SYX #2
“Amai, come on—” My voice was shaking now, panic clawing its way up my throat. “You don’t have to do this—I didn’t betray you—”
“You fucked my ex-wife.”
“You don’t give a fuck about her, so stop the cap!”
“And you think that makes it okay?” He didn’t look at me. Just kept walking, his grip on my arm unrelenting. “You think that changes what you did?”
“I love her.”
That made him stop.
He turned to face me, and the look in his eyes—
Cold. Empty. Lethal.
“Love,” he repeated softly. “You’re twenty years old, Syx. You don’t know what the fuck love is.”
“I know enough.”
“You know nothing.” He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. “But you’re about to learn.”
He started walking again, faster this time, and I stumbled trying to keep up.
We turned a corner.
Another hallway. Shorter. Darker.
And at the end—
A door.
Heavy. Steel-reinforced. No window.
My stomach dropped.
“Amai, please.”
He didn’t answer.
He just pulled me forward, swiped a keycard, and shoved the door open.
The room beyond was exactly as I remembered it.
Small. Concrete walls. A single chair bolted to the floor in the center.
Leather restraints hanging from the armrests and legs.
A drain in the floor.
A table against the wall with—
I looked away.
I didn’t want to see what was on that table.
“Sit down,” Amai said.
“No.”
“Sit. Down.”
“Fuck you.”
He moved faster than I could react—one hand on my shoulder, the other behind my knee, and suddenly, I was falling.
I hit the chair hard, the impact jarring through my spine, and before I could recover, Amai was on me.
He grabbed my wrist and slammed it against the armrest.
The leather strap came down.
Click.
“Stop—Amai, I’m your blood, nigga!”
He moved to the other wrist.
Click.
I tried to kick out, but he caught my ankle mid-swing and forced it down.
Click.
Then the other.
Click.
And finally, the strap across my chest.
Click.
I was trapped.
Completely. Utterly. Trapped.
“Amai—” My voice cracked. “Please.”
He stepped back and looked at me, his expression unreadable.
“I’ll be back,” he said quietly.
And then he turned and walked toward the door.
“Wait—where are you going—Amai!”
The door closed.
The lock engaged.
And I was alone.
The room was silent except for my breathing.
Fast. Shallow. Panicked.
I pulled against the restraints, but they didn’t budge.
My wrists burned where the leather dug into my skin.
My chest felt tight, compressed by the strap holding me in place.
I couldn’t move.
Couldn’t run.
Couldn’t do anything but sit here and wait.
And remember.
The man’s name was Duke.
I didn’t know his last name. Didn’t know where Amai had found him or what he’d done to end up here.
All I knew was that he’d fucked up.
Bad.
I’d been seventeen—still new to the family business, still learning how things worked.
Amai had told me to come to the Sanctum. Said I needed to see something.
I thought it was going to be a lecture. Maybe some kind of test.
I didn’t expect this.
Duke was already in the chair when I arrived, his wrists and ankles strapped down, his face pale and slick with sweat.
He looked at me when I walked in—desperate, pleading—but I didn’t know what to say.
Amai stood beside the table, his back to us, arranging something I couldn’t see.
“Close the door,” he said without turning around.
I did.
The lock clicked into place, and Duke flinched.
“Amai, man—please—I told you everything I know.”
“No.” Amai’s voice was calm. Almost gentle. “You told me what you thought I wanted to hear. That’s not the same thing.”
He turned around, and I saw what he’d been arranging.
Pliers. A knife. A blowtorch.
My stomach twisted.
“Syx.” Amai looked at me. “Come here.”
I didn’t want to move.
But I did.
I crossed the room slowly, my legs feeling like they were made of lead, and stopped beside him.
“You’re going to watch,” Amai said. “And you’re going to learn.”
“Learn what?”
“How to get the truth.”
He picked up the pliers and walked toward Duke.
“Wait—wait—Amai, I swear—I don’t know anything else!”
“You know where Rahsaan keeps his secondary accounts.” Amai’s tone didn’t change. “You’ve been running money for him for six months. You know the routes. The contacts. The drop points.”
“I don’t—”
Amai grabbed Duke’s hand and forced it flat against the armrest.
He screamed.
“Let’s start with your pinky,” Amai said. “And we’ll work our way up.”
The pliers closed around his fingernail.
“No—no—please!”
Amai pulled.
The sound.
I’ll never forget that sound.
Wet. Tearing. Duke’s scream rising to a pitch I didn’t know a human voice could reach.
Blood welled up from the nail bed, dripping onto the floor, pooling around the drain.
“Where are the accounts?” Amai asked.
“I don’t—I don’t know—”
Amai moved to the next finger.
“Wait—wait—okay—okay—”
“I’m listening.”
Duke was sobbing now, his whole body shaking. “There’s—there’s a bank in the Caymans—Grand Cayman—Rahsaan uses it for—for offshore transfers—”
“Account numbers.”
“I don’t—I don’t have them memorized—”
Amai pulled the second nail.
Duke screamed again, his voice breaking, and I felt bile rise in my throat.
“You’re lying,” Amai said calmly. “You’ve been moving seven figures a month. You know the numbers.”
“I—I—”
“Say them.”
And Duke did.
He said everything.
The account numbers. The routing codes. The names of the shell companies Victor used to hide the money.
He said it all between sobs and screams and pleas for mercy.
And Amai wrote it down.
Every. Single. Word.
When he finally ran out of information, Amai set the pliers down and looked at him.
“See?” he said softly. “That wasn’t so hard.”
Duke was crying, his face twisted in agony, blood dripping from his ruined hand.
“Please,” he whispered. “Please—I told you everything—just let me go—”
Amai picked up the knife.
“I know you did,” he said.
And then he slit Duke’s throat.
The blood came fast—too fast—spraying across the floor, across Amai’s shirt, across my shoes.
I stumbled backward, my hand over my mouth, trying not to vomit.
Amai wiped the blade on Duke’s pants and set it back on the table.
Then, he looked at me.
“You understand now?” he asked.
I couldn’t speak.
“Everyone breaks, Syx. Everyone. It’s just a matter of how much pressure you apply.”
He walked past me toward the door.
“Clean this up,” he said. “And don’t forget what you saw here.”
The door closed behind him.
And I was left alone with the body.
I snapped back to the present with a gasp.
My heart was pounding so hard I thought it might burst.
My wrists were raw from pulling against the restraints.
And I realized—
I didn’t know how long I’d been sitting here.
Seconds? Minutes?
The room looked the same.
The door was still closed.
But I was strapped in now.
Wrists. Ankles. Chest.
Just like Duke.
Just like every other poor bastard who’d sat in this chair.
And Amai was coming back.
I cracked jokes, played my game, and chilled. I wasn’t into the shit Amai and Kaisen were into. I was around at times when shit went down, but he was on some other shit.
The door opened.
No warning. No footsteps in the hallway.
Just the sudden click of the lock disengaging, and then Amai stepped inside.
He didn’t look at me right away.
He closed the door behind him—slow, deliberate—and stood there for a moment with his back to me, one hand still on the handle.
The silence stretched.
My pulse hammered in my ears.
“Amai—”
“Don’t.” His voice was quiet. Calm. “Don’t say a fucking word until I ask you a question.”
He turned around.
His face was blank. Empty. The kind of emptiness that was worse than rage because it meant he’d already made his decision about what came next.
He crossed the room and stopped in front of me, his hands in his pockets, his gaze moving over the restraints like he was inspecting his work.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
He tilted his head slightly. “I asked you a question.”
“No,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m not fucking comfortable, nigga. The fuck.”
“Good.” He pulled a chair from the corner—metal legs scraping against concrete—and sat down directly in front of me. Close enough that our knees almost touched. “Then you’ll be motivated to answer quickly.”
My posture went limp, as if all the bones had dissolved. This nigga was about to do me in.
“I didn’t betray you,” I said, my voice shaking. “Whatever you think I did—”
“How long?”
I blinked. “What?”
“How long have you been fucking my ex-wife?”
The question landed like a punch.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.