But nah...
That shit was done now.
I looked back at Marcus one more time, shakin’ my head like he wasn’t even worth the energy no more. I let my eyes sit on him for a second, really lookin’ at him like I wanted him to understand exactly where he was at and how this was finna end for him. Before he could even think to say another word, I lifted the gun and shot him right between his eyebrows.
His body dropped back, already lifeless, like his time had been up, and I just clocked him out.
“All that playin’ both sides shit?” I muttered, standin’ over his dead body. “Yeah… it caught up to you.”
Then I turned back toward Kelli, noddin’ once while I looked at the screen again.
“Let’s get this shit out there,” I said. “Time to show these muthafuckas what really happened.”
’Cause at this point, it wasn’t just about clearin’ Kay’Lo’s name…
It was about tearin’ all that corruption down with it.
It was another late, dreadful night, and I sat in my office with a short glass of brown liquor in my hand. I watched the city through the windows while everything that had been building over the past few months refused to quiet down in my head.
Nothing about this felt manageable anymore. The more I tried to move through it the way I always had, the more I realized that too many things were slipping outside of my control at the same time. The media would not let my family rest. Every headline carried my daughter’s name, my sons’ deaths, and Kay’Lo Mensah’s trial in a way that made it impossible to separate any part of my life from what was happening publicly. It did not matter where I went or who I spoke to, because the narrative had already taken on a life of its own, and now it was moving without permission.
I lifted the glass and took a slow drink, letting it settle. I kept my eyes on the reflection staring back at me through the dark glass.
Thomas had been missing for weeks, and the news had turned it into a story that was gaining attention by the hour. His face was everywhere. His name was being repeated. People were starting to ask questions that did not have easy answers. I had already heard enough speculation to know that it was only a matter of time before the wrong kind of attention landed in the wrong place, and that alone made it harder to sit still and pretend that everything was still operating the way it was supposed to.
I knew exactly what I did to him and that feeling did not come with the kind of relief I had expected.
When I replayed that moment in my mind, I could still see the way he looked at me before I pulled the trigger. I could still feel the weight of the decision sitting behind it. What stayed with me more than anything was the fact that I hadn’t hesitated when it mattered. I had done what needed to be done because he refused to move in the direction I required. Even with that, there was still something in me that had changed since that moment. It was something that did not feel as controlled as everything else in my life had always been.
I poured another drink and moved back toward my desk, trying to ground myself in something that felt familiar. Even that felt different now, because the foundation I had built everything on no longer felt as stable as it once had. My children were gone, and there was no way to adjust to that kind of loss without it changing the way everything else was processed. I had buried Rioh, Jaqwon, and Echo within a span of time that still didn’t feel real. Every decision I had made since then had been shaped by that loss whether I acknowledged it or not.
My marriage had suffered under the weight of everything as well. Even though Jamie and I still moved through the same space, still spoke when necessary, and still held ourselves together in front of other people, the truth was that too much had already broken between us for things to feel the way they once did. We had tried to find our way back to each other through grief, but grief had a way of exposing what was already fractured instead of repairing it. That reality had settled in without either of us needing to say it out loud.
The situation with Celine had only made that worse. The fact that it had been dragged into the public by Abeni Mensah had stripped away any illusion of privacy I had left in that part of my life. I had managed that relationship for years without it interfering with anything that mattered, but now it was another piece being used against me. It was another detail being discussed by people who had no understanding of what it actually was or how it had been maintained.
I exhaled slowly and leaned back in my chair. I pressed my fingers against the side of my face while I let my thoughts move through everything that had gone wrong, because there was too much to ignore at this point. Kush had failed to carry out what should have been a simple task. Instead of resolving the situation, it had escalated it in a way that brought more attention and more risk. Kwame Mensah being the one who was shot had shifted the tone of everything, and Kush being caught had only made matters worse.
Now, Kush was missing, and that was not something I could dismiss or explain away easily. The most likely explanation pointed directly at the Mensahs.
I reached for my phone and unlocked it. I scrolled through the notifications I had ignored while I sat in the quiet. That was when I noticed the thread of messages that didn’t sit right with me. The conversation with Marcus Hale was open on the screen,and as I read through it, something in me tightened because what I was looking at did not match anything I remembered doing.
There were instructions in that thread that had come from my number. They were clear directions telling Marcus to move the footage from Kay’Lo’s shop because things were becoming too visible. His responses followed naturally, as if there had been no reason for him to question it. He had asked for a location, and one had been provided. The more I read through it, the more I realized that the entire exchange had taken place without my involvement.
I read it again carefully. I paid attention to the details, to the timing and to the way the messages were written. Nothing about it felt accidental or misinterpreted. This was deliberate, and that realization did not come with any immediate explanation that made sense.
I pressed call and brought the phone to my ear, waiting for Marcus to answer. I stood from my chair and moved toward the window again, but the call rang out and went straight to voicemail. I ended it and tried again, giving it enough time for him to respond if he was able, but the result was the same. By the third attempt, it was clear that I was not going to reach him.
I lowered the phone slowly and stared at the screen. My thoughts began to move in a different direction, because this was no longer about whether Marcus would answer or not. This was about understanding how those messages had been sent in the first place and what that meant for everything connected to it.
The only conclusion that made sense was one that I didn’t immediately want to accept. The more I stood here with it, the clearer it became that there was no other explanation that fit all the details. My phone had been compromised, and whoever had done it had done so in a way that allowed them to move within my communications without drawing attention to themselves.
That realization carried weight in a way that went beyond this single conversation. It meant that anything I had sent, received, or discussed through this device could now be somewhere it didn’t belong, and that kind of exposure was not something I had prepared for.
I turned back toward my desk and picked up the glass again, finally taking the drink I had been holding. As the liquor settled in my system, I allowed myself to think through what needed to happen next. This was not something that could be ignored or handled casually, because it reached into every part of what I had been managing behind the scenes.
If someone had access to my phone, then they had access to more than just one conversation. If that access had already been used to manipulate Marcus into moving that footage, then it was safe to assume that whatever came next had already been set in motion.
I set the glass down and looked at the phone one more time. I read through the thread again with a clearer understanding of what I was dealing with. For the first time since I had noticed it, I allowed myself to acknowledge the truth without trying to soften it.
