A debt has been incurred. And they've come to collect.
Vanessa Cruz is a young black woman, simply trying to survive in a world set up to conspire against her prosperity. Grinding Monday to Friday, and working Friday to Sunday left her no room to h...
Moodlist Foolish - Ashanti Me, Myself and I - Beyoncé I Can Love You - Mary J. Blige featuring Lil' Kim Love to Lose - Sinead Harnet
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Our first argument was always going to be a big one.
In a way, we were fighting our own Cold War. Little jibes were thrown back and forth, concealing the bigger, overarching motives behind the fighting. Two opposing political belief systems, or in this case, personalities, using a foreign land as our battle grounds.
We chose work to dig our trenches.
I had been working on bringing my father's executioner to heel. After all this time, I still didn't understand why he was targeted. The man was one of the least competitive, or aggressive movers and shakers amongst the ranks. A stand up guy that had been a bonafide associate for his whole adult life.
I did know it was the Russians though. And I knew it was them because of the nerve agent that had been used to do it.
Novichok.
A name given to a group of chemicals that arrested the body's functions in a slow and painful decline. No hospital was ever prepared to deal with the victim of nerve agent poisoning, most doctors would never come across a victim of the terrible fate in their life time.
Novichoks are strictly developed by the MRU, an acronym for the arm of the Kremlin that rivals the CIA. It was a word I would never be able to pronounce, although Vanessa had learned from Raymond. She had actually learned quite a bit of Russian over the months. Enough to have a conversation.
Anyway, the use of the chemical meant that the warrant had been signed off somewhere within the Russian Government. I wasn't tryna think about all that though.
I wanted to go ahead full steam ahead and press every vein we knew that the Russians had on the coast to get him emerge. Vanessa was staunchly opposed to the idea. Had she done what she would have even a week ago, which was cuddle me in the bed of our apartment, and expressed her concerns for my safety in only the way the woman of your affections could, I would have probably taken a bit of a different approach.
However, the change that I observed in Vegas was a double edged word.
She was different; a heightened version of herself. It was what being assured of my feelings for her did. I couldn't hide them if I tried, so she no longer felt the need to butter me up. The prospect of being killed had long ceased to be a worry for her. She knew I would rather swallow a denim jacket whole that do that. She also knew I wouldn't extend the agreement any further.
Now that I had basked in the sunlight of her affection, I would do what it takes to keep that tan. Extending the agreement would be me exerting my control in a way that was disadvantageous to her. It would upset the careful balance of things she had put in place to allow her feelings for me to escape her heart. Ultimately, doing so would firmly cast me back outside, a place I didn't want to be. So she had the full scope to argue.
