Page 79 of All's Fair In Love & War

I led them past the stairwell to the second floor. “The candidates are inside.”

“Really?” Riley asked with a frown.

“Yeah, they've spent two days here undergoing polygraph tests, loyalty assessments, and even a bit of torture to apply some real psychological pressure, but nothing too extreme,” I answered, cutting my eyes in Riley and Sophia’s direction to gauge how they reacted.

“You torturing bitches now?” Riley gazed at me in disbelief.

I shot her a look. “Just making sure they can handle discomfort. Pressure either bursts pipes or makes diamonds. I want bitches who don’t break by my side.”

“I feel that.” Sophia nodded her head in approval. “We can’t afford to have any weaklings in our organization.”

“None. People already underestimate me, so I need the best of the best beside me. No weak links,” I replied in agreement.

A few moments later, we entered the office. The setup was bare but effective. Across the wall were twenty-three screens, each displaying a different room. Inside, twenty-three women were either isolated, restrained, pacing, or sitting motionless like statues. The cameras captured every detail: their eye movements, postures, displays of aggression, and restraints. There was no audio, but sound wasn't necessary to identify who had the potential for more.

I didn’t build the list of women on my own. Riley handled most of the intel. She pulled names through her network ofpaid informants, social workers, and flagged police reports. Sophia tracked movements and habits, cross-referencing crew affiliations and rumors on the street. Khalil even had a quiet hand in it, too. He gave us backdoor access to sealed juvenile records, jail intake logs, and surveillance feeds from neighborhoods. He never asked why. Just did what I asked and walked away.

Between Riley, Sophia, and me, we filtered through a hundred names, narrowing it down to these twenty-three women. Grabbing them was the easy part. I had officers in my pocket who owed me favors, though not every capture involved a badge. Some women were grabbed in the dead of night, others during staged altercations or botched drug deals we’d orchestrated. Some were deceived by trusted acquaintances for a few measly bucks, only to find themselves in black hoods and bound with zip ties. A few were arrested under bogus charges, like drug possession or assault, and discreetly redirected to me.

They were cuffed, blindfolded, and dropped into rooms with no explanations. I didn’t take them off the streets to scare them. I needed to see who they were when no one was watching. Who would break, who would beg, and who would adjust without being told how.

“These are the prospects?” Sophia asked, stepping closer to the screens.

“Yeah,” I said. “But we’re only taking the ones who prove they belong.”

I stood behind the one-way glass, arms crossed over my chest, my coat drawn tight even though I wasn’t showing yet. The overhead lights were buzzing loud as hell, but it was the nausea that made my ears ring and my stomach flip. I'd been dealing with it for days, blaming it on stress if Naeem just so happened to be around when it hit, but I knew he wouldn’t buythat for much longer. That was why I needed to get things in order now.

Kairo, one of the few men I trusted, walked up and stood a few feet behind me.

“Talk to me,” I said, arms still crossed, eyes locked on the screen.

“Three have already buckled under the pressure, and nine others are on the verge of breaking. The rest are managing to hold on, but these six—” he gestured towards screens three, seven, ten, sixteen, eighteen, and twenty-three, “we put them through every conceivable test. Most people I know would have crumbled under that kind of stress, but they stayed strong. Those are the ones to keep an eye on.”

I nodded. That was all I needed to hear. If Kairo said they were the ones, then I trusted it. We weren’t family, not by blood, but we’d grown up in the same mess, learned to clean it with the same dirty hands, and we loved one another like siblings.

His parents had abandoned him to the system, and my father took him in when we were kids. Kairo didn’t answer to many people, but he answered to me, and showed no discourse when I had become Don. Honestly, I believe he even liked my father’s decision to pass the torch to me.

Moving closer to the screens, I studied the ladies Kairo had pointed out. They didn’t look anything alike, except for the shine in their eyes. You could always tell which ones had survived something. Not just survived, but learned to harness it as a weapon.

“Who are they?” I gestured toward each screen to indicate which woman I was referring to.

Riley scanned the papers on the clipboard that she grabbed off the table. “Five were arrested on false charges. The other had to be taken with more finesse. All except one have spotless records, no criminal history.”

“Which one has the record, and what are the charges?”

“Number twenty-three, Chyna Maddox, aggravated assault.”

“What’s her story?”

“Twenty-eight, born and raised in East Briar,” Riley added, flipping the page. "Her mother operated a brothel from their one-bedroom apartment, and later expanded into drug trafficking from the same location. By the time Chyna was in middle school, she was dealing ounces of cocaine and marijuana, and by twenty-one, she was running product from East Briar to Jackson Hill. No one ever saw her touch the drugs, only the money.”

“When her crew went down, she was the only one left standing. She disappeared, changed her look, and started taking college classes online. People said she got lucky, but I think she let the men around her take the fall. There’s no paperwork, no sealed deals, and no talk of cooperation. She’s clean.”

“How’d she catch the charge?” Sophia asked, leaning against the wall, her eyes locked on the screens.

“She got arrested at seventeen,” Riley said. “One of her mother’s girls stole from her. Chyna caught wind and beat the woman half to death. She pressed charges. Chyna did seven months in the county. After that, her mother threw her out. She’s been on her own ever since.”

I zeroed in on the screen, taking her in while everything Riley said ran through my mind. Chyna sat cross-legged on the floor, her long braids twisted into a tight knot on top of her head. Her brown skin was flawless, save for the tattoos crawling up both arms. She wore a black hoodie, sleeves pushed to the elbows, dark jeans, and no jewelry. She wasn’t trying to be seen, but she still stood out.

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