They were talking about blood at the scene. A secret affair. Freaky text messages splashed across the screen for the whole world to see. No body recovered, but enough evidence to deny bail.
Vivica Banks was my last ally, my only source of funding, my backup plan, and she was done.
I laughed because what else could I do? There was no one left in the world to work with me. No one left who probably even cared about me. Sure, I had cousins and a few friends but we had all been estranged the last year. After Prime and Thad did what they did to me, I isolated myself. And when you pull back from people, they pull back from you. No one wants to be around the girl with such chronic bad luck that her father is dying of cancer, her ear was cut off and now she’s a paranoid mess. So fuck it, I had nothing left to lose.
“Well,” I said to the empty room. “Looks like I’m on my own.”
I should’ve been scared. Should’ve been panicking about money, about resources, about how the hell I was supposed to pull this off without Vivica’s connections.
But I wasn’t scared. I was relieved.
Vivica had been holding me back. Telling me to be patient. To wait for the right moment. To think strategically instead of emotionally.
Fuck strategy. Fuck patience. Fuck waiting.
Daddy never waited. When someone crossed him, he moved. Swift and brutal and final. He didn’t sit in rental houses for days, watching and planning and second-guessing. He acted.
I needed to be more like him.
I touched the side of my head without thinking. The scar tissue where my ear used to be. The constant reminder of what Prentice Banks had taken from me.
He thought cutting off my ear would break me. Would send a message. Would make me crawl into a hole and disappear.
He was wrong.
I pulled up the surveillance feed on my laptop—the camera I’d hidden in the bushes across the street from Zainab’s house. The picture was grainy but clear enough. I could see the front door, the driveway, the cars parked out front.
Prime’s car was still gone. Had been for days.
Good.
I settled in to watch, the way I’d been watching for almost a week now. Learning their patterns. Their routines. The delivery drivers who came and went. I would see the boy go out and pick up mail or packages.
Yusef.
He was more my family than he was Prime. I was his cousin. His father Meech was my father’s sister’s son. He should’ve been home with me. But fuck him. He’s a traitor. My father told me he killed his own father.
Movement on the screen caught my eye.
The front door opened and Yusef stepped out. He was dressed casual—jeans, hoodie, sneakers. Backpack slung over one shoulder. He walked to the end of the driveway and stood there, looking at his phone.
Alone.
No Prime. No Zainab. No escort.
Just a teenage boy, standing on the sidewalk, waiting for something.
A minute later, a car pulled up. White Toyota. Uber sticker in the window.
Yusef got in.
I was off the couch before I even made the conscious decision to move. Grabbed my keys, my phone, my jacket. Out the door and into my rental car in under thirty seconds.
The Uber was just turning the corner when I pulled onto the street. I hung back, keeping two cars between us, following at a distance. My heart was pounding, but my hands were steady on the wheel.
This was it. The opportunity I’d been waiting for.
They merged onto the highway heading toward Culver City. I followed, weaving through traffic, never letting them get too far ahead. Twenty minutes later, we were pulling into the parking structure of the Westfield mall.
