YAHMARIA
The lock disengaged before I heard footsteps, which meant Amai had been standing outside my cell longer than I realized, watching me through the clear wall like I was something in a display case.
I hated that I hadn’t noticed.
“Where’s Syx?” I was on my feet before the door finished sliding open. “What did you do to him?”
Amai didn’t answer. He just stood there in the doorway, unbothered, like I hadn’t spoken at all.
“I swear to God, Amai, if you touched him—”
“He’s alive.” Three words. Like he was doing me a favor by confirming it.
“That’s not an answer. Is he hurt? Did you—”
“Walk.” He stepped back, giving me space to move past him into the corridor, and the casualness of it—like this was routine, like I was cattle being moved from one pen to another—made me want to scream, but my body had become petrified stone.
“You don’t get to just say walk like I’m one of your soldiers. I asked you a question.”
“And I answered it.” His eyes were dead in a way that used to scare me during our marriage. It now just made me furious. “He’s alive. That’s more than you’re going to get out of me if you keep talking instead of moving.”
I moved. Not because he’d won, but because staying in that cell, screaming at him, accomplished nothing.
The corridor stretched longer than I remembered, fluorescent lights humming overhead, and I cursed him the entire walk.
“You’re a piece of shit, you know that? A real piece of shit. He didn’t do anything to you. He’s twenty years old, Amai. Twenty. And you had him strapped down in some torture room like he’s one of your enemies. You been a ain’t shit nigga, though.”
Amai said nothing.
“Say something,” I snapped. “You always got something to say. Where’s that mouth now?”
“You want me to talk?” He finally glanced at me, and there was something almost amused in it, which made it worse. “Fine. Your boyfriend’s fine. Scared. Confused. But fine. Now, walk faster. I don’t have all day to babysit your tantrum.”
The interrogation room was smaller than I expected—metal table, two chairs, and a single light fixture that cast everything in a harsh white glow. Amai gestured to the chair across from him, and I sat because my legs were shaking too hard to keep standing and pretending otherwise.
“Let’s talk about your father,” he said, sitting across from me, hands folded like this was a business meeting.
“I don’t know anything.”
“You know something.” His voice didn’t rise. It never rose. That was the thing about Amai—he didn’t need volume to be terrifying. “You knew he was working with Rahsaan. You knew before the warehouse. Did you know about the vault?”
“No.”
“Did he tell you where the money is?”
“I said I don’t know anything.”
“Did he use you to gather information about me? About the family? Is that why you showed up at my house that night?”
“Fuck you.”
“That’s not an answer either.” He leaned forward slightly.
“Let me explain something to you, Yaya. Right now, you exist in this building because there’s a possibility you’re useful.
That’s the only reason. Not sentiment. Not history.
Not the fact that we were married for three years.
Usefulness. And right now, you’re proving to be a waste of a cell. ”
“Maybe I don’t have anything to give you.”
“Then you don’t have a reason to keep breathing.” He said it so calmly it took a second to land. “That’s not a threat. That’s just math.”
I felt my throat tighten, but I refused—refused—to let him see it. “My daddy will come for me.”
Something flickered across his face. Not quite a smile. Something colder. “Will he?”
“He will.”
“Prove it.” He slid a phone across the table—my phone, apparently recovered from wherever they’d stashed my belongings. “Call him.”
My hands were trembling when I picked it up. I told myself it was rage. I dialed dad’s number from memory, and it rang twice before he answered.
“Yahmaria.” His voice was steady. Composed. Like I’d called to check in about dinner plans.
“Daddy—” The word came out cracked, younger than I meant it to sound. “Daddy, I’m at the Sanctum. Amai has me. He has Syx too. You need to—you need to do something, please—”
“I know where you are.”
Silence. I looked at Amai, who was watching me with an expression I couldn’t read.
“You know?” I repeated. “You know and you haven’t—Daddy, please, you have to send someone, you have to trade the money or—”
“Yahmaria.” His voice hadn’t changed at all. Still calm. Still unbothered. “Sacrifices happen in war. This is unfortunate, but it’s not something I can fix right now.”
“Unfortunate?” The word felt like a slap. “I’m your daughter.”
“And you’re also a casualty of decisions that were made before any of this started. I need you to understand something. I have priorities that extend beyond this call.”
“What priorities? What could possibly be more important than—”
“The money,” he said simply. “The war. Rahsaan. Surviving what’s coming. I can’t compromise those things for—”
“For me.” My voice broke completely now, no fighting it. “You can’t compromise those things for me.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” Something in my chest was collapsing, my heart plummeting into something dark. “You’re not coming.”
“Yahmaria—”
“You’re not coming.” I said it again, slower, like saying it would make the truth less real. “You knew this could happen. You knew when you sent me in there. Did you—did you want this? Did you want them to—”
“I need you to be strong right now.”
“Answer the question.”
The pause was too long. Too heavy. And in that silence, I heard everything he wasn’t saying—every calculation he’d made, every version of this outcome he’d already considered and accepted before I ever walked into Amai’s house that night.
He’d expected this.
He’d expected them to hurt me. Maybe kill me. And he’d sent me anyway because I was expendable in a way that made sense to him, the same way everything made sense to him—cost, benefit, strategy, survival. I wasn’t his daughter in that equation.
I was a variable he was willing to lose.
“You son of a bitch,” I whispered.
“Yahmaria, listen to me—”
I ended the call. My hand was shaking so badly I nearly dropped the phone onto the table.
Amai hadn’t moved. Hadn’t spoken. He just watched me fall apart across from him, and for once, there was no cruelty in his expression. Just something closer to confirmation—like he’d expected exactly this outcome and needed to witness it firsthand.
Syx had told me. God, Syx had told me as soon as we got here, sitting in that cell, warning me that Victor would let this happen, that he’d never intended to save me, that I was collateral in a war he’d started and had no intention of losing gracefully.
I hadn’t wanted to believe him.
I believed him now.
“He’s not coming,” I said quietly. Not to Amai. To myself. Making it real.
“No,” Amai agreed. “He’s not.”
I looked up at him, something shifting inside me—not trust, never trust, but a cold, clarifying rage that had nowhere else to go now except toward the man who’d actually orchestrated this.
“Rahsaan’s been moving money through a shipping company.
Baptiste Logistics, but it’s a shell—my father set it up years ago under a cousin’s name in Metairie.
If he’s hiding assets from you, that’s where he’d start. ”
Amai’s expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes sharpened. “Keep talking.”
“I want Syx moved somewhere safe first.”
“That’s not how this works.”
“Then we’re done.” I sat back, arms crossed, meeting his stare without flinching. “I’m not giving you anything else until I know he’s not in a room like this one.”
Amai studied me for a long moment, and for the first time since I’d known him, I saw something that almost looked like respect.
“Fine,” he said. “But you’re giving me everything you know about that logistics company first. Then, we’ll talk about Syx.”
I nodded once, hard, and started talking—not because I trusted Amai, not because I owed him anything, but because Victor had made his choice, and now I was making mine.
Survival didn’t require loyalty.
It just required knowing who’d already stopped being worth it.
Amai pulled a chair close enough that I could see the calculation running behind his eyes, the way he was already three steps ahead of whatever I was about to say.
“Baptiste Logistics,” he said. “Start from the beginning. Address.”
“It’s off Airline Highway, near the rail yard.
Small office building, brick, nothing that draws attention.
That’s the point.” I kept my voice flat, businesslike, because if I let it shake even once, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop.
“My father registered it under my cousin Desmond’s name.
Desmond Baptiste. He doesn’t know shit about what it’s actually used for—he thinks it’s a tax write-off, a favor for family.
My father’s been doing that for years. Using people who don’t ask questions because they trust him. ”
“Employees?”
“A woman named Corinne runs the front office. She’s been there since before I was born, practically.
She won’t tell you anything voluntarily—she’s loyal to my father in a way that doesn’t make sense anymore, but it’s real.
There’s also a guy, Dale, handles the actual shipping side.
Contracts, manifests. If money moved through legitimate channels, his name would be on the paperwork somewhere. ”
Amai didn’t write anything down. He didn’t need to. I could see him storing it, filing it away with that terrifying precision he’d always had, even when we were married and I mistook it for attentiveness instead of what it actually was—control.
“Routes,” he said.