“I thought about it, but I haven’t decided yet. What if the card gets stolen or the account gets hacked? There are so many scams these days targeting people with savings.”
He smirked slightly, looking almost amused.
“Nobody’s going to steal from you.”
“What makes you so confident?” she wanted to say out loud.
Because, Darius, your mother is literally planning to steal it right now.
But she kept completely silent, only looking at him with a long, calm, steady gaze.
He was the first one to look away.
The night was quiet except for the trees rustling outside the window and a distant car horn on the interstate.
Darius’s breathing was steady and almost silent in the darkness.
She knew he wasn’t actually asleep.
She felt it with complete certainty.
And she knew that everything would change very soon, because in five years of marriage, she had learned to read him not just through his eyes and tone of voice.
She had learned to anticipate his moves before he made them.
And the premonition now was so clear and strong she almost wanted to laugh.
Well, let them try, she thought calmly.
She would wait and watch.
The morning started with a phone call that changed everything.
Kiana had just gotten out of the shower, her hair still dripping wet, when she heard Darius’s phone ringing urgently in the entryway.
He grabbed the phone quickly—too quickly, with the kind of urgency that meant something was happening.
His voice sounded guarded and tense.
“Yeah, Mom. Hey.”
Kiana wrapped herself in her worn terry cloth robe and listened carefully.
The walls in their modest apartment building were thin as paper.
You could hear almost everything if you paid attention.
“Today? Uh, I don’t know,” Darius said after a pause.
He went silent, apparently listening to his mother’s instructions on the other end.
“Okay, fine. Come around six.”
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