And Ivy was about to find out that disappearing on me was the last thing she was ever going to do again.
—
Night had fallen by the time I pulled up to where Marco was waiting with the team.
Five men outside the truck, including Marco. All of them moving with the kind of quiet that told me they had already been briefed and had already made their peace with whatever the night was going to ask of them. Nobody was talking loud, nobody was doing too much. Just checking weapons, adjusting vests, running through their own mental checklists in the dark.
Marco stood off to the side with his arms crossed and when he saw me he gave one nod. That was all we needed. Dank always bragged about how loyal this nigga was, and he’d really been proving it.
Dank and Deuce grew up with him, but I’d only knew him for a few years, although it felt like forever. That’s the thing about loyal and genuine connections. It will make you feel like you’ve known a person your whole life, when in actuality, it’s only been years.
We loaded into his truck. Six of us total, pressed in close, the kind of silence that only existed when everybody in a space understood the weight of what was about to happen. I didn’t have to question any nigga in this truck, and I knew they’d make sure we all made it out safely.They’d rode for me twice in less than twenty-four hours.
Marco drove. I sat up front and looked through the photos he’d sent me again. I was going through the layout one more time while he pulled onto the highway and settled into a steady speed. Not too fast. Nothing to draw attention.
“Front gate has a lock that can be compromised and I have the tool for it.” I said, keeping my voice low and even. “I’ve got the bypass tool. Once I disarm it we have maybe thirty seconds before somebody inside notices the feed dropped. That’s the window.” I looked back at the team.
“Two guards at the front, two around back based on what Marco clocked last night. Could be more inside but we don’t know the exact count so we move like it’s more. Silencers stay on from the jump. Nobody fires unless they have a clean shot. We are not announcing ourselves to the neighborhood or giving anybody inside time to react.” I paused. “Grim is somewhere in that house. He does not get touched. I don’t care what’s happening around him, you see him, you protect him. That’s the only standing order that doesn’t change regardless of anything else.”
Heads nodded around the truck.
“We clear the house room by room from the entrance back. Anybody that isn’t Grim or Cherish, you handle them. Cherish is mine. She’s not to be killed either.”
Nobody asked questions. That was the thing about working with thorough people. You didn’t have to repeat yourself or explain your reasoning or hold anybody’s hand through it. You said what needed to be said and they absorbed it and that was the end of it.
The ride was two and a half hours.
Marco kept the truck at an even pace and the city eventually dissolved behind us into stretches of dark highway and open land that told me we were getting deep into territory that didn’t get much traffic. Which was exactly why Cherish had chosen it.
Isolation was protection when you were holding somebody. Less eyes, less noise, less chance of somebody stumbling onto something they weren’t supposed to see. Cherish wasn’t smart at all because this was what I was going to use to my advantage.
I sat with my elbow against the window and watched the dark go by and let my mind go where it had been trying to go since I woke up this morning.
Cherish. And handling her ass once and for all.
I had thought of every version of what I was going to say when I finally saw her face, and none of them felt right because the honest answer was that I didn’t know how I was going to react until I was standing in front of her. That was the part that bothered me most. I was a man who controlled his environment. I planned, I prepared, I accounted for variables. But she had gotten behind my walls in a way that I still didn’t fully understand, and I couldn’t guarantee what version of me was going to show up in that room tonight. I didn’t want to be exposing my emotions, but the bitch had gotten to me.
She had made me believe she loved me. Not right away, it had built slow, which was what made it feel real. She had been patient and deliberate and by the time I realized how deep in Iwas, I had already made the decision to let her live when I was supposed to put her in the ground. I had gone against a direct order and risked everything I had built because I thought what she and I had was something real.
Then she disappeared. Woke up one morning and she was just gone. Nothing but empty space where she had been.
And I had carried that. Put it somewhere deep, locked it down and told myself it was done. But I still couldn’t move past it, no matter how hard I tried. That's why I needed this tonight.
Then she reappeared just to take Grim and put a number on his head and run the clock down like I was just another piece on a board she was moving around. Using me again, and this time the bitch wanted money.Nah. This bitch owed me answers, and tonight she had no choice other than to give them to me.
The part that settled into my blood like ice was that I still didn’t know exactly when she had figured out that Grim was my brother. I had never told her. Never connected those dots out loud for her. I pretended to just be the hired eliminator. But I knew in the back of my mind the way she moved, her mannerisms with me, she had known for a long time. She just never let me know that she knew.
A woman that calculated didn’t move without information. She had done her research on me the same way I should have done mine on her, and I had been too distracted by what I felt to see it coming.
She had used me the same way Grim had used people his whole life and I had still let her breathe.
That wouldn’t happen twice.
—
Marco cut the headlights about a quarter mile out and rolled the truck to a stop along a stretch of dark road where the trees gave enough cover that we wouldn’t be visible from the property. We sat for a moment and did a final check. Silencers secured, vests on, earpieces in. I checked the magnetic bypass tool in my jacket pocket and confirmed it was reading.
We moved on foot through the dark, staying low and close to the tree line until the property came into view. The house was large, old money Southern architecture, the kind of place that had history soaked into the walls. Lights were on inside but dim. From the outside it looked almost peaceful.
