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My father built the foundation, but Mama helped run that shit right beside him. By the time I was old enough to take my place, she already knew the money, the suppliers, the numbers, which men could be trusted, and which ones smiled too damn much when they were lying.

After Pops died and I took over the operation, I told Mama she didn’t have to stay in the game anymore. She had put in enough years and had more than enough money. If she wanted to retire, travel, shop, and spend the rest of her life doing whatever the hell rich women with too much free time did, I could handle everything from there.

Mama looked at me like I had lost my damn mind.

Apparently, I had forgotten who raised me.

That woman made it clear she wasn’t about to suddenly turn into some sweet, innocent little retired lady sitting at home baking cookies and shit while I got to have all the fun moving weight, calling shots, and running the operation.

“Hell nah. You ain’t running shit I helped build without me. We doing this together. Like mama, like son.”

Her words, not mine.

And we did.

So nah, Mama wasn’t just an emergency contact, and she damn sure wasn’t somebody I added to my account just in case something happened to me… Mama belonged there.

So, between that, her name being on the house, and the access she already had to my legitimate holdings, handling repairs, paying contractors, keeping the property maintained, and making sure everything continued running after I disappeared hadn’t been difficult for her.

I assumed.

That being said, I didn’t give a damn about Mama spending any of my money.

Hell, I was dead, and I clearly didn’t die with it.

Not to mention, I was sure she looked out for Lakelyn or Kaidence. And when it came to them, Mama could’ve emptied out all of my accounts down to the last dollar and I would’ve been somewhere cheering them on. What bothered me was watching Mama spend money—whether from my account, hers, or ours—upgrading a house for strangers to enjoy.

Keeping the place from falling apart was one thing, but making shit nicer for people who weren’t my woman and my son?

Yeah, I wasn’t fucking with that at all.

***

For the next several days, it felt like every contractor in Hallowridge had been given permission to walk through my front door.

Painters moved from room to room touching up walls, cleaners scrubbed shit that was already clean, repairmen checked everything from plumbing to electrical, landscapers worked the property, and HVAC technicians spent hours crawling through parts of the house I hadn’t thought about since I bought it. Somebody even came to polish floors I had never asked to have polished, while another crew steam-cleaned furniture that wasn’t dirty in the first damn place.

At the same time, Mama had people boxing up pieces of my life and loading them into a climate-controlled storage truck: clothes, personal items, valuables, anything she didn’t trust strangers around disappeared one container at a time while she stood there checking every inventory sheet herself before letting a single box leave the property.

I hated every second of it, not because Mama was doing anything wrong, but because I couldn’t stop any of it even if I wanted to.

Those days, even knocking over a damn paintbrush took more out of me than it should have… so I watched and waited.

***

Nearly a month later, Mama brought more strangers into my house… that time it was a family: a husband and wife, both somewhere in their forties, with two teenagers who wandered through my foyer staring up at the ceilings like they had entered a museum.

I was already irritated.

Then I heard the woman say, “This would be perfect with lighter furniture.”

No, the fuck it wouldn’t.

Nobody heard me.

The husband stepped farther into the living room. “You could really open this space up.”

You ain’t opening shit.