“Who is he?” Booda asked.
“You don’t remember him? We took everything he had.” The memory pulled more with it. “We thought he was dead,” I said. “He was supposed to be dead.”
Rich wasn’t just somebody we robbed. He was a problem you didn’t leave breathing, but we hadn’t.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said, standing to pace the floor.
“What doesn’t make sense is how he knew about the drop,” Booda replied, making me pause mid-step.
I quickly turned around, my eyes wide with surprise when I peered at him.
“Somebody set me up,” I said, anger rising through my entire body. “Somebody really tried to have me killed.”
“Whatchu wanna do about it?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” A sob broke loose as tears fell from my eyes.
“You know.”
“Booda—”
“Don’t Booda me. Tell me.”
“No.” I dropped my head into my hands and shook it. “I want to leave that shit in the past,” I admitted quietly. “I woke up not remembering the fucked up shit I’ve done, and for a while… I gotto be somebody else.” My voice cracked as I wiped angrily at my face.
“I don’t wanna go back to being that person.”
Booda stayed quiet for a moment before crouching in front of me.
“Baby, that life already came back for you,” he said softly. “Rich made sure of that the second he tried to kill you. You think that nigga gon’ stop?” Booda asked. “You think the people who set you up just forgot about you?”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Because deep down, I knew the answers to those questions.
“But why just me? Why haven’t they come for you, too?”
“Nobody knows I’m here, but you. I’m lowkey. Now tell me what you wanna do about them niggas, Koko,” he said again, lifting my chin until I looked at him. “Say it.”
I dragged in a shaky breath. “I want to find everybody who played me,” I whispered. “Everybody who owes us money. Everybody who thought they got away with crossing me.”
“And then what?”
The tears stopped as something colder clicked in their place.
“I want them dead.”
Booda nodded as if he approved. “Then they will die.”
CHAPTER 10
Headlights swept across the windshield as I leaned forward in my seat, staring out at another block that looked as though I should’ve known it better than I did. A liquor store sat on the corner behind a wall of scratched plexiglass. Three men lingered outside beneath a flickering light, their voices carrying over the music rattling from a car parked next to the curb.
I knew this area.
Or at least pieces of it.
A run-down building sat nearby with paint peeling from its sides. A bent street sign stood crooked at the corner, and an old mural stretched across the wall of a store, faded from years of heat and sunlight. Something about all of it kept pulling at me, even if I couldn’t fully understand why.
I drove with one hand on the wheel while the other rested against the center console, my eyes moving slowly over everything around us.
