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“Aye," I said. "It's time to ride out. Make the call and round up. I'll send you everything in five minutes." I paused. "And Namier." My voice dropped. "This ain't a warning run. Come ready."

I hung up and kept walking without looking back.

But I heard her standing in that media room behind me.

And for the first time since I put her in that truck I wasn't thinking about what she cost me.

I was thinking about what she was worth.

The ride to Fort Worth was silent the way it needed to be.

Three trucks moving through the dark with no music, no talking, no bullshit. Just our men locked in on what was about to happen. Namier was in the truck behind me with two of our shooters. Mars and three more were in the third truck. The third truck was following for backup and to handle the body situation after we were done.

I had the address. Elijah Reeves lived in a section of Fort Worth that didn’t ask questions and didn’t call the police. Low income neighborhood, mostly Section Eight, the kind of place where gunshots didn’t mean anything to anybody who heard them. Perfect spot for a nigga trying to lay low. I knew that’s where he ran back to because that was the last place he expected niggas like us to look if we’d ever found out that it was him.

We pulled up at 2:17am. Everybody already knew their positions before we hit the street. No radios. No talking. Just movement. Silent and organized the way an operation needed to be.

I went in first with Namier right behind me. The door wasn’t even locked. Elijah was confident in a way that told me he thought he was untouchable. A low life ass street nigga. I was one of the most feared nigga there was, but even I wasn’t cocky enough to not lock my damn doors. Or maybe he thought the message at my gate was enough to keep us off his ass.

He was wrong on both ends.

We found him in the bedroom. Alone. Sleeping like a nigga without a care in the world. I stood in the doorway for a minute, watching as Namier hovered over my shoulder, ready to rush in the room. I held my hand up so that he’d stand down.

After the snores of this fuck nigga started to piss me off, I walked into the room, to the nigga bedside. I grabbed him before he could fully wake up. Wrapped my hand around his throat, rushed him against the wall, and pressed his ass hard enough that the drywall cracked.

His eyes went wide. That moment of panic when a nigga realizes his life just changed. I knew that look. I’d seen it before. He was discombobulated like a muthafucka. Hell, any nigga would be great f they got woken up out they sleep like this.

“Don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” I said quiet. Calm. The way I always sounded when I was about to end somebody. “You gonna come with us and if you think about putting up a fight, I’m gonna end you right here in your own crib and let your moms or yo bitch find you in the morning.”

He tried to fight anyway. That was stupid. Namier put him down quick. He slapped his gun across that nigga face repeatedly, til Iheard teeth crack. He beat his ass. Not hard enough to make him pass out but hard enough that he understood the situation.

Once he calmed down, he was weak and disoriented from being pistol whipped. We had him in the back of the first truck in ninety seconds.

The whole ride back to a warehouse we had in Dallas, Elijah was shaking. Damn near crying like he ain’t kill a man and leave his body at my fuckin crib earlier in the day. Trying to talk his way out of something that couldn’t be talked away. I didn’t say nothing to him. Didn’t answer his questions. Just looked out the window while Namier sat across from him looking like he was thinking about how many different ways he could hurt a nigga. Namier made it his business to ride back in the truck with me so that he could torture this man. He had his wrist and ankles tied. Every five to ten minutes, Namier was punching him in the damn face like a bobble head.

The warehouse was empty and clean. No witnesses. No cameras except the ones we controlled. I had Mars and two other shooters secure the perimeter while I walked Elijah to the back room. He was begging by then. Full on begging. Using all his strength to try and keep me from dragging him.

“Please,” he said. “Please I got family. I got kids. I didn’t want to do this. They made me.”

“Who made you?”

“I can’t say that. If I say that they’ll kill my whole family. You understand? They’ll kill everybody.”

I looked at him. “So you killing yourself instead? That make more sense to you?”

He didn’t answer.

“What if I can fix this shit? What if I can make up for the shit that went down today? I didn’t know that nigga, nor did I have a problem with him. He was a casualty and a message sent. I had direct orders and if I didn’t see it through, I would be dead. I didn’t know it was towards you either.” He rambled and I knew he was lying. He knew Darius was connected to my family, like I said, I’d done business with these niggas.

“How you think you can fix killing one of mine and disrespecting my home, where my family lay their head? Tell me who the fuck ordered this first. You really ain’t got too many options in this bitch. You wanna protect muthafuckas who ain’t gone look for yo ass when you go missing cause they know exactly what death trap they sent you into. Think about that, why the fuck would you let a muthafucka put you and your family in danger, leave you with the consequences like you some fuck boy or some shit. Don’t tell me you a damn flunky!” I spoke the real. My jaw twitched and I was seconds away from slumping this nigga. I had done too much talking.

I let him sit with that for thirty seconds. Just watching his brain work trying to figure out if there was a play left. There wasn’t. He was in a room with three men who came to kill him and he had one currency left — information.

So he talked.

He told me about a shipment hitting the South Side in four days. Told me the location. Told me the time. Told me how many men were coming to pick it up. Told me it was Brick Boyz money and Brick Boyz product and if I took it I’d be starting a war that my father wasn’t ready for because they would automatically know that it was my team that took it. The thing about that was, they’d already started a war and damn sure couldn’t determine how I would react. This nigga had just gave me the drop on a shipmentfrom their new connect. I may as well intercept that shit, see what the new product hitting on and sent them niggas into a drought before the grave.

“Your pops shut down business with us for a reason,” Elijah said. Desperation making him stupid enough to keep talking. “He knew better than to play us like he be playing other folks. Cutting and stepping on that work ten times before selling it. He couldn’t short us, so he backed out. After that, you niggas intentionally started having your people serving on territory that you knew belonged to us. That was disrespectful in several ways. From the business end, then on the street shit. Niggas not tolerating disrespect out here, you know that better than anybody. That body at your gate? That was a warning. Crossing these people is suicide. You listening or you about to get even more niggas killed?”