Writblr or nah?

You walked together for about ten minutes until he led you down a couple steps into a dark alleyway. His hand lowered slowly to interlock with your fingers before he stood before two burly, mean-looking men guarding a side hall. Erik flashed a card he fished out of his back pocket, and they stepped aside while he escorted you inwards. You were struck with the noise and smells of a pleasantly crowded hookah bar lounge. The swirls of fragrant smoke, mirrors, booming Afrobeats music overhead, and the laughter and screams of way too many drunk and joyous people almost disoriented you, but Erik’s hand holding yours kept you steady as he led you further and further back into the fray.

Moments later, the two of you arrived at a room with a second set of bouncers and Erik flashed the backside of the same card he’d used to enter the lounge. 

This time, a man, who to you quite literally was the size of a mountain, sat up from his stool, crossing his arms and shaking his head.

“She,” he motioned to you, “has to go if you want to see the boss back here. You wouldn’t want her to end up staying here with us, would you?” His French was spoken in a deep, low voice and betrayed a Maghrebian accent. 

Erik smirked, as though entertained by the thought of a man actively trying to intimidate him by something as insignificant as size. He was still holding your hand, and held your hands clasped together up to imply that you were together. Your face started to flush, and suddenly you felt excessively underdressed in your yoga pants and a company T-shirt.

“Don’t worry, the boss won’t confuse her with them bitches you got in here.” He replied in English.

The Mountain raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “It’s your call, chef,” he said, still responding in French as he stood aside, eyeing you closely as you followed carefully behind Erik. 

If you had thought you were underdressed before, you were probably wearing more fabric than all the women combined in this room. Naked dancers of all shapes, shades and sizes twirled up and down poles, doing their best to entertain the sharply-dressed men playing pool, smoking cigarettes and enjoying elaborate lap teases. A couple of the men fixed their stares on you as if they were shocked to see a person with breasts not exposed for their entertainment, and were quickly redirected by the women swindling them out of their cash with their God-given assets.

You gave Erik a confused look, and while he wasn’t looking at you, you could tell by his smirk that he was amused by your reaction.

I’ll explain later, he seemed to convey through a squeeze of your hand.

“Ahhhhh, mais alors, je te retrouve finalement!” A mature-appearing and extremely well-kept, olive-skinned man exclaimed, bounding from where he was seated surrounded by the prettiest of all the women in the room to rush over to Erik, arms outstretched. You can’t have imagined the look Erik gave this man, but said mister quickly diverted paths from him to instead cup heavily jeweled hands around your face, so it must have been terrifying.

“And who might this be? A gift perhaps?” He asked, moving your head from side to side as though calculating how much you could earn in a night. This close up, you could see the man’s salt and pepper curls were slicked back with copious amounts of gel.

“Not her.” Erik said, clearing his throat, and the older man stepped back, flashing a grin with teeth so white they had to be fake. 

“This is what I got to offer.” Erik stated, clearly starting to get annoyed by the antics. In what looked like a sleight of hand, he produced a small piece of vibranium ore, the size of a walnut between his fingers.

The man appeared to visibly salivate just looking at that small piece of metal. Erik closed his fist around the piece of ore.

“Pay up.”

The club owner raised both eyebrows then let his expression settle into an even more malicious grin. 

“As you wish.” He turned his back on the two of you and clapped his hands once. As though on cue, the music seemed to lower, and a couple of the other patrons perked their heads up to see what had disrupted the mood.

“Allez-y! Bring the young monsieur his compensation. Fair’s fair.” One of his subordinates brought over a briefcase, which when opened was filled to the brim with Euros.

“Or would you prefer American money?” The man taunted. Erik smirked back. “Yeah, actually, I would.”

Another lackey brought over an identical briefcase with roughly the same volume of cold, hard, American Benjamins. Erik passed the ore with one hand and held on to the suitcase in the other, and the transfer was complete. 

“Nice doing business with y’all.” He said, loudly to the group. “Let’s bounce,” he said in a low voice to you, as he took a couple steps back to exit the room.

The moment he turned his back, you heard the crack of a gunshot and before you could think, you were acting, materializing your shield against the sudden rain of gunfire that had started the moment Erik turned to leave. 

“Damn, I must be growing sloppy.” Erik thought out loud, as the two of you ran, both hoping the shield would hold up for the time, it would take you to run out of the club inside a club. Holding the suitcase like a battering ram and with you close behind, Erik slammed into the reinforced door with all of his force. Thankfully, it gave in, and the two of you rolled outside past the guards who hadn’t yet gotten the memo to stop your exit. 

As you scrambled to your feet (turns out you weren’t as nimble as Erik), your shield faded and you narrowly missed a bullet to your head. You let out a sharp gasp in panic.

“Dammit, Nki!” Erik yelled, already several yards away. He ran back to scoop you off the ground and hoist you over his shoulder before you guys kept moving. 

“Fucking slow as shit..” he whispered under his breath. “Put that shield back up if you can.”

“I’m trying!” You exclaimed, but you couldn’t reach that level of control you had back then, especially with the screams of previously inebriated people recognizing danger and pouring out of the room in a panic. Thankfully, you eventually made it far enough that you wouldn’t need it anymore at this point, as you and Erik melded into the crowd of people. He put you down so you stood out less in the throng of people now littering the street, and the two of you ran off into the night. 

---

“So that’s what you were doing in France?” 

You and Erik had finally made it to the hotel room he had been staying in, bodies and wads of cash intact. You sat on the edge of his bed while he sat on the floor, back against the foot of the mattress as he counted the bills.

“Getting paid?” He scoffed. “Yeah, of course, babygirl.”

“Does it usually end like this?”

He snorted, and looked up at you. His brownish-golden eyes twinkled as he looked at you.

“Nah, but let’s say I was off my game today... A little distracted.” He said, eyeing you up and down. You suddenly felt a warmth from your face downward, and you looked away. 

“Sike nah,” he said, with a light chuckle. You threw a pillow at him at his face.

“So you wanna play like that?” He said, his laugh even lighter. He got up, sliding the briefcase under the bed with a bare foot and hooking his arm around your neck from the side to pin you softly onto the bed, on your back.

You were gazing into each other’s eyes yet again, feeling an almost magnetic attraction in the space between you. Your breathing slowed, body tense in anticipation of what would happen next.

To your misfortune, or maybe good fortune, the sound of a phone vibrating on Erik’s person dispelled the tension and Erik shifted away from you to look at the device, running his hand through his locs and tapping his foot impatiently. 

It was Lwazi’s phone, confiscated off his corpse, and on the screen, Esihle’s phone number was flashing. A lump formed in your throat as you realized.

Erik let the phone ring in his hand four times then laid it down beside him. A notification of a missed call and then a voicemail flashed across the screen. He played the voicemail out loud.

“Brother, where are you?! And why aren’t you picking up your phone? It shouldn’t take so long to get rid of one helpless girl! … Fine…. Call me back, I’m starting to get concerned.” Esihle’s voice was high and frantic.

Your heart fell as the message ended and you slowly pulled your knees to your chest, shaking all the while.

You couldn’t trust anyone, ever, you realized. Even though you suspected that Esihle would probably be in on Lwazi’s “tasks”, a small part of you was hoping that she would not have been a part of it. You were simply put, crushed.

Erik got up wordlessly, dumped Lwazi’s phone in the nearest trash can and went to the bathroom, closing the door sharply behind him. 

The sounds of the high-pressure shower turning on was soon drowned out by a sudden deafening ringing in your ears.

When Erik finally came out, anywhere from five minutes to an hour later (you had lost track of time in your dissociation), you could see a fresh, cherry-red, bloody spot on his chest.

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