Page 98 of Collateral Love
“Don’t,” she rasped.
“Don’t what?” My voice was calm. My chest wasn’t.
“Don’t… turn this into… a massacre,” she said. “We move smart.”
Channy’s mouth tightened like she was swallowing something hot.
Xavier stared at the floor.
Miles held his hands up, like he was the reasonable one in the room. “She’s right, Zay. We need to be strategic.”
Kenya’s gaze slid to Miles for one second.
Not long.
Just long enough that if you knew her, you’d see it.
Kenya didn’t look at people when she trusted them.
She looked at them as she measured where they might break.
She looked away and focused back on me.
“Promise,” she whispered.
I bent down until my forehead hovered close to hers. I let her feel the heat of me without giving my body permission to make promises my mind couldn’t keep.
“I promise I’ll be smart,” I said.
Her eyelid fluttered.
“And slow,” she added, as if she knew me too well. She looked at me and whispered. “Where was Miles during the rescue mission?”
That was my baby, even in the midst of grueling pain, she was calculating loose ends. In the action of grabbing YaYa, I didn’t notice that Miles never made it inside. The rest of us were tattered and bruised, and he looked as if he just stepped out of a GQ magazine.
I exhaled through my nose.
They rolled her away.
The hallway swallowed her.
And that was when the gangster in me stood up fully.
I turned back toward my people.
Channy was already walking with purpose, gun tucked now, phone out.
Xavier’s hands were in his pockets, but his posture was tense and on edge.
Miles hovered like an adviser in a king’s court.
I looked at all of them and felt the shape of the war shift.
Charles didn’t just kidnap my wife. He triggered a response system that had been sleeping under marble, philanthropy, and board meetings. No matter the corporate meetings and the tailored suits, I would always be Zay, the ruthless Nigga that would shoot you in the head for staring too long. I hated that my wife was collateral, but the man who woke up was refreshing.
And this time, we weren’t going to fight like the streets.
We were going to fight like we owned the city.
