YAHMARIA #2
“Gulf ports, mostly. Mobile, sometimes Houston. My father used to talk about it like it was boring, like it was just business, but I always got the sense that the boring stuff was cover for something else.” I swallowed.
“He separates cash from paperwork. Always has. If there’s money moving, it’s not going through Baptiste Logistics on the books.
It’s going through people. Couriers. Cash handoffs he arranges himself, face to face, no digital trail. ”
“So, the shell company isn’t where the money is.”
“No. It’s where he’d go to access people who could move money.
Or hide it. I don’t know the exact location.
I swear to you, I don’t.” My hands were flat on the table, and I made myself hold them still.
“If I knew where the money was sitting right now, I would’ve told you already.
I don’t have a reason to protect it. Not anymore. ”
“Because he abandoned you.”
“Don’t,” I snapped, before I could stop myself. “Don’t act like you understand what that felt like.”
Amai’s expression didn’t change, but something in the room did—a small shift, like he’d decided not to push that particular wound any further. Not out of mercy. Just efficiency.
“Did he use you,” he asked again, “to gather information about the Landrys? About me?”
The question landed like a slap, mostly because I’d asked myself the same thing more times than I wanted to admit.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I want to say no. I want to believe I was just his daughter, not an asset. But I can’t be sure.
Looking back—some of the questions he asked me, about your schedule, about Winston’s habits, about the Sanctum even existing—I thought it was just concern.
Fatherly concern.” I laughed, and it came out bitter, jagged. “I was so stupid.”
“Did Rahsaan ever contact you directly?”
“No. Never. I only knew his name because my father mentioned him once, a long time ago, in passing. I didn’t know they started working together.”
Amai studied me for a long moment. The kind of look that made you feel exposed, even when you were telling the truth. Then, he pulled out his phone and typed something quickly, thumbs moving with the same brutal efficiency as everything else about him.
“Trey,” he said, without looking up. “Baptiste Logistics, Airline Highway location. I need eyes on it in the next hour. Full workup—employees, financials, anything that connects to Victor’s movements in the last month.
” He paused, listening to whatever Trey said back.
“No, don’t move on it yet. I want confirmation first. If this is real, I don’t want to spook him before we’re ready. ”
He ended the call and looked back at me.
“If this checks out,” he said, “you’ve bought yourself something. If it doesn’t—”
“It’ll check out.” I met his eyes without flinching, even though everything in me wanted to look away. “I might not know where the money is, but I know my father. He’s predictable in the ways that matter. He always has been.”
Amai stood, and for a moment, I thought that was it—that he’d walk out, and I’d be alone again with nothing but the hum of the fluorescent lights and the sick feeling still sitting in my stomach from the phone call.
“Come on,” he said instead.
“Where?”
“You wanted proof he’s alive.” His voice was almost bored, like this was a formality and not a small, sharp mercy. “So, I’ll show you.”
I didn’t trust myself to speak. I just followed him out of the interrogation room and down the corridor.
my legs unsteady in a way that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with hope—a feeling I’d trained myself not to have anymore, and yet there it was, clawing its way back up my throat.
The room he led me to had the same clear wall as my cell, the same sterile lighting, and through the glass, I saw him.
Syx.
He was sitting on the edge of a cot, elbows on his knees, head down. My stomach twisted violently, but he was breathing. He was moving. He was alive.
“Syx.” The word tore out of me before I could stop it, and I was at the glass before I even registered moving, palms flat against it like I could push through if I just wanted it badly enough.
He looked up, and the relief that crossed his face when he saw me nearly broke me in half.
“Yaya.” His voice was rough, hoarse, but it was steady in a way that told me he was fighting to sound okay for my sake. “You alright?”
“Am I?” I laughed, and it came out wet, unstable. “You’re asking if I’m okay? Look at you.”
“I’m alive.” He said it simply, like that was the only metric that mattered anymore. “That’s more than I thought I’d get.”
I pressed my forehead against the glass, and for a moment, I just breathed, trying to hold myself together in front of Amai, who stood a few feet behind me, watching everything with that unreadable expression he always wore like armor.
“I called my father,” I said quietly, not looking away from Syx. “I told him where I was. I begged him to do something.”
Syx’s jaw flexed, but he didn’t say anything.
“He said sacrifices happen in war.” My voice cracked on the last word, and I hated it, hated how much it still hurt, even though I’d known—somewhere underneath all the denial—exactly what kind of man my father was. “He wasn’t coming, Syx. He was never coming.”
“I know.” He said it gently, no triumph in it, no cruelty. Just quiet understanding. “I tried to tell you. I wasn’t trying to be right. I just—I knew him. I knew what he was capable of not doing.”
“I should’ve listened.”
“You loved your father. That’s not something to apologize for.” He pressed his own hand against the glass, mirroring mine, and even through the barrier, I swore I could feel the warmth of it. “I just wish it hadn’t cost you this much to see it.”
I closed my eyes, and for a moment, the room around us disappeared—the Sanctum, the cells, the war neither of us had asked for—and it was just us, two people who’d found something real in the middle of everything false.
“He’s important to you,” Amai said from behind me, and I turned to find him watching not me, but Syx, with something almost thoughtful in his expression. “That much is obvious.”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation, because there was no point in lying anymore. “He is.”
“That works in his favor. For now.” Amai’s voice was even, just fact, laid bare the way everything with him always was. “His survival depends on your usefulness. That’s not a threat. It’s just how this works.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” He studied me for a long moment.
“Because I need you to understand something else, too. I don’t care about your feelings for him.
I don’t care about the history, the affair, any of it.
What I care about is whether you’re going to keep giving me something I can use.
That’s the only currency that matters here. ”
“I know exactly what currency matters,” I said, meeting his eyes. “You’ve made that abundantly clear.”