with a brutal, practiced efficiency. They wore black ski masks, but their clothes were a motley assortment—no unifying color, no obvious flag. This wasn’t about territory; it was an erasure. One held a crowbar. Two others had pistols, held low but ready.
The leader—taller, with a tattoo of a spiderweb on his neck visible above his collar—scanned the room. His eyes locked onto Anaijiah. “Where is she?”
Anaijiah’s mouth was dust. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She took another step back, her hand closing around the metal shaft of her tattooing machine—a pathetic weapon.
The man with the crowbar took a step toward Malik’s station. Toward Dove.
Then, a new sound cut through the ringing silence. Not glass, but metal. The shriek of tearing chrome and the crunch of fiberglass from the street outside.
Through the shattered window, Anaijiah saw Nevaieh’s black SUV plow through the line of parked motorcycles belonging to the crew. The bikes went down like dominos, a symphony of destruction. The SUV didn’t stop; it mounted the curb and slammed to a halt, blocking the broken shop front.
The doors flew open.
Five figures emerged, but these moved differently. Purposeful. Calm. They were masked too, but in simple black balaclavas. And they were armed with a chilling uniformity: sleek, black handguns already raised.
Nevaieh was the last to exit. She didn’t rush. She stepped around the wreckage of the bikes as if it were minor debris. She wore black from head to toe, the red bandana tied around her neck the only spot of color. The fading evening light caught the single teardrop tattoo on her cheek, making it gleam like a fresh wound.
She walked through the shattered window frame, glass crunching under her heavy boots. She didn’t look at Anaijiah, not yet. Her eyes were on the spiderweb-neck leader.
The room had frozen. The rival crew turned, their weapons shifting focus. The air was taut, a wire about to snap.
Nevaieh’s Glock was in her hand, seemingly materialized there. The metallic click-clack of her cocking it was obscenely loud in the quiet. It wasn’t a gesture; it was a period at the end of a sentence.
She walked straight up to the leader, ignoring the other four guns now trained on her. She stopped when the barrel of her pistol kissed his forehead, right between his eyes.
“You come for what’s mine?” Her voice was a purr, low and devoid of any emotion beyond a mild curiosity.
The man’s Adam’s apple bobbed. He didn’t speak.
Nevaieh’s free hand came up, not to gesture, but to reach behind her. Her fingers found Anaijiah’s hip, pulled her close without looking. The grip was iron, possessive. A public branding in the middle of a battlefield. Anaijiah stumbled against her side, the cold metal of the gun pressed into the rival leader’s head mere inches from her own face.
“The shop,” Nevaieh continued, her thumb stroking Anaijiah’s hipbone through her jeans. “The artists. Her.” She pressed the barrel harder, forcing the man’s head back. “You see any of this and think it belongs to you?”
One of the masked rivals shifted his weight. Nevaieh’s crew didn’t move, but their collective focus snapped to him, a silent promise of violence.
“We just… we have a message,” Spiderweb stammered, his bravado crumbling under the cold pressure of the gun.
“You’re the message now,” Nevaieh said softly. Then, louder, addressing the room but never taking her eyes off him. “Kayla. Malik. Dove. Go to the back room. Now.”
Her command brooked no argument. Malik moved first, pulling a shaking Dove with him. Kayla hesitated, her eyes wide on Anaijiah, before backing away slowly toward the rear door.
When the door clicked shut, Nevaieh leaned in closer to the leader. “Tell Luc I’m not playing his fucking games. Tell him this is the only warning. He sends men to a business again, I send pieces of him back in a bag.” She pressed the gun so hard his head tilted further back. “You understand the words coming out of my mouth?”
He nodded, a tiny, desperate movement.
“Good.” In a motion too fast to follow, Nevaieh reversed the gun and slammed the butt into the side of his temple. He dropped like a sack of stones, unconscious before he hit the glass-littered floor.
His crew flinched but didn’t raise their weapons. They were outgunned, out-matched.
“Get this trash off my property,” Nevaieh said to her people.
Her crew moved in, efficient and silent, disarming the rivals and hauling them out through the broken window. The one who’d held the crowbar received a vicious knee to the gut before he was dragged out. In less than a minute, they were gone, loaded into a second van that had pulled up silently. The SUV remained, a black beast blocking the ruin of the storefront.
Nevaieh finally turned to Anaijiah. Her face was a mask of cold fury, but her hand on Anaijiah’s hip softened, just slightly. “You’re bleeding.”
Anaijiah touched her cheek, her fingers coming away with a smear of red. The cut stung now, a sharp, clean pain. “Glass.”
Nevaieh’s thumb brushed just below the cut, wiping away a trickle of blood. Her gaze was intense, searching. “You okay?”
The question, simple and direct in the aftermath of such violence, undid her. Anaijiah nodded, then shook her head, a tremble starting deep in her core. Nevaieh pulled her into an embrace, tight and crushing. It wasn’t comfort; it was containment. Anaijiah buried her face in Nevaieh’s neck, smelling gunpowder, leather, and her.
From the back room, Kayla’s voice, shaky but clear. “Is it… is it clear?”
“It’s clear,” Nevaieh called back, not letting go of Anaijiah. “Come out. We need to leave. This place isn’t safe tonight.”
The crew emerged, pale and wide-eyed. Dove was crying silent tears. Malik’s hands were clenched into fists. Kayla looked at the destroyed window, the glittering floor, then at Nevaieh holding Anaijiah. Her expression was unreadable.
“Take them to the safehouse on Wabash,” Nevaieh instructed one of her men who had re-entered. “Stay there until I call.”
“Anaijiah comes with me,” Nevaieh said, and it wasn’t a question.
The ride in the SUV was silent. Nevaieh drove with a furious focus, weaving through Chicago’s side streets. She didn’t go to Anaijiah’s condo. She drove to an industrial part of the city, pulling into the bay of a darkened, seemingly abandoned auto body shop. A rolling door closed behind them, plunging them into near-total darkness before a single hanging bulb flickered on.
It was a sparse space—a desk, a few chairs, a worn sofa, a mini-fridge. A hidden place.
Nevaieh killed the engine and sat for a moment, her hands gripping the wheel. The adrenaline was leaching away, leaving a different kind of rawness in the air.
She turned to Anaijiah. In the dim light, her eyes were black pools. “You see?” Her voice was rough. “You see what it is?”
Anaijiah could only nod. She saw. The violence wasn’t an abstract concept; it was brick and glass and a gun against a forehead.
Nevaieh got out, came around, and opened Anaijiah’s door. She didn’t offer a hand. Her presence was a command. Anaijiah followed her into the cavernous room. The air smelled of oil and old concrete.
Nevaieh walked to the sofa and sat, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. She looked suddenly tired, the weight of the teardrop tattoo seeming heavier. “Come here.”
Anaijiah went. She stood before her.
“The bandana,” Nevaieh said. “You have it?”
Wordlessly, Anaijiah pulled the red cloth from her pocket. Nevaieh took it, stared at it for a moment, then looked up at her. A storm brewed in her gaze—fury, possession, a desperate, grim need.
She didn’t speak. She reached out, hooked her fingers into the belt loops of Anaijiah’s jeans, and pulled her down onto her lap, straddling her. The position was familiar, intimate, but charged now with the electricity of what had just happened.
Nevaieh’s hands went to Anaijiah’s face, cradling it. Her thumbs wiped at the dried blood on her cheek. “He made you bleed.” The words were a lethal promise.
Then she kissed her. It was a collision. A claim staked in the aftermath of chaos. Her tongue invaded Anaijiah’s mouth, tasting of adrenaline and anger. Anaijiah kissed her back, a surge of something wild and grateful rising in her throat. She was alive. They were alive.
Nevaieh’s hands dropped, yanking Anaijiah’s shirt over her head. The cool air raised goosebumps on her skin. Nevaieh’s mouth left hers, trailing down her neck, over her collarbone, to her breasts. She took a nipple into her mouth, piercing and all, sucking hard, biting down on the metal until Anaijiah cried out, her back arching.
“You’re mine,” Nevaieh growled against her skin, her hands scrabbling at the button of Anaijiah’s jeans. “Mine to touch. Mine to fuck. Not his to break.”
She got the jeans open, shoved them and her underwear down her hips. Anaijiah helped, kicking them off. She was naked now on Nevaieh’s lap, exposed under the single bare bulb.
Nevaieh’s own clothes came off with brutal efficiency—boots kicked away, pants shoved down just enough. She was bare underneath. Her arousal was evident, a hard, wet heat against Anaijiah’s thigh.
There was no preamble, no gentle coaxing. Nevaieh spat into her hand, slicked herself, and guided Anaijiah onto her. The entry was a fierce, burning stretch. Anaijiah gasped, her nails digging into Nevaieh’s shoulders. She was filled, utterly and completely, in the dim, wreckage-scented dark.
Nevaieh held her hips, forcing her down to the hilt. “Move,” she commanded, her voice guttural.
Anaijiah moved. She rode her, a desperate, rhythmic seeking. Each rise and fall was a punctuation mark, a hard period after the sentence of violence. This was raw, a physical scream. Nevaieh met her thrust for thrust, driving up into her, her grip bruising.
“You feel that?” Nevaieh gritted out, her own control fraying. “You feel what you do? You walk into my world, you smile at me with your pretty mouth, and you make it all matter too fucking much.”
She slammed up harder, hitting a spot that made Anaijiah see white. Anaijiah cried out, her rhythm fracturing.
Nevaieh flipped them suddenly, pressing Anaijiah back into the worn cushions of the sofa. She loomed over her, driving into her with a new, frantic intensity. “Now you’re in it. All the way in. And I’m not letting go.”
The orgasm ripped through Anaijiah, violent and mind-wiping. She shattered around Nevaieh, a silent scream tearing from her throat as wave after wave of sensation obliterated thought.
Nevaieh followed, her own release a harsh, broken sound against Anaijiah’s neck. She collapsed, her full weight pressing Anaijiah into the sofa, their bodies slick with sweat.
For long minutes, the only sound was their ragged breathing in the vast, dark space. The hanging bulb swung slightly, casting moving shadows over them.
Finally, Nevaieh spoke, her lips moving against Anaijiah’s shoulder. “The shop is gone for now. You and your crew work out of my territory. A place I control.” She paused. “You don’t say no.”
It wasn’t a request. It was the new reality.
Anaijiah stared up at the rusted ceiling, feeling the heavy, spent weight of Nevaieh on top of her, feeling her own body thrumming with the echoes of violence and possession. The red bandana lay discarded on the concrete floor, a spot of color in the grey. A flag planted. A line crossed.
The weight of her was solid, real, an anchor in the shuddering aftermath. Anaijiah’s lungs burned, her skin buzzing where it made contact with Nevaieh’s sweat-slicked torso. The hanging bulb’s slow sway painted arcs of jaundiced light across Nevaieh’s back, over the intricate tapestry of ink that told stories Anaijiah was only beginning to fathom.
Nevaieh’s breathing, ragged and hot against her neck, gradually slowed into something deeper. The violent energy that had possessed her seeped away, leaving behind a spent heaviness. She didn’t move to separate them. Instead, her arms, which had been braced on the sofa, slid underneath Anaijiah. One hand cradled the back of her head, fingers tangling in her ginger curls. The other wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her even closer into the damp heat of her body.
A long, deep sigh moved through Nevaieh, a tremor that seemed to originate in her core. She buried her face in the crook of Anaijiah’s neck, her lips moving softly against the pulse point there.
“You okay, mama?” The words were muffled, coarse with spent passion, but the tone was new. It was a rasp of undeniable concern, laced with something vulnerably tender.
The endearment, so at odds with the woman who had just pressed a gun to a man’s forehead, unlocked a thaw in Anaijiah’s chest. “Yeah,” she whispered, her own voice frayed. “I’m good.”
Nevaieh shifted, just enough to look down at her. In the low light, her eyes were black, unreadable pools, but her thumb came up to trace the line of Anaijiah’s jaw, then the small cut on her cheek from the flying glass. “My pretty girl,” she murmured, almost to herself. “Look at you. All this fucking beauty.” Her touch was reverent now, a stark contrast to the punishing grip of minutes before. “And I let them put glass on your face.”
“You didn’t let them do anything,” Anaijiah said, finding a surprising strength in her voice. She reached up, her fingers tracing the famed teardrop tattoo on Nevaieh’s cheek. “You stopped them.”
A shadow passed behind Nevaieh’s eyes, a flicker of the ever-present storm. She captured Anaijiah’s hand, kissed her palm, a gesture so soft it stole Anaijiah’s breath. “Could’ve stopped them sooner. Should’ve known Luc was that fucking stupid.”
She leaned down, placing a soft kiss on Anaijiah’s forehead, then another on her eyelids. Each kiss was a silent apology, a brand of a different sort. “My brave, stupid baby,” she whispered against Anaijiah’s skin. “Walking around with your art and your smile, lighting fires you don’t even see.”
Another kiss, this one on her lips, gentle and lingering. “You scared the shit out of me today.”
The admission hung in the oily air. Anaijiah stared up at her, at this impossible woman who ruled streets with iron but whose hands now trembled slightly as they framed her face. “You scared me too,” Anaijiah admitted. “The way you walked in… I’ve never seen anything like that.”
A ghost of Nevaieh’s old smirk touched her lips. “Good.” She lowered her head again, her mouth traveling down Anaijiah’s throat, over her clavicle, nuzzling between her breasts. Her voice was a low vibration against Anaijiah’s skin. “Want you scared of it. Respect it. Because it’s the only thing that keeps this,” she kissed the center of Anaijiah’s chest, right over her pounding heart, “beating. That keeps your shop safe. That keeps Dove from being a message in a dumpster.”
The words were harsh, brutal in their truth. Anaijiah flinched but held her closer, nails digging into the tight muscles of Nevaieh’s back.
Nevaieh looked up, her expression naked now, stripped of all its defensive armor. “This thing with you… it ain’t a weekend thing.” She swallowed, the motion visible in the dim light. “I look at you and I don’t see an end. I see… mine. You feel me?”
Anaijiah’s heart hammered against her ribs. “I feel you.”
“I want this,” Nevaieh said, the words leaving her like they were made of shrapnel. “I want you to be my girl. For real. No more fucking around. You’re mine, I’m yours. In my world, that means something. It means you don’t look at nobody else. It means they see this,” she touched the red bandana now discarded on the floor, “on you, and they know the consequence is me.” She paused, her gaze searching Anaijiah’s. “It also means I keep you safe. I build you a fortress with my fucking name on it. Your shop runs under my flag. Nobody breathes on you wrong.”
The proposal was not flowers and dinner. It was a treaty, a merger of lives and dangers. It was the only version of “official” a woman like Nevaieh could offer.
Anaijiah thought of the shattered glass, the gunmetal glint, the way Nevaieh had pulled her close in the center of that chaos. She thought of the tender brutality of her touch, the terrifying depth of her focus. This was the current that had pulled her under from the first moment, wild and irresistible.
A slow smile spread across Anaijiah’s face, fueled by adrenaline, by desire, by a fierce, defiant love that had taken root in the fractured concrete of this new life. She cupped Nevaieh’s face, her thumb stroking the teardrop.
“Hell yeah,” she said, her voice clear and certain in the dusty gloom.
The words acted like a trigger. Nevaieh’s mouth crashed down on hers, but this kiss was different. It wasn’t about possession or frenzy. It was a sealing. A promise. It was deep and starving and full of a terrifying future.
When they broke apart, gasping, Nevaieh rested her forehead against Anaijiah’s. “My love,” she breathed, the phrase foreign and precious on her tongue. “My fucking love.”
They stayed like that for a long time, entangled on the scratchy sofa in the hollow belly of the auto shop. The world outside, with its threats and its Lucs, receded. Here, there was only the shared heat of their bodies, the syncopated rhythm of their breathing, and the profound, silent understanding that the line had not just been crossed, it had been erased.
Nevaieh finally stirred, her voice practical once more, but softer now. “We gotta move. Can’t stay here long.” She kissed Anaijiah’s shoulder, a final punctuation. “Got a real place for you tonight. For all of you.” She looked down at her, a new possessiveness in her gaze, tempered by that raw, unmistakable affection. “Let’s get my girl dressed.”