“Fix it.”
“How? I don’t know where the fuck she is.”
“I don’t care how. Fix it. She’s your only asset inside that family and without her you’re useless to me. And useless peopledon’t get funded.” The line went quiet for a second. “Is this going to blow back on me?”
“No. I hired those boys through three layers of separation. They don’t know your name. They don’t know who I report to. All they know is I’m BCC and I pay them for jobs.”
“Keep it that way.” She hung up without saying goodbye because Vivica didn’t do pleasantries. She did directives.
I sat on the couch and stared at the ceiling and snorted the second line and felt the chemicals light up my brain while the rest of me sat in the wreckage of an operation that was falling apart faster than I could hold it together. Two soldiers in the hospital. A boss in prison pulling strings I could barely keep track of. A girlfriend in hiding who had all the intel I needed locked in a phone I couldn’t access anymore. And a nineteen-year-old with a baby on the way who I owed thirty thousand dollars I didn’t have.
I picked up my phone and scrolled to Serenity’s contact. Her picture was still my lock screen. It was a photo from Miami where she was laughing on the balcony in a white dress with the ocean behind her. Before the bruises. Before the coke got bad. Before her brothers decided they knew what was best for her and took her away from me like I was something she needed to be rescued from.
I wasn’t done with Serenity. Not because I loved her, although I told myself that sometimes when the coke was wearing off and the house was too quiet. I needed her because without her I was flying blind on the Banks family and Vivica was going to cut me loose the second I stopped being useful.
I’d find her. Wherever those brothers had stashed her, I’d find her. And when I did, I wasn’t letting her go again.
I dialed her number one more time. Voicemail. Her voice, sweet and recorded and gone.
I hung up and cut another line.
43
MEHAR
Class ran long today and by the time I got to my car I was exhausted in the good way. The way that comes from learning something new and being one step closer to the life I was building for myself. Mrs. Pak had pulled me aside after the session to tell me my technique was improving and that she thought I’d be ready for the advanced certification by the end of the semester.
I was getting there. One class at a time, one client at a time, one dollar at a time.
Speaking of dollars. I checked my phone and saw the CashApp notifications stacked up. I had tributes from three clients this week alone. I transferred all of it into my high-yield savings account and watched the balance climb. Every deposit was another brick in the foundation of my spa. My name on a building. My hands healing people instead of hurting them. My life on my terms without a man’s money or a man’s permission or a man’s name attached to any of it.
The dominatrix work was going to have to end eventually. I knew that. Quest would lose his mind if he found out. His possessive, alpha, “you’re mine” energy did not include sharing me with men who paid to kneel at my feet, even though I nevertouched them sexually and the power dynamic was entirely in my control. He wouldn’t see it that way. He’d see other men in a room with his woman and that would be the end of us.
But I couldn’t give it up for a man. Something about that equation felt like every other equation I’d lived through. Change who you are so a man can be comfortable. Shrink yourself so he has room. I’d spent my whole life doing that and I wasn’t doing it again. Not for Quest, not for anyone.
For now, he didn’t know. And I wasn’t ready to transition out because this was the fastest path to my spa, and the spa was the thing that would outlast every man I’d ever meet.
I drove home with the windows down and my music playing and that rare feeling of a good day sitting warm in my chest. Parked in the lot, took the stairs because the elevator was still broken.
The door was already open. Not unlocked. Open. Cracked about three inches with the deadbolt hanging loose like someone had forced it.
My gun was in my hand before my next breath. I pushed the door open with my foot, stepped inside, and the good day died on the spot.
My apartment had been destroyed.
The navy leather sofa was slashed open, stuffing spilling out of long gashes that looked like they’d been made with a knife. The orange accent wall that I’d painted myself had been spray-painted with a word I couldn’t bring myself to read twice. My plants, every single one of them, the pothos and the snake plant and the monstera I’d been nurturing for almost a year were ripped out of their pots and scattered across the floor, soil ground into the carpet like someone had stomped on them. The portraits of Black women that I’d hung with care and intention were pulled off the walls and slashed through the faces, canvas hanging in ribbons.
The Afro pick coffee table was flipped and cracked down the middle. My bookshelf was emptied onto the floor, pages torn out of journals I’d been writing in since I left Ahmad. The kitchen was ransacked. The cabinets open, dishes shattered, food pulled from the fridge and smeared across the countertop.
I walked through each room with my gun raised and my heart slamming against my ribs. In the bedroom the mattress was flipped, clothes pulled from the closet and cut up, my underwear drawer emptied onto the bed. In the bathroom, the mirror was cracked, products swept off the shelves, towels shredded.
Nobody was here. Whoever did this was gone. But they’d taken their time. This wasn’t a robbery—nothing of value was missing. My laptop was still on the desk. My emergency cash was still in the shoebox in the closet. This was personal. This was someone sending a message.
I stood in the middle of my living room surrounded by the wreckage of the one space in the world that was entirely mine and I called Quest.
He picked up on the first ring.
“Somebody broke into my apartment,” I said. My voice was steady because I’d been trained by my own life to stay calm when everything around me was falling apart. “They destroyed everything. I need you.”
