Chapter 16 #2
Zena froze, completely stunned by her own mouth. She had never, ever admitted that truth out loud to a single soul. She had spent the last few months trying to convince herself it was just a drug-induced nightmare because she lacked the power and evidence to fight for real justice.
“No one,” she whispered, her voice suddenly hollow. “Just let me go.”
Zena used every ounce of her remaining strength to rip her hands out of his grip. Wiping the blinding tears from her eyes, she went right back to packing her suitcase. She was getting out of Atlanta tonight, even if it was the last thing she ever did on this earth.
Tate didn't try to stop her again. He walked back into the living room, slumping onto the couch, watching her pack in silence.
Zena gathered her essentials into two suitcases packed to the brim.
She dragged them to the front door, then made one final trip back into the master closet.
Pulling the lighter from her tracksuit pocket, she grabbed a stray piece of paper, lit it, and tossed the burning paper directly onto the oil-soaked pile of Tate’s luxury wardrobe.
The fabrics ignited, a roaring wall of flames devouring his prized possessions.
As she calmly turned to walk out of the room, Tate ran past her into the bedroom, screaming hysterically. “Are you crazy?! Why the fuck would you set my shit on fire?!”
Zena didn't even turn around. “You’re lucky I didn’t set your pathetic ass on fire with it. Fuck you. I'm moving out.”
With that, Zena snatched the car keys right off the kitchen counter, dragged her suitcases out, and slammed the door on that life forever.
Zena double-parked the Audi directly in a red tow-away zone right outside the studio lot. She popped the trunk, grabbed an aluminum baseball bat, and hurried through the rear entrance.
The facility was dimly lit, with only a few vehicles left in the parking lot. Good. She didn’t want an audience for what was about to happen. She wasn’t sure if Velvet was still there, but she was about to find out.
The metal bat felt solid in Zena’s trembling hand as she paced down the long hallway.
Most of the studio rooms were dark and empty; she only passed a few high bystanders who were far too preoccupied with their own shit to notice a girl carrying a weapon.
She checked two more rooms before reaching the studio at the very back of the hall.
Through the studio door’s glass window, she spotted J-Rock and Freddy sitting at the soundboard.
Inside the booth, Velvet was standing in front of the microphone.
The dim lighting, the thick clouds of weed smoke, and the bass booming through the monitors created the perfect distraction. Nobody heard or saw her enter the room.
“Yo, Velvet, you gotta try harder to stay on key, man,” Freddy’s voice echoed over the talkback. “I can only fix so much with pitch correction.”
Zena didn’t even bother to wait for the response. She sprinted across the room, threw open the door to the booth, slid the aluminum baseball bat perfectly through the door handles to lock them inside together, and mauled Velvet.
The studio headphones flew off Velvet’s head as Zena’s fist connected squarely with her nose, shattering the cartilage. Blood sprayed across the room as Velvet shrieked in terror, trying desperately to fight back, but it was useless.
“Get off me! Get off me!” Velvet screamed, choking on her own blood.
Zena couldn’t stop. She was a lion descending on a gazelle with zero mercy. Velvet was taking a punch for every single night Zena had spent crying herself to sleep in that condo. For every single dollar Tate and J-Rock had stolen out of her royalties.
Through the thick glass, Zena could see the control room in chaos. J-Rock was throwing his weight against the booth door, banging frantically on the glass and screaming obscenities she couldn't hear.
Zena pinned Velvet to the floor, mounting her waist and continuing to brutally assault her face. While Velvet managed to throw up her hands and land a few frantic scratches, Zena’s bloodlust made her bulletproof.
“I hate opportunistic bitches like you!” Zena roared, grabbing Velvet by her cheap, synthetic weave and wrapping the tracks tightly around her fist, forcing her bloody face upward.
“You wanted my spot?! You wanted my man?! Guess what, bitch? You can have all of it! Because I am done with this shit!” Zena screamed directly into her face until Velvet’s eyes rolled back.
Zena let her head drop. Crimson blood was everywhere, splattered across her tracksuit, stained her knuckles, and smeared across the floor of the booth. She couldn’t even recognize Velvet’s face anymore, and truth be told, she couldn’t recognize herself either.
“Okay! I get it! I get it! Please just stop!” Velvet sobbed, bloody snot dripping heavily from her swollen nose.
Zena’s entire body shook violently as she took a slow step back, the adrenaline starting to curdle in her veins. All the pressure of this disgusting industry had pushed the nice girl completely out the window.
If there was one single thing her father had been right about regarding this business, it was that she didn’t belong in it.
The baseball bat clicked out of the handles as J-Rock forced his way into the booth, backed by two bulky studio security guards. The team immediately crowded around Velvet, lifting her bloody frame off the floor.
“Princess! Fuck! You’ve gotta chill the fuck out!” J-Rock yelled, his eyes wide with shock. “You can’t be pulling this wild shit in hea’!”
“Fuck you!” Zena sneered, her eyes wild as she snatched her aluminum bat off the floor and shoved past the guards before anyone could think to call the Atlanta PD.
J-Rock sprinted out of the room after her, cornering her in the hallway near the emergency exit. “What the fuck are you wilding out on Velvet for? She’s your label mate!”
“She fucked Tate!” The words exploded out of her mouth like a grenade, the sheer volume of her scream echoing off the walls. Her chest heaved, her knuckles dripping blood onto the floor.
J-Rock stared at her for a minute. Then, he burst into a loud, mocking laugh, as if it were the funniest joke he had ever heard in his life. “All of this...You crashing out over a nigga?”
Zena just looked at him.
The mocking laugh died in J-Rock’s throat the moment he took in the dead expression on her face.
“Fuck your grimy ass too,” Zena whispered, her voice lethal. “I know all about your little side deal with Tate. I read the texts, and I know all about you and Finesse.”
J-Rock’s eyes darted around the empty hallway. He stepped forward, grabbed her by the collar of her ripped tracksuit, and aggressively pulled her into an empty studio, slamming the door shut behind them.
“Look,” J-Rock’s voice dropped into a low, threatening baritone.
“I didn’t do a single thing your boy didn’t personally give me the green light to.
The nigga owed me money, Zena. I simply collected his debt directly out of your album advance.
That’s just standard business. You mad about the terms of your contract?
Do you have any idea how many desperate artists sign deals ten times worse than yours just to get in the room?
It’s the platform that matters. We gave you a name.
Use it right, keep your mouth shut, and you’ll eventually buy your way out.
Hell—” He took a step closer, crowding her into the mixing desk.
“—if it wasn’t for me…you’d still be sleeping on somebody’s couch and busting tables for tips for the rest of your life. You should be thanking me.”
Zena felt the rage moving through her veins like pure liquid venom, but she kept her face still, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing her break.
“So, what are you gonna do about it?” J-Rock tilted his head, a smirk on his lips. “What’s a lawyer gonna do? Supreme has an entire legal team that will ensure the only time you ever sing again is—”
J-Rock kept talking, but Zena stopped hearing the words.
As he leaned over her, closing the distance between them, an expensive, distinct scent reached her nose.
Her entire body went rigid.
The memory was suddenly vivid. Terrifying. The exact scent that had filled the room at Lisa’s house on the night she couldn't fully remember. The night she had spent months trying to erase from her mind.
She knew this smell. She knew exactly where she had smelled it.
Her eyes slowly traveled up, locking directly onto J-Rock’s face.
“Oh my god,” the words cracked out of her throat, barely louder than a breath. “It was you…”
J-Rock’s expression hardened. His eyes turned dark. He didn’t step back, and he didn’t advance. He just stared down at her in silence.
“I don’t know what the fuck you think you saw b—”
“It was you!” Her voice broke, exploding with the devastating weight of bringing the monster into the light.
The silence stretched between them in the studio, and Zena understood it. His silence was the only confession she would ever get from a man with this much power. There was nothing she could do to him legally. The system was rigged. She had no evidence and a drugged memory. She was powerless.
She closed her eyes for a second.
Her fingers gripped the cold aluminum grip of the baseball bat, rage fueling her muscles like a shot of pure adrenaline.
She snapped her eyes open, stepped hard into his space, and swung the bat with every single ounce of agonizing pain inside her soul, connecting the solid metal directly with the side of J-Rock's jaw.
A sickening crack echoed through the room as he collapsed hard against the mixing board.
“I quit bitch!” Zena screamed.
She turned on her heels and stormed out of the building.
She got in the car, threw the bat into the passenger side, and drove straight toward the downtown bus station. When she pulled into the gravel lot, she sat behind the wheel for ten minutes. Processing the debris of her life.
She finally knew who had been in that room.
He hadn’t even tried to deny it; his cold eyes had confirmed everything.
But as much as her soul screamed for vengeance, she knew the reality.
She had no evidence, her career was dead, and the label would blackball her into oblivion.
She would handle the legal fallout of the contract later; tonight, she just needed to survive.
She needed to get the fuck out of Atlanta.
She parked the car in the back lot, slipped the keys under the driver’s seat, and grabbed her two suitcases from the trunk.
Walking into the terminal’s fluorescent light, she managed to purchase a one-way bus ticket to a destination outside the state in under an hour.
Fortunately for her, the midnight crowd was too exhausted to look twice at a girl with a half-ripped tracksuit and bloody knuckles.
She spent that hour on the wooden bench, logging into her banking app and frantically transferring the last of her money into an old account.
A grand total of nine hundred and eight dollars to her name.
She completed the digital transfer, wiped the device clean, and casually dropped her phone into the bottom of a rusted terminal trash can.
At midnight, the bus gears grinded to life, pulling out of the station.
Zena leaned her head against the glass window as the Atlanta skyline faded into the darkness. She was finally going home.