Page 37 of Collateral Love
When I stepped inside, the lights snapped on.
Channy stood at the foot of the stairs with a Glock in one hand and a tablet in the other. Hair pulled back. Jaw set and eyes sharp.
She didn’t look like the young teenage girl I looked after while Kenya was at college, or the college student I checkedon from time to time. My sister-in-law looked like a fuckin’ problem.
“You’re late,” she said.
Xavier was already in the war room.
That’s what we called it, even though it looked like a tech startup had a baby with a private intelligence agency. There were screens everywhere, we had several data streams running, and facial recognition on every locked door. My little brother is not so little now. He was 41 years old, much broader from lifting in the pen for almost two decades. While he was calmer, he was more deadly and calculated. Now that he had his family back, he wouldn’t go back inside for anyone.
“Say it,” he told me, not turning around.
“Charles took YaYa. Miles helped give me confirmation.”
X turned then.
For a split second, the past flashed through his face; the alleyway shootouts, the arcade homicide where he killed several men over the love of his life, and all of the other atrocities we committed.
“Okay,” he said. “Then we go to work.”
That was how I knew he was ready. He had nothing else to say.
X tapped a key, and the room shifted. Maps layered over Crestwood’s coordinates. Burner networks came alive. Shell companies unfolded like blueprints. Kenya built most of the structure, but X made it lethal when he got home. What he built in the 2 years he had been home was remarkable. My brother was a force in the streets, with his pen as J. Allen, the anonymous best-selling author of street lit, and now as a coder and hacker. Despite the bullshit we were facing, I felt damn proud.
When X went to jail for voluntary manslaughter, I blamed myself. I was supposed to protect him. I knew Channy was offlimits, and I promised YaYa I would never let them fall for one another, and I failed them both. But despite that, my brother won. He got his girl, his daughter, and he didn’t hate a Nigga. He still looked up to me with pride.
X walked closer to me, drawing me from my thoughts.
“Charles didn’t move alone,” X said. “He used an old pipeline. Pre-2015. He thinks we forgot it.”
I almost smiled.
“We didn’t forget shit,” I said.
“No,” X agreed. “We just outgrew it.”
Channy stepped in beside him and set her tablet down.
“I pulled studio footage,” she said.
Kenya fought. She stalled him almost forty seconds longer than expected.”
“That bought her time,” X said. “Time buys mistakes.”
Channy looked at me. “Let’s get my older sister.”
My instinct said keep her home. My wife fought so hard to keep her out of this lifestyle. She cried damn near every night for the first four years of Channy being in college. She mourned her innocent sister before love overtook her heart, and the grief of losing my brother to the prison system overtook her. From afar, we watched Channy get addicted to weed, pills, and sex. I felt like shit watching her spiral, but YaYa told me she was safer at college with the rich, stuck-up Black folks like Charles than anywhere near us in Crestwood.
I chuckled at myself as I packed an extended clip into my bag. Boy was YaYa wrong.
As I prepared for war, I could hear my wife’s voice—steady, bossy, always right, telling me to trust the system we built.
I sat down for the first time since the call.
That was when I felt the shift.
The moment where Zayden King, CEO, husband, father… stepped aside.
