CHAPTER 22
RECKONING
Baton Rouge gave him distance but no peace, grief for Chucky J sitting heavier with every day spent alone in unfamiliar streets, the uncertainty of his own worsening condition gnawing at him in the quiet hours he could no longer distract himself away from.
Two weeks in, healing enough to move without doubling over, he made the decision to go back — not for revenge alone anymore, though that still burned steady underneath everything, but because leaving Vanilla behind in Steve's grip felt like one more failure he couldn't add to the pile.
He found her carefully, avoiding anywhere Steve's people might be watching, catching her alone outside a corner store on an errand that had briefly slipped her free of supervision. She startled at the sight of him, relief and fear crossing her face in quick succession.
"You're alive," she breathed. "I heard about the ambush. I thought—"
"I'm alive. Chucky ain't." The words still cost him to say plainly. "Listen, I don't got much time before somebody notices you gone too long. I need your help."
He laid it out carefully, low and urgent — a plan to get close enough to Steve to finish what he'd started, using her position inside the operation to create an opening neither of them would get any other way.
It required her going back, staying visibly compliant, buying time until Varnell could find the right moment to strike.
Vanilla's face went pale at the suggestion. "You know what going back means."
"I know. I hate asking it of you. But it's the only way I see this ending different than it already has."
She was quiet a long moment, fear and exhaustion and something like reluctant trust all warring behind her eyes, before she nodded, slow and unwilling. "Okay. For a chance at actually being free of him. Okay."
? ? ?
She went back that same day, Varnell watching from a careful distance as she disappeared back into the world he was trying to help her escape, hating every part of the plan even as he told himself it was the only viable path forward.
It went wrong faster than either of them anticipated.
Whether Steve grew suspicious of her absence, or something else entirely tipped his hand, the violence that followed came swift and severe, far beyond anything Varnell had braced himself to witness happen to her.
He learned about it the way half the neighborhood seemed to — a local news segment covering an assault so brutal it had drawn police attention despite the world Steve normally operated well outside of any official scrutiny, Vanilla's name withheld but her situation unmistakable to anyone who knew what to look for.
Something in Varnell went past fury into something colder and more absolute the moment he understood what had happened, all the careful calculation he'd tried to apply the first time collapsing entirely into pure, focused intent.
He didn't warn anyone this time, didn't plan elaborate strategy, just moved with a grim, unhesitating purpose that carried him straight to wherever Steve was most likely to be found unguarded.
He found him that same night, alone enough that no elaborate ambush or intervention could save him this time.
What happened in that final confrontation, Varnell would never fully recount to anyone afterward — only that when it was over, Steve wouldn't be hurting anyone else, ever again, and Varnell walked away from it with blood on him that no amount of time would ever fully wash off, not just literally but somewhere deeper, in whatever part of him still remembered being a kid too scared to let Rodney pull a gun in that first robbery gone wrong.
Before leaving the city entirely, he found a way to get word to Vanilla, still recovering, a message passed carefully through someone trustworthy enough not to trace it back — that she was free now, that Steve would never touch her or anyone else again, that whatever she chose to do with that freedom was hers alone to decide.
He didn't wait for a response. Some closures didn't need one.
? ? ?
He left New Orleans behind for good after that, the city having taken more from him than he'd ever expected to survive losing, and made his way north with nothing but grief and exhaustion and the unanswered question of his own worsening health riding alongside him the entire way.
He reached out to Angellisa before crossing back fully into familiar territory, unwilling to walk straight back into Newark without knowing more about what waited there, arranging instead to meet her somewhere neutral — a quiet town in South Jersey neither of them had any history with, distance enough from everything heavy to allow just a little room to breathe.
She was waiting when he arrived, and the sight of her broke something open in him that grief and violence and endless running hadn't managed to fully close off — relief so overwhelming it nearly buckled his knees, months of separation collapsing instantly the moment she pulled him into her arms.
"You're really here," she said, holding him like she was checking to make sure he was solid, real, not another rumor or half-truth. "You look—" She pulled back, studying him properly, taking in the changes months of trauma had carved into him. "You look like you been through hell."
"Feels about right," he admitted.
They spent the weekend together in a small rented room, the world outside kept carefully at bay, no operation, no Steve, no Chucky J's absence pressing quite so hard for those few days, just the two of them relearning each other after months of distance and everything unsaid between them.
He told her more than he ever had before — not everything, some things still too dangerous or too painful to voice even to her, but enough.
Chucky J. The fire. New Orleans. The vague, terrifying uncertainty hanging over his own health since he'd walked out of that hospital without waiting for answers he was too afraid to hear.
Angellisa listened to all of it without flinching, holding his hand through the parts that shook hardest to say, and when he finally finished, she pulled him close again, quiet resolve in her voice.
"Whatever's coming," she said, "you ain't facing it without me again. I don't care how scary it get. I'm not going nowhere."
For the first time in longer than he could remember, Varnell let himself believe that might actually be true, and allowed the weekend's fragile peace to hold him a little longer before the rest of his life came calling again.