Winning His War

28

Jem's POV

I was on cloud nine to say the absolute least. Our drugs guys sold us weed and crack at a price no one could beat since they needed to get rid of it quickly, apparently they had cops sniffing around where they shouldn't be and that put them in a bind, meaning we would have almost pure profit coming out of this next shipment.

On top of that, a few rival gangs disbanded a few days ago. They were in a war with each other and in stand off one of the leaders were killed. Apparently he didn't trust any of his members enough to make them leader if something ever happened to him and without a leader no one knew how to run a gang and they all but fell apart.

One of the hit men from the gang wasn't about to let the other guys off that easily even if the gang was no more though. He killed the other leader with a second gunshot wound to the head from several yards away and by the time his body hit the ground; the hit man was already gone.

With them being weakened, another gang I had no quarrel with attacked them and took over their remaining land. Meaning I now had to only compete with one gang in the area instead of three.

Something this good hadn't happened in a while so needless to say, I was all but bursting at the seams. If I could manage to keep in good faith with this new gang I could try to get them to help me deal with this Elijah Down situation.

On top of all of this though, I had one more great reason to be excited; I had a surprise.

I could tell Andrew was suspicious of my smile as we sat on the couch, letting some anime that he picked out playing in the background but he didn't say a word for a while. His eyes constantly shifted from me to the TV as if waiting for me to just spontaneously combust. It wasn't until Patrick and Dev walked through the door when I caved.

"Should I be worried that you aren't you aren't cooking," Patrick asked as he began taking off his shoes. The look on Dev's face said he was asking the same question until he saw the smile.

"Don't even take those off," I said as I leaned over the back of the couch and pointed to his shoes. "And you go get ready," I looked back over to Andrew. "And be fast about it, we have places to be."

Both of them frowned, the conversation we had a few days ago about leaving the house was already forgotten but I had been planning and thinking of worse case scenarios since the words left Andrew's mouth.

"What exactly should I be dressing for?"

"A surprise," I said, not being able to keep the excitement from my tone. Andrew's skepticism didn't fade but I could see him slowly feeding off my emotions.

"What's the dress code? Like is this not formal enough?" The second he got home he was all but stripping as he walked down the hall towards his room. I didn't want him to get suspicious so early to instead of making him wait to undress I let him go, knowing that if I told him he would only bug me until Patrick got back. Now he sat here in sweat pants and a clearly well loved shirt.

"You can wear what ever you want. You'll look hot in anything you put on anyway," I teased while ushering him to his room to jump into anything he thought was good enough.

He huffed but didn't say anything else before closing the door behind him.

"Where exactly are we going," Patrick asked while coming around to sit on the couch while I stood by the door, ready to push both of them out the door the second Andrew was ready.

"Were you not listening? It's a surprise," I said with a forced eye roll.

"And what happened to not going out because it wasn't safe?"

"I happened," I said a bit too proudly. "There are very few things that I can't fix with a little time and man power."

Patrick only hummed as he puled his phone from his back pocket while Dev disappeared down the hall, knowing he wouldn't be needed for the night.