On Chicago's Southside, loyalty is everything-and betrayal can cost you more than your heart.
Zariah "Zari" Banks has always been different. While others around her settle for survival, she's determined to build a future. Working as a CNA and studyi...
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Summer 2017 hit the Southside of Chicago heavy.
The air was thick, not just with heat, but with everything people didn't say out loud. Broken dreams sat on porches. Loud music played through cracked apartment windows. And the city kept moving like nothing ever happened in it.
Zariah "Zari" Banks was 22.
Too grown to be confused, too young to have it all figured out.
She pulled up in her little car — nothing fancy, but it was hers. Paid for with long shifts at a decent-paying job she never bragged about. It wasn't CNA work yet. Not RN school yet either. Just survival money. Enough to look good, stay fresh, and keep her independence without asking anybody for a thing.
She stepped out her car, keys wrapped around her finger, phone already in her hand before her feet even hit the sidewalk. Southside blocks were familiar — too familiar. Everybody knew her. Not because she talked a lot, but because she didn't fold.
Zari wasn't the loudest girl on the block.
She was the one people stepped around carefully.
They said she could fight. Not in a "cute rumor" way — in a don't test her unless you ready way. She didn't start trouble, but she finished it if it landed on her doorstep.
Still, behind all that reputation... she was trying to become something else.
A nurse.
A real career.
A different life.
But Chicago didn't care about her plans.
It tested everybody.
And that summer... it was about to test her in a way she never saw coming.
Because that was the summer she met DeAndre "Dee" Vaughn.
And everything she thought she had under control... started slipping.
