TWENTY FOUR

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Raegan settled Zyaire into her bed for the night, despite her pleas to stay awake and play with her uncles in the living room. Although she loved being around them, it was well past her bedtime. Raegan had washed her up and put her in bed, staying by her side until her eyes fluttered close and her breathing became even with sleep.

Despite her motherly calmness, Raegan was fuming. What Darius and Braxton had told her made her stomach turn with disgust.

"Has she tried callin' you? Textin'? Any of that?" Darius questioned. But Raegan couldn't stand to look at either of them at that point.

The way they came into her home and talked down on Nadine, she almost kicked them out immediately. If she didn't respect them like she did, they would have been long gone.

"No. But everything you sayin' is lies. She wouldn't do that shit and both a y'all know that."

"You can't deny--"

"Can't deny what, Braxton? You know how much she changed; I refuse to believe all this shit about snitching and lying and whatever the fuck else y'all tryna say she did. She not a snake. But you know who is? That lil witch you call your first love."

Darius sat up straight, clenching his jaw. "Chill on her," was all he said. Raegan couldn't read Darius' response to her calling out Lorena all that well, but there was something there that suggested they were more than friends. She had no evidence, though, and wasn't going to throw out accusations before she knew the truth.

"You don't think it's weird that Lorena came out wit' all these accusations after the fact? Because if she really thought some was up with Nadine, she'd a been said something as soon as she peeped Nadine moving weird. Why all of a sudden she wanna speak up when she seen you two getting close, hm?"

It wasn't a secret that Raegan never liked Lorena. She couldn't explain what it was, maybe a sister's intuition, but there was something untrustable about the girl. Like she had ulterior motives and was never one-hundred percent truthful about her intentions.

"Rae, I'm not playin' wit' you. Calm the fuck down talkin' reckless like that," Braxton said, ice coating his words. "Me and Lo haven't been together in a while. Her eyes not on me."

"Yeah, okay," Raegan nodded sarcastically.

They didn't give her the full story, but it was obvious that words were exchanged between Nadine and Braxton. He was jittery, on edge. In anyone else, it would be understandable given the situation. But this was Braxton; nothing and no one could shake him up like that.

"We just gotta find her and deal with this shit," Darius added after moments of tense silence.

"Deal with this shit? What the fuck does that mean? I swear if you lay a hand on her--"

"You gon what, huh? This shit is more serious than you think, Raegan. Yeah we was all buddy buddy but she changed up on us! Everything we did to keep her safe and make sure she was good, she still did this to us. Got close and became like family but it was never real," Darius yelled. At this point he was up with his voice raised, his face turning red with anger.

Luckily Zyaire could sleep through anything, because if not she would have woken right up.

Realizing his niece was in bed and so was the rest of the neighborhood, Darius sighed and sat back in his seat. "You wasn't there when Lorena told me. If you woulda seen how scared and shook up she was about it, you would know that everything she said was the truth."

Raegan crossed her arms, weighing everything in her mind. Even she had to admit that from the detective mentioning her name to Lorena's alleged observations, none of this looked good for Nadine. But Raegan had a gut feeling that something was amiss; she wasn't going to write off Nadine so quickly without speaking to her first.

That was the thing about men: they don't always listen to reason. They don't always see every angle of situations; everything is always viewed based on how they feel. Raegan knew better than to take this for face value. Something else was going on here.

Nadine and Lorena seemed pretty close, Nadine even killed for her. If Lorena thought Nadine was really a rat, Lorena wouldn't have sold her out; you don't snitch on someone who saved your life. Lorena would have-- should have, at least-- given Nadine a heads up to get out of town and run as get away as possible from LA. Then maybe she would tell Darius or Braxton about her suspicions, so she herself didn't look suspect when they found out.

But even at that, if someone risked their life to save yours, why would you snitch on them at all? Why even give Nadine time to skip town when she could have just kept her mouth shut, turned a blind eye? They would never blame Lorena for not clocking Nadine's behavior so she could have stayed out of it completely without looking suspicious.

The very reason Lorena ended things with Braxton was because she couldn't handle the lifestyle anymore. The danger, the late nights, Lorena could no longer stomach it. So why would she tell Darius that Nadine could be the snitch if her goal was to stay as far away from the game as possible? That would be the very thing that got her right back tangled up in the mess she tried to stay far away from.

Questions and potential connections swarmed Raegan's mind. She was no longer listening to Darius and her brother talk next steps; she barely remembered them hugging her goodbye and leaving. She knew for certain the only thing left to do was to find Nadine and ask her herself.






Lorena paced Captain Lozano's janky office, unsure and afraid of the consequences of what she had just done.

Hours before Darius had come to her place, Detective Brenner had Nadine in an interrogation room, trying but failing to get anything out of her. Lorena had told him before hand that Nadine was as hard as they come; she'd never say anything to incriminate herself or those around her.

Not even threatening her with the murder charge was effective. Detective Brenner wanted to reveal that Lorena could corroborate the story of how Nadine killed Carti to save both of their lives, but that would reveal that Lorena was his criminal informant. And surely they'd kill her before she could give him any more information.

Eventually, he had to let her go. But as soon as she was in her Uber back to Braxton's house, the detective called her.

"This is your chance. You said you feel like they're on to you? It could be your own paranoia, but I've just given you your scapegoat. You tell your little boyfriend that Ms. Carter's been acting weird, sneaking around. Tell him you heard her on the phone, maybe seen a few texts. Pin everything on her and their eyes won't be on you anymore. She won't be able to explain away being missing for hours. Once they find out she was at the station, they'll put two and two together and realize she's the person they're looking for." He said it as if it were that simple, as if betrayal was something that came easily for him.

"I can't, she's-- we're friends."

"I'm trying to help you, but after this you're on your own. If they catch you, you're caught. But you will continue to feed me intel, otherwise I'm using the evidence from the murder and conversations I recorded between you and I to arrest you. Then I'm coming for that little boyfriend of yours. So it's either Ms. Carter's ass, or yours."

He hung up abruptly, leaving Lorena in a state of shock. She couldn't believe that she let her deal with Detective Brenner get this far to where she had basically signed Nadine's death certificate.

When she told Darius the "truth" her tears were real. The sobbing, the pain. It was all there. She hated that she had to do this, but she wanted to protect Darius. And this was the only way she could think of doing it.

"Lorena, how are you doing, love?" The detective entered slyly. Lorena rolled her eyes, annoyed at the pet names he always threw her way.

"Shut up. Just came to see what was up wit' Nadine."

"Guess I should be asking you the same thing. Did they believe your little story?"

Lorena nodded, shame filling her all over again. "She didn't say anything, by the way."

"She wouldn't. Why'd you pick her up in the first place?" Lorena had been turning it over in her mind for hours. She still didn't understand what Brenner was doing with Nadine to begin with. What had gotten him interested in her anyway? Brenner knew about her own connections to Braxton because everyone on the street knew that she and Braxton went way back. But no one in the game knows about Nadine's relationship to Braxton, at least not to the extent they knew Lorena.

So where did he look to find Nadine, and why?

"I have my reasons. Nothing for you to worry about, sweetheart."

His response, his motives, they didn't seem right. But neither did any of it, and that was the reality of the life she had chosen.












Nadia sat back in her plush office chair and sighed in annoyance. She hated being played.

Her entire agreement with Detective Brenner was orchestrated by those she worked with, but she never saw it as a good idea. Nadia didn't want anything to do with the police, even if they were helping her business thrive by eliminating the competition.

She knew Brenner played a good game. He proved himself by figuring out her real identity and concluding that she was looking for her sister. She underestimated him, and now she was paying the price.

The only thing Brenner still hadn't figured out was why Nadia was looking for her. It was a mystery to even the people who worked for her. Only she and the boss, her father, knew. It was a family matter.

Her father, for some reason, needed Nadine for something which he would not say. Nadia was just tired of her older sister disrupting her life. First, Nadine ran away from home. Now, she was reemerging as a threat to Nadia's position in the business. Once her father got what he needed from Nadine, Nadia was going to make sure she disappeared for good.

Nadia cleared her mind of vengeance and got back on task. The computer monitor in front of her showed security camera footage of her sister sitting in an interrogation room with the detective. Yet, Nadia never received any word from him that he had found Nadine, even though she specifically told him to report to her.

Nadia watched on the screen as Nadine walked right out of the station and into an Uber. She felt her stomach drop to the ground after seeing Nadine for the first time in years. She couldn't see much from the poor video quality, but Nadine looked somewhat healthy. A little annoyed, but calm, sane, and seemingly not on drugs or doing tricks as she had last heard. "Still lookin' bug eyed as ever," Nadia mumbled, recognizing her sister's familiar facial features.

"When was this?" She asked Hugo, head of her security team.

"Last night. We staked out the location she was dropped off at, but it was just an empty lot. Nothin' there."

Nadia nodded, letting out a breath she didn't know she was holding and shutting off the screen. "She smart for not gettin' a ride to her place, wherever that is. Still playin' it safe in case someone was following her. Y'all searched that side of town?"

Hugo nodded, explaining that no one they asked had seen or heard of a Nadine Carter.

"She underground or some shit, cause this the first time we seen her on any type of security cam or had any idea of where she was at."

"Old habits die hard." She stood, stretching her legs and grabbing her purse. "Keep combing the streets. She'll show up eventually."





The dim streetlights that lined her old street corner were far too bright for Nadine. Her head was swimming and a headache pounded at the front of her forehead.

After she had stormed out of Braxton's house she took off for the place she first called home, before she met him. A few busses and a lot of walking later, she was back in Compton.

She had realized how much of an idiot she was to think that his home could be hers. That she could live free from judgement and embrace him with trust, and eventually love.

She was close to feeling it, love. It spread through her every time she saw him, every moment she spent talking to him right before she fell asleep, at every meal they shared. For a split second there, she saw her life taking on a new meaning with him deeply intertwined in what her future looked like.

Those ideas and hopes had all died after he said how he truly felt. Deep down she still held that insecurity, wondering if she could ever be worthy of the life she wanted to have with him so badly. At the end of the day, she was a prostitute who was addicted to any drug that could numb her pain, get her high. And once the anxiety that came from those thoughts poked through all the progress she made, she found herself falling right back into another withdrawal episode.

Yet every time she fell, Braxton was there to pick her back up. And she loved that about him. How he would never leave her or do anything to make her turn back to the fast lifestyle of drugs and sex that once ruled her life. How he showed her what it meant to feel for someone so much that you'd do anything for them. How he made her smile on the worst days.

But there was no more Braxton, no more almost love, no more of anything.

The first bus she hopped on saw her crying so hard she was shaking, curled up in a sad heap in the very corner of the vehicle. The closer and closer she got to her corner, the later in the night it had gotten, she wiped her face and put on an air of bravery. While she was hurting, she didn't want anyone picking at her because they saw weakness.

With her eyes low and red, she walked one of the busiest street corners filled with sex workers, drug addicts, corner boys, pimps, and customers.

She walked past an older man, slumped over on the concrete with some white on his nose. His eyes looked glazed over, as if he was in a trance. Drool pooled out of his mouth as he smiled toothlessly.

As if something clicked, Nadine realized that she didn't have to suffer anymore. She too could live in that same trance the man was in. All she had to do was cop some.

She had been clean for months, and didn't want to break her sobriety. She was fighting every day to become a better version of herself. But this argument with Braxton was going to break her. She couldn't take it anymore; she didn't want to think about his words, or the hatred in his eyes. Because if she did, then it would all be true.

It would mean that the only group of people that took her in after all this while really only saw her as a drugged up whore, worthless.

If they thought that of her, she didn't need to fight the allegations any longer. She saw plenty of corner boys that would sell to her, that wouldn't think twice about it either.

But she remembered where she was and who ran these streets: Braxton. She remembered his words the first night she broke down in front of him begging for a fix.

"No one is gonna sell to you anymore. You're not using that shit ever again," he said nonchalantly.

"The fuck do you mean?" She asked, angered at his refusal to appease her.

"Maybe you ain't hear me clearly. I'm not gon let you go back to none of that shit you was on before."

"Yeah? You think you gon' stop me?" She scoffed. He had all the audacity in the world to think she had to bend to his rules.

"You been with me long enough to know who the fuck I am and what the fuck I do. I run this shit. So if I said nobody gon' sell to you, then I meant it. So you can forget about the needles and the snorting and all that shit," he spat.

She couldn't believe what she was hearing. It was entirely too hypocritical of him to be trying to get her to quit. He was the one that put drugs on the streets. How could he get mad if he was the one who even caused the problem? "And what about the rest of the fucking crackheads out there? You gon' stop selling to them, too?"

"You're not them," he got in her face.

The irony of it all. She was going to test that theory, to really see if he meant what he said. But her better judgement reminded her of the man he really was. If he really did think her to be a snitch, he wouldn't hesitate killing her once he found her. And if she bought from anyone selling his product, it would lead him straight to her.

"I know that look," an unknown voice spoke from behind her.

She wiped the stray tears that fell from her face, spinning around to find the person who the voice belonged to.

He wasn't anyone she recognized. Dressed in a hoodie and jeans, brown skin, standing a few inches taller than her, he could have been anyone.

Nadine continued walking-- her destination unknown. But she felt the strangers presence behind her, lingering.

"I got some, if you tryna buy. I can tell when someone need a hit, and you look like you need one." She stopped in her tracks, realizing the opening he had just created with his words.

"Know what? You ain't even gotta worry about payin'. Consider it on the house," he grinned. The guy had a cool demeanor about him, like he had been slanging and banging since he was wearing diapers.

If she was in her right mind, she wouldn't have turned around. She wouldn't have followed him to wherever

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