19. No Way Back
The rain started as soon as the clock hit midnight. The night was cold and dreary, as if the weather knew what we were up to as soon as the clock struck a new day. There was a cold and steady drizzle that coated the city in silver and made the prison look even more unforgiving than usual.
From the passenger seat, I stared through the windshield at Crestwood Correctional Facility.
The floodlights illuminated concrete walls that stretched toward the sky.
Guard towers stood watch over razor wire.
Security vehicles moved slowly around the perimeter.
Everything about the place screamed control.
Everything except the fact that Xavier knew every inch of it. I glanced in the rearview mirror.
My brother-in-law sat silently in the backseat beside Chanel.
The darkness inside our truck couldn’t hide the change in him.
Jared getting shot had awakened something old and vicious in him.
X wasn’t just angry. Anger burned hot; this felt more palpable.
It was the kind of rage that took its time.
Beside him, Chanel looked equally terrifying.
My Baby Bear hadn’t cried as much as she used to, and she was collecting bodies like the Tomb Raider, and I hated that.
Despite how hard I tried to keep her from this life, she still ended up a game piece on this board.
Chanel was always my light; she was happiness personified, and this cold silence wasn’t natural for her. Silence meant she was planning. And planning Chanel was a different animal entirely.
The radio crackled with commands from our lead soldier, Liem.
“Perimeter is secure.”
I glanced toward Zay. He mouthed “Bestie.”
And I smiled at him and mouthed “For the restie.”
Outside the prison, thirty of our soldiers were already positioned strategically in their all-black tactical gear around the perimeter.
They were watching and waiting for our signals and for us to communicate through the earpieces in our ears.
Nobody was here for heroics. Our soldiers knew the drill; nobody was here to play mobster and shine.
Everyone had a role, and as long as we stuck to it, we should all make it out of here alive.
Shit was weird that the warden did her check-in meetings at night, but it worked out perfectly for us.
In the dark, we could be in and out as if this mission never happened.
As the SUV rolled forward to the first checkpoint, I adjusted my glasses while reviewing the final set of credentials Alex had secured.
We had on correctional officer uniforms. We had fake names, fake clearances, but real access.
Enough to get us inside. Transport often happened overnight for prisoners being moved, so it was just another day for the folks working the checkpoint.
No reason to be suspicious. A correctional officer stepped toward the vehicle.
He turned on his flashlight and wore a bored expression.
He had tired eyes and leaned down toward the passenger’s side window, where I was seated.
I felt Zay’s hand settle on my knee, grounding me.
But as long as I had my man next to me, I would always be grounded.
The officer checked paperwork and looked at IDs, but didn’t even bother to cross-check the IDs or to search the SUV. He simply waved us through.
The first gate opened. The heavy steel moved slowly, and the sound echoed through the night.
For some reason, that noise made my stomach twist. Because once we crossed into the facility, there was no pretending anymore.
Bodies were going to drop, and as long as I succeeded in taking Cameron’s last blood relative away from her, I didn’t give a shit about who else died in the crosshairs.
The gate closed behind us with a metallic boom.
Ahead of us stretched rows of buildings connected by fenced walkways and security checkpoints.
The prison looked almost peaceful from the outside, but I knew better.
Places like this were built from pain and from secrets.
Xavier leaned forward from the backseat. His voice was low but full of authority. “The administrative wing is on the east side.”
I nodded, and Zayden drove in the direction Xavier directed.
He continued. “The warden’s offices are on the second floor.”
“You sure she’s going to show up like everything is normal?” Chanel asked.
“She’s arrogant,” I answered. “People like Carmen always think they’re the smartest person in the room.”
Nobody argued, because everything we’d learned supported that theory.
Alan hid. Charles manipulated. Cameron was obsessed.
But Carmen operated openly as if she were a god.
She thought her position protected her. She thought owning a place like this made her untouchable.
The SUV came to a stop near the administration building.
Rain tapped softly against the roof. For a moment, nobody moved.
The four of us sat there together in silence, weighing what we had gon over countless times in the war room.
Then Zay looked at me. “You ready?”
I thought about Jared. About Camilla sleeping beside his hospital bed. About Genesis asking if her uncle was dead. About JoJo crying. About Jazzy screaming for her father, and my twins being so traumatized that they had nightmares.
My answer came easily. “Yeah.”
I opened the door, and together we stepped into the prison.
The administrative wing felt nothing like what you would assume a prison yard would look like.
There were no inmates here or loud cell blocks.
There were just fluorescent lights and quiet hallways.
The four of us moved through the building with purpose.
Every step felt heavier than the last. I knew a place like this was used to receiving COs from other facilities for transport, but I couldn’t help but worry. What if someone recognized X?
We kept moving as if we belonged there, not breaking stride to avoid looking suspicious. Alex had already cut the camera in this wing of the prison to avoid catching our faces on camera.
A cleaning cart sat abandoned near the elevators.
Several offices remained lit despite the late hour.
Xavier led the way. I watched his eyes scan every hallway and doorway.
While he tried to remain cool and collected, I could see his shoulders tense being here.
Prison never left him completely; this place still lived somewhere inside him, and I hated that we brought him back here.
A few minutes later, we reached the warden’s office suite. The nameplate beside the door read Warden Juliet Anderson. What a fuckin’ joke, I thought.
Chanel stared at the plaque for several seconds. Her jaw tightened.
“Let’s move,” Xavier muttered.
The office was larger than I expected. There was expensive furniture and awards on the wall.
According to her degree in criminal justice, she also attended Cherry University.
The idea of that made me feel unsteady. How had I not recognized her?
We were around the same age. Was I her mission, the way Chanel was Cameron’s?
I took note of the photographs and certificates that lined her desk.
From the outside looking in, she seemed like the perfect image of success, when in reality, Carmen Price was living the perfect lie.
I walked toward the desk while Zay searched the filing cabinets.
Chanel moved straight toward the computer.
Nobody wasted time. According to the calendar Alex hacked, she should be arriving within the next fifteen minutes for her meeting.
We were all looking for the same thing: any kind of proof that someone was helping to connect the pieces of our past with our present. I was hoping for something that explained how information kept finding its way back to our enemies, and that answer came faster than expected.
“Kenya.”
I looked up.
Chanel stood frozen beside a stack of files.
Her face had gone pale.
“What?”
She handed me a folder.
Inside sat years of disciplinary reports, transfers, sentence modifications, and informant agreements, and one of those names looked familiar as fuck.
The name Ty’Quan Michaels, the same one who ran with Zay and X for years before he got picked up on a charge for kilos of coke.
Quan’s family was well set up. I remember Zay going out of his mind, worried Quan would talk, but he stayed solid, and in return, Zay got him the best legal counsel, which knocked a fifteen-year bid down to five.
Quan should be close to surviving the end of his time now.
Something wasn’t adding up. Why turn now?
I felt my stomach drop. But as much as I was in denial, it had to be him.
He was the only one still alive who rode with X and Zay back in the day.
He was at the skating rink that night when tensions were high, and Chanel’s hardheaded ass ran into that alleyway, and I ran after her, trying to convince her to come back to the skating rink.
“Look at the dates,” Chanel said.
I looked again, and the pattern was impossible to ignore.
He got into a lot of trouble in here. His name popped up several times, connecting to other inmates’ murders and supposed suicides, but according to the record, every time Quan should have received additional time, he mysteriously didn’t.
Every time his record should have gotten worse, it improved, and he was written letters of good standing from the warden.
Quan was being protected, and I’m sure that protection was for feeding any information he had about my family to the sick-ass Price family.
“Fuck,” Zay breathed.
I looked toward him. His expression had darkened immediately.
Because now he understood that Quan wasn’t just another inmate.
He was feeding information to Carmen, who was feeding it to Cameron.
They were hoping his testimony would put us all away.
But you couldn’t have a testimony without a testifier.
All this time, we’d been chasing shadows; meanwhile, the source sat inside the prison system.
“How much does he know about y’all’s operation?” I asked quietly.
“Enough.” Xavier’s voice sounded cold. “Nothing about what we do now, but all of the early gettin’ it out of the mud shit he was privy to.”
Xavier looked shaken because now that we knew the culprit, he was calculating all of the dirt Quan had witnessed over the years.
X cleared his throat. “If Quan had been talking all these years? There was no telling what information reached the Price family.”
Chanel’s voice barely rose above a whisper. “Why would Quan help them?”
Zay chimed in. “I’ll never fully understand the motive of a rat to turn on folks that treated them like family, but what I assume is that he was desperate enough to do anything to get out of here. But now this Nigga ain’t leaving here alive.”
The prison had been compromised long before we realized it, and that made tonight feel even bigger. Because this wasn’t just about the Prices anymore. This was about every lie built on top of another, every betrayal and every secret.