“What are you thinking?” Riley asked, watching me now.
“I like her,” I said, then pointed to another screen. “What about number three?”
“Nova Jean Price, twenty-six. She’s from Briar Glen. Graduated top of her class from Eastgate Tech with a degree in mechanical engineering. Turned down a full ride to grad school after her cousin died in a car explosion. The police ruled it gang-related. No arrests were made.”
Riley flipped the page. “Six months later, three men tied to the case ended up dead, one from a gas leak, another in a car fire, and the last crushed at a construction site. The police didn’t make any connections, but the timing was too perfect. Each death lined up with the kind of stuff she used to build in school. I talked to one of her old professors, pretending to be a researcher, and he confirmed Nova had done projects on gas pressure systems, vehicle ignition triggers, and structural weak points.”
Sophia raised an eyebrow. “So she basically used her class projects as practice?”
Riley nodded. “Yeah. If she wanted to send a message, she did it without leaving a trace.”
“Brains… I like that," I said, smiling as I stared at Nova. “Room 18.”
“Roselyn ‘Ro’ Vance, thirty. Grew up in the system. Had a baby at fifteen who was taken by the state. She taught herself family law through online paralegal courses and fought for custody. She won, but lost her again when her man got knocked on RICO charges. Before the feds could seize anything, she disappeared with six figures of his hidden stash, unaware he worked for your family.”
Riley looked up at me, and I could tell she wanted to know what I was thinking.
“Keep going,” I said, keeping my voice neutral.
“Your father sent people after her, and from what I hear, she and her daughter barely escaped. Since then, she’s been off-grid, working at a corner store in West End. Her ex taught her about surveillance, system rerouting, and data scrubbing. We tapped into the system a month ago. Surveillance reroutes led to a backroom IP. The camera showed Ro there every night, alone, typing. Sophia traced her burner accounts and found she’s been ordering custom components in cash, using abandoned identities.”
“She’s protecting herself and her daughter,” Riley said. “She’s watching for Genevese movement, mapping known affiliates, and tracking plates. If anyone so much as circles the block twice, she’ll know. She wasn’t just hiding. She was making sure no one ever got the drop on them again.”
“If that’s the case, how did we get her?” I asked as I turned around to look at Riley.
“We caught her slipping one night,” Riley said. “Her daughter was sick. Ro left the store in a rush and forgot to shut down the surveillance reroute. One of our guys flagged the traffic spike and moved in before she could fix it. We had eyes on her, followed her home, and waited for the right moment.”
“When she came out for groceries, we snatched her,” Sophia added.
For the next hour, we meticulously sifted through the remaining ladies’ profiles. The process was thorough. Each woman was carefully examined and discussed. As we concluded our review, the clipboard in my hands was marked with six names, each circled in bold red ink.
I pressed the intercom. "Move to phase two," I said.
Sophia and Riley grinned at each other, feeding off my energy. Kairo gave a less enthusiastic fist pump, but even he couldn’t hide a little smile as he walked off and disappeared through the door that led down to the holding rooms.
A few minutes passed, and the rhythmic clatter of boots and the jangling of cuffs reverberated up the narrow stairwell. Soon, the six women emerged into view, each accompanied by two of my guards. Their hoods had been stripped away, revealing their faces. Some were etched with expressions ranging from seething rage to wary suspicion, while others wore masks of icy indifference. And although their heads were uncovered, their wrists remained tightly bound with zip ties.
Chyna was first to enter the room. Her jaw was tight, eyes locked dead on me as if she was calculating how to take me out. Nova followed calmly, but carefully, her gaze sweeping the room as if it were a crime scene. Then came Ro with her head high, eyes sharp, and lips pressed together like every word she wanted to say had been boiled down to a single “fuck you.”
The other three trailed in behind them, all with stories and fire of their own, but Chyna, Nova, and Ro were the problems. Those three would need more convincing.
“Who the hell are you, and why the hell did you kidnap us?” Chyna asked, her eyes shooting daggers at me, Sophia, and Riley.
“Take a seat,” I said, pointing them toward the long, low conference table.
The assembled chairs were mostly rickety, but none of the women seemed to care if the metal bit into their thighs when they sat.
Chyna stayed standing, cracking her neck with a disdainful sweep side to side. “Nah, I’m good,” she said. “Standing works for me.”
Ro seemed to weigh the odds of a fight before sitting with arms crossed, back rigid, and legs squared as her eyes roamed over every person in the room. Nova took the seat closest to the exit, cataloguing every threat.
“Let me start with an apology,” I said, dropping into the only padded chair and letting my coat fall open so they could see my lack of gun, badge, or any other official threat. “I didn’t bring you here to humiliate or break you. I brought you here to see who could survive under pressure, who could handle the unknown, and who had what it takes to sit at the top beside me.”
Ro crossed her arms. “That’s not an apology. That’s justification.”
“You’re right.” I nodded. “I’m sorry for the fear, the confusion, and the violence. I wouldn’t want that done to me, but I also know what it takes to build something powerful in a world where women like us are often underestimated, forgotten, or taken advantage of. I needed to be sure you weren’t just tough. I needed to know you were unbreakable.”
“You could’ve asked,” Chyna snapped.
