The speakers hummed. No answer. I started moving faster, ignoring the ceiling now, pushing down a narrowing corridor. My shoulder scraped metal. I hissed and shoved at the panel.
It didn’t move.
“She was on a date when I came back. Really trying to move on.”
The voice was back, almost amused.
“With a man who had no idea how close he came to dying for touching her.”
I started thinking. About the first time Kemp’s loud ass told me Theory had some Russian-connected nigga. About the way those niggas started trapping me, toying with me. About Aunt Marguerite talking aboutSidorovsand getting leverageand demanding blood. About Virginia crying about “Chauncey, please, let it go.” I thought about how I laughed at first. A woman like Theory wasn't gone forever. She valued love, family, relationships. She wanted a good man who would put her in a big house and help her fill it with kids. She would remember how we used to be, what we planned to build. She would come around. She always did before.
“She became my wife,” the doctor said.
My breath left. The walls moved again. Closer. I stumbled backward and hit metal.
“She’s becoming what she was always meant to be.”
“Targen,” I whispered.
The intercom stayed silent.
My own breathing sounded loud in the tight space. Then the doctor laughed softly. Not the doctor.
Him.
“About time,” he taunted.
The rage came first. It beat the fear for maybe half a second.
“You bitch ass nigga!” I roared, slamming both fists into the panel beside me. Pain shot through my hands. “Open the door! Open it!”
The ceiling overhead darkened as the tiles moved. It was all storm clouds now. There was no blue, just gray and more gray. The path narrowed again, slow enough for me to understand he was doing it on purpose.
Targen’s voice came through the speakers, stripped of all that professional softness.
“You spent six weeks telling me about the woman you thought belonged to you.”
I punched the wall again.
“And every story ended the same way. Somebody disrespected you. Somebody made you angry.Somebody made you do it.”
“Fuck you!”
“You never asked why your hands were always on somebody.”
My chest heaved in and out as I spun around, searching for escape.
“You don’t know shit about me,” I ranted.
“I know everything about you I need to know.”
“You don’t!”
“I know you tried to take her. You tried to take the best thing that ever happened to me before she could even happen to me. You know how fucked up that is?”
The words were so cold that I had no response. The panels moved closer. My elbows bent to keep from being pinned.
“Let me out,” I snapped.
