Chapter 13: Peace disturb
The world didn’t end after the incident in the grocery aisle. It tightened. The threads of their triad pulled closer, woven into an even denser, more private fabric. September bled into October with the ferocity of a turning leaf.
Their sophomore year was a grind they mastered. Early mornings were for film study and weights. Afternoons were for practice, a ballet of controlled violence on sun-baked grass. Evenings, after a shower and a hot meal Brianna had waiting, were for business. The operation was sleek now, a well-oiled machine. A few texts, a discreet drop at a frat house, a handoff in a library study room. Money moved electronically, cleaned through their supplement company. The physical cash was stacked, counted, and stored with the quiet efficiency of archivists.
Brianna’s world was the studio, the gym, and the home. Her body was her temple, and she maintained it with religious devotion. Every Wednesday and Sunday, she waxed herself completely smooth, the ritual as familiar as brushing her teeth. Her nails were always long, sharp, impeccably shaped in bold colors—matte black, blood red, glittering gold. Her toes always matched. Her hair was either blown out in a voluminous cascade, natural and curly or braided sleekly back. Makeup was full beat, even to take out the trash. She dressed in uniforms of their ownership: tiny leggings, cutoff sweatshirts that swallowed her hands but stopped high on her stomach, tight dresses with necklines that plunged. She was a walking fantasy, perpetually ready, a living altar to their taste.
Tonight, she’d made gumbo, the real deal, simmered for hours. The rich, spicy smell filled the entire apartment. A text came through as she was setting the table.
Zah: Don’t wait up. Big party at Sigma Chi. Gotta work. Plate it up for later.
Rah: Love you. Don’t sleep on the couch.
She smiled, a little wistful. She plated the food anyway, beautiful servings over white rice, covered them in cling film, and placed them in the fridge. She washed the pot, wiped down the counters, swept the floor. She fluffed the pillows on the sectional, aligned the remote controls, wiped a smudge from the TV screen. The silence of the apartment was a presence, but it was their silence. It was safe.
In the bathroom, steam fogged the mirrors. She took her time. She shaved the few negligible hairs that dared to grow, exfoliated every inch of skin, washed her hair with a costly shampoo that smelled of jasmine. She stepped out, patting herself dry before applying a thick, coconut-scented oil until she gleamed under the recessed lights. No lotion, no underwear. She slipped between the cool, high-thread-count sheets of their massive bed, naked and bare. The scent of them—sandalo wood, clean sweat, them—was deep in the pillows. She fell asleep wrapped in it.
A crack in the night jolted her awake.
The digital clock on the nightstand glowed 4:17 AM. The space beside her was cold, empty. The apartment was a tomb. A sudden, cold finger traced her spine. She fumbled for her phone. Their locations were on—they’d insisted after the grocery store. Two glowing dots pulsed at the Sigma Chi house, stationary.
She called Rah. It rang, then went to voicemail. She called Zah. Same. A text thread, opened and re-opened a dozen times, held her last messages from hours ago: Be safe. I love you. No replies.
Her thumb moved on its own, opening Instagram. Their profiles were public, carefully curated monuments to their success and their possession of her. There were photos from last week’s game, her in the stands, lips bright, eyes on them. There were clips of them training. Pictures of her cooking, her back turned, ass outlined perfectly in shorts. They tagged her in everything. She was their most frequent post.
Her breath hitched. A notification. She’d been tagged in a photo. Not by them.
It was from an account named @lexiluxe. A pretty girl, all bronzed skin and careless curls, posing in a crowded, smoky frat party. Red solo cups, strobe lights, a blur of faces. And there, in the background, clear as day, were her men. Zah was leaning against a wall, talking to some dude, but a girl—this Lexi—had her hand on his arm, her body tilted toward him like a flower to the sun. Rah was in the shot too, looking at his phone, but the same girl’s other hand was resting on his bicep, fingers splayed. The caption: Turned up with the Kings 👑😉 @rassaanking @zashionking
It was the casualness of it. The proprietary touch. The smile on the girl’s face, too fucking comfortable. Brianna’s heart began to hammer against her ribs, a frantic, trapped bird. A hot pressure built behind her eyes. She zoomed in, her perfect nail tapping the screen. Zah wasn’t pulling away. Rah wasn’t shrugging her off. They were just… there. In her space.
The front door clicked open.
Her body moved before her mind could process. The phone clattered to the nightstand. She swung her legs out of bed, her skin suddenly chilled. She snatched her silk robe from the foot of the bed, wrapping it tight around her oiled body, tying the knot with shaking fingers. She was out of the bedroom, padding down the dark hall, just as they were coming in.
They filled the entryway, smelling of weed, cheap beer, and night air. Rah was locking the door. Zah was toeing off his Jordans. They looked tired, but buzzed, their movements loose.
“Hey,” Rah said, his voice a low rumble. He turned, a soft smile for her that died the moment he saw her face.
“Where were you?” The question came out brittle, sharp.
Zah straightened up, frowning. “Sigma Chi, like I texted. We had to move product. It was a whole thing. Why you up?”
“You didn’t answer your phones.” She could hear the tremor in her own voice.
“It was loud, Ma. We were working,” Rah said, taking a step toward her. “You good?”
“No.” She backed up a step, holding up her phone, the screen glaring in the dark room. “Who is Lexi?”
The confusion on their faces was genuine, which somehow made it worse.
“Who?” Zah asked, his brow furrowed.
“Lexi! @lexiluxe!” Her voice cracked. “She’s all over my timeline! Touching my men!”
Understanding dawned, first in Rah’s eyes, then Zah’s. It was followed by a flash of annoyance. “Oh, for real?” Zah scoffed, running a hand over his braids. “That’s what this is? Some thirsty basic bitch at a party?”
“She had her hands on you! Both of you!” The tears broke then, spilling over, tracing hot paths through her perfect makeup. “You just let her?”
“We didn’t let her do shit,” Rah said, his voice hardening. “It was a packed party. We were there to handle business, not police every groupie who wants a photo op.”
“She tagged you! She was claiming you!”
“And we didn’t tag her back!” Zah shot, his own temper rising to meet hers. “We didn’t post her. We didn’t even fucking notice her, Brianna! We were getting money!”
“It looks bad!” she shouted, the sound raw in the quiet apartment. “It looks like you were there with her! After you ignore my calls, my texts… I’m here, waiting, and you’re letting some random bitch put her hands on what’s mine!”
The word ‘mine’ hung in the air, a reciprocal claim that usually soothed them. Now it fueled the fire.
“What’s yours?” Rah repeated, his voice dropping dangerously low. “You questioning that? After everything? Over a stupid picture?”
“I see what I see!”
“You see wrong!” Zah barked, taking an aggressive step forward. “We’re out there grinding for this life, for you, and you’re sitting up scrolling, looking for problems!”
“I’m not looking for them! They’re posted for the world to see!” She was sobbing now, ugly, heaving breaths that hurt her chest. “You don’t get it! You don’t get how it looks to me!”
“We get it,” Rah said, his tone cold, logical. “It looks like nothing. Because it is nothing. You’re tripping.”
The dismissal was the final blow. A white-hot rage mixed with the crushing hurt. She turned and stormed back into their bedroom. They followed, their presence large and angry in the doorway.
“Mommy, come on,” Zah tried, his voice strained, the anger warring with the distress her tears caused him.
“Get out.” The words were a whisper, then a scream. “Get out!”
She grabbed the two king-sized pillows on their side of the bed—their side—and hurled them at them. They bounced off Rah’s chest. “Get out of my room!”
“This is our room!” Rah roared, finally losing his composure.
“Not tonight it’s not!” She rushed at them, not to hug, but to push, her small hands slamming against their solid chests. “Get out! I can’t even look at you right now!”
They allowed her to shove them, stumbling back into the hall out of sheer shock. The sight of her, robe gaping, face shattered, crying like her heart was breaking, froze their aggressive postures. They hated her tears. They caused a physical pain in them. But the accusation, the lack of trust, burned just as hot.
“Mommy, no,” Rah said, his voice rough with emotion, reaching for her.
She slammed the bedroom door in his face. The click of the lock was a tiny, final sound.
For a second, there was dead silence in the hall. Then a fist hit the door, not a bang, but a heavy, frustrated thud.
“Open the door, Brianna.” Zah’s voice, right against the wood.
“Let us in. Talk to us.” Rah, pleading now.
“Go away!”
Another bang, harder. “We’re not sleeping on the fucking couch!”
“Then don’t sleep!” she screamed through the door, sliding down to the floor, her back against it. Her body was wracked with sobs.
There was more arguing, muffled through the door. Their voices, low and furious with each other and the situation. More pounding. Then, eventually, a thick, resentful silence.
She heard their footsteps retreating down the hall. Heard the groan of the grey sectional as two heavy bodies threw themselves onto it. Heard a muttered, venomous curse.
She crawled back into the cold, empty bed. The sheets still smelled like them. She buried her face in Rah’s pillow and cried, deep, gut-wrenching sobs that came from a place of primal fear—the fear of the one thing that could truly break their world: an outside force, a crack in the ‘us’ that nothing else could penetrate. The image of those hands on them played behind her closed eyes on a torturous loop. The tears kept coming, a salty flood, until exhaustion finally pulled her back under into a fitful, troubled sleep.
The tears kept coming, a salty flood, until exhaustion finally pulled her back under into a fitful, troubled sleep.
In the living room, silence was a thick, suffocating blanket. It stretched taut over the furniture, broken only by the sound of a palm sliding roughly across a forehead. Rah and Zah couldn't sleep. The grey sectional felt alien, a punishment. Their long bodies were contorted, too large for the space, tangled in separate blankets that didn't smell like her.
They tossed. They turned. Hours ticked by on the cable box clock, glowing green in the dark.
"Fuck this," Rah finally muttered, the words a low growl in the darkness. The cushion shifted as he sat upright.
"We just gonna lie out here all night?" Zah was already moving, his own anger and misery a coiled spring. "Like some fucking strangers?"
"We ain't strangers. She locked us out." Rah stood, a dark silhouette against the dim city light filtering through the blinds.
Zah was beside him in an instant, their movements in perfect, agitated sync. They moved down the hall toward the locked door. The brass knob was cool and unyielding under Rah's touch. They just looked at each other. This was their home.Their door. Their woman.
Rah took a thin, flexible card from his wallet—a driver's license—and slid it carefully between the door and the jamb. With a precise, practiced flick of his wrist, he popped the lock. The mechanism gave with a soft, definitive click. It felt illegal, this entry into their own room, and the violation of it twisted their stomachs even as they pushed inside.
They found her curled into a tight, small ball in the center of the disheveled bed. The sheets were wrapped around her legs. In the faint light from the hallway, her face was a heartbreaking landscape of grief. Her long lashes were clumped and wet. Tear tracks shimmered on her cheeks. Her perfect smudges with tears. Face red.
Seeing her like that, defenseless and swollen with the sorrow they’d caused, even unintentionally, slammed into them like a blindside hit.
They stopped dead in the doorway, their fury and desperation evaporating into a cold, gutting remorse. The fight went out of them, leaving behind a raw, hollow ache. They moved as one to the foot of the bed, the fight gone, sitting heavily on the edge of the mattress. The sight of her sleeping like that, because of them, was a physical weight.
Rah reached out first, his large, calloused hand settling with infinite care on the dip of her silk-covered ankle. Zah’s hand followed, covering her slender foot, his thumb rubbing slow circles over her instep. Their touch was a silent apology, a desperate tether.
"Mommy," Rah whispered, his voice shredded with a night of quiet arguing and regret. "Wake up, baby. We gotta talk."
Briana stirred, surfacing from the murky depths of a dream laced with other hands and strange perfumes. Her senses reassembled slowly: the familiar weight and warmth on her feet, the solid presence at the bed’s edge, the scent of their cologne and night air. Her eyelids felt heavy, swollen, as she forced them open.
She saw them first as dark silhouettes against the grey pre-dawn light at the window. They were sitting side by side at the foot of the bed, watching her with an unsettling, total stillness. Her heart gave a painful thump of confusion and renewed hurt.
Before she could speak, before the hot wave of tears could threaten again, Zah extended his phone toward her. The screen was already lit, a video cued up. "Watch," was all he said, his voice flat.
It was dark, grainy footage, from a high angle. A frat house living room packed with bodies. She saw them immediately—her twin pillars in the chaos. Her own eyes, still bleary, focused. The girl, Lexi, approached. She saw Zah turn his head sharply away the second her hand made contact with his arm. She saw him say something, his lips clear in the footage: "Back up." She saw Rah physically step away from the touch on his bicep, his face a mask of cold dismissal, already pulling out his own phone, probably to check the time or text a runner.
They hadn't lingered. They hadn't smiled. They’d shut it down the instant it happened and moved through the crowd toward the kitchen, away from the camera, their bodies angled away from everyone else in the room.
Rah then showed his own screen. A bank transfer notification from later that night. A significant sum. "This is what we were there for," he said, his voice quiet. "Not that. Never that."
They placed their phones on the duvet between them. They just looked at her, their expressions laid bare. The raw disbelief that she could think otherwise was etched into every line of their faces. "You think," Rah started, each word deliberate, "we would ever, ever touch another bitch when we got perfection right here?" His gesture encompassed her, the room, their entire life. "Do you know who you are to us?"
The truth in the footage, the cold clarity of it, collided with the emotional wreckage of the last few hours. Shame began to seep through the cracks in her anger, hot and sharp. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
Zah moved. He didn't ask. His hands went to her shoulders and he guided her gently, firmly, out from under the covers and onto the plush carpet between them. She knelt there, the silk robe pooling around her, her knees sinking into the pile. He unfastened his jeans with a swift, purposeful tug of the button and zipper. Rah did the same.
"This," Zah said, guiding her head toward him, "is all you.Always you." She closed her eyes as he filled her mouth, the familiar weight and texture, the taste she knew better than anything—salt, skin, clean soap. It was exactly as he said: it was hers. There was no ghost of cheap perfume, no artificial sweetness of another woman's lip gloss. It was just him. She swirled her tongue, a deep, confirming pull, and he groaned, his fingers tightening in her hair.
When he pulled back, Rah guided her to him, his hands cupping her jaw. "Proof," he murmured, watching her lips part. She tasted him next, the same familiar essence, underscored by a faint, musky trace of her own arousal from earlier, before the fight. It was an intimate circle, a taste of their private ecosystem. Nothing foreign. Nothing else.
"See?" Rah breathed as she pulled away, a thin strand of saliva connecting her lip to him for a second before breaking. "Nobody else. Couldn't be."
In one fluid motion, Rah pulled her up from the floor and into his lap on the edge of the bed. The hard heat of his erection pressed against her through the thin silk as she straddled him. His thumbs, rough from weights and turf, came up to her face, wiping the last of the dried, salty tracks from her cheeks. The gesture was impossibly tender, a stark contrast to the possessive fire in his eyes.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, the words choked. "I saw the picture and I just…"
"Ssh," he silenced her, kissing her forehead. "We didn't explain right. Our fault."
Zah had come around to kneel on the floor before her, his strong hands pushing the silk of her robe apart, baring her smooth skin to the cool room air. He looked up at her, his eyes dark and hungry, but his face softened with something else.
"Now let Daddy taste," he murmured, his voice a low vibration that went straight to her core. "Let me taste how much you missed us. How much you cried for us. It's all in here." He leaned forward, his mouth finding her, his tongue making one long, slow, claiming swipe through her folds.
Brianna gasped, her head falling back against Rah’s shoulder. Zah feasted on her with a devotional intensity, his tongue laving, probing, sucking. "You taste like sad," he moaned against her, the words muffled. "Fuck. You taste like you cried for hours. We gotta fix that. Gotta make you taste like us again.Like ours."
His work was thorough, expert, a relentless reconquest. Rah’s hands were busy under the robe, sliding around to cup her breasts, weighing them, his thumbs brushing over her nipples until they ached. He bent his head to her neck, nipping the tendon there, whispering into her skin.
"This whole body," Rah said, his voice thick with a mix of fury and adoration as his palms smoothed over her waist, her hips, "is our masterpiece. We carved it out, we polish it, we worship it. You think we wanna go finger-paint on some dusty sidewalk? Fuck no." His hand dipped between her legs from behind, his fingers sliding easily into her wetness alongside his brother's mouth. "This is the only temple we know."
She was unraveling, the last dregs of her jealousy and fear dissolving under the dual onslaught. She was melting back into them, reclaimed molecule by molecule. She felt owned, more than ever, not just through possession but through this desperate, thorough reassurance.
"You gonna cum for Zah," Rah ordered softly in her ear, his fingers curling inside her, finding a rhythm that made her sob. "You gonna show him he’s forgiven. Show him this pussy only sings his name."
She couldn't fight it. Her hips rolled against Zah's mouth, her hands grabbing at Rah’s dreads for purchase. The climax that had been stolen by anger and tears came roaring back, a tidal wave of pure, shuddering release that tore through her. Her cry was loud, unfiltered, a raw sound of surrender that echoed in the quiet bedroom.