𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐲, 𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐞 ¹

thirty six.

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
jamal's sacrifice

Jamal

next day

The Lyons were having an urgent family meeting this morning thanks to Hakeem and his loud ass mouth. He had told the world about Jamal and Mateo when he was having a bitch fit, and Jamal wouldn't be surprised if he was trending on Twitter again.

Thirsty paced around while on his tablet. "Well...this isn't looking too good."

Jamal grew worried. "How bad is it?"

"It's pretty bad. You're trending on Twitter, and everyone's wondering if you're gay. But that's not the worst part."

"What could be worst than that?" Ro asked.

"The Twitter detectives," Thirsty answered. "They did their research and figured out the guy Jamal's always with is in fact Mateo, so Jamal's not looking too good right now."

Jamal glared at Hakeem. "I hope you're proud of yourself."

Cookie yelled at him. "What the hell were you thinking, Hakeem? You can't expose your brother like that! It was his choice to come out to the world, and you took that from him!"

"I wasn't trying to expose him. I was mad, and I didn't know everyone was recording."

"You punched him in the face. Of course they were going to record."

Andre shook his head. "I told you that you need to work on your emotions, Hakeem. Now look. Our brother's life is in shambles."

Lucious said, "Calm down, Andre."

"No, I'm not going to calm down. It's one thing to argue at home, but now they're arguing at your company, Pop! That's not a good look!"

"I bet you're thrilled," Jamal said with an attitude.

"With your snake ass!" Hakeem spat.

"That's enough!" Cookie interjected. "Don't come for Andre when you're the one who fucked up, boy!"

Jamal huffed and crossed his arms. "Dad. You said we can salvage this. How?"

"By this." He left and came back with a white girl with straight black hair. Jamal had never seen her before in his life.

"Okay...who's she?"

"This is Tory Ash. Your girlfriend."

Everyone gave him a bewildered look, including Jamal. "My what?"

"Your girlfriend," Lucious repeated. "The world thinks you're gay, right? Once you go public with Tory, they'll no longer think that."

Jamal laughed because this was fucking crazy. "Okay, you've said a lot of crazy things during my twenty three years on this earth, but this is next level insanity. I'm not pretending to be straight."

"You don't have a choice. Do you want Empire to be blacklisted? Do you all want that? Then none of you will be CEO!"

Andre didn't look happy about that at all.

Royalty said, "What if we're overreacting? What if the world doesn't care if Jamal's gay?"

Lucious looked at her seriously. "Jamal is a Lyon, and when it comes to Lyons, people always care. So this is the only choice you have, son."

Jamal was so annoyed. "What about Mateo?"

"What about him? He doesn't matter right now. Tory does."

"But he's my-"