Page 46 of Collateral Love
Then I kicked the bed frame.
Once.
Hard.
It cracked just enough to sound expensive.
He flinched like I’d hit him again.
I walked to the door.
Before I opened it, I spoke once more.
“This was mercy,” I said. “Don’t confuse it with kindness.”
After the fratboy disappeared from her orbit, things shifted between us— Kenya didn’t mention him again.
She just worked.
Harder.
Smarter.
She started bringing me into her world the way people did when they trusted you not to break it. Late-night labs. She explained code the same way I explained corners—clean, deliberate, assuming intelligence instead of begging for it.
“This isn’t about hiding,” she told me once, fingers flying over keys. “It’s about blending. When systems don’t stand out, nobody interrogates them.”
“You talk about this shit like it’s alive,” I said.
She shrugged. “It is. Systems adapt. People don’t.”
That felt like a warning.
The money came in steadily. Kenya tracked everything. Every dollar had a job. Every expense was justified. She made me reroute funds I’d already gotten comfortable with just because the numbers said the pattern was getting lazy.
“You like habits,” she said once, tapping my notebook. “Habits get traced.”
I laughed. “You lecturing me now?”
“No,” she replied calmly. “I’m protecting what we’re building.”
Whatwe’rebuilding.
She never said only one of our names when she said it. She never claimed credit, never softened her tone.
And I found myself listening harder than I ever had.
Xavier had noticed me changing.
“You're different,” he said one night when we were back in Crestwood, counting money in silence.
“How?” I asked.
“You're thinking more,” he replied. “Less reacting.”
I didn’t answer.
Because the truth was, Kenya had changed the way I moved without ever telling me to.
