Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
CHAUNCEY
It’s been a long time coming. I ain’t a hundred percent yet… but I’m back—and that’s all that matters. I shift slightly in the chair, rolling my shoulder once to test the lingering stiffness in my body.
The pain is still there, but it ain’t stopping shit.
Not anymore.
It’s time to get back to fucking business. Simmy, Coop, and True have been handling shit while I was laid up—snatched Kori up about a week ago, kept her tucked and quiet… waiting on me.
Now I’m here, which means it’s time to handle that bitch and everything connected to her—her, her cousins, and anyone who thought they could play with my life and breathe easy after.
I drag my hand down my face slowly, jaw tight, but even with all that sitting in front of me… my mind keeps drifting back to her.
Rhy.
That call we had a week ago? Yeah… that shit is still sitting heavy on my chest. Show me something different. Her voice replaying like a warning—not a request, a condition. I exhale slowly, leaning back. She’s still in the city—that’s the only thing working in my favor right now—but time?
Time ain’t on my side.
Because I know her, when Rhy makes up her mind for real… she’s gone. No warning, no looking back.
Just gone.
I lean forward, elbows resting on my knees, eyes darkening as the weight of it all settles.
“I’ve got a few loose ends to tie up,” I mutter to myself, voice low and focused. “Then I’m coming for my wife.”
It’s time to take Kori off the fucking map.
My security team wheels me into the small interrogation room like a king brought to witness his betrayer. The wheelchair feels wrong—too stiff, too limiting.
I can fucking walk.
I rise anyway.
The light’s too bright, cutting across my vision, and every movement pulls at the stitches in my chest, pain flaring sharp—but I don’t stop. Bandaged up, barely healed, still fuckin’ dangerous, because of pain? That shit sharpened me.
Focused me.
Kori sits across from me, wrists curled tight in her lap.
The bravado she used to wear like perfume is gone—stripped clean.
Tonight, she smells like fear. Her mascara’s cracking at the edges, her lips trembling as if she’s trying to remember how to fucking lie, but the silence in this room ain’t giving her anything to work with.
She thought the city would protect her. It didn’t.
Not tonight.
I study her slowly, the way a predator studies something soft—something already caught. Every twitch, every breath, every flicker of panic in her eyes. When I speak, I don’t raise my voice. I don’t need to.
“You really called them pussy-ass niggas,” I say, calm. “You put a price on my fucking life.” Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out—just air.
She swallows hard. I step closer, slow and deliberate, the distance between us shrinking like her fucking options.
“I—I didn’t mean for him to?—”
Her words tangle, tripping over themselves as she throws out names and excuses, anything she thinks might soften what the fuck she did—but in this room?
That shit sounds thin, weak as fuck, and useless.
“So, those niggas weren’t supposed to kill me?” I ask, my voice low. “They weren’t supposed to shoot me in the chest and leave me to fucking die, hoe?”
Kori’s face fractures right in front of me, her defenses crumbling in real time.
“No! I—I wanted to embarrass you… And that whore you brought to the clinic. Make you look stupid. Make her look stupid. I didn’t want—I didn’t want you dead.”
I tilt my head slightly, studying her.
“You wanted me humiliated,” I say. “A nigga can’t fucking humiliate me. Ask them pussy ass niggas how I gave it up when they stepped to me.”
I take another step closer.
“You wanted a photo. A rumor. A fucking moment. You wanted to be the one to take me down a hoe.”
Tears finally start falling. She drags her hands down her face, the truth ugly and exposed.
“You were disrespecting me,” she mutters.
I let out a short, humorless breath.
“How? I ain’t never promised you shit. I got a fucking wife—she’s the only woman I’m promising anything.”
“You were disrespecting everybody,” she shoots back weakly.
“And?”
That one word hits heavier than anything else.
“I thought… if you looked scared… you’d—you’d listen. I didn’t think?—”
Her voice breaks, collapsing into nothing.
Simmy’s recorder hums softly on the table. Coop and True stand behind me like shadows—silent, unmoving.
And the room?
The room holds her confession like it’s alive. “You made a list… and you checked it off with bullets,” I say, each word a match struck in the dark. “Do you know what you brought to my fucking door, hoe?”
Kori shakes her head, breath shallow, eyes wide with something close to panic.
“I’m sorry… I’m so sorry. I never wanted?—”
“Sorry ain’t fixing lungs pierced or a damn near a month of silence,” I cut in, steady. Controlled. “You weren’t a victim.”
I pause for a beat. I don’t even want to handle her like this, but I got too.
“You were the architect.”
Her shoulders collapse under that. Whatever is she holding on to?
Gone.
And then it spills.
Kori drops her cousins’ names and numbers, including burner numbers, along with their locations. All of it comes out messy and rushed—like she thinks the truth might save her if she gives enough of it. I listen quietly.
Still.
Each word settles into me like another scar I gotta carry. By the time she’s done, the room feels heavier. I’m low-key full, alive with everything she just confessed. She looks up at me like she’s waiting for something.
A decision, hoping I give her mercy. She made a fucking mistake. I lean forward slowly, elbows resting on my knees. The lines in my face pull tight—the nigga who lay in that hospital bed and the one who runs this fucking city?
Same nigga.
A different fucking moment.
“You thought this shit would teach me humility,” I say.
I paused before I really went in.
“It didn’t.” My eyes lock onto hers. “It taught me how fucking small and dumb you are.”
She starts crying harder now, shaking her head as if she can undo it.
“Hoe, you tried to play with my fucking life… and forgot what you were holding.”
I don’t raise my voice.
I don’t need to.
“I’m not killing you in some dark alley,” I continue, quiet but deliberate. That makes her look up—hope flickering where it shouldn’t.
And I kill it.
“I’mma take yo ass off the map for this shit.”
Her breath breaks into sobs.
“Please… please don’t?—”
Simmy shifts slightly behind me, her voice cutting through her crying like it means shit.
“Aye, it’s too late for that,” he says. “You should’ve thought about it before you called that hit. What the fuck do you think this is?”
I don’t say anything.
I don’t need to.
They approach her swiftly and efficiently. She offers no resistance, only weight and broken sounds as they lift her from the chair. She is escorted, not recorded, but cataloged.
The door opens. Then it closes. And just like that… Kori Johnson disappears. The city won’t remember her tomorrow.
Outside, the night waits.
Inside… the clean, surgical work of dismantling the lie is just beginning.
They bring the cousins in like fresh evidence—shackled, hog-tied, eyes wide. These pussy-ass niggas try to spin a story that won’t fucking stick. Simmy plants his phone on the table, camera rolling. Coop and True stand in the doorway, muscle and shadow. It’s time to crack these niggas.
The room smells like cheap perfume and fear. Coop cracks his knuckles, not for show.
“Y’all niggas played with fire; be prepared to get burned.”
We started handling these niggas one by one. Light work. I got a few more loose ends to tie up before getting back to the real business, Rhy.