Jaz suddenly entered, carrying a large cardboard box. There was an air of the old Jaz about her, not the vulnerable, broken down, man-done-left-me recent Jaz.

“Hey, let’s have a meeting in the living room,” she said. “Call Kyra in, too. We all need to talk,” Jaz added.

Kyra came out of her room, and we all went downstairs. We all gathered around Jaz, who had taken charge for the time being. She seemed to be getting back to her old self since the miscarriage.

“Look, I don’t know about y’all, but I feel like we are sitting ducks just being here.” Jaz got straight to the point. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on. But I do know that Faheem is getting us a place, but if he doesn’t come through soon, we need to map out a plan to get our own place and get the fuck outta here. And from what I’m piecing together, your husbands may be detained over in China for all we know.”

“Don’t say that, Jaz,” Kyra said. “You don’t know for sure.”

“The hell I don’t. I was able to pull a little bit of info from Faheem. There are only eight men surrounding this house, and I don’t trust them. There are four women and eight children, two of them babies in here.”

“What are you talking about, Jaz?” I asked.

“Being ready that’s all. We can’t trust those muthafuckas. We are going to have to be proactive up in this joint.” With that, Jaz went over to the corner and pulled out the cardboard box and opened it. Inside were four guns.

“Look, I’ve been going to the gun range since I got back. We had enemies we made in Atlanta, so I wanted to be prepared. I can’t take y’all out to the gun range, but I can simulate how you shoot and teach you. Hell, we can watch a YouTube video if we need to. All I’m saying is, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

“Jaz, I hope we won’t need to use any firepower, but I’m in,” I said.

“Okay, ladies, we gon’ have to get suited and booted up in this piece. There’s a burner for each of you. Today is lesson number one. How to properly hold your weapon.”

This bitch was bored to death and her mind was now playing tricks on her. She was going stir crazy.

Chapter Thirty-Four

CHARLI LI

As soon as I arrived, I saw one of my old business partners, Han Shou. Over the years, we’d done a lot of business in Africa with technology.

“Hello, Han,” I said in Cantonese, which was what I used to speak with him, although they mainly spoke Mandarin in Beijing.