The rain hadn’t stopped for three hours, as if the sky itself was trying to wash Stansfield clean. Tariq St. Patrick stood on the wet balcony of his penthouse, a half-smoked blunt burning between his fingers, the glow of the city below mirroring the war raging inside him.
The screen cut to black.
“Mecca’s done,” she said, her voice a low, venomous purr. “But he’s not stupid. He’ll burn everything on his way out. So we burn him first.”
Forty minutes earlier, the Tejadas had laid out their final play. Monet, her nails freshly done, her eyes colder than the marble floor of her penthouse, had slid a photo across the table.
Tariq had nodded, but his mind was on Brayden. His brother-in-arms, the only white boy with more heart than sense, was pacing the warehouse floor, knuckles bloody from a fight Tariq hadn’t seen.
The HRip copy of the episode’s climax flickered in his memory: the gunshot, the scream, the face he’d never unsee.
Tariq turned, his father’s ghost whispering in his ear. “Now? We stop surviving. We start ruling .”
That was the thing about this life—every alliance was a ticking clock.
