The interviewer leaned forward slightly. “Do you believe he targeted your family?”
Echo’s lip trembled, and she gave that look people gave right before they said something that would make headlines.
“I think he hated that I didn’t want him,” she said. “And I think he wanted to hurt me in the worst way possible, so he took them from me.”
That part mattered because that part was the hook.
Double homicide in a courtroom sounded like law, but a woman saying she was harassed, assaulted, and then punished with the death of her brothers sounded like evil. It sounded like a story people couldn’t scroll past.
It was good. It was convincing, and it was the kind of footage that spread fast once it hit the right platforms. Once the public decided who the villain was, jurors came into court already leaning a certain way. People liked to act like they were unbiased, but they were human first, and humans carried emotions into every decision they made.
I felt Jamie’s tears before I saw them. She lifted her free hand to her mouth, trying to hold herself together while our daughter cried under bright lights. I squeezed her hand again, and this time it wasn’t only comfort. It was a reminder.
They’re going to pay,I thought, and Jamie felt it because my silence had always spoken loudest to her.
The interviewer let the camera linger on Echo’s face before asking the final question. “What do you want people to understand about Kay’Lo Mensah?”
Echo didn’t hesitate. “He’s not who they think he is,” she said through tears. “He’s not some misunderstood businessman. He’s dangerous, and my brothers are dead because of him.”
When they finally cut the cameras, the tension in the room broke all at once. A producer rushed in with tissues and soft words. The stylist stepped back in, fixing Echo’s makeup with quick hands while telling her she was brave. Jamie released my hand and walked to our daughter without saying a word, wrapping her in an embrace that looked like it was holding more than grief. It looked like it was holding fear too. It was the fear that if we didn’t win this, then the Mensahs would keep walking over us like we were nothing.
I stayed where I was and watched for a moment, letting the scene settle in my mind the way a plan settles into place.
This was bigger than one interview. This was momentum.
Public sympathy moved juries, and repetition built a story people believed. By the time this aired, it wouldn’t just be a court case. It would be a story about a grieving sister who said she was abused and terrorized before her brothers were killed trying to protect her. The public would say Kay’Lo wasn’t just a killer. They’d say he was a predator too, and once people believed that, it stuck. And that was the point.
Jamie and Echo walked back over to me after a while, and Echo’s eyes were swollen but determined. She didn’t ask if she did well because she already knew she did. She’d felt the room shift while she spoke. She’d felt the way the crew got quiet and attentive, and felt the way the interviewer leaned in like she was hanging on every word. Echo wasn’t naive. She understood what we were doing, and she understood why.
“You okay?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Yes.”
I studied her for a beat longer than necessary. There was something hardened in her now. It was something shaped byloss and anger, and that was good for us. Soft girls got dismissed, and they got ignored, but a girl with grief in her eyes could move a crowd.
We left the building together, and as we stepped outside into the late afternoon light, I felt that same shift inside me that I’d felt after leaving Thomas’s house.
If the Mensahs wanted to play clean in public while moving pieces in private, then we were going to meet them there, and we were going to beat them at their own game because unlike them, we had loss and rage. We had a story the world would carry for us.
And I wasn’t done.
Trill-Land, ‘LoLux Estate
Two weeks later…
I was standin’ in the kitchen, drinkin’ juice while Toni held her phone up to my face like I was supposed to stand here and calmly watch that bullshit.
Echo’s face filled the screen. Her hair was laid, makeup soft and eyes glossy like she was some poor innocent woman tellin’ her story instead of the same bitter bitch that been runnin’ her mouth about me all over this island for months. The interviewer kept noddin’ at her like every word out her mouth was gospel, and that alone had my stomach turnin’.
I took another sip of my juice and shook my head. “Turn that shit off,” I muttered.
Toni ain’t move, though.
Echo kept talkin’, her voice soft and wounded while she painted this whole picture about fear and harassment and how she had been scared for her life. Every word felt like sand in my ears. I could feel the irritation crawlin’ up the back of my neck the longer she spoke.
“Yo,” I said again, lookin’ at Toni instead of the screen, “I said turn that shit off.”
Toni lowered the phone just enough to look at me. “Why?”
