"And why the hell would I do that?" Milan asked the woman on the other line of the phone.

She had to admit that the wager pissed her off. They were both adult women and knew the havoc on the streets would not stop unless someone did something. Yet, Tatiana needed a prize for doing so, and her chosen prize was Ramses Young.

And after what he did to her on the kitchen sink?

Milan didn't want to give that up for sure. 

"I mean... the choice is yours, Milan. You're the one whose head they want. This is all your fault." Tatiana proceeded to pull at the fraying guilt Milan felt for the whole situation. 

But then, she got her head on straight. She took a deep breath that calmed her whirling emotions."Tatiana, let's be fucking for real. If you want a n*gga that literally chose another bitch over you, fine take his ass as soon as he get out the fucking slammer. However, the gun shots better stop by five o'clock tonight." 

Milan knew accepting the wager was one thing, but actually delivering was another. She did want Ramses, but she wanted to live her life with out fear more and if whatever Tatiana was gonna do would allow her to roam free... she had to let it be done. 

"Say less." Tatiana replied finitely before ending the call. 

And for some reason, Milan felt like she'd just signed herself over to the devil.

Feeling rather defeated and definitely on edge about what Tatiana would do, Milan took a nap.

If she didn't she would've had an anxiety induced panic attack.

***

Milan woke up to knocks at her door, when she grumbled her permission from them to enter. She squinted her eyes to see Malcolm in her doorway. 

"There ain't been no shots in 5 hours. Not even a firework done popped off." He told her like he couldn't believe it himself. 

It seemed like Tatiana was a woman of her word. 

"I told you that girl Tati know some shi—"

"Aye yo, Wes just told me Devon just took half our stash from the trap. N*ggas literally let him walk right in and take that shit!" CJ yelled from the living room. Malcolm immediately darted from the doorway to see what CJ was talking about.

The sleep definitely had been shaken out of Milan's spirit as she hopped up and ran to the living room as well. "Why the hell would— who the hell told them where we hid our shit at?" 

Then the two men turned to Milan with their jaws slack.

"Tati. Your lord and savior." Milan deadpanned. She had no sympathy for them.

"When Pharaoh gets out he's gonna burn VD like a dirty stripper. How she just gon—" 

Milan held her hand up to stop his new fearful rant. She was tired of hearing the fear mongering. She wanted them out of her house and to finally be able to be by herself. 

"Y'all wanted the shots to stop. They stopped. I feel safe enough to be by myself now and ain't nobody gon shoot you that you weren't aware of before. Please get out." She told them, standing in the living room and gesturing towards the front door a few feet away.

Malcolm smacked his lips, "Damn, it's like that, Mi? After all we been through?"

The comment caused CJ to smack the back of his head. Malcolm gave him a glare that was strong enough to vaporize him. CJ paid him no mind and walked into the kitchen and grabbed the pot of spaghetti on the stove. He held it up for Milan to see as he walked to the door.

"We're taking this as our payment for being locked up with your mean ass."

Malcolm nodded his head in agreement dramatically as he walked to the door as well, opening it. "Tell Pharaoh ass to pick nicer girls. I'm tired of this shit." Milan rolled her eyes at their griping, following them to the door and quickly locking it behind them when they left. 

She gave a deep sigh when she finally was enveloped by a silent house. 

Because of the new found silence, she heard her stomach growl loudly. Since the spaghetti she made was now the new prisoner of Malcolm and CJ, Milan went to the fridge to whip something up out of the wasteland of groceries they house had left.

Before she could even open the refrigerator completely, the back door of the house was completely broken off its hinges.

Or at least it sounded like it had from the force of the boom that echoed through the space.

"Clear!" A man's voice confirmed. 

Immediately she was surrounded by at least five men with several different types of automatic weapons on them. 

Milan's blood was ice in her veins as she pulled her robe closer to her body. 

"What the fuck do y'all want?" Milan could barely get out under the intense shaking she couldn't control. She was scared shitless. Of course she had seen your average pistol, but at least two of the men standing less than 3 feet away from her had AR-15s. 

Terrified was an understatement.

"We have come for you, princesa." A familiar raspy voice came from the hallway, like they were just entering the home. In a few moments, Alex, Chrisanto's right hand henchman appeared. 

His black clothes clearly had blood stains on them still. Milan prayed her blood wouldn't be in his wash cycle as well. 

"What do you mean? Does my brother know you're here? He'll fucking kill you!" Milan angrily screamed at him, still clutching at the lapel of her bath robe.

Alex continued to approach her, breaking the line of people surrounding her to lift her chin and give her a smile that made her skin crawl.

"Who do you think sent us?"

And before Milan could curse Devon to hell, Alex smothered her in a wet cloth. In a few seconds, the whole world went black.

***

When Milan came to again, immediately she realized her mouth was taped shut. Her arms were bound behind her back and she was leaned over on a couch that smelled of cigarettes and cat piss.

Immediately the state of her legs being bare and how she'd never get this smell out of her robe let alone her hair made her want to throw up.

The air was damp and it smelled of mildew. She guessed she was in some basement.

A door opened somewhere in the room, no lights were on, but she knew someone had just come in. The sound of their footsteps were heavy. 

Suddenly, a hand grabbed her and sat her straight up on the couch instead of leaned over the arm of it. Then, the scrape of furniture against the concrete floor was next.

A shadowed figured sat down in front of her. Milan felt her whole body get hot as if she was going to faint. Then she saw the hand of the figure reach for string that was above them, a light turned on.

The yellow fluorescent light illuminated the figure of her brother.

He too had blood on his clothes and hands. 

She wondered just had been able to happen in the time between Chrisanto's murder and Tati's call.

Milan tried to speak, but was met with sound of her own muffled murmurs.

Devon looked at her like she was the scum of the earth. He rested his elbows on his knees and worked his temples with his fingers. Milan was set on edge by the pink tinge that stained them. All she wanted to do was ask what had happened and what the fuck was going on right now that made her have to be bound and gagged.

"'Lani... I never imagined that you would be the one to do this. To take from us."

Just by the first sentence alone Milan knew the end of this would not spell well for her.

She couldn't even open her mouth to sigh.

She continued to watch her brother warily, when he finally stopped rubbing his temples, his eyes were void of emotion when they met hers.

"Chrisanto took both of us in. Both of us. I told you what he'd want when you refused to stop seeing Pharaoh and what did you do?!" Devon angrily asked her, and Milan found herself shrinking back into the back of the couch.

She was scared of her brother, for the first time. 

The light cast unnerving shadows across his face. 

"You kept seeing him. And when Chrisanto finally asked your ass to pay up, you fucking snaked him. You gave your word and you snaked the closest thing we had to a father."

Now that made Milan want to vomit.

Immediately the feeling of Chrisanto's hands on her thigh in the club or his hand under her chin in her car flooded over her skin. She was repulsed. 

Chrisanto could never have been a father to her. He was sick. 

Looking over her brother's unhinged appearance and expression, she could almost bet the same sickness or worse had taken root in him.

"If you think... Ramses ass... the same lil n*gga who got our parents shot, the same bitch ass n*gga who is sitting in the county right now, can save your ass from the streets now... you're as dumb as you look." 

Milan was taken aback by the use of Ramses's name by her brother and not Pharaoh. She knew he hadn't called him that in over five years. Her brother began to laugh, however it also sounded like he was close to tears when doing it.

Honestly, being bound and unable to speak wasn't scarier than watching her brother seeming to unravel in front of her. Devon reached behind him and a pistol appeared in his hands. Milan once again got the urge to throw up, this time from fear. 

"You know... when I got the call from Tatiana to cease fire, I wondered what she had to offer me. I wondered what in God's name would appease the BL's and the VD's to stop warring..."

He took a shaky breath, looking up to the light for a second. When he did, it was revealed he was crying while he was laughing. He had tear marks on his face.

All of this just added to the insane aura surrounding him right now.

"Do you have any idea what she offered me, 'Lani? The offer that made every bullet in Chicago freeze in the air?" Devon asked her.

Milan had no choice but to shake her head, her wrists pressing hard against the coarse rope that bound them. It was the only thing that kept her from thinking all of this was a bad dream. She begged God for it to be. 

"She gave me your head. Your head and half of the BL stash houses. That's what I settled for to stop the blood rain from Chrisanto's death." 

Devon closed his eyes, rolling his lips inward as he took a deep breath. The gun his hands pointing towards the floor. 

Silence engulfed the siblings. 

"And the crazy thing about that offer is, it didn't hurt when I said yes."