I wasfinallyliving.
SINCERE BELLAMY
The next day was the zoning board vote. This was the vote that decided whether the project could move forward the way we planned or stay tied up in politics and delay tactics. The zoning board was voting on land use, approvals, and whether the city would let the project move from plans and promises into actual work. If they voted yes, we could finally start building. If they voted no, or pushed it off again, we’d lose time, money, and leverage.
When I got out of the car and headed toward the building, I noticed the protest crowd first. The group was smaller, and the energy was weaker. With the Crown no longer around to fan the flames, their momentum was dying off.
Inside, I took my seat. Legend, Icon, and Saint were already seated.
Kai came in a few minutes later. Before the vote, he would be called to speak because he was the public face tied to the pushback and who called for the moratorium, so the board needed to hear him support the project now. I’d given him exactly what he needed to say to make them comfortable. Everyphrase was built to make the project sound safe, smart, and impossible to vote against without looking stupid.
When his name got called, he stood and went right into it. He talked about jobs, tax revenue, and investment without displacement. He read from that script like he wrote every line himself.
The whole time, I watched the board.
By the time public comment wrapped and they moved into the vote, the yes votes started coming in one after another. There were no speeches or surprise holdups. Just yes after yes after yes.
When the final vote was given, the project was approved. The moratorium died right there without the fight people expected. All the back and forth and stalling over the last few months finally ended with a board member reading out a result into a microphone. “Approved.”
Legend leaned over first and gripped the back of my neck before he let me go. “Good work, bro.”
Icon gave me a proud stare. “You handled that.”
Saint leaned in from the other side. “’Bout time. I was tired of listening to all this political bullshit.”
I sat there and let myself feel it for a second. I was proud of myself. This was the biggest project I’d ever touched, and I got it through the part that was built to break it. For once, all the work I put in, all the moving around, all the thinking ahead, it wasn’t just helping everybody else eat. It was building something for me too; for my future, for the life I’m trying to have outside of putting out fires for other people. And now that the vote was done, we could finally stop talking about what we were going to build and start building it.
AVA REYNOLDS
I stood in the mirror with one earring in and the other in my hand, staring at myself. I told myself I was getting dressed because Zahra and I were going out to celebrate the vote, and that was true. The Cartiers could finally start building, and everybody had a reason to pop out tonight. But that was not theonlyreason I had changed outfits for the third time. I was thinking about Reek. I hated admitting that, even in my own head.
I’d always known he was fine. A woman would’ve had to be blind not to see it. He was that toxic kind of handsome that made you look twice and then get mad at yourself for still looking. He had the most lethal combination: full, neat, beard, deep, crisping lined waves, and a body covered in ink. He carried himself like he knew exactly what he did to a room, and that little grin of his only made it worse. He looked good, and he knew it. I never focused on his looks, though, because Reek was a hoe and my heart had been set on Sincere. Everybody knew it. He flirted for sport. He moved how he wanted. He was the kind of man you only had fun with. But I wanted a relationship and something real.
Still, ever since he started flirting with me, I had been thinking about him differently. Not just that he was attractive. I was thinking about how he looked at me, how he talked to me, how he kept pushing, even when I acted naïve to his flirting.
I leaned closer to the mirror and blended the corner of my eye.
The door opened without a knock.
“Are you ready?” Zahra asked.
I looked at her in the mirror and smiled. “Almost. I just need to finish my makeup.”
She came in and sat on the edge of my bed to wait on me, already dressed and pretty.
I capped my lipstick and asked, “Where are we going again? And who all is gonna be there?”
“The private Cartier spot. Everybody basically. The Cartiers and their spouses. Sincere and Rhythm. Reek too."
I looked at myself in the mirror so she wouldn’t catch my smirk.
Zahra snorted. “I wonder if Sienna’s going to be there now that the vote passed.”
I glanced back at her. “Why you say that?”
She laughed and crossed one leg over the other. “Because I’m wondering how Reek’s gonna get rid of her.”
I turned around fully. “Why you think he wants to get rid of Sienna?”
