Chapter 24 #2
I glanced at the recorder, then at Xavier.
Got it.
We had what we needed. Zayden stopped recording.
“You told them he could have done it,” I repeated slowly. “You gave them motive. You gave them temperament. You gave them just enough to turn a question mark into a period.”
“I did what I had to do,” she said again. Quieter now. “I wasn’t losing everything just because he wanted to play detective over some man I used to know.”
“That ‘man you used to know’ is the reason Cameron exists,” I said. “And Cameron is the reason Jared’s appeal got blocked twice. She’s the reason Charles got close enough to touch my life. She’s the reason my kids almost lost their father and their mother in the same week.”
My mother’s eyes flashed.
“You made those choices,” she shot back. “You brought those damn King brothers into our lives. Alan warned me about what you were doing at the university. Don’t act blameless.”
I almost laughed. This was the same woman who had told me my whole life to stay away from the streets and never once asked why I walked into them in the first place.
“You want to know why I started moving product?” I asked quietly.
She scoffed. “Because you liked power. Because you liked money.
“No,” I said. “Because Jared went away and nobody was doing shit but praying and wringing their hands. Daddy was breaking in half. You were pretending we were fine. And Channy was still in elementary school, reading stories, trying to escape our reality.
Channy sobbed softly.
“I needed money,” I continued. “Not for shoes. Not for bags but for his lawyers and his commissary. I had to care for his kids. For the nieces and nephews, you only half-claimed on holidays. I built a whole system to fix what you helped break.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it.
I leaned in.
“You didn’t just give them Jared,” I said. “You flipped him for a man who never claimed you in the daylight and a child you refused to stand next to. You betrayed him to protect a life that was already dying.”
The room went quiet.
My mother’s shoulders sagged for the first time in my life.
She looked… old.
Not just in years. In decisions.
“I did my best,” she whispered.
“No,” I said. “You did what was easiest for you.”
We sat in that for a moment.
I felt Channy shaking beside me. I wanted to reach for her, but I didn’t because I needed my Baby Bear to realize her mom deserved to die.
“For what it’s worth,” I said finally, voice softer, “Jared never stopped loving you. He never stopped waiting for you to tell the truth.”
She laughed bitterly. “Boys will love their mamas through anything.”
“Not anything,” I replied. “Just long enough.”
Channy wiped her face. “What happens to her now?” she whispered.
I looked at Zayden.
His face was unreadable.
“That depends,” he said.
My mother lifted her chin weakly. “On what? Are you going to kill me? Is that what this is? You're going to put a bullet in your own mother behind some thug shit?”
I stared at her.
“I don’t need you dead right now,” I said. “I need you to be useful.”
Xavier smiled, slow and humorless.
“Congratulations, Mrs. Davis,” he said. “You just became Exhibit A.”
She blinked.
“What?”
“You’re going to tell the court what you told us,” I said.
“About Jared. About your statements. About the DA. About how eager they were to hear from a grieving mother with a son who ‘might have done it.’ You’re going to say it under oath with the same enthusiasm you used when you sold him out the first time. ”
“And if I don’t?” she asked.
Zayden finally stepped forward.
He didn’t raise his voice.
“If you don’t,” he said, “I’ll still get Jared home, but you will spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder, wondering when today will be the day the King Brothers blow your head off from behind.”
She flinched.
“Either way,” I added, “you’re done pretending to be the victim in this family.”
Her eyes filled.
She looked at me, really looked, maybe for the first time since I was eleven, and told her I’d handle my own hair from now on.
“You always thought you were better than me,” she whispered.
I shook my head.
“No, Ma,” I said. “I always thought I could be better for us.”
She looked away.
As we walked toward the door, I heard her voice behind me, small and raw.
“Kenya,” she said.
I paused but didn’t turn.
“Yeah?”
“I loved him,” she said quietly. “Your brother. I loved him.”
Pain hit me like it always did when Jared’s name settled in a room.
“I know,” I said. “You just didn’t love him enough to lose anything.”
I walked out without looking back.
Outside, the air felt colder. Cleaner. The sky was low and gray, as if rain were still trying to decide whether to fall.
Xavier lit a cigarette he didn’t intend to finish.
“She gave us everything we needed,” he said.
“Not everything,” I replied. “Just enough to make a judge nervous.”
Channy stood between us, arms wrapped around herself like she was trying to hold her ribcage together.
“She’s really going to testify?” she asked.
“She will,” Zay said. “Whether she wants to or not.”
I looked past him, down the block where the city stretched out in all its messy glory.
For the first time in a long time, I could see a version of the future where Jared wasn’t just a voice on the phone or a folded picture in my wallet.
And I could also see the price.
Because the evidence that was going to free my brother was built out of my mother’s confession.