Cyprian's Pov
He wore a fitted black shirt tucked into dark slacks, the fabric clinging to his muscles like it feared him. His sleeves were rolled up, veins twisting down his arms like ropes. A matte-black watch sat heavy on his wrist.
He was massive—a tower of man—and he didn't need to move to take over a room. The air bent to him. The silence obeyed him.
But I didn't want to look at him.
I kept my eyes down—on the cracked tiles, on the broken boxes in the corner, on the black stains that marked the concrete floor like forgotten blood.
The warehouse around us was vast and cruel. A dead space. Hollow like a ruined cathedral. Stacked boxes leaned like corpses against rusted racks, and the sharp stink of weed and chemicals clung to everything. There was a flickering bulb overhead, humming faintly, casting trembling shadows on our faces.
I could feel him watching me.
His scent reached me before he moved—smoke and spice, mixed with something raw and wild, like earth after rain or the skin of something dangerous.
This is him, I realized.
Not a myth. Not a whisper. Not a warning spoken in fear.
He was real.
He was Black Tiger.
"Na this one try do pass himself," Jide sneered from behind me, breaking the silence. "Him think say he be gangster. Say make we show am wetin gangster really mean."
Without warning, he kicked me in the stomach.
A violent, deliberate blow.
I choked.
White hot pain exploded through my core. My ulcer—the one I thought had gone—flared awake, tearing through me like broken glass. My knees buckled.
"Aaagh!" I screamed, curling inward, pain rising to my throat.
"Boss, e no serious like that jor," Jide chuckled. "Na just small correction. Make e sabi say no be every time we go dey take mouth talk—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
Bang.