Page 127 of Collateral Love
I hadn’t given Charles locations. Hadn’t handed over bodies. I’d only redirected. Nudged outcomes. Adjusted timing. I created pressure where there was none before.
That’s not betrayal, that’s strategy.
That’s what I told myself, anyway.
The truth was uglier.
I’d loved Kenya first.
Not loudly but foolishly. The way men like me love. I was observant, patient, and convinced proximity would eventuallybe enough. I told myself I respected her business choices in college. I told myself I respected her marriage and her loyalty. But I hoped one day Zayden would go down the way me, Charles, Cameron, and Nathalie set X up to go down.
But respect didn’t stop resentment from growing.
And resentment is ambitious.
When Cameron told me she had feelings for me, it felt like fate pretending to be a coincidence. She knew too much and asked the right questions. She framed everything as justice, not revenge.
“She erased my father,” Cameron had said once, eyes cold, voice measured. “And she never paid for it.”
Kenya hadn’t erased anyone violently. That was the brilliance of her. She didn’t destroy men. She outlived them. Made them irrelevant. Made their names stop echoing.
Cameron wanted exposure.
I wanted relevance.
Charles wanted control.
That was the triangle.
I didn’t realize until too late that triangles collapse inward.
By morning, the signs were undeniable.
My access to Crown Logistics files had changed.
The Crown Logistics files were revoked.
I checked the shell company again—the one I’d nudged Cameron toward.
It was gone. Not seized or frozen, but gone.
That was when my stomach dropped.
They hadn’t just watched me.
They’d fed me.
I laughed then. A short, humorless sound that startled me in the empty room.
“Well played,” I muttered.
My phone finally buzzed.
Just one message.
X:
You should come in.
