1. AMAI #3
“It changes nothing.” I was in his face now, close enough to see the flecks of gray in his eyes.
“Yahmaria and I aren’t about to be shit.
You understand me? We’re not raising this baby together.
We’re not playing happy family. And you have me fucked up if you think I’m going to expose Truth to her. ”
“You don’t have a fucking choice.”
“I always have a choice.” My voice dropped to something cold and dangerous. “And you’re pushing me back to that dark place, old man. The place I hate going. The place where my bloodlust takes over, and I stop giving a fuck about consequences.”
Winston’s eyes narrowed.
“You threatening me, boy?”
“I’m telling you that if you keep pushing, I will kill Yahmaria and Victor for my freedom. And I won’t lose sleep over it.”
“Then you and I will be at war.”
“Then it’s war.” I didn’t blink. Didn’t back down. “Because I don’t play about Truth.”
The silence that followed was electric.
Charged with violence that hadn’t happened yet but was coming.
I could feel it building between us—years of resentment, control, and unspoken rage finally finding a target.
Then he moved.
Not toward me.
Toward his desk.
He slammed both hands on the surface hard enough to make everything on it jump.
“You forget your place!” His voice was a roar now, all that careful control shattered. “You forget who the fuck you’re talking to!”
“I know exactly who I’m talking to.”
“Do you?” He came around the desk, and for the first time in my life, I saw the full weight of what he was capable of. “You think that darkness in you is special? You think you’re the only one who knows how to hurt people?”
“I never said—”
“That shit you did?” He was in my face now, his voice dropping to something quiet and deadly. “That violence you’re so proud of? That’s a fucking Disney movie compared to what I’ve done. You think you’re dark? You think you’re sinister?”
He laughed.
It was the ugliest sound I’d ever heard.
“Boy, I invented that darkness. I perfected it before you were even born. Everything you are, every brutal thing you’ve ever done, you learned from watching me.”
“Then maybe you should have taught me better.” My voice was shaking now. “Maybe you should have taught me that family means something. That loyalty goes both ways. That you don’t sacrifice your son’s happiness for a fucking business deal.”
“I taught you how to survive.” Winston’s finger jabbed into my chest. “I taught you how to build an empire and keep it. I taught you that weakness gets you killed and sentiment gets you buried. No one gives a fuck about your happiness when those things are on the line, Amai. Stop your fuckin’ whining and man up.
We all have made sacrifices. There’s nothing special about yours. It’s just your time.”
“And look where that got us.” I knocked his hand away. “Elias and Silas are dead. Kaisen’s a fuck-up. And I’m standing here ready to go to war with my own father because he can’t let me have one goddamn thing that’s mine.”
“Everything you have is because of me!”
“Then take it back!” I was shouting now too, all the rage, pain, and exhaustion of the last twenty-four hours pouring out. “Take the territory, take the business, take the fucking name! I don’t care anymore!”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I mean every word.” I stepped back, my chest heaving. “I’m done, old man. Done playing your games. Done being your puppet. Done sacrificing what I want for what you need.”
He stared at me.
For a long moment, neither of us moved.
Then, his expression shifted into something cold and calculating.
“You think you can walk away from this?” His voice was quiet again. “You think you can just choose that woman over everything we’ve built?”
“Her name is Truth.”
“I don’t give a fuck what her name is.” He moved closer, and I saw it then—the real darkness he’d been talking about.
The thing that lived underneath the expensive suits and the polished persona he presented to the world.
“You force my hand, Amai, and I will remind you exactly where you came from. I will remind you that the same blood that runs through your veins runs through mine. And mine ran cold long before yours did.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s a promise.” His smile was razor-sharp. “You want to protect that girl? Then you better remember who you’re dealing with. Because I don’t lose, son. Not to Rahsaan. Not to Victor. And sure as hell not to you.”
The air between us was suffocating.
I could feel my pulse in my throat, my hands, my temples.
Could feel the violence simmering just beneath my skin, begging to be let out.
But I also knew—with absolute certainty—that if I stayed in this room one more second, one of us was going to bleed.
And I couldn’t do that to Mama.
Not after what I’d just watched her go through.
“We’re done here,” I said.
I turned and walked toward the door.
“Amai—”
“I said we’re done.”
I yanked the door open and stepped into the hallway.
Behind me, I heard him say something else—something low and sharp—but I didn’t stop to listen.
I just walked.
Down the hallway.
Past the family portraits.
Past the memories of who we used to be before everything went to shit.
Out the front door and into the humid morning air that felt like breathing through a wet towel.
My hands were shaking.
My whole body was shaking.
I got in my car and sat there for a long moment, gripping the steering wheel so hard pain shot through my knuckles.
Cornered.
That’s what I was.
Cornered between my father’s empire and the woman carrying my child.
Between the life I’d built and the life I wanted.
Between duty and desire.
And just like any cornered animal, I was about to do something dangerous.
Something destructive.
Something that would change everything.
I started the engine.
And drove away from my father’s house, knowing the next time I came back, it would be as an enemy.
Not a son.
If I couldn’t reason with my dad, maybe Victor Baptiste would understand that the marriage between me and his daughter was over. He was my next stop.
The closer I got to Victor’s house, the more rage crashed through me. I wanted out! If they wouldn’t listen to reason, then I’d take my freedom by force and blood.
The Baptiste estate sat in Metairie like a monument to old money and older grudges.
I’d been here exactly three times in my life.
Once for Victor’s sixtieth birthday party—Winston dragging me along like a show pony to prove the Landry name still meant something.
Once for Yahmaria’s and my wedding reception—a spectacle I’d endured with my jaw clenched and bourbon burning in my throat.
And once a year ago when I’d tried to convince Victor to talk sense into his daughter about signing the divorce papers.
That conversation had ended with Victor laughing in my face and telling me I’d made my bed.
Now I was about to burn the whole fucking house down.
I pulled up to the gate doing sixty and came to a stop.
I was about to put this custom build on my car to the test. I was fully aware of how wicked shit could get in this life, so all my cars and trucks had reinforced steel in the body and a lot of other upgrades to insulate me when my temper got the best of me.
The guard stuck his head out of his booth, hand already raised in that universal gesture of stop.
“Mr. Landry—” His voice crackled through the intercom. “Sir, you need to—”
I rolled down my window.
“Open the gate.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but Mr. Baptiste didn’t authorize—”
“I don’t give a fuck what he authorized.” My voice was flat. Cold. “Open the gate, or I’m coming through it.”
The guard’s face shifted—uncertainty flickering across his features as he processed whether I was serious.
I was always serious.
“Sir, I can’t—”
I rolled up the window.
Put the car in reverse.
Backed up fifty feet down the long driveway while the guard scrambled back into his booth, probably calling the main house, probably warning them that Amai Landry had lost his goddamn mind.
He wasn’t wrong.
I pulled out my phone and called Priest.
He answered on the first ring. “What’s up, boss man?”
“Send a tow truck to Victor Baptiste’s house and have another one of my cars dropped off.”
“Should I ask?”
“No.”
“Aight. I’ll get everything in place.”
I ended the call and shifted into drive.
Pressed the accelerator to the floor.
The engine roared.
The gate loomed ahead—wrought iron, expensive, designed to keep people like me out.
I hit it at seventy miles per hour.
The impact was catastrophic.
Metal screamed. Glass shattered. The airbag deployed with a violence that knocked the breath out of my lungs. My head snapped forward, then back, pain exploding across my chest where the seatbelt locked.
But the gate gave.
It bent. Twisted. Tore free from its hinges and went flying across the manicured lawn like a piece of trash caught in a hurricane.
My car kept going.
Smoking. Hissing. The front end crumpled like paper, but the engine was still running, and that was all I needed.
I made it another hundred feet up the driveway before I slammed on the brakes.
The car skidded to a stop in front of the main house—a sprawling plantation-style mansion with white columns and a wraparound porch that screamed we’ve had money since before you were born.
I kicked open the driver’s side door.
It fell off the hinges.
Didn’t matter.
I was already moving.
My chest ached where the seatbelt had caught me. My hands were bleeding from where I’d gripped the steering wheel through the impact. My ears were ringing.
I pulled both guns from their holsters—one from my waistband and one from the shoulder rig under my jacket—and trained them on the front door just as it burst open.
Victor’s security team poured out.
Four men.
All armed.
All moving with the kind of precision that said they’d done this before.
“Drop the weapons!” the lead guard shouted. He was big—6’3’, 240, the kind of man who’d been hired specifically to intimidate people.
I didn’t drop shit.
“Back the fuck up,” I said, my voice steady despite the adrenaline screaming through my veins.
They didn’t back up.