Crowned Crew Heights POV & Stories - E. M. Moore Page 0,1

Shame creeps over me. For fuck’s sake. I’m always making him hit me. If I could just fucking stop doing things that piss him off. A growl rips through me, and the pain in my ribs flare.

I hobble to the bed in my own efficiency apartment in our main house, gently lying down and staring at the ceiling. My lids flutter closed, drawn by sheer exhaustion and the need to block the world out for a little while.

Even more pronounced than the pain ripping through me, though, is the anger taking over my body.

She left me. She made him like this.

Before my mother defected from the Crew, I didn’t get hit. We were a family. Or as much as we could be one with all the responsibility hanging over my father’s head. When she lived with us, I had my own room upstairs—just down the hall from them. When she chose to leave, I lost everything.

The walls around me are bare. The sparsely decorated apartment that’s been mine for a few years barely even looks lived in. Loneliness crashes into me but I fight it back and instead, focus on something I can control. I replay the argument with Kingston Marx and analyze why I pissed him off so I can figure out how to never do it again.

For the sake of both our futures in the Crew.

I do this every time he hits me. It hasn’t worked before, but at some point, I’m going to figure out what makes him tick, and then I’m never going to displease him again.

But what if what he’s always telling me is true?

I’m not strong enough.

I’m not good enough.

I’m not…man enough.

2

The bruising on my face when I walk into Rawley Heights High the next day only makes the mystery around me grow. They stare, then look away when I peer back. They whisper to their friends. They raise their eyebrows with wide eyes. They understand who I’m being groomed to be, and they show me the respect I deserve.

To them, it doesn’t look like I got the shit beat out of me. It looks like I got in a fight, and I probably kicked the ass of the person who dared lift a hand to me.

It’s exactly the persona I need to portray.

A pair of hands sneak around my midsection. Bright red fingernails with the fourth finger painted black grip the front of my shirt. There’s only one girl in this school who would be so bold to touch me like this—without asking first, anyway.

“Hey,” her seductive voice purrs in my ear.

When I was thirteen, my father hired me an escort so I could lose my virginity. I practiced on the woman until I was skilled, until I could make her scream my name. My father listened through the walls to make sure I accomplished my task.

Power makes a great Crew leader, and sometimes, that power comes from sex. Cherry stays because she loves my dick. It’s certainly not because of how well I treat her.

Like my father says, girls are expendable.

As for me, I let her stick around because she’s exactly the type of girl who helps keep my status. She’s tough. She grew up on the Heights streets. She understands what’s important. The other girls skitter out of her way when she walks down the hall. She’s not scared to pick a fight, and she most definitely doesn’t give a shit about anyone or anything, except for me.

I turn toward her. She barely glosses over the bruising on my face before smirking. It’s obvious she thinks I got into some Crew scuffle last night, and it turns her on. She’s practically vibrating with sex right now.

She likes the danger.

I smile back at her, playing the part, even though it’s all a carefully constructed wall. If she knew my father was the one who kicked my ass last night, and I didn’t even lift a hand at him in retaliation, she wouldn’t be sinking her fingers into my hips right now.

As far as everyone else knows, my father’s going to be the next leader of the Crew—and I’ll be on my way to becoming his second in command.

That’s why we keep my weaknesses a secret. It allows us to keep up the façade. One day, I’ll grow past them, and everything I’ve earned on the surface will only get better.

Cherry drags me down a short hallway and into an alcove under a set of stairs that lead to the second floor. Her