Outside, I imagined the city blooming with sun, Mira’s laughter carried by wind over rooftops and her weaving in and out of busy L.A. traffic. Maybe that was why the silence here inmy study felt so sharp, every tick of the clock with Mira out of my sight was a reminder of what I couldn’t control.
I traced the carved lines on a pawn, thinking of how easily a small piece could tip the balance. How much I wanted to trust her, to trust her out in the world without me beside her. But old habits die hard, and for every hour she was gone, I felt myself unravel just a little more, threads of my anxiety tangled with threads of hopefulness that she would return to me with no hiccups. Did I truly own her yet? Maybe it was too soon…
The more my owls shifted with their eyes glinting with quiet judgment, I found myself ready to make a move off my impulse alone. Soon as I touched my phone, it buzzed. It was Tone, I let it ring two more beats before I answered, greeting him with silence. Tone rarely called unless it mattered so this phone call immediately placed me on edge.
Tone not saying nothing right away was the first code spoken loud and clear.
“Yeah.” I stated flatly.
“I was just tapping in with you, everything good with you over there?” Tone’s voice sounded off in his usual normal tone.
“Define good.”
I pressed the speaker button then sat my phone down next to my chess board.
“Well, I could imagine you sitting in front of a chess board with your owls as the audience on your good ol’ Robin Hood tip.” He chuckled. “Meanwhile, our women are in Los Angeles, going about their activities without concern.”
I didn’t respond. The rustling on his end told me he was walking, probably pacing like he always did whenever something was off. I closed my eyes then opened them seconds later eyeing my board.
“Where’s Dre?” I asked calmly.
Tone hesitated in his response, which automatically alarmed the fuck out of me. I sat up straight, my heart rate picked up as I waited for him to speak.
“He’s…been takin’ care of business.” Tone answered.
That was another secret code, someone was close to him listening.
“What business?” I pressed.
Tone clicked his tongue twice, my chest tightened as I waited for the next set of code words to leave his mouth.
“Black Knight, white pawn?—”
“Streets been active.” I cut him off finishing his sentence.
A shift happened, a dark one. The board in front of me blurred for a second, then my mental board formed in my mind. It wasn’t wood and pieces, but people and moves. Power and betrayal. I saw it clear as fuck. A black knight with an eyeless poisonous snake wrapped around the chess piece in my mind. The rook at the edge of the board was Dre.
Suddenly everything clicked in a violent, cold rush. Dre’s patterns. The silence that Dre had been keeping a little too tight lately. I hardly said much too him but always observed each man that worked for me. Dre never presented himself to be unloyal. He and Tone were close, they hung out a lot outside of me.
“Tone,” I said, voice low. “Dre’s helping Smack.”
“I started to feel that way when he was a little too slow on getting you the information you requested…I didn’t want to believe it though…”
That made my brows raise because Tone never held back.
“I always figured if it was disloyalty with Dre, you’d see it before I did.” He added.
My jaw clenched. I looked back at the physical chessboard, then swept the white pawn off the table with one smooth flick.
“You get one warning in this life,” I murmured, more to myself than him. It was one of my Pop’s favorite lines. “After that, you become a lesson.”
“Dre’s in the middle of picking up something…” Tone said cautiously.
Which meant Dre was in the middle of picking up money from a new drop over on the south side of L.A.
“He left his personal phone in the car,” Tone sighed. “I don’t know what made me go through it, that’s some shit a bitch would do, but I did it and?—”
“Save it and bury the emotions that you feel from finding out whatever you found in that phone. Fuck Dre.” I spat.
