Page 1

“On another note, we have the name of the other player who’s put their hat in the ring for mayor,” Kim Bridges, my special undercover operator, informs me.

“Let me guess, Jessi Franklin?”

“Actually, she changed her mind about running for mayor. I haven’t gotten the inside scoop on that yet, but as soon as I do, Z, you’ll be the first one to know.”

Smiling at her, I tap the long, oval glass conference table and reply. “You’re slipping, Kimmie baby. Are you losing your touch?”

Rolling her eyes, she sucks her teeth and replies with sass. “Never that, baby. You’re trying the wrong bitch.”

“Okay, then, why don’t you know what’s going on with Jessi Franklin?”

“Because she hasn’t shared it with anyone yet,” Kim remarks, leaning back in her chair at the other end of the table.

I watch as she plucks imaginary lint from her pink Chanel suit.

“Go ahead, girl. Humor us. How do you know?” Aris Waters, my data analyst, asks.

“Let’s just say her husband’s head game is tight. By the time his face left my twat last night, he was ready to tell me all her secrets.”

“Bitch.” Janel Howard, one of three assassins that I have on my payroll, remarks as she leans in to give Kim five.

Shaking my head, I don’t say a word, but I’m called on that subtle movement anyway.

“What?” Kim asks.

“I said nothing.” I plead my case, biting back a smirk.

“But you wanted to.”

“Since when have you ever known me to bite my tongue?” I ask.

“Never. But look, you’re the one who said do whatever it takes to get the job done short of getting locked up or killed. Why not have a little fun along the way?” Kim asks, laughing.

“You have to put a bitch on game,” Janel comments.

I glance at Aris, who is shaking her head and staring at her laptop. But I also see the tiny smile dancing around her lips.

I glance around at the men in the room, and they look as if they want to cry. All of them, except Parker Jones, my VP of Operations of The Knight Group, would give their left leg to get in Kim’s pants, but she says she sees them all like brothers.

I appreciate that because they all know how I feel about fraternization. They can fuck anyone else anywhere else in my business, but not amongst this team. I don’t have time or the space for negative energy or relationship blues in my core elite circle. That bullshit impacts business.

“So, who is running against Martin Brassard if not Jessi Franklin? She was the only one who I could see taking him down,” Hakeem Steele, my accountant, points out.

Kim brushes her fingers over her lapel. “So, ask me how I got this information before I tell you who it is.”

“Damn, is it that good?” Malik Edwards, my other assassin, asks.

“Even better than that good.”

“I don’t give a damn who you fucked to get the information, Kim. I just want to know who it is,” Parker, who is also my right-hand man, speaks up, sharing my precise thoughts.

Perhaps because he’s been by my side since my early days in the streets, he always seems to know just what I’m thinking. I seldom need to speak up and say a word because he’s always got his finger on the pulse of my thoughts.

I sit back in my chair, crossing my arms, and stare at Kim.

“Aww, Parkie Pooh. You take all the fun out of everything. So, I’m going to tell you anyway, although you might not want to hear it.

I was at the nightclub the other night with this person’s best friend.

She’d had one too many drinks, and her tongue got a little loose.

She started talking shit about what’s going on in city hall because she works down there.

I told her that’s where all the gossip seems to happen.

Then she told me that there was one conversation that hadn’t seen the light of day at City Hall yet.

I asked her what, and she said her best friend was going to announce Monday morning that she was running for mayor. ”

“Who is her best friend, Kim?” Parker grits out.

“The former D.A., Miss Essence Hamilton.”

“I thought she gave up politics to return to private practice because it was too much for her,” Hakeem remarks.

“Apparently, she was, but for some reason, she’s changed her mind,” Kim confirms.

My blood runs cold, and a pounding starts at the base of my neck. It quickly lights its way around to my temples and then my frontal lobe like a match lit to a line of gasoline. It explodes so violently that I can barely see.

Tiny explosions of lights go off behind my closed eyelids, and I massage my temples, mentally telling myself to unclench my teeth.

The room is getting too hot, and my tie feels like it's choking me.

I stand from my place at the head of the table and walk to the wall of windows overlooking my city.

My team continues to talk behind me, discussing whether we should get behind her or not, and how we can leverage her for our purposes.

“Essence Hamilton.” I pull my fingers through my beard as I look out over downtown Chicora Falls.

Large buildings look like glass statues in the night, with indoor lighting giving the appearance of twinkling fairy lights.

I walk to the right of my office and stare out the wall of windows at the waterfall at the end of the street.

“You know her, Z?” Jamal speaks up from his place at the glass conference table.

I breathe through my nose and change my face into a cool mask of composure before I turn back to face the room.

“Who's on her campaign team?” I ask Aris.

In her usual, soft-spoken voice, she gives me a rundown of every member of Essence’s campaign team.

“Kim, I need a comprehensive background check on each of them. Credit, criminal, finances, education, family, health, fetishes, weaknesses, any history of drug or alcohol abuse, and any family members with drug addictions,” I command.

“So, the usual?” Kim quips with a slight smirk, tapping away on her laptop.

My steely voice is unfair to her. She has no way of knowing how personal this shit is to me.

“Fuck the usual. I want you to go back as far as their great-grandpappy. I want to know who their neighbors are and if they have kids, where their kids go to school, who their kids’ friends are, and if they’ve got any extracurricular activities.

I want to know what color draws they’re wearing every day and when they sit down to take a piss and shit. ”

Kim’s eyes widen before she glances back at her computer. I feel every eye in the room on me, aside from hers.

“Noble.”

I turn to my intelligence ops guy.

“Yes, Bossman?”

“I need you to do the same for Ms. Hamilton. I want to know everything. If she’s ever had any STDs, who her last sexual partner was, and anything else that you can find out about her.”

“Gotcha, Bossman.”

“Is it safe to say that she won’t be our next mayor?” Parker asks.

I roll my eyes at him, and he holds his hands up.

“I look like a muthafuckin’ joke to y’all tonight?”

“No, sir,” everyone answers in a serious monotone at once.

I walk back to the giant wall of windows overlooking downtown Chicora Falls. Three of my walls are nothing but floor-to-ceiling windows. I can lighten or darken them to my pleasure so that people can see inside or not.

“Y’all get prepared to work hard for the next year.”

“We hustle hard with you all the time, Bossman,” Noble admits.

I nod my agreement because I know they do. While I may have hundreds of workers, contractors, and subcontractors in the streets and my other businesses, this is my crew right here. They are my family, and I trust them with my life.

“Wonder why she changed her mind?” Aris asks.

I know why. That’s a fact that I’m not ready to share with my team yet. Just like I’m not quite ready to trust them with what my interest in Ms. Hamilton is. I never make a business decision based on personal reasons.

Until tonight.

Shit just got real, and the game has changed.