Chapter 6
Kenya didn’t flirt.
That was the first thing that fucked me up.
After a year of us working together, every girl around campus knew who I was.
Kenya told them I was her best friend who attended the community college down the road.
Girls laughed louder when I walked past. Straightened their clothes.
Asked questions they already knew the answers to, just so I’d look at them.
Kenya didn’t do any of that.
She treated me like a variable.
And that was worse. Did she think she was too good for a Nigga like me?
That couldn’t be true, right? We both moved weight for the same reason: we wanted to protect our siblings.
I smoothed my hand over my coils, realizing I needed a shape-up.
A Nigga was trippin’ on some simp shit, worried about YaYa when she wasn’t checkin’ for me.
Cherry University sat too clean for the kind of money moving through it. Brick buildings, trimmed hedges, security guards with empty eyes who thought safety came from uniforms instead of awareness. The kind of place parents paid for peace of mind, and kids paid for ignorance.
Our operation worked because we thought differently. Whenever I would press her about being a beginner and not being built for this life. She would smile faintly and say, “And you ain’t never been in systems engineering. Yet here we are.”
Touché.
In a year, Cherry University was humming.
Not loud.
But efficient.
Runners rotated without knowing each other. The product never stayed in one place longer than twenty-four hours. Drops were disguised as study groups, tutoring sessions, and fake Bible meetings. Kenya called it noise camouflage.
“People don’t question activity if it looks productive,” she told me. “That’s how institutions survive scrutiny.”
She didn’t talk about killing, but was ready and kept her piece at all times.
She didn’t romanticize violence.
She planned around it.
That scared me more than any gun ever had.
I started staying in her single dorm longer than I needed to, pretending to be too high or drunk to make the trip back to campus.
I began showing up even when everything was running smoothly.
I enjoyed watching her work and listening to her talk.
She would nerd out about the weirdest fucking things, like collecting all the Furbies while singing along to the 3LW album.
But as irritating as Shawty was, I couldn’t shake her fine ass.
I would find myself staring at her full lips and lying about daydreaming when she would call me out for staring.
One night, I found her sitting on the steps outside the engineering building, notebook balanced on her knee, pen tapping against her lip.
“You good?” I asked.
She looked up. “Yeah. Just thinking.”
“Dangerous hobby,” I said.
She smirked. “You’d know.”
I sat beside her.
“You ever think about what we’ll do next?” she asked.
“After what?”
“After the system works,” she said. “After it scales. After that, it outgrows this campus.”
I thought about Crestwood. About blood and names and legacy. I thought about keeping my brother X safe and making enough money that Mom could get an in-home nurse to manage her Lupus medications and help her try natural remedies and cook vegan foods to ease her flare-ups.
“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”
She nodded. “Me too.”
Silence settled between us.
“What you have in mind, Bestie?” I smiled.
YaYa opened her mouth to respond when some corny motherfucka walked up to her with roses in his hand.
He was some pretty-boy from one of the fraternities, jogging up like he had permission to exist in her space. He leaned down and kissed her cheek too casually.
My jaw tightened before my brain caught up.
“Hey,” he said. “You ready?”
“Almost,” she replied, closing her notebook. “I told you I had work.”
“It’s always work,” he laughed.
She stood and slung her bag over her shoulder.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Zay,” she said.
She didn’t explain where she was going, and that pissed me the fuck off.
I stayed sitting there long after they walked off.
I didn’t recognize this green-eyed monster on my back. I was pacing around campus.
I knew I should take my ass home, get some pussy, and some food. But as I scrolled through my Blackberry deciding which girl I would fuck tonight, I got angrier.
What if YaYa was fuckin’ this corny ass Nigga?
I went to the dining hall and gave the older Black lady at the front desk the biggest smile I could muster.
“Hi Miss Joyce, how you doin’ tonight?”
She smiled brightly. “You just as handsome and polite as you wanna be, Zayden.”
“Where’s Kenya? You know I’m technically not supposed to let the guest eat without the student on the plan.”
“She’s on a date, Miss Joyce.”
She gasped. “Oh, honey. Gone and get some food.”
I walked into the dining hall and grabbed a plate full of food. I looked around at the college kids in their sweatpants, hoodies, and Nike slides. They laughed loudly and had no cares in the world.
That pissed me the fuck off even more. Kenya wasn’t like these clowns and the one she was out with tonight.
I scarfed down my food and decided I was being creepy sitting on her campus waiting for her. If she didn’t want a Nigga, I would take my ass back to Crestwood and chill with a bitch that did.
As I walked out of the dining hall, head bowed and feeling raw, Miss Joyce yelled my name.
“Zayden, she’s yours. Go get your girl.”
Joyce’s voice felt motherly. My own mother was heavy in the streets before she got sick. She moved more coke than any King Pin I knew. She didn’t discuss feelings or crushes. Ms Joyce’s voice gave me permission.
That night, I found out his name.
Jordan Hale.
Business major.
Junior.
He lived on the third floor of Alder Hall, room 312. Corner room. The window facing the quad as if he wanted to be seen.
I waited until after midnight.
The campus changed after midnight. The noise died. The fake safety settled in. Security got lazy. Students got brave.
I parked two blocks out and walked the rest of the way, hoodie up, hands loose, breathing slow.
Jordan came back, and I was relieved when he entered his room alone without my YaYa.
He was laughing into his phone, drunk enough to feel important but sober enough to remember what happened next. He swiped into the dorm, shoulder-checking the door as if he owned it. I followed.
He didn’t hear me until the door to his room closed.
That click was final.
“Ayo,” I said.
He turned.
He was confused at first. Then he recognized me. The fear crept in, but he tried to pretend it wasn’t fear.
“Yo—who the fuck are you?”
I didn’t answer.
I crossed the room in three steps. I slammed him into the wall hard enough to knock the air out of his lungs. His phone hit the floor and skidded under the bed.
He gasped, hands scrambling.
I grabbed his collar and lifted just enough to keep his feet from settling.
“Rule one,” I said calmly, “don’t touch what doesn’t belong to you.”
He tried to swing.
But that was a bad decision.
I let go with one hand and drove my elbow into his ribs. He folded with a sharp, ugly sound and dropped to his knees.
I stepped back and let him breathe just enough to stay conscious.
This wasn’t about pain.
It was about memory.
“You've been around Kenya,” I continued. “You thought proximity meant access.”
He coughed, shaking his head.
“Rule two, keep your mouth shut or I’ll make sure it’s wired closed.”
I kicked his leg out from under him, and he hit the floor hard, cheek cracking against the tile.
I crouched down, so he had to look at me.
“Don’t look at my girl,” I said. “Don’t speak to my fuckin girl.”
I stood and dragged him up by the back of his shirt, spun him, and shoved him face-first onto his bed. I pressed my knee into his spine
He started crying then.
“Please, man,” he said. “I promise– I promise to leave her alone.”
“I know you will,” I said. “That’s why you're still breathing.”
“You’re gonna change schools,” I told him. “Quietly. Quickly. No goodbye tour. No explanations.”
He nodded fast.
“You’re gonna forget her name,” I continued. “You’re gonna forget her face. And if I hear even a whisper that you remembered wrong…”
I let the sentence hang.
He sobbed harder.
I stood, straightened my hoodie, and stepped back.
Then I kicked the bed frame.
Once.
Hard.
It cracked just enough to sound expensive.
He flinched like I’d hit him again.
I walked to the door.
Before I opened it, I spoke once more.
“This was mercy,” I said. “Don’t confuse it with kindness.”
After the frat boy disappeared from her orbit, things shifted between us— Kenya didn’t mention him again.
She just worked.
Harder.
Smarter.
She started bringing me into her world the way people did when they trusted you not to break it. Late-night labs. She explained code the same way I explained corners—clean, deliberate, assuming intelligence instead of begging for it.
“This isn’t about hiding,” she told me once, fingers flying over keys. “It’s about blending. When systems don’t stand out, nobody interrogates them.”
“You talk about this shit like it’s alive,” I said.
She shrugged. “It is. Systems adapt. People don’t.”
That felt like a warning.
The money came in steadily. Kenya tracked everything. Every dollar had a job. Every expense was justified. She made me reroute funds I’d already gotten comfortable with just because the numbers said the pattern was getting lazy.
“You like habits,” she said once, tapping my notebook. “Habits get traced.”
I laughed. “You lecturing me now?”
“No,” she replied calmly. “I’m protecting what we’re building.”
What we’re building.
She never said only one of our names when she said it. She never claimed credit, never softened her tone.
And I found myself listening harder than I ever had.
Xavier had noticed me changing.
“You're different,” he said one night when we were back in Crestwood, counting money in silence.
“How?” I asked.
“You're thinking more,” he replied. “Less reacting.”
I didn’t answer.
Because the truth was, Kenya had changed the way I moved without ever telling me to.
She didn’t challenge my authority.
She expanded it.
I started running things the way she would’ve—anticipating fallout, insulating people, planning two exits for every move. I stopped enjoying chaos. Stopped mistaking noise for control.
One night, she invited me to sit in on a meeting I wasn’t supposed to attend.
Four students. Two guys. Two girls. All nervous. All were thinking they were about to get blessed with an opportunity.
Kenya ran the room.
Not loud. Not intimidating but present.
“You don’t need to know the whole plan,” she told them. “You just need to know your role. You’ll be compensated fairly. You won’t be overworked. And if you talk out of turn, you’ll be removed quietly.”
One of the guys laughed.
“Removed how?”
She looked at him. Really looked at him.
“You’ll lose access,” she said. “And people lose interest in what doesn’t provide access.”
The room went silent.
When they left, I leaned back against the wall, arms crossed.
“You could’ve scared them more,” I said.
She shut her laptop. “Fear makes people lie. Comfort makes them loyal.”
“You sure?”
She met my gaze. “You don’t lead with violence. You lead with structure. Violence is maintenance.”
I stared at her.
“So the opposite of me?” I asked.
She smiled, slowly. “I don’t intend to break their ribs and force them to transfer.”
I laughed in awe of her knowing the truth about that dumb frat boy.