Chapter 1 #2
“This is where you should be moving,” I said, highlighting a stretch just off campus. “No cameras. No security patrols. Student parking overflow. You keep transactions under ninety seconds, you rotate locations every week, and you stop dealing directly with buyers.”
He frowned. “Then who does?”
I looked at him over the edge of my screen.
“People who can afford to get caught.”
That did it.
He leaned back, studying me as I’d finally stepped into the light.
“You planning to recruit?” he asked.
“I’m planning to structure,” I said. “Recruitment comes later. Nothing connects back to you.”
“And where do you fit in all this?” he asked.
There it was. The question men always asked once they realized a woman knew more than she should.
I closed my laptop.
“I fit in where I’m needed,” I said. “Right now, that’s making sure you don’t bring Crestwood heat into a college town that doesn’t know how to survive it.”
His eyes held mine, searching for something. Maybe he was looking for fear, greed, or ego, but he wouldn’t find any of that here.
“You don’t sound scared of me, and I’m not fuckin’ with that,” he said.
“I’m not,” I replied.
That earned me a slow nod.
“You got a lot of heart, Lil Mama,” he said. “Say I listen. What do you get?”
I folded my hands on the table.
“Control,” I said. “Distance. Clean money.”
He laughed quietly. “Everybody wants clean money.”
“Not everybody knows how to make it,” I shot back.
I opened my notebook and slid it toward him.
Inside were numbers and margins. I had calculated costs and risk percentages. The projections looked like engineering formulas in the event that anyone ever found these plans. It looked like no more than homework equations.
His brows drew together as he scanned the page.
“This is… detailed,” he said.
“I don’t do vague,” I replied.
He looked up at me slowly.
“Do you know what you’re looking at,” I asked?
“A Nigga ain’t dumb. It’s calculus.”
That made my panties wet. The ruthless Zayden King was smart.
“You from Crestwood,” he said again,
“No, I’m from North End.”
He laughed. “A suburban girl cosplaying like a Queen Pin.” But he looked me right in the eye, a sign of respect. “But I’m going to try this because you don’t move like anybody I know.”
That was the moment. The exact second something shifted.
Zayden King leaned forward, lowering his voice even though nobody was close enough to hear.
“You got someone backing you?” he asked.
I held his gaze.
“No,” I said. “I’ve got myself.”
Something like respect flickered across his face. Not loud. Not obvious. But real.
“You know my brother’s reputation,” he said. “You know mine. You know what happens if you cross us.”
“Yes,” I said. “And you know what happens if you don’t listen to me. We both go fuckin’ down.”
He smiled then.
A predator recognizing another one.
“You always walk into rooms like this?” he asked.
“Only when I intend to own them.”
Silence stretched again, thick and charged.
Finally, he stood.
“You’re an engineer,” he said, more statement than question.
“Yes.”
“And you’re telling me you want to build something,” he continued. “Not just hustle.”
“I’m telling you I already am,” I said.
He nodded once.
“Alright, Kenya,” he said. “We’ll try it your way.”
Try.
The word hung between us, loaded.
He turned to leave, then paused.
“You know this changes things,” he said. “Once you step into this, you don’t get to step back out. You’re collateral now.”
I didn’t look away.
“I’ve been stepping into things people don’t survive since I was a kid,” I said. “This is just math.”
He watched me for another second, then walked off, disappearing between the shelves like a shadow.
I sat there long after he was gone, my pulse steady, my mind already ten moves ahead.
Because this wasn’t about money.
It was about control.
And for the first time, I wasn’t just protecting the world I came from, I was building a new one where I wasn’t ignored but at the center.
I packed my bag, slid my chair back in quiet increments, and folded myself into the stacks as if I belonged there.
By the time I walked out into the night, the campus had gone soft. Lights warm in dorm windows. Laughter floating up from somewhere, it didn’t matter. A world built to feel temporary, like consequences were something you aged into.
I crossed the parking lot and got into my car.
Now that midterms were over, I could go home and check on my little sister, Channy.
The drive back toward North End took fifty-eight minutes if you didn’t speed and forty-five if you knew where the county lines blurred.
I took the long way. Always did. Gave my mind time to settle.
Gave me space to decide which version of myself I was about to be when I arrived.
The radio stayed off. Silence was cleaner.
Streetlights flickered past, one by one, like a pulse. Somewhere between mile markers and memory, Zayden King slipped into a place in my head I didn’t usually let people occupy.
He wasn’t reckless. He wasn’t loud. He wasn’t sloppy. He was disciplined in a way that told me he’d already buried something, or someone, and learned from it. Men like that didn’t bluff. They didn’t posture. They moved when it mattered and stayed still when it didn’t.
Which meant if he agreed to my plan, he’d execute it.
That made him useful.
It also made him dangerous.
Crestwood announced itself before you ever saw it. The road dipped. The air changed. You could feel the city before it showed its face, like it was breathing just under the surface, waiting. Up the road, 15 more minutes, was our five-bedroom suburban house in North End.
I pulled into my parents' driveway just after eleven.
The house was quiet, lights off except for the lamp in the living room. That meant Chanel was home. My chest tightened automatically. I hadn’t even seen her yet, and already I was smiling brightly.
Inside, the familiar smells wrapped around me—cleaning solution, old wood, something fried earlier that hadn’t aired out yet. I was home, and that truth was both comforting, complicated, and heavy.
Chanel was curled up on the couch with her knees tucked to her chest, textbook open but untouched. She looked up when she heard my keys.
“Hey,” she said, soft like she was afraid of disturbing something.
“Hey Baby Bear,” I replied, dropping my bag by the door.
She smiled at me the way little sisters did when they still believed you were capable of fixing everything. It was a look that came with expectations. I carried those carefully.
“How’s college?” she asked.
“Fine,” I said.
She studied me for a second, eyes narrowing slightly. My Channy noticed more than people gave her credit for. She just didn’t always know what to do with what she saw.
“You eat?” she asked.
“I will,” I said. “Maybe later.”
She nodded, turning back to her book, but I could feel her attention linger as if she wanted to ask something else and didn’t know how.
I watched her for a moment. The curve of her shoulder.
The way she folded in on herself when she read, like the world was too loud even when it wasn’t.
She was four years younger than me. She still believed in clean lines.
In right and wrong. In love as something that saved you instead of something that costs.
She still saw the world in color when I saw things in black and white.
I swallowed.
“Chanel,” I said.
She looked up.
“I know I said you could visit me on my campus next weekend, but stay home,” I told her.
Her brows knit together. “Why?”
“Because I said so.”
She sighed. “YaYa—”
“Please,” I cut in, sharper than I meant to be. Then I softened it, because she deserved that much. “I’m behind on schoolwork, and I need to focus.”
Her lips pressed together, but she nodded. Chanel always did. She trusted me in a way that was both comforting and terrifying.
“Okay,” she said.
She went back to her book.
I stood there a moment longer, watching her breathe, letting the weight of it settle into me.
This was the part nobody ever saw.
The reason behind the decisions. The calculus behind the control.
I didn’t want Channy anywhere near what I was building.
Which meant I had to be far enough away to stop her from touching any part of this life Zayden and I were building.
Later, in my room, I spread my notes across the bed and ran through them again.
The campus maps, routes, schedules, and risk assessments.
Zayden’s face flickered through my mind.
His bright smile that I never seen before.
I spent years watching him from afar, and I never knew his smile was bright enough to light up a room.
I thought of his chiseled body and imagined what it would be like on top of mine.
I thought of how turned on he looked when I pulled my gun on him in the library.
Respect looked different on men like him.
My AIM messenger buzzed on my Sidekick.
KingZay111:
You serious about this pink gangsta?
I smiled, impressed that he managed to get my AIM profile.
HotGirlYaYa:
About systems? Always.
KingZay111:
Meet Me Tomorrow in Crestwood at the Deli.
I stared at the screen for a moment, then typed.
HotGirlYaYa:
Bring Your Ideas. We’re talking strategy.
KingZay111:
You’re bossy.
HotGirlYaYa:
You’ll live.
I set the phone face down and leaned back against the headboard, exhaling slowly.
Engineer by day. Queen in waiting by night.
The line between them was thinner than people thought.
Sometime after midnight, when the house had settled and the street outside went quiet, I got up and opened the small lockbox at the back of my closet.
Inside were things that didn’t belong to a nineteen-year-old girl with a scholarship and a careful smile.
Cash cleanly wrapped. Account numbers written in my own shorthand. A burner phone I’d never turned on in this house.
I ran my fingers over the edges of it all, grounding myself.
This wasn’t new.
I hadn’t stumbled into control because of Zayden King.
I’d been preparing for it long before he decided to bring his operation an hour out of Crestwood.
He didn’t know yet that he’d walked into a structure that already existed. I was already dealing at Cherry University, but I was building quietly—brick by brick. Zayden’s connections would amp up my operation.
Loving Chanel meant funding her law school dreams. I was saving for my Baby Bear’s future and for my brother, Jared’s, appeal attorney. It meant I needed money, and if that meant becoming something dangerous in the process?
So be it.
I closed the lockbox and turned out the light.
Tomorrow, the real work would begin.