His eyes flicked to Sasha. She kept her head down as her lips trembled. Messiah stood and moved behind her, resting a heavy hand on her shoulder. Every instinct I had started screaming, goosebumps ran up my arms as the temperature in the room seemed to drop.
“I treated this woman like a queen,” he said as he stroked her hair. “House, cars, trips, clothes, anything she wanted, she got.”
His hand wrapped around the front of her neck. “And I get it—she’s bad as fuck. The pussy’s fire and got your mans caught up. But my wife seems tohave forgotten her vows.”
He yanked her head back so she was looking up at him and bent down to kiss her sloppily. “For better or for worse, right, Sash?”
Sasha whimpered as he pushed her head forward so she was looking at us.
“In sickness and in health,” Messiah continued, letting her go and pulled the Glock from his waist. Sasha’s hands were balled tight in her lap, tears sliding down her face.
“And most importantly—till death do us part.”
He pressed the gun to the back of her head and pulled the trigger.
I flinched. The sound was still ringing in my ears when Sasha’s body slumped forward, her cheek hitting the glass table. Her eyes were open, fixed on me as blood spread beneath her.
I’d killed plenty of people. I watched plenty die. But I’d never seen a man kill his own wife and look so unbothered doing it.
Messiah tucked his piece away, his eyes dark. “You cross me, you lose everything. The only way this gets handled is Slim paying with his life. Either hand him over, or I’ll come get him myself. I don’t give a fuck who gets caught in the crossfire.”
He jerked his chin at the door. “Meeting’s over. Get the fuck out my office.”
21 /FONTAINE JACKSON
I can’t rememberthe last time shit had been this tense. We’d gone to war with crews when we were young and reckless trying to make a name for ourselves. Now we were older and niggas had more to lose. We had to move smarter.
It was the day after we flew back home and we were meeting at one of the safehouses—a nondescript single-family home tucked outside of the city with no discernible trace to any of us. It was furnished plainly with the bare necessities, but it wasn’t meant for long-term stays.
Cash walked into the living room, the last of us to arrive.
“He killed her,” he said as he sat on the couch next to Jelani.
Slim sucked in a sharp breath. “She told me she had this under control.”
“Again, I don’t know why you let her get into your head like that. If you had said something—” Jelani started.
“Y’all would’ve told me to dead it,” Slim said.
“Hell yeah, because we wouldn’t be in this predicament now.”
“It’s a moot point,” Cash said, before things got too heated. “What’s done is done. Slim fucked up, but at the end of the day you’re family and we not about to hand you over.”
Slim let out a heavy breath. “So I either pay with my life, or he just starts picking off whoever he feels like.”
I thought of Slim’s grandmother. Drea. Any of us in the room right now.
“We need to get him out the country,” Nairobi said.
Everyone looked at her.
“I’ll call Hana,” she continued. “The Order can get him a passport and a way out.”
“Leave the country?” Slim’s eyes widened. “That’s not a little drastic? How long we talking?”
“Yes, leave the country,” she said calmly. “Messiah’s the most powerful gunrunner on the East Coast. You don’t think he has people in every nook and cranny of the country? If he’s calling hits through the Agency, his reach is long. And you damn sure can’t stay in Atlanta.”
“But my grandmother?—”
