In this thrilling conclusion of the Nena Knight series, the trained assassin will have to confront the ghosts of her past…before she becomes one herself.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Yasmin Angoe’s It Ends With Knight, which is out now.
Until his untimely death, Nena’s mentor was the backbone of the Tribe. With his leadership position unfilled and despite the Tribe’s newfound misgivings about her, Nena has stepped into a new role she never wanted.
Politics is an entirely new venture for her, and now one of the Tribe’s own has been kidnapped, forcing her back to her origins as an assassin. But the only person qualified for such a rescue mission is Nena Knight—and a new team whose trust in her continues to waver.
Determined to harness the power of her former role to succeed in her new one, Nena must also face what she left behind. Old fears, resentments, and anger threaten the precarious hold Nena has on her new life as she realizes that the past—and the people from it—are never far behind.
Before
My first sanctioned American dispatch comes soon after I have settled into my new home in my quaint little neighborhood of Citrus Grove in Miami. Though my older sister, Elin, lives not too far away, in an exquisite high-rise condo in the upscale area of Coconut, and our parents would prefer I reside with her now that she and I have moved here from England, I prefer the simplicity of Citrus Grove and the people who make the place a home.
Some weeks prior, Witt, my mentor and the head of the Dispatch team of the African Tribal Council, sent me intel on a broker set to arrive in Charleston, South Carolina, of all locations. Charleston is apparently a place of great import and export, and the broker is no longer an asset to the family by whom he is employed. He is about to sell valuable assets of theirs to competitors, ones who are not within the Tribe, so Witt has received dispatch orders, and I am to execute them.
I land at Charleston International in the afternoon and take a shuttle to the French Quarter Inn, where the mark will stay. He is due to arrive later that evening, if my intel is correct (and it normally is), and my plan is to be in the lobby to find out what room he will be assigned when he arrives.
Charleston is reminiscent of New Orleans. It is small and quaint. I learn it is full of old slave plantations and was a bustling port for the slave trade. It even has a marketplace in the center of downtown where the slaves were sold to the highest bidder. Now the market has been transformed to an open-air flea market. I decide to stay on a bit longer after my mission to tour this city that has been around since the start of this country and holds so much history. I am from the world from which the enslaved who ended up here were stolen. I am from where their last memories of Africa were of the doors closing behind them, and to be in a place where so many of my fellow Africans ended up weighs heavily on my soul. I know what it means to be stolen, to be ripped from all you once knew. I know something of their pain, and their fear. I should like very much to walk the grounds of one of the plantations that surround this city, imagining what life used to be like for them. Of how they suffered. And of how I have suffered as well.
But first, the job I must complete.
The hotel is beautiful. I check in quickly, keeping my sunglasses on in my attempt to be as invisible as possible. I do not cause any fuss, not like the woman before me, who complains that her room doesn’t have the best view of the city. She is obnoxious and loud, and dispatching her would be a bonus to the world. There is no reason to be rude to the people who work behind those desks. I am sure there is more money in one of my accounts than this woman has in all the world, this Bethany Davidson (her name and room number lock into my memory . . . for just in case), and yet I would never presume to think it gives me any right to mistreat or look down on others. What if I paid Bethany Davidson a visit later to remind her of such? Would that be so bad? She has caused quite a scene, and the concierge, a young Black girl with almond-shaped eyes glistening with water that threatens to fall as she endures the tirade, looks up at me like the weight of the world is on her shoulders. We are worlds apart, the girl and I, and yet we are unified in this moment of trauma, at being subjected to unprovoked harassment because of class. I do not cause any fuss, not like the White woman before me, who complains. Because of . . . whatever.
Her feelings are my own. When people treat you horribly, you wear it like a second skin. Never comes off and makes you question if you did something to deserve it in the first place. I offer the girl—Cynthia, her tag reads—kindness.
“I will take the room with the worst view,” I say. I am not there for the view anyway.
Cynthia’s eyes blink rapidly at me to rid themselves of their building tears.
“Ma’am?” Cynthia asks, trying to collect herself so she can continue providing the top-notch service that the French Quarter Inn is known for, or so their website tells me.
I break out into a grin. I am in character, and when in character, an occasional smile is required so that I am not off-putting. Being a Black woman who doesn’t smile is something people seem to remember, as outrageous as it sounds. One shouldn’t be forced to smile if not inclined to do so. But I want no one to remember me here, and for that to happen, I must assimilate as best I can.
Cynthia finally gets it and lets out a relieved laugh that actually moves me a bit. Making this young girl smile is a stark difference from the dark nature of my trip. And from that little bit of levity, I am upgraded to a suite even my sister Elin would find acceptable to her bougie nature. Better than Bethany’s; I check her room later, as she showers, to lift the hundreds she has in her purse to gift to Cynthia—for her troubles, of course. Consider that my Robin Hood act of kindness for the year. I won’t do that again.
When the mark arrives, I am in the lobby, sitting in one of the overstuffed chairs with a magazine and a cup of tea. I am close enough to hear the exchange at the counter and which room the mark will be in. He comes alone, as I knew he would. He is working in secret, so he will not want to let his employer know his whereabouts by traveling with his usual entourage.
It is not my intention to engage him. I want to make quick work of his demise so I can enjoy the rest of my mini vacation, as I have decided this to be.
“Where is a good bar around here?” the mark asks the new concierge at the counter. “I want to go get a drink.”
“We have a bar on-site, sir, or we can bring a drink to your room?”
The mark shakes his glistening bald head. “No, I would like to go to a bar. See the sights a bit and grab some dinner before my meeting tomorrow.” The concierge obliges, asking him what he is in the mood to eat.
“Seafood, I think,” the mark says.
“Maybe try Hyman’s. They are out of this world.”
Hyman’s it shall be.
***
I work alone, with neither Witt nor Elin in my ear providing overwatch as I run through my mission. There is no one to check in with, no team members to provide support or cover or to be my wingmen. Only me. It is both unsettling and exciting, and I wonder if this is what a baby bird feels like when it is ousted from the nest.
With my travel clothes changed to workout clothes—tight yoga pants, formfitting black hoodie, sneakers, hat, an earbud for my music, and honey-colored wig with hazel contacts—I am ready to take my run around the city. The mark should be dining at the same time.
The inn is on Church Street and the restaurant on Meeting. It is only a block and a half away, near the historic Charleston City Market, where the slaves were sold. While he gorges on surf and turf, drinks cognac, and flirts with the young college girls who work at the busy seafood restaurant, I get my exercise in and take the lay of the land.
The landscape of Charleston provides good cover. The buildings are densely packed and aged. There are plenty of alleyways and nooks and crannies to do what is needed without many eyes on you. I calculate any possible direction the mark may take. He will walk because he will want to take in the night air after so much eating and drinking. Plus, a two-minute cab ride back to the inn is just plain lazy.
I run, a form of exercise I do not particularly enjoy, and stop to stretch, checking for my mark. I can see him at his table signing the check and downing the last of his drink. I sit at the bench and stretch my legs some more. My music blares in my ear as I twist my neck left and right.
The mark says his goodbyes to the greeter and steps through the door the valet has opened for him into the cool night air. He rubs his hands together, checks his phone, then slips it back into the pocket of his pants. He turns right, away from me, and begins walking. He is taking the long way back to the hotel, probably wanting to see some sights before he heads in for the night. According to intel, he has a huge day tomorrow. One that will make him millions and cost the Tribe at least triple that in money, commodities, and respect.
He walks nearly out of my sight before I lift myself off the bench, stretch once more, and begin jogging slowly after him. His gait is unhurried, and he is well within my sight in a matter of seconds. There are people on the street—couples strolling hand in hand; giggling students from the College of Charleston, according to their hoodies; families on vacation, enjoying this fall evening. But the time is rather late, about ten o’clock, so the street isn’t as busy as it was an hour ago.
We pass closed boutiques and other businesses. A horse and carriage strolls by with a couple snuggling in the passenger seat. We approach Market Street, passing a side street, and my pace hastens. I break into a light run so the soles of my feet do not alert the mark before I am ready. He slows at the dark alley, and I hesitate, thinking he is on to me.
My right hand slips into the wide front pouch of my hoodie, where my gun with attached silencer rests. The bass from a hip-hop song thumps in one ear, but not so loudly that I am not keenly aware of what goes on around me with my other ear, where there is no earbud.
My hand grips the gun, pushing it through until its barrel just barely clears the other side of the pocket. The mark slows to a stop. He makes a quick sweep of his surroundings but doesn’t look behind him, where I still approach, but at a reduced pace.
I am just upon him, ready for the possibility that he has made me and will try to attack me from within the alley. I could stop and turn and take him down at the inn, but I like the inn and don’t want any commotion there or with Cynthia, who has that cash I took for her. No added heat will be needed there when Bethany starts screaming about her money. I should have thought about that before I stole from the repugnant to give to the kind, my own decreed punishment for Bethany Davidson’s misbehavior. With her, I am my own Council.
The mark steps into the alley, and just as I am about to pass it—to see if he awaits me, if I will have to engage or will have to abort, a failure—I hear him muttering, followed by light spatter. It is the sound of liquid hitting pavement. I hear a groan and realize with disdain that the mark is relieving himself. I swallow my disgust like a bad pill and push the barrel of my gun out farther from the pocket of my hoodie.
The hit will have to be precise because I am moving. I cannot stop, because if there are cameras I have missed—and there may be—I do not want them to see the jogging woman stop and pull out a gun. Maybe she can slow because she heard a noise that happened to be a businessman being assaulted, but she doesn’t stop. What woman jogging alone would?
His back is to me. His legs are apart, and a steady stream of urine vacates him through a cloud of smokelike vapor in the cool air. He grumbles, groaning his pleasure at the release. That coupled with the liquor has dulled his senses. Perhaps because it is not in his nature to be aware of danger, not like his security would have been, he does not look around. Maybe because he, like Bethany, thinks he is so entitled and important that no one would dare screw with him. That is how the high and mighty typically are.
I switch my hands, deciding at the last moment to use the hand closest to him and the alley rather than shoot from the hoodie. I am not sure I can take a clean shot while moving, and I have to ensure he is dead. I fumble with the gun in my pocket and with my iPod, making it appear as if I am changing music.
My right hand tightens around the grip, and I slow down just enough that I can aim and shoot as I pass, catching a whiff of pungent odor as he finishes and shakes himself off. I quickly let off two to the back of his head—the kill window so short and with not a second to spare for an error—and clear the rest of the alley’s opening, jogging at my same measured pace down the street. I slip the weapon back in the pocket, like any normal twenty-year-old would, before his body hits the ground in his puddle of urine. It is a good hit.
The next day I follow my plans to visit the hauntingly beautiful plantations that once boomed with cotton and tobacco. I stroll past merchant tables overflowing with handmade wares at the marketplace that was once the location of a burgeoning nightmare for people who look like me.
Though I did not come to America as the enslaved people did long ago, I know personally what it means to be one. The connection I feel in this place is humbling. I cannot help but think about the stolen who were sold on these streets I freely walk on now. I accept a handwoven flower crafted from straw from one of the young boys bobbing in and out of the mass of visitors. His eyes widen when I give him a twenty for his two-dollar flower.
This city is like me, with its old-world feel: the cobblestone paths and tight streets, the gnarled sprawling oak trees reaching toward the sea just beyond them, are all a facade masking an ugly history behind a beautiful, picturesque surface. Yes, this city is exactly like me.
I squint at the brilliant, hot sun. I stretch my arm up toward it and fan my fingers to block the rays hitting my eye. A young couple with their double stroller and two babies walks past. They smile and say good afternoon and ask me how I am doing. It takes me a moment to realize they are speaking to me. They would be different if they knew of the life I took last night. Charleston is very much like me. Its outsides perfectly confine the deadly monster within.
I mimic their smiles and regurgitate their greetings back to them. I remember Elin’s notes and even compliment their little bald babies, though one has all its toes in its heavily drooling mouth, and that visual is most unappealing. Its sibling is more hygienically sound and stretches a hand to me. I nod at it, turn on my heel, and take my leave.
Then my phone vibrates in my back pocket. I pull it out to read a message I had been trepidatiously waiting for all day.
WITT: Well done on number one, E. I think you’ll do just fine.
His words are Christmas, and the world of worry that I had failed him and wasted the countless hours he spent training me lifts off my shoulders. His words are confirmation of what I feared I could never achieve in Dispatch and in life . . . in my after.
That I, Nena Knight, once known as Aninyeh Asym of N’nkakuwe, will be just fine.
Chapter One
Nena Knight was not okay.
But right now, there was only the body.
His body.
The casket was all Nena stared at, knowing he was inside it. Her teacher. Her mentor. Her family.
Witt.
In there by her hand.
That night three months ago, standing at the bottom of the cliff as Witt—Nena’s mentor and teacher, and someone she’d considered closer than family—waited for Nena to retire him, to deliver a death decree as the ultimate punishment for his betrayal of the Tribe. Of her father. And of her. No, Nena was not all right at all, and she wondered if she would be truly okay ever again.
She had meted out that punishment. Killed him. Forced yet again to kill someone she cared about. Every night, Nena thought about what she had done and about how she was put in this situation over and over again, the one where she had to take the lives of people she had trusted or cared about. She thought about how death had seemed to follow her wherever she went since she was young, only fourteen, and in her now extinct village of N’nkakuwe.
Nena drew in a deep breath, pulling herself out of the dark reverie she’d plunged into, and pulled her eyes up, catching the furtive glances of funeral goers as they studied her, curiosity and superstition in their eyes. When they saw she’d caught them, they’d avert their gazes, as if being in her line of vision would bring about their sudden deaths. Nena wasn’t surprised by any of this. She often thought the same about herself—that she was cursed, a bringer of death, and not even loved ones were safe around her.
Since Nena had returned alone to the mayhem at the charity dinner in Ghana where her father, Noble, was nearly assassinated, she’d received nothing but that look—the one that accused her of killing their most trusted Tribe member, the one who’d ensured everyone’s safety, who’d gone from foot soldier to head of Network operations and Dispatch and was the most loyal Tribe member there’d ever been.
In the end, Witt had not been loyal. And that was something none of these people attending his funeral, grieving him, looking at her like some pariah, would ever know. Because to tell them of the depths of Witt’s betrayal would upend everything the Tribe believed. It would undermine the loyalty and trust they had built—that their most loyal member would turn on them and facilitate an insurrection.
“I am prepared to tell them,” Nena had said when she’d told Noble what happened at the bottom of the cliff when Witt and his minion Mariam had revealed that they’d been working together to destabilize the Tribe and put in a new regime of mercenaries.
She and her father had sat side by side, just the two of them at the breakfast table in the hotel suite where they stayed under heavy guard after the dinner. Noble’s arm nestled in a sling, a result of Mariam’s attempt to assassinate him as he gave a speech. They were lucky the shot hadn’t been more serious. It was a good thing Nena had come in time to distract the shooter. But still, with the high-caliber rifle used, Noble had been very lucky. So, maybe her juju wasn’t bad all the time.
Noble had looked disheveled, nothing like the normally gregarious Tribe leader everyone expected to see. Since learning of Witt’s betrayal, he’d become more subdued, more reticent. His closest friend and confidant had attempted to overthrow him and was dead.
“We can tell the Tribe what Witt has done. Perhaps they should know. Perhaps we shouldn’t always protect them from the realities of what we do.”
They could do that, tell everyone everything just to exonerate Nena. But to what avail? So, Nena said no. They should remain silent. They should say Witt was killed as they went after Mariam. They should lay him to rest as he’d want in his Rwandan tradition and keep his legacy intact, despite what he’d done. Because in the end, Witt’s intentions for the Tribe had been pure—to ensure all its members were cared for—though his means to that end had not been. Nena could forgive him that. And Noble should as well.
“You know how people are. Superstitions and fear. And if you say nothing, they will spin their stories and cast you as the villain, or a witch, or whatever fairy-tale monster that scares them.”
There are no heroes.
It was the last thing Nena had said when Mariam had accused her of trying to be one, before Nena put one in her head. There were plenty of villains. And whatever Witt had been in the end, Nena would never take from Witt what was rightfully his. His good name, or his legacy.
It was custom for the deceased to be held for an extended time while the family planned the funeral. Oftentimes, it was to get everyone who was abroad back in country so they could lay their loved one to rest. Witt didn’t have any family that Nena knew of. He’d never spoken of children, a significant other, or siblings, or even of his upbringing. Nena had searched all over to make sure that what had happened with Goon’s family—how they’d fallen through the cracks, and no one saw to them when Goon died—wouldn’t happen to Witt’s family. She had found no one. And so, Witt’s funeral rested on the Knights’ shoulders, which they took as a badge of honor, with Noble preparing and dressing the body for burial, as was custom. Witt had been their good friend, their family, despite how things had turned out in the end.
Nena focused on the casket and away from the accusatory or curious stares. On the regal traditional cloth spread over the smooth cherrywood in the small cemetery outside the Rwandan town of Witt’s childhood as the pastor said his words. Witt’s final rest would be where he began, though his village was likely vastly different than he’d remembered. Its name was one of the sparse pieces of personal history he’d shared.
“How could this have happened?” came a whispered question from two women in the row behind Nena.
Nena stiffened. Next to her, Elin sat, her face obscured behind huge black sunglasses and her mouth setting into a grim line. Nena was in tune with her sister’s movements and moods. Her years of training had taught her how to study tells people didn’t even know they had. And so Nena could sense the shift in Elin.
“Happened when trying to apprehend the person who tried to kill Noble Knight” was the second woman’s response, which was not much of a whisper, either intentionally or not.
“Who’s taking over for him?”
There was silence, but Nena could practically feel the second woman pointing at her back. It felt as sharp as a knife. Nena inched her hand toward Elin’s arm, suspecting what would come next and needing to head it off before anything happened to ruin the ceremony. Nena’s fingers curled around Elin’s arm.
Woman One clucked her tongue. “Hmm,” she said. “Wasn’t she there, too, when he died?”
“Ennhh,” the second affirmed.
Nena’s squeeze came as Elin was about to turn and cut in on the conversation behind them, which was meant for Nena to hear, and give them a piece of her mind. Nena kept a firm hand, the gesture begging Elin to be still, remain silent, please. For her.
The fight bubbling up behind Elin’s lips was not worth having on the day they bid Witt farewell and safe journey to his final place.
Not when there would be so many more on the horizon . . .
Excerpted with permission from HER NAME IS KNIGHT, by Yasmin Angoe.
