The paper sat on Darius’s kitchen table all night.


He didn’t burn it. Didn’t tear it.


He just stared at it—fourteen words that felt like a chain around his neck.


You gettin’ soft. We see you. Don’t forget where you from.


The old him would’ve gone outside with a weapon tucked and a war in his chest.


But now?


Now he had job paperwork on the counter. Zaire’s school schedule on his phone. A reason to survive.


Being “soft” wasn’t weakness anymore.


It was strategy.


The next day, Maya prepped for Zaire’s family day event. She was helping decorate the classroom with colored streamers and poster board while Zaire colored outside the lines on purpose just to make the other kids laugh.


She glanced down at her phone. Still no new message from Darius.


But he said he’d come.


She wasn’t holding her breath.


But she hoped.


And hope, for Maya, was both dangerous and sacred.


That night, Darius visited King Rawls again.


The old man sat on a plastic lawn chair outside his apartment, puffing a cigar and watching the world with eyes that had seen it crumble and rise again.


“You came back,” Rawls said, not looking up.


Darius nodded. “I think they watching me.”


“They been watching. Now they just want you to feel it.”


“I ain’t scared.”


Rawls glanced at him. “You should be. Fear is what keeps fools from walking into their own funeral.”


Darius leaned on the rail. “I’m tryna do right. Got a job interview. Got a chance to show up for my son. But every time I get close to clean, they pull me back dirty.”


Rawls flicked ash onto the sidewalk.


“You know what a rose gotta do to grow through concrete?”


“What?”


“It gotta break the damn concrete first. That ain’t soft. That’s violent. That’s strength.”


Darius stayed quiet.


“You think being good means being safe,” Rawls added. “But the truth is—being good just means you’ll be tested harder.”


That night, Darius went home and taped the threatening note inside his kitchen cabinet.


Not to dwell on it.


But to remind himself.


That no matter who was watching…


He wasn’t folding.


Not this time.