I walked toward my study, planning to sit down and think, but my mind drifted back to when Kay’Lo was six. That boy had always been different. He was loud when the world was quiet, quiet when everybody needed answers, and intense in ways that made me stop and look at him just to understand what he was feeling. I remember Treasure sitting beside me on the couch one night with her hand pressed against her chest while Kay’Lo ran up and down the hallway with a wild look in his eyes.
“Kwame,” she said softly, “I think something might be off with him.”
I brushed her hand gently and told her he was just free-spirited. Boys like him always grew into great men. I told her to let him be a child. She nodded, because she trusted me, but I could see the worry still swimming in her eyes.
Back then I wanted to believe I was right.
By the time Kay’Lo turned thirteen, I could not pretend I did not see the change. He had gotten taller, stronger, faster, and his anger grew with him. I remember the phone call from the academy telling us he had broken a boy’s nose. The principal tried to keep his voice calm, but I could hear the fear in it. Pressure and Renza were sitting in the office next to him, bruised knuckles and wild eyes like they just walked off a battlefield. The other boys were in the nurse’s wing, one crying, and one trying to breathe through a cracked rib.
The principal said Kay’Lo threw the first punch. Pressure said the other boy insulted him. Renza said it was self defense.
The cameras showed all three of them chasing the boys down the hallway like wolves hunting prey.
When Treasure walked into that office she almost fainted at the sight of all the blood. She caught Kay’Lo’s face with both hands and told him she loved him, but she was terrified. I placed a hand on her back and told her everything would be fine, because that was the only thing I knew how to say when life looked too big for her heart.
But even then, a part of me saw the truth. Kay’Lo’s eyes did not look like a child after a fight. They looked like a boy trying to escape a storm inside him.
I took him home and sat him on the couch to talk. He apologized. He cried. Then he laughed in the same breath. I stared at him and knew it was more than just being young. Something was wrong, but I refused to give it a name.
Treasure told me again that something might be wrong with him, and I told her again he just needed discipline.
I held onto that belief for years, even as the fights continued. Even as his temper got sharper. Even as the school called us every other week. Even as Pressure and Renza became part of every story. Those boys were thick as thieves, and wherever they went, chaos followed. I remember another day at the academy when the three of them sent three older boys to the hospital. There was blood on Kay’Lo’s uniform, and his lip was swollen, but he looked calm. I will never forget that.
Treasure cried in the car ride home, and I told her everything was fine. She knew I was lying, but she let me hold onto that lie because she trusted me with her whole life.
Years passed and Kay’Lo became a man. A wild one. A talented one. A brilliant one. But the storm inside him never went away, and I never helped him calm it.
Now he had a diagnosis…
And it was eating at my pride like a sickness.
My son… My blood… A schizophrenic.
The thought tasted bitter.
He left my house with his head high and his voice calm, and I had told him I was proud of him, but when that front door closed behind me, my heart sank. I built TrillNet from nothing. I built this entire empire with my bare hands and my mind. I built systems the world would never understand, systems people would kill to get access to. I created an intelligence network that touched every corner of the globe. I had governments calling my phone asking for help. I had power that could bend laws without me ever lifting a finger, but I could not stop the storm inside my son.
It made me feel helpless, and helpless was something I had never been.
I walked down the hallway until I reached the west wing where the bedrooms were. Treasure was in the sitting room near the window, adjusting her earrings and checking her reflection, since we were supposed to head to Abeni and Kojo’s for dinner. When she turned around and saw me, her eyes softened because she could read me better than anyone alive.
“You look heavy,” she said. “How did it go with our son?”
I nodded once and kept my face smooth. “It went fine.”
Her brows pulled in slightly. “Are you sure? You look unsettled.”
“I said everything is fine, baby,” I repeated, but I said it gentle, because I never talked to her with anything other than love.
She studied me for a moment, and even though she wanted to ask more, she let it go. She always let me tell things on my own time. “We need to be ready to leave soon,” she finally said. “Abeni wants us there before seven.”
I watched her for a long moment. She was beautiful, soft, elegant, everything that made my world sharper and calmer at the same time. She had always been the reason Kay’Lo grew upknowing affection, because I raised him to be strong, but she raised him to feel loved.
I walked up to her and slid my hands around her waist, pulling her close until her back rested against my chest. Her perfume rose into my nose, warm and sweet. I pressed my lips to the side of her neck, then kissed it slow. Treasure tilted her head slightly, and when I started sucking on that spot I knew she liked, her breath left her in a soft sound that only I ever got to hear.
Her hand slid back and rested against my jaw. “Kwame,” she whispered, “what is going on in that mind of yours?”
I kept holding her, but my thoughts were nowhere near the softness of her skin. I was thinking about my son, and about how the world would look at him if they knew. I thought about how labels stick to people forever, about how men like me build kingdoms and then watch them crack from the inside if they are not careful.
