Page 5 of Between Passion and Revenge, Part One (The Griot Chronicles #1)

SHAE

I walk into the drab building and prepare for the smell of old carpet and worn wood. The community resource office is a refurbished seamstress building that sat abandoned for forty years before Daddy and a few of the other council members came together to fix the place up.

It’s no high-rise office in the heart of the Loop, but it’s in a place that matters, situated on the main thoroughfare in historic Bronzeville.

“My baby’s here!”

I get three steps into the lobby when Mama’s head pokes above the front cubicle in the open space.

She steps into the center aisle separating the two neat rows of recycled cubicles.

Mama doesn’t bother keeping her voice down since the other five cubicles are vacant.

In the back, Daddy has an office, but the other volunteers and employees for the Project leave at a normal time…

not after eight p.m. like Mama and Daddy do on most nights.

Mama pulls me into a hug, the scent of Happy by Clinique wrapping around me. I sink into her.

My daddy works hard. But my mama? She works harder. No one taught me the value of consistency and sacrifice more than Opal Rivers.

“I brought your daddy dinner since he says he can’t leave the office with everything going on,” she says, linking her arm with mine and leading me down the hall.

“What’s going on?” I ask, realizing it’s been three weeks since I’ve seen them. Recovering from the GMAT, my work schedule, the start of the semester—it all piled up. I didn’t mean to go so long without checking in.

Mama makes a sad sound and looks down as she shakes her head.

“Baby girl! What are you doing here?” Daddy’s deep baritone rumbles down the hall, reminding me of the years when he was a pastor before the church shut down. It’s an unconscious movement when I speed up to give him a hug, leaving Mama behind.

“I missed you and Ma is all. Decided to make the trek from campus,” I say with my head tucked beneath his in a tight hug.

He squeezes me as he always does, lifting me up as he leans back so my feet dangle in the air.

“What happened?” I ask again.

Daddy frowns. “You didn’t read the prayer line group chat?”

“Reginald,” Mama warns, coming up behind me to put her head on my shoulder. I grimace because, despite my protests not to add me to the text message thread, Daddy made sure I received the daily group updates about the community and the church.

Daily messages.

So, about a month ago, I silenced all the notifications, choosing to go in once a week to mark all the unread messages as read.

“What, Opal? First, she stopped coming to church on Sundays. Now, she’s ignoring us?”

Mama tsks . “Don’t be so dramatic.”

Daddy grumbles in response, and I can’t help but notice the new lines around his mouth and forehead or the way the darkness and bags beneath his eyes show just how tired he must be.

“So,” I drawl. “Is anyone gonna tell me what happened?”

Daddy pinches the skin between his eyebrows, but Mama jumps in.

“Not here. Reggie, you need to eat, and I don’t wanna discuss this in the hallway,” Mama says as she pushes me forward.

Daddy comes along. When I pass his office, the messiness shocks me.

Reams of papers stack tall on the reclaimed metal desk donated from a school, and there are even thick binders, one on top of the other, next to his worn rolling chair.

But I don’t get to examine the space for long before Mama pushes us into the break room.

“Sit, both of you. It’s gonna be microwaved, but it’s better than nothing,” she says, releasing her breath in a light sigh.

I turn back to Daddy as she pulls the Tupperware from the apartment-sized fridge.

“Really, the suspense is killing me,” I press. Daddy breathes deep before releasing it, dropping his shoulders.

“There was another drive-by shooting last week. A fourteen-year-old was killed walking home from school.”

The energy in the space drops several degrees, sadness mingling with the smell of Cajun spices coming from across the room.

“I hate that so much,” I rasp, crossing my arms over my chest as if to hold myself together.

Chicago is my home and there’s no other place like it—the history, the culture, the community.

But in the last decade, the rise of gun violence has drawn the attention of all sorts of political pundits and other rich folks who think my home is some war-torn hellscape and that they can “save Chicago.”

None of them come through or stay long enough to actually make an impact. Usually, they’re here long enough to take a few pictures, kiss a few babies, and poof. They’re gone like the wind.

“Yeah,” Daddy says. “His funeral is tomorrow. I’ve been working with the church to get resources together to give him a proper burial.”

I hum in response.

Another funeral.

So many damn funerals.

Mama places two plates in front of us, breaking the mood.

Chicken and sausage jambalaya piles high on our plates—Daddy’s favorite and mine, too. I’m not even hungry, but I’ll eat with them anyway.

Always.

We wait for Mama to sit with her plate before Daddy reaches out and links us together in prayer.

“Father God, we thank you for this food. We thank you for the opportunities you have blessed us with. We thank you for keeping us through the storms and keeping your mighty hand of protection over us. We thank you in advance for how you have and will show your grace and mercy within our community and throughout the world. We thank you and we praise you. Amen.”

Mama and I murmur “Amen” at the same time, but I keep my head down for a moment after they start digging in.

I’m so blessed. I’ve always known this, just like I’ve always known my mission in life is to walk in my purpose and help people.

Starting with my family and my community.

I look back at my mom, who holds her fork in one hand and my daddy’s hand in the other. They have eyes only for each other, smiling softly like there isn’t a beautiful, devastating world outside these walls.

As I shovel a bite of the rice dish into my mouth, I make a promise to myself.

No matter what happens, I won’t let anything distract me from my mission.

“They were doing coke in the bathroom, Shae!” Ezra’s voice is animated in a way he rarely expresses, but I suppose seeing one of Hollywood’s most famous up-and-coming stars doing a line of coke off a man’s dick in a bathroom stall will do that to a person.

“Everything would have been fine and we could have stayed to enjoy the premiere if you could have just been cool, Ez,” Yenn says, sighing loudly from her place on the couch.

I fold my legs beneath me as I sit on the floor, taking up the limited space between our entertainment center and the coffee table opposite Yenn.

Despite Yenn’s father owning the building as part of his real estate portfolio, Yenn pushed back on his desire to put us in the penthouse.

He didn’t want his daughter “slumming it.” It was bad enough she was rooming with Ez and me, even though I’ve known her—and her father, Dr.Nedrick King Jr.—forever.

Still, Yenn wanted an authentic college experience, so when her father refused to allow her to live in a dorm room, this apartment was the compromise.

“Help me out here, Shae,” Ezra says, looking at me with a pleading gaze.

His dark eyes are a little unfocused, probably because he and Yenn have been baked since way before I walked in the door at ten p.m. When I hold my hands out in the universal sign for “what do you want me to do?” he groans and flops back into the armchair, running his broad palm over his crisp fade.

Instead of sitting upright like a normal person, Yenn has her legs on the back of the sofa and her feet planted on the wall. Her long auburn locs pool on the designer rug, and her forehead is too close to the sharp-edged coffee table for my liking.

“I was shocked, Yenn!” Ezra exclaims at the same time I say to Yennifer, “Isn’t the blood rushing to your head?”

She gives Ezra an exasperated look before turning her attention to me. “That’s the point, Shae.”

Okaaaay.

I turn back to my spiral-bound calendar, thumbing through all the syllabi laid out before me so I can plan out the semester.

A semester in which I’ll have to deal with the likes of Storm Sandoval.

A shiver goes down my back at the thought of him.

Storm Sandoval is a carbon copy of many other guys who roam the Asheford University campus. He probably comes from a rich family and doesn’t have to work too hard to get ahead.

Plus, the fact he’s hot doesn’t hurt at all.

Stop thinking he’s hot, Shae.

“You all are really distracting, you know. The whole reason we’re in here is to get organized.”

Yenn and Ezra share a look.

It’s been three days since the start of the semester, and except for Professor Hansen, it took a few days for my other professors to send out their syllabi. Which had been stressful.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

That’s one of my dad’s edicts I do actually kinda agree with. Excellence doesn’t happen by accident.

Still, I look down at the stacks of papers and color-coded sticky notes and can’t help but think one thing: This is gonna suck.

Eighteen credit hours in my last year is a heavy load, but I’ve done more.

It’ll be fine.

“So now we’re de facto banned from future premiere events because you decided to make a scene,” Yenn says, whipping up so fast that her waist-length hair knocks against her bong, making it teeter precariously.

Ezra, Yenn, and I jolt forward in an attempt to keep it from smashing to the ground.

After it rights itself, we all exhale. Swiping the bong off the table and patting around her pockets, Yenn says, “Well, you could have just signed the NDA and quietly gone about your business.” She finds her lighter and uses the butt of it to push at the remaining pot in the stem.

“Well, first, their PR manager lady was rude. Second, she wanted me to sign something without reading it, Yenn. You know better than that.”