YAHMARIA #3
“I’m fine.” I pushed myself up. My side screamed. “I’m fine, stop—”
But I wasn’t fine.
None of us were.
“You’re a fuckin’ hypocrite!” I screamed at Amai, my voice raw with rage and terror. “You threw your own brother in a concrete hole over a surrogate you just started fucking! How is what we did any different?”
“Bitch, don’t question me about shit. You’re a weird ass bitch,” his voice cold. “Fuckin’ on Syx when you know he’s fucked up in the head about his mama. When you know he watched her die. When you know he’s got night terrors and trauma he can’t even process.”
“I’m not a fuckin’ kid!” Syx shouted, stepping between us. “Stop talking about me like I’m some broken thing you have to protect!”
“I’ve been taking care of you like one your whole life!” Amai shot back. “I’ve been the one who held you when you woke up screaming! I’ve been the one who made sure you ate, who made sure you had a roof over your head, who made sure you didn’t fall apart!”
“And I’m grateful for that,” Syx said, his voice shaking. “But I’m not yours to control. I’m not yours to decide for.”
“Then what are you?”
“I’m hers.” Syx looked at me, and the love in his eyes was so raw, so undeniable, that it made my chest tighten. “I’m taking her, and we’re leaving.”
Amai laughed—sharp, humorless. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“You can’t stop us.”
“Watch me.”
Amai pulled the gun from his back holster and leveled it at Syx.
I screamed. The sound came out of me without permission, high and ugly.
Syx didn’t move.
He stood with his bleeding face, possible cracked ribs, and looked directly at Amai, not backing up a single inch.
“You gonna shoot me?” he asked.
The gun stayed level. Then, Amai lowered it.
“No,” he said. “But you’re both coming with me.”
He looked at Priest. “Car. Sanctum.”
The sanctum.
Oh God.
Oh God.
“No. No, Amai, please—” I begged, my voice breaking.
“You made your choice,” Amai said, his voice flat. “Now you get to live with it.”
Syx moved to shield me completely, his body between mine and Amai’s, and I felt tears streaming down my face.
“Move,” Amai said.
“No.”
Amai stepped forward, grabbed Syx by the collar, and dragged him toward the door.
Syx fought—God, he fought—but Amai was so much stronger.
Priest pushed off the doorframe and headed out without a word.
I had never been to the Sanctum.
I’d heard the name exactly twice in my years as a Landry wife—once in a conversation Amai had thought I wasn’t close enough to overhear, and once in something Winston had said to a man I never saw again.
Both times the word had landed with a specific kind of quiet afterward, the quiet that meant you didn’t ask.
Now I sat in Amai’s car, Syx’s hand locked in mine in the back seat, Priest in the passenger seat, watching the city thin out behind us.
I’d tried the door at the first gate.
Child locks. Of course.
Amai had looked at me in the rearview mirror with the closest thing to amusement I’d seen from him all morning.
“Slow as snail piss,” he’d said.
Syx had called him a narcissistic psychopath, and Priest had laughed—one real, involuntary laugh—before Amai’s eyes flicked over and killed it.
After that, the car was silent.
The city gave way to the outskirts. The outskirts gave way to industrial zones, empty lots, then nothing: trees and darkness and the low smell of the swamp coming in through the vents.
The drive took over an hour. I tracked what I could—the direction, the turns, the distance—but past a certain point, the sameness of the trees made it useless.
Then lights through the trees.
Floodlights, white and cold, lighting up a structure that looked like it had been built for the single purpose of making people understand that getting out was not part of the plan.
Concrete and steel, massive, the kind of thing that had no windows at normal height and no ornamentation—nothing to soften or explain itself.
Armed guards at the perimeter in full tactical gear. Helmets, face shields, ARs. Surveillance cameras on every angle of every surface, their small red lights tracking in rotation.
Two checkpoints. Biometric scan on Amai. Barriers and electromagnetic locks disengaging with sounds like bodies hitting floors.
We were escorted inside. Priest fell in behind the guards, his expression the same emotionless nothing it had been the entire drive.
The interior ran on the same logic as the exterior—clean lines, polished concrete, recessed lighting.
Modern. The walls were old stone underneath, the kind that had been here long before any of the rest of it, and they smelled like something that had been locked in for a very long time.
The air was wrong. Too thick, too cold, with a metallic edge underneath everything.
We turned down a long corridor, and I saw the cells.
Clear walls—reinforced, floor to ceiling—displaying each prisoner in their full captivity like specimens.
One man paced in tight circles, his lips moving.
A woman sat in the corner with her arms around her knees, and her face turned away from the glass.
A man near the far end lay on his cot, staring at the ceiling with the flat, empty expression of someone who’d stopped expecting anything to change.
I kept walking.
My breathing was shallow, my chest tight.
I could feel the panic building, clawing at my throat, threatening to choke me.
My hands were shaking.
I tried to steady them, tried to breathe, but my body wasn’t listening.
The fear was too big.
Too consuming.
And then I felt it.
Warmth spreading between my legs.
No.
Oh God, no.
I was pissing myself.
I squeezed my eyes shut, tears spilling down my cheeks, my face burning with shame.
I couldn’t stop it.
I couldn’t control my own body.
When I felt my bladder let go, I stopped being able to think about anything else.
The shame hit before I’d even fully registered what was happening—hot, immediate, humiliating in a way that made the fear almost a secondary thing. I pressed my thighs together and kept walking, telling myself no one would notice, but knew that wasn’t true.
“Yaya.” Syx’s voice, tight and low.
“Don’t,” I said. “Please don’t.”
But he looked back at Amai with something burning in his face.
“You see what you’re doing to her?”
“Take your shirt off and put it around her,” Amai said. No affect. Like he was commenting on traffic.
Syx lunged.