Page 71 of About the Green

I’ve got her right where I wanted her and now…

I have to make it right and find a way to save her from herself.

Chapter 27

It’s over.

Years of hard work that I had been successfully carrying out on my own, now down the drain.

Because of Vertiz Marten.

Fuck him and everything he stands for.

He took everything from me.

When Liezel walks in and see’s us gathered she says, “I got here a little early, but I didn't realize that I was going to be stopping a guillotine.”

“It's not unless Nina can figure out what she's supposed to be doing for the family and what she's not supposed to be doing,” Racquelle asserts and the stab of it is foreign from her. Each time she disregards my small contribution, I get a little smaller. Want to fight back even harder.

“She will—” Vert interjects. He puts a hand over my mouth. “—be doing everything she's told because she doesn't want to be executed on the spot for something so silly.”

This fucking vamp does not speak for me.

I could never understand why they call him that when I can’t get him to stop blabbering about me and ruining my life, it seems. He needs a new nickname. I’m thinking one that starts with ‘fuck’ and ends in ‘er’.

I stand up and move around him so that he can't talk over me again. “What I'm doing is a noble cause, and it's not for nothing. It's so that other girls like me don't end up in a similar position. They don't have badass women around them to save them from the same fate. Too many girls who look like me, Black and Brown, go missing. No one ever finds them again. Guaranteed it's because of the kinds of men that I have been targeting. There's no way that I could possibly give up what I'm doing when the statistics show everything is so stagnant or on the rise. There is no decline.”

Blue questions me, his voice reverberating in the room. “And you think you're gonna be able to take all of these men down by yourself?”

Swallowing, I admit the truth of the weight on my shoulders. “No, I don't think that, but I'm at least putting a dent in the number.”

Racquelle takes a really long sigh, and though I've already had this conversation with her, it appears that most of the other people at this table still look at me like I'm the one in the wrong for what I'm doing.

“All I've done has been sanctioned. Though I am my own boss, and I get to be the one to decide when and who I target, I've still been doing exactly what I've been allowed to do. There's no reason why I should be punished when I haven't actually done anything wrong. It's just off of what you suspect could go wrong,” Hot tears prick my eyes but I refuse to let them fall with my abandonment this time. “Racquelle. I thought that you understood.”

Liezel comes to stand beside me. “She does, sweetheart.” Her hand is soothing on my back, but I don’t want her soothing.

I want my vengeance.

“No, she doesn't, because I've been told to be silent, to give up on all the other women who are having to grow up like me, with memories of trauma and horror that they can't erase. If we even find them again, sometimes they disappear, and we never see their bodies. Their families never get closure. Those women never get to see another day. Those girls never get to see another day.”

I'm trembling with fury because I can't let go of this so easily. Looking at Vert is no longer an option if I hope to keep my cool. My blade isn’t in my cheeks and I’m desperate to do something with my hands to protect me from the betrayal I feel.

I refuse to let go of it so easily. “It's too easy for grown ass men to take advantage of women, and for it to be pushed under the rug. It's even easier when they're not from a wealthy family, or if they are Black, or Brown, or any one of us pushed to the margins.”

The silence that sits at the table with us is heavy with the truth of my passion. There may not be statistics here but there is a truth that we all know is enough to churn your gut. These victims—we—are not just numbers. We’re people and someone should be fighting for us.

Finally Racquelle speaks. “Well, something's got to change, because you've alarmed other people within our families. There needs to be a better method, a better system, or something. I would never tell you that you have to work with the police, because we know that they're not helpful.”

And on cue, Colton comes into the room, the most non-helpful law enforcement of them all.

Liezel holds me closer to her body as Colton takes his seat, and a few other people come into the room.

Blue takes the lead and stands while more of the Griffiths filter in. “We're shelvin’ this matter for now, but since Vert was the one who brought it to our attention, it's up to you two to figure out how to make this a more beneficial task for the families, or to cut it out altogether.”

“What?” I question. “Why is it that he gets a say over what I do when I've been doing just fine this whole time?”

Blue’s jaw ticks with my rebuttal. Racquelle pats his hand and calms him down before she says, “As we've already discussed in this meeting, you haven't, and it's alarmed other people in the family, so it's either find a better solution and work together, since what you've been doing isn't efficient, or you stop altogether.”