"What else?" Juste asked.
"What else what."
"What else you ain't saying." He knew me too well. I don't speak until I sort it. And when I sort it, it usually wasn't surface-level. I looked at Enzi again. "How often do you fly the same route?" I asked.
"Every few months."
"Same airline?"
"Usually."
"Same day of week?"
He paused. "Yeah."
That pattern he had, was way too predictable. That's how traps get set. I nodded once. "This wasn't luck," I said. "This was patience."
Noles let out a low whistle. "That's worse." It was. Worse than random. Worse than sloppy. Worse than greedy. Strategic meant deliberate. Deliberate meant somebody studied the pattern before breaking it.
"So what's the move?" I asked Juste.
He frowned at me, not hard, just enough. "None of your concern nigga. I don told you to sit your hot ass down somewhere. You waiting to go to trial remember." He glanced at me, letting that word sit there. It didn't scare me by any means, but it did make me feel tight.
"Yeah, speaking of," Pierre cut in. "When we handling that shit? We gotta take care of that before we take care of this." Business loss was one thing. Legal exposure was another.
That conversation had me alert in a different way. I straightened slightly. "Y’all make her an offer?" I questioned. Silence sat in for half a second.
"Nigga ain't nobody paying that bitch. Her ass is outta here," Noles said, waving me off like it was simple. I tried my hardest not to react, but something inside of me went still.
"Enzi, I need to get with you to use your technology shit to find somebody," Juste said, rubbing his chin. Enzi nodded like a man trying to prove usefulness after embarrassment. I knew that tone in Juste's voice. Low. Decided. Already two steps ahead of whatever he was saying out loud.
I also knew it wasn't about passports or diamonds. That "find somebody" was layered. And I knew who that somebody was. I chose not to interrupt. Because when Juste's mind locks in, arguing don't move him. It just make him dig deeper. That's why I needed Jade to take the money and get the fuck on. This shit could all be so simple, but nothing in my life has been simple in years.
I leaned back against the wall again. Brick pressing against my spine. The back room felt tighter than before. Smoke thick enough to taste. Liquor sharp in the air. Bass from the main floor vibrating faint through the floorboards like a heartbeat you don't control.
The more they discussed that shit, the foggier my brain got. Voices layered. Pierre throwing out suggestions. Noles talking about pressure. Enzi trying to drink away his fuck up. Juste calculating out loud in fragments.
I tuned that shit out. Let it fade to background noise and continued to smoke the blunt that was in rotation. Slow pulls. Measured exhales.
I shouldn't have cared. That's the part that bothered me. I shouldn't have cared one way or the other. Jade ain't my responsibility. She ain't my loyalty. She ain't my love. She a problem. A liability. A loose end. So why did the idea of her being "found" sit wrong in my chest?
It wasn't about her.
It was about what came with her.
Bodies don't disappear clean.
They echoed.
I'd been working too hard to quiet everything behind me. The last year taught me something simple. Every move leave something behind. Every decision stick to somebody. And right now, I wasn't far enough removed for it not to land on me.
nia
I laid in the bed watching the sun start to rise through the curtain. The light slipped in soft and gold, stretching across the wall slow like it had nowhere else to be. I was alone, and it didn't feel like something was missing. I found myself at peace taking in the morning. Just quiet. It used to be that quiet made me uneasy. Quiet meant something was about to happen. Quiet meant waiting. Now it just felt like space.
I let out a breath and pushed the covers back, the sheet cool against my legs as I stood. The floor creaked under my feet when I walked into the bathroom. I turned the shower on and watched steam begin to gather in the mirror before stepping inside. The water hit my shoulders and rolled down my back, steady and warm. I closed my eyes and stood there longer than I needed to. There was a time when I rushed mornings. Cook breakfast. Check backpacks. Iron clothes. Make sure Jules had what he needed before he even asked. Make sure the house looked lived in but controlled. Make sure I looked like somebody who had it together. Now I moved slower. Not lazy, but Intentional.
I brushed my teeth and stared at myself in the mirror while the foam gathered at the corner of my mouth. My eyes didn't look as hollow as they used to. My cheeks had filled back in some. I rinsed, wiped my mouth, and leaned closer. Once I was done, I ran a comb through my short cut before turning off the light and leaving the bathroom. I glanced at myself in the mirror, smiling as I passed by. The way that I'd been feeling about myself had changed lately. It wasn't dramatic. I didn't wake up reborn or nothing like that. It was subtle, like breathingdeeper without thinking about it. I was starting to be happy with myself again, because I'd stopped tying my worth to what was happening around me.