Chapter 17
Kenya’s beaten body was laid across the back seat of my armored Escalade as a queen dragged from war.
Her face was swollen, one eye was puffed, her lips were split, and her wrists were raw where the restraints had bitten her.
Every inhale looked like it hurt. Every exhale looked like it cost her pride.
Channy kept turning around from the passenger seat, gun in her lap, eyes locked on the window as the city slid by.
Xavier drove like a man who’d been waiting years for the chance to steer again.
His hands were steady, eyes cold, movements economical.
He didn’t speed. Didn’t weave. Didn’t give anybody a reason to remember us.
That was the difference between the old us and the new us.
Old us would’ve left a trail of smoke.
Miles sat in the third row, talking low into his phone, already giving instructions. His voice was measured, law school diction wrapped around a street boy’s instincts.
People loved a man like Miles. He was useful in rooms that hated men like me, and X. We sent him to meet people who would be turned off by our tattoos.
Kenya had introduced him years ago as safe.
Xavier had vouched for him after they were locked up together, and Miles was exonerated.
Since he got home, his private investigator business had helped Crown Logistics tremendously.
He was the face we sent in to close, but was as ruthless as we were behind closed doors.
“Take the long way,” Miles said, still on the phone. “No highways, I don’t trust the randomness tonight.”
Something about the way that motherfucka said it felt shifty. I never got that feeling before, but I learned early on to trust your gut.“We are already in handcuffs,” I said. “We just don’t know whose name is on the metal yet.”
Miles finally looked at me then, and he smiled like I was joking.
I didn’t smile back.
Channy’s eyes flicked to mine for half a second—quick, curious, like she felt the temperature drop too.
Kenya didn’t move. But her fingers twitched once against the seat, like she wanted to reach for me and refused to.
That was my wife.
Even half-broken, she still tried to protect the system. Still tried to keep my emotions from becoming the headline.
I hated that I loved her more for it.
We got her to the private clinic on the east edge.
It was one of ours, earmarked for our soldiers.
No signage. No uniforms. No paperwork would exist stating that Kenya Davis-King was in the building.
The nurses looked at my wife the way people looked at storms: with respect and fear, as if they moved wrong, the weather might punish them.
They tried to wheel her away fast.
I stopped them with two fingers on the gurney.
Kenya opened her good eye and found me.
“Don’t,” she rasped.
“Don’t what?” My voice was calm. My chest wasn’t.
“Don’t… turn this into… a massacre,” she said. “We move smart.”
Channy’s mouth tightened like she was swallowing something hot.
Xavier stared at the floor.
Miles held his hands up, like he was the reasonable one in the room. “She’s right, Zay. We need to be strategic.”
Kenya’s gaze slid to Miles for one second.
Not long.
Just long enough that if you knew her, you’d see it.
Kenya didn’t look at people when she trusted them.
She looked at them as she measured where they might break.
She looked away and focused back on me.
“Promise,” she whispered.
I bent down until my forehead hovered close to hers. I let her feel the heat of me without giving my body permission to make promises my mind couldn’t keep.
“I promise I’ll be smart,” I said.
Her eyelid fluttered.
“And slow,” she added, as if she knew me too well. She looked at me and whispered. “Where was Miles during the rescue mission?”
That was my baby, even in the midst of grueling pain, she was calculating loose ends. In the action of grabbing YaYa, I didn’t notice that Miles never made it inside. The rest of us were tattered and bruised, and he looked as if he just stepped out of a GQ magazine.
I exhaled through my nose.
They rolled her away.
The hallway swallowed her.
And that was when the gangster in me stood up fully.
I turned back toward my people.
Channy was already walking with purpose, gun tucked now, phone out.
Xavier’s hands were in his pockets, but his posture was tense and on edge.
Miles hovered like an adviser in a king’s court.
I looked at all of them and felt the shape of the war shift.
Charles didn’t just kidnap my wife. He triggered a response system that had been sleeping under marble, philanthropy, and board meetings.
No matter the corporate meetings and the tailored suits, I would always be Zay, the ruthless Nigga that would shoot you in the head for staring too long.
I hated that my wife was collateral, but the man who woke up was refreshing.
And this time, we weren’t going to fight like the streets.
We were going to fight like we owned the city.
Because Crestwood belonged to the fucking King brothers.
We had several war rooms. Of course, one in Kenya and our shared mansion, but the bigger one wasn’t in our home.
The mansion had cameras, contractors, staff, and a world that believed we were clean. It was beautiful, but it wasn’t safe for blood.
Not real blood. The one with grenades, C4, and illegal weapons was off-property.
The real war room was under the west-side office. There, we had concrete walls, signal jammers, and a wall of screens.
Men stood, heads bowed, waiting for directions.
Joel, my head of security, had maps projected and live city feeds displayed on the flat screens around the room. Financial overlays. He had a list of names arranged like targets on a whiteboard instead of people.
Kenya would’ve appreciated the layout.
She loved it when something ugly looked organized.
I took the seat at the head of the table and didn’t speak right away.
I listened.
To the hum of machines.
To the quiet breathing of men who were ready to die for a paycheck.
I listened to the faint vibration in my bones that always came before a storm.
Then I looked at Xavier.
“You see the bigger picture?” I asked.
Xavier nodded once. “This wasn’t a kidnapping. This was bait.”
Channy crossed her arms. “He wanted us out.”
“He wanted us visible,” I corrected.
Miles pulled up a chair. “He wanted leverage. But now that she’s out—”
I cut my eyes to him. Before today, I took him speaking up as proof he was a value to our organization, but today his ballsy move felt like treason.
“Now that she’s out, he still has leverage.”
Miles blinked. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning the law,” I said.
The word landed heavier than any gun.
Because guns were honest.
The law was theater with knives hidden in paperwork.
Xavier reached over and clicked a file open on the screen. A headline from a local blog had already started circulating with grainy footage from a traffic cam. The footage showed a black SUV and figures struggling.
People didn’t know it was Kenya.
But they knew something happened.
And once the internet smelled blood, it didn’t stop sniffing.
“Media’s moving,” Xavier said. “And police chatter is ugly.”
Channy’s face hardened. “They're gonna try to tie this to us. I’m a state official.”
“We don’t know that,” I said. “Don’t be paranoid. Remember, Charles doesn’t just want Kenya hurt. But don’t worry, sis. I would die before I let your name be smeared.”
I leaned back, letting the full shape of it settle in the room.
“He wants me, you, and Kenya exposed. He wants Chanel’s career hanging off a cliff, so she has to choose loyalty or survival.”
Chanel’s jaw flexed.
Miles leaned forward. “We can get ahead of it. I’ve got a relationship with—”
Xavier held up a hand. “No.”
Miles paused. “No?”
Xavier’s gaze stayed on the screen. “We don’t call friends. We call assets.”
Miles gave a tight smile. “Same thing.”
Xavier finally looked at him.
“No, the fuck it ain’t.”
The room went quiet.
I watched Miles carefully.
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t get offended, and he didn’t get loud.
He kept his face calm.
Too calm. If he wasn't dirty, he would take offense to the sudden questioning of his loyalty.
I filed it away.
Kenya would’ve filed it away, too.
Joel cleared his throat softly. “Boss… we got the first pressure report.”
“Talk,” I said.
He tapped the tablet, and the screens shifted.
“Charles’s cash flow took the first hit. Three shell accounts froze within the last hour. Two warehouses got flagged for inspection. And—”
I raised a hand. “That ain’t us.”
Joel hesitated. “No, sir.”
I leaned forward slightly.
“Who hit it?” I asked.
Joel swallowed. “Unknown. But… the pattern is familiar.”
Xavier’s eyes narrowed. “Show me.”
The screen zoomed in on the timing.
The freezes weren’t random.
They weren’t sloppy.
They were too clean.
They were… engineered.
Xavier stared at the data for a long moment.
Then he said quietly, “That’s Kenya.”
Channy’s eyes widened. “How?”
“She doesn’t just escape,” Xavier murmured. “She rearranges the room on her way out.”
I let out a slow breath.
Even half-dead on a gurney, my wife had been doing math.
I should’ve been relieved.
Instead, I was furious all over again, because it meant she’d been awake enough to know she needed to help us before we helped her.
I stood.
“Good,” I said.
The room watched me.
I walked to the board and placed my palm flat against it, grounding myself the way Kenya taught me when my rage got too loud in my body.
“We don’t hunt Charles tonight,” I said.
Channy snapped, “Zay—”
“We don’t hunt him,” I repeated, harder. “We corner him.”
Xavier nodded, already with me.
Miles opened his mouth like he wanted to advise.
I cut my eyes at him.
He closed it.
“Pressure points,” I continued. “We squeeze what he loves.”
Channy scoffed. “He doesn’t love people.”
“He loves control,” I said. He loves money. He love image. He loves leverage.”
I pointed at Joel.
“Start the seizures,” I said. “Every asset we can touch without making noise.”