Chapter 1
MONEY
One Year Later
I sat in the limo, watching the nighttime of the city roll past the tinted windows. Everything was different now. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, letting myself feel. Change. Therapy. Healing. Growth.
“I don’t need to talk to nobody about my feelings,” I insisted to Solei one morning as she pulled on her blazer for her session. “As long as we’re workin’ on us, everything is good.”
She turned to me with those eyes that could see straight through every wall I’d ever built and said, “Money, you need to heal the thirteen-year-old in you. You don’t think that’s important?”
That’s how I ended up in Dr. Lee’s office for a solo therapy session. At first, I sat there feeling stupid as hell, arms folded across my chest and my jaw tight. I was ready to give short answers until the hour was over so I could say I tried and never go back again.
But then Dr. Lee asked me something simple, and I swear that shit hit me harder than getting shot ever did. “When was the first time you stopped feeling safe as a child?”
Because the truth was… I couldn’t even remember feeling safe.
By thirteen, I’d already killed somebody.
I was already outside every day trying to survive.
Selling drugs before I even fully understood what I was becoming.
Watching addicts stumble around my neighborhood like ghosts.
Keeping money hidden in shoeboxes and under mattresses while still having homework in my backpack.
Dr. Lee leaned in and asked, “How did that make you feel?”
I damn near laughed in her face. Where I came from, feelings got you killed.
Fear got you killed. Hesitation got you killed.
So I learned to shut off every emotion except anger.
Anger made me money. Anger made people respect me.
Anger made people scared to cross me. But somewhere along the line, that anger became the only thing I knew how to carry.
For over twenty years, I’d told myself that killing Steez was survival.
That it was the only way to eat, to provide, and to become somebody.
But sitting in Dr. Lee’s office, I realized it was more complicated than that.
It was also a fear of being invisible and powerless.
It was the fear of ending up like my father–gone and worthless.
“You’ve spent your entire adult life trying to prove you’re not your father,” Dr. Lee said, like she could read my mind. “But in doing so, you became something your mother never wanted you to be, and she died knowing she couldn’t save you… from you.”
“So what the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” I demanded, my voice rough.
“Forgive yourself,” she said simply. “And then do better.”
That first session broke something open in me.
I started going every week. Solo sessions where Dr. Lee dragged every demon I’d ever buried into the light.
We talked about my mama. My father’s absence.
The violence. The control. The way I’d built my entire identity around power because I was terrified of being powerless again. And we talked about Solei.
“You don’t just love her,” Dr. Lee said during one session, about three months in. “You’re addicted to her. She’s the proof that you’re not the man you were at thirteen. She’s educated, beautiful, moral–everything you thought you could never have. And losing her would mean losing that proof.”
“So you’re sayin’ I don’t really love my wife?”
“I’m saying you love her so much that you’ve made her responsible for your redemption, and that’s not fair to either of you.”
I sat with that for weeks because she was right.
I’d spent sixteen years trying to be worthy of Solei, but I’d never actually done the work to become worthy.
I’d just tried to control everything around her–who she talked to, where she went, what she did–because I thought that’s what love looked like.
But it wasn’t love. It was fear that if I let go, even a little, she’d see who I really was and leave.
With me going to solo therapy, our marriage therapy started going more easily.
There were still moments where I’d slip back into old patterns, trying to control her schedule or question her decisions.
And she’d shut down, her walls going up.
One day, Solei sat on the opposite end of the couch, her body language closed off, her arms crossed.
I sat there feeling like I was on trial.
“Solei,” Dr. Lee said gently, “what do you need from Money that you’re still not getting?”
Solei was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, “I need him to trust me.”
“I do trust you,” I protested immediately.
“No, you don’t.” She looked at me, her eyes tired. “You say you do, but then you check my phone. You ask Check to keep tabs on me. You question every decision I make about wanting to open my own law firm like I’m a child who can’t be trusted to live her own life.”
“I’m just tryin’ to keep you safe, Soul.”
“I understand that, but I need you to trust that I can keep myself safe, babe. I need you to trust that I’m not going to leave you after every disagreement. I need you to trust that I chose you, and will choose you any day.”
Her words hit me like a freight train because she was right. I trusted that she loved me. But I didn’t trust that her love was strong enough to survive my flaws, my past, my nature. I mean, shit, I’d almost lost Solei twice. What did she expect from me?
Dr. Lee leaned forward. “Montana, you’re asking Solei to prove something that can’t be proven.
Love isn’t about guarantees. It’s about choice.
Every single day, she chooses you. But you’re so afraid of losing her that you’re suffocating her.
And eventually, that fear will become the very thing that drives her away for good this time.
” That session ended with both of us in tears, but it was the beginning of real change.
Over the last six months, Dr. Lee taught us how to communicate, how to fight without destroying each other, how to set boundaries and respect them, and how to really apologize, not just say sorry and move on. An apology without change is just manipulation. And slowly, things started to shift.
The business side of my life had shifted, too.
I’d gone back to the projects that had made me and broken me and started rebuilding it.
I’d partnered with the city to renovate the brick buildings into townhomes, safer and better, playgrounds, and basketball courts for the kids.
It was now called East Hollis Community Gardens.
I’d also funded small-business grants for residents who wanted to open shops in the neighborhood, including better-stocked corner stores, working laundromats, and more restaurants. The goal was simple: make the projects a place people wanted to live, not one they were trying to escape.
It was working. Crime was going down, school graduation rates were up, and families were staying instead of leaving. And every time I drove through the hood, I felt something I never felt looking at it. Pride that came from knowing I was leaving something behind that mattered.
The youth center came next. I named it Change Matters Youth Opportunity Center.
It was a massive facility–two stories, brand new, with a full basketball court, a computer lab, a library, classrooms, and offices for mentors and counselors.
I’d poured millions into it and made sure it was staffed with people who actually gave a fuck.
Social workers. Teachers. Former hustlers who’d gotten out and wanted to give back.
And I was there every week to check on shit.
Every Wednesday evening, I ran a workshop on entrepreneurship and financial literacy. I taught kids how to start legitimate businesses, manage money, and invest. I told them my raw, unfiltered truth about the drug game and what it cost me.
“I made millions,” I told a room full of teenagers one night.
“I had power. I had respect. I had everything I thought I wanted. But you know what I didn’t have?
Real peace. I didn’t have peace and I didn’t have freedom.
‘Cause when you’re in the game, you’re always lookin' over your shoulder. You’re always waitin’ for the raid, the setup, the bullets.
And the money? It doesn’t mean shit if you’re dead or locked up. ”
One kid raised his hand. “But what if that’s the only way to eat? What if you got a family to feed and no other options?”
“Then you make options,” I replied. “You learn a skill. You ask for help. I’m not sayin’ it’s easy. I’m sayin’ anything is possible, and I’m here to help you do it.” I meant that shit.
I’d also started a small business grant program for kids in the neighborhood. If they had a real idea and not some half-assed dream, I gave them seed money to get started. A few thousand dollars, plus mentorship and support.
Junior had started helping me with the mentorship program when he wasn’t playing basketball.
He turned fourteen and had grown into a young man I was proud of.
He was smart, thoughtful, and he had Solei’s heart.
He didn’t judge the kids we were working with.
He just listened, offered advice, and showed them that it was possible to grow up in this world and still choose something different.
Check and Tip kept telling me how proud they were of me.
They were still my niggas. That was never changing.