YAHMARIA #2
“He just proved it. On the phone. Thirty seconds ago.” Syx looked at me, steady, none of the anger left.
Just that thing in his face that I didn’t know what to do with, the thing that kept being there regardless of how complicated I made it.
“You need to leave. Tonight. Before whatever Amai’s building gets here. ”
“Syx, you don’t understand. I have no access. Nowhere to go.”
“I understand perfectly. I understand that you’re trapped in a marriage to a man who doesn’t love you. I understand that your father is using you as a pawn in some fucked-up power game. And I understand that if you stay here, you’re going to end up dead.”
The words hung in the air between us.
Dead.
I’d been trying not to think about it. Trying to convince myself that Amai wouldn’t go that far. That my father would intervene. That somehow, I’d be okay.
But Syx was right.
I wasn’t okay.
I was a liability now. A loose end. A problem that needed to be solved.
And the Landrys didn’t leave problems unsolved.
“I can’t just leave,” I whispered.
“Why not?”
“Because—” I struggled to find the words. “Even if I escape the Landry’s my daddy may send someone after me. The last time I left he sent for me and had me dragged back to this hellhole.”
“Even if staying kills you?”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
Syx pulled me into his arms, and I let myself collapse against him.
“I know you’re scared,” he murmured against my hair. “I know this is fucked up. But I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You hear me? I’ll protect you.”
I wanted to believe him.
God, I wanted to believe him so badly.
But the truth was, I didn’t know who to trust anymore.
My father had left me exposed.
My husband had cut me off.
And Syx—sweet, loyal, twenty-year-old Syx—was offering me an escape I wasn’t sure I deserved.
“Think about it,” Syx said quietly. “But don’t think too long. Because time is running out. You have me. I got you.”
I looked at him.
Amai had made his move.
Now I had to make mine.
The question was: did I trust my father’s promises?
Or did I trust the boy who’d just offered to throw away his entire life to save mine?
I didn’t have an answer yet.
But I knew one thing for certain.
I was running out of time.
“Hold on,” he said.
He disappeared upstairs without another word and came back down with a Goyard duffle bag. He set it on the coffee table and unzipped it. The money was packed so dense, the zipper caught. He had to work it free with both hands.
“My mama’s life insurance,” he said. “Never touched it. I’ve just been sitting on it because I didn’t know what to do with it, and spending it felt wrong.
” He looked up at me. “I know you think I’m young as shit and fucked up in the head, but I ain’t no dummy.
I didn’t spend a dime of the insurance money from my mama’s death.
It’s just been sitting. We can have a life together Yaya.
I’ve known you for years. The good, bad, and ugly and I know what I’m getting into. ”
I looked at the money.
I looked at him—his mother dead, a bag full of grief he’d been carrying around waiting for a reason to put it down.
“They will find us Syx.”
“Then we go somewhere they don’t know to look.”
“That’s not—it’s not that simple.”
“I know it’s not simple.” He didn’t flinch. “I’m asking if it’s possible.”
I didn’t have an answer. But for the first time in a long time, the question felt like it was mine to answer. Not Victor’s. Not Amai’s.
Mine.
I picked up the bag and looked inside it—the clean, dense weight of it, the absolute realness of it—and something in my chest shifted a centimeter toward something I didn’t have a name for yet.
The front door slammed open.
The sound detonated through the house.
I dropped the bag and spun around, my heart already in my throat before my eyes caught up.
Amai.
He stood in the doorway, Priest a half-step behind him.
The energy that came in with him was different from his usual cold—this was colder, the kind that lived past anger on the far side of something more dangerous.
Priest moved to one side of the entry and stayed there, taking in the room without a word.
Something was wrong.
Something was catastrophically wrong.
Amai’s eyes locked on mine.
“Amai—”
“Your daddy,” he said, stepping inside, his voice perfectly controlled, “stole all our fuckin’ money out of the vault. Killed the staff and left them there like trash.”
The room tilted.
“I don’t—I didn’t know anything about—”
“I know you didn’t.” He was in my space now, towering over me, and I instinctively took a step back.
“The Landrys are about to put belt to ass, and it’s all because Victor decided to rob us blind.
” He stopped a few feet away, and up close I could see it—the damage from wherever he’d been last night, the exhaustion riding underneath the fury, the way his whole body was running on vengeance.
“Your daddy’s a dead man. And just thinking about putting a bullet in his head makes my dick hard.
A bullet would be too easy for him. Nah, I gotta take my time killing his ass after all the shit he put me through.
Forcing me to stay married to your slut bucket ass. ”
My breath caught in my throat.
“You need to chill the fuck out Mai!” Syx barked.
Amai’s eyes cut to him.
“Your Millie Vanilli ass always bullying somebody. Damn.”
“Syx—” I started.
“Shut the fuck up! This ain’t got shit to do with you suken place, night terror having ass. You got other shit you should be focused on. If I knew pussy would cure your ass I would’ve been paid a bitch to take you down through there. Stay in a child’s place nigga.”
“I’m not a fucking child,” Syx said, stepping forward. “And she didn’t have anything to do with what Victor did.”
I’d seen Amai angry before. I’d seen him cold, calculating, ruthless.
But this was different.
This was personal.
“Amai, please—”
“Please what?” His hand shot out and grabbed my arm. “You think you get to beg now? You think you get to play innocent?”
The grip was bruising, precise, a point being made rather than violence for its own sake. Pain shot up to my shoulder, and I gasped.
“Let her go.”
Syx had moved closer, his hands clenched at his sides.
“Syx, don’t—” I started, but Amai cut me off.
“You need to walk away,” he said.
“Not while you’re putting your hands on her.”
Something shifted in Amai’s face—not softening, more like something sharpening to a point. He released me and turned to face Syx fully.
“You fuckin’ her now, so you think you get to play hero. Captain Save-A-Hoe standing right here in my living room. You know what the rules are. Blood over bitches. Always.”
“I’m not playing shit.” Syx’s voice was steady in a way that surprised me. “And she’s not a bitch!”
The room went silent.
Even Priest shifted uncomfortably near the door.
“You don’t love her. You never did. And you want to talk about betrayal? You hid your whole marriage from Truth for months. You lied to her face while you were lying in her bed. What the fuck do you call that?”
“That’s not the same—”
“You threw your own brother in a concrete hole over a bitch. Now you’re in here putting your hands on Yaya because of something her father did. You a clown ass nigga on my mama.”
His jaw worked. Rage moved through his face—not guilt exactly, but the particular expression of a man who knows you’re right and hates you for saying it.
Then it closed off completely.
Amai moved so fast I barely saw it.
One moment he was standing still, and the next his fist was connecting with Syx’s jaw.
The sound was sickening—bone on bone.
Syx’s head snapped to the side, and he stumbled backward, but he didn’t fall.
And then he came at Amai.
“Syx, no!” I screamed, but he wasn’t listening.
He was younger, faster, and he fought with a desperation that made my chest ache.
He ducked under Amai’s next punch and drove his shoulder into Amai’s ribs, slamming him back against the wall.
The impact shook the room.
But Amai recovered instantly.
He grabbed the back of Syx’s neck and brought his knee up hard into Syx’s stomach.
Syx grunted, the air rushing out of him, his face twisting in pain.
But he didn’t stop.
He twisted out of Amai’s grip and landed a punch to Amai’s leg—right where I knew Winston had shot him earlier.
Amai hissed through his teeth, his face contorting.
“Syx, stop!” I screamed again, my voice breaking. “Please!”
But Syx wasn’t stopping.
He was fighting like his life depended on it.
Like my life depended on it.
And maybe it did.
“Priest break this shit up!” I pleaded.
“Family shit,” Priest said from the doorway, watching with mild interest and no intention of moving.
Amai grabbed Syx by the throat and drove him into the wall, his hand tightening. Syx’s face started going dark, his hands clawing at Amai’s wrist.
“You think you love her?” Amai snarled, his face inches from Syx’s. “You think this is love?”
“Yes,” Syx choked out, his voice barely a whisper.
And I saw it then.
The truth in his eyes.
He wasn’t lying.
He wasn’t playing games.
He was willing to die for me.
The realization hit me like a freight train.
“You chose her over me.” Amai’s face was inches from his. “Over family.”
“I chose her over a lie,” Syx rasped. “You don’t love her. You never did. And nigga you got some balls saying that shit after you violated the entire family over a BITCH!”
“That’s not the fuckin’ point!”
Amai threw him.
Syx’s body hit the coffee table, and the wood splintered under him. He hit the floor in a heap of broken furniture and didn’t move for a second.
“No—” I ran toward him, but Amai’s hand closed around my arm again and yanked me back.
I shoved him. I clawed at his grip. “Get off me—”
He shoved me.
Not a grab this time—a shove, and I flew backward onto the couch, tumbled off the edge, and hit the floor. I lay there for a moment with the air knocked out of me, the ceiling spinning.
“Yaya.” Syx was on his feet. He was bleeding from his lip and moving wrong on one side, but he was still trying to get to me. “Yaya—”