Fear and uncertainty spread through the warehouse, and the tension in the room tightened with it. No one looked relaxed, not around me.
Word traveled fast in the streets, and I was sure the story everybody heard was the same. Koko Holiday came back from the dead, and bodies were about to start dropping.
I stopped in the center of the room and slowly looked around. Faces started clicking into place now that my memory wasreturning. I recognized men who used to stand outside our stash houses with rifles hanging off their shoulders. Men who rode behind us during pickups and sat around counting money until three in the morning. Men who celebrated with us, fought with us, and bled with us.
The memories came fast, but not fast enough for the emotional connections to click naturally. Some of them still felt strangely distant despite everything my mind was starting to remember. It was as if I was stepping back into someone else’s life and slowly realizing it had once belonged to me.
“Close the doors,” I ordered.
Nobody hesitated. The heavy warehouse doors slammed shut behind us a second later.
Three men were tied to chairs near the back wall, with blood running down their faces, and their hands secured behind them. One looked barely conscious, and another kept glancing toward the exit.
I walked toward them first.
“Koko…” the one in the middle started nervously.
“Don’t say my name like we cool,” I cut him off.
I stopped directly in front of them and folded my arms while studying each face carefully.
Memory was strange.
Some things stayed blurry for months, but now I could remember exactly who stood where during certain nights. I knew who handled money, who got nervous under pressure, who talked too much, and who disappeared when things went bad.
And I remembered these niggas.
“Seeing you tied up tells me one thing. You switched sides after I got hurt,” I said with disgust.
“It wasn’t even like that,” one of them rushed out. “Rich started taking over everything. Niggas were scared.”
“So y’all just rolled over and let that pussy ass nigga move into y’all town and take over your shit?”
“What were we supposed to do?” the one in the middle asked.
“Hold shit down,” I replied before glancing over my shoulder at another soldier standing nearby. “Who found them?”
“Me and Twan,” he answered quickly.
I nodded before looking back at the men tied to the chairs.
“I want to know everything you know about Rich now!”
“He got three spots,” the middleman blurted out. “One on the south side near the abandoned apartments. Another stash house off Miller. Then a spot near the highway where they been moving pills.”
“How many men be at the houses?”
He started naming names fast after that, locations, the trap that stayed busiest at night, and which ones he kept the money inside. Fear made people talk, especially when they knew death was standing directly in front of them.
When he finally stopped, I looked toward the others. “Anything to add?”
The second man shook his head vehemently. “That’s everything.”
The third started crying. Actually crying. Snot running down his face and everything.
“I swear I ain’t wanna switch up on y’all,” he choked out. “I thought you was dead, and I had to feed my family.”
A dark laugh almost escaped me. Everybody did.
