Majeston #4
I sat behind the wheel long after the front door disappeared behind Masina and Emory.
The engine idled while the house sat motionless against the dark Tennessee sky.
From this distance it looked almost peaceful, as though nothing inside had changed, as though thirty years of pain hadn’t finally come to rest on the hardwood floor of a forgotten room.
Maybe that was more fitting.
The world rarely announced when monsters died.
Headlights swept across the gravel road behind me. I looked in the rearview mirror just as a black Cybertruck rolled to a stop several yards from the house. Before the dust had settled, three doors opened in unison and out hopped Kade, Yayo, Cassian. Niggas was late as hell to the party.
None of them acknowledged my truck tucked under the tree line. They couldn’t have seen me from where they were, and I made no effort to announce myself. This wasn’t my moment anymore.
The three of them moved with the silent efficiency that had become second nature after years of surviving one war after another.
Kade reached the porch first, pushing the front door open without hesitation while Yayo and Cassian fanned out instinctively, clearing the rooms before disappearing inside. The house swallowed them.
Seconds stretched into ten minutes before they emerged again.
Kade came out first, his face unreadable against the porch light.
Cassian followed, pausing long enough to glance back through the doorway before pulling it shut behind him.
Yayo lingered for another second, shaking his head once as if confirming something only the three of them needed to know.
Whatever had happened inside that house would die inside that house. Kade turned toward the truck, already reaching for the driver’s door, but Yayo and Cassian kept walking past him until they reached the bed of the Cybertruck.
They dropped the tailgate, lifted out two oversized launchers with the kind of casual familiarity that would’ve unsettled anybody who didn’t know them, and rested the weapon across their shoulders like they were carrying little more than old memories.
Even from where I sat, I heard Kade’s voice drift through the night. “Is this necessary? The nigga already dead.”
Yayo didn’t even bother looking back.
“Yeah, nigga. We ain’t say shit when we was witnesses to your arson at Planned Parenthood. Let us have our fun.”
He called over his shoulder, adjusting the launcher against his shoulder. “For once...I actually agree with his ignorant ass.” Cassian snorted beside him.
The brothers walked another twenty yards from the house before planting their feet.
They exchanged one quick look, lifted the launchers into position, and squeezed the triggers simultaneously.
Twin rockets screamed across the short stretch of yard before disappearing through the front of the house. The explosion swallowed everything.
Glass burst outward in glittering waves. Timber folded in on itself with a deafening groan. Flames erupted through the collapsing roof as decades of dry wood surrendered all at once, the fire climbing into the Memphis sky with such violence that it illuminated the trees surrounding the property.
The second blast followed almost immediately as something inside ignited, reducing what little remained into a collapsing mountain of burning debris.
Within seconds, there was no house. Only the place where Marius Myles had taken his final breath disappearing under the weight of its own destruction.
Yayo lowered the launcher first. “Welp...” he muttered, dusting imaginary dirt from his hands. “Now he homeless.”
“Idiot.” Cassian laughed under his breath.
The two of them slung the launchers over their shoulders and started back toward the Cybertruck where Kade waited with his arms folded, watching the last of the structure collapse into itself.
Before climbing into the driver’s seat, he stopped.
His attention drifted away from the fire and swept slowly across the tree line until it settled directly on my truck hidden in the darkness.
Even from that distance, I knew the exact moment he found me.
“Nigga notices everything,” I murmured under my breath.
He never called out, walked over, or questioned why I was there.
Instead, he simply held my gaze for a quiet moment before giving the slightest nod, an understanding passing between us that neither of us felt the need to put into words.
I returned the gesture just as subtly, and with that, the moment was over.
Kade climbed into the Cybertruck, closed the door, and moments later the taillights disappeared down the gravel road with his brothers riding beside him, leaving nothing behind except the crackling remains of a house that would never tell its story.
I watched the flames until the roof surrendered, collapsing into itself beneath the weight of the fire.
Marius Myles had spent his entire life surrounded by people he controlled, manipulated, and convinced they couldn’t survive without him.
Yet when the smoke settled and the last chapter of his story came to an end, there wasn’t a soul standing beside him.
In the end, he died exactly the way he’d lived.
Alone.