Chapter 1: The Cracks in the Ceiling
Jamal was born in a neighborhood where the streetlights flickered like dying stars and dreams dissolved in the heat rising from cracked concrete. His mother, Lena, worked double shifts at a run-down diner, and still, they barely made rent. His father, Marcus, was a shadow, just a name etched on a headstone, killed in a street shootout when Jamal was barely two.
Lena never spoke much about Marcus. When Jamal asked, she'd just clench her jaw and say, "He made choices. That's all." Then she'd return to scrubbing the stove like it had insulted her. There was always a quiet rage simmering behind her tired eyes.
Growing up, Jamal saw the world through broken glass, anger, poverty, missed birthdays, and secondhand shoes. His teachers called him "bright but troubled." He had a quick mind, but a quicker temper. Fights became common, and suspensions followed. Lena tried. She begged. She yelled. She cried. But Jamal kept slipping further into the cracks.
Chapter 2: The Wrong Shoulders
At thirteen, Jamal met Trey. Trey was older, wore clean sneakers, and drove a car with tinted windows. He said all the right things told Jamal he was special, smart, capable. Told him he didn't have to keep getting stepped on.
"You got fire, kid," Trey said. "Use it."
Trey ran with a crew guys who called themselves The Irons. They weren't just some street gang; they were family, or so they said. They took Jamal in, gave him his first real jacket, his first roll of cash, his first taste of power. At home, his mother cried herself to sleep. Jamal stayed out late and lied often.
By sixteen, he was doing runs moving product, intimidating rivals, and carrying a gun he wasn't afraid to use. The Irons had become his truth. The streets whispered his name with equal parts fear and respect.
But Lena? She saw what was coming. She'd seen it before.
"I won't bury you, Jamal," she whispered one night, eyes bloodshot. "I buried your father. I won't bury you too."
Jamal couldn't answer. He just stared at the floor, where the linoleum curled like it, too, was trying to get out.
Chapter 3: Scars and Smoke
When Jamal turned nineteen, things spiraled fast. A rival crew moved in The 88s. Turf wars started, silent at first graffiti, threats but quickly turned bloody. Trey pushed harder, demanded more.
"We're not backing down," he growled. "Either you stand with us, or you're in the way."
Jamal couldn't walk away. He was too deep. There was no college, no job interviews, no clean slate waiting for him. Only blood. Only debt.
One night, after a shootout left two Irons dead, Trey gave Jamal a gun and a target, a lieutenant from the 88s who drank at a corner bar every Friday. "Make it loud," Trey said. "Send a message."
Jamal sat outside the bar for an hour, engine idling, heart pounding. His hand trembled. In the side mirror, he caught his reflection and for the first time, he saw Marcus. Same hollow eyes. Same clenched jaw.
He didn't pull the trigger that night. He drove home instead, walked into the apartment where Lena sat waiting, a half-cooked dinner on the stove and tears on her cheeks.
"I want out," Jamal said.
But you don't just walk away from people like Trey.
Chapter 4: The Burn
The Irons didn't send a warning. They sent fire.
Jamal returned from the grocery store two days later to find the apartment building ablaze, smoke curling into the sky like a funeral veil. Firefighters held him back. Screams echoed in his ears even after they stopped. Lena died from smoke inhalation before they could reach her.
She never made it out.
The police asked questions. Jamal said nothing. His heart had hardened into stone. The only thing left in him was vengeance.
He went to the Irons' old hideout with two guns and a bottle of gasoline.
Chapter 5: Ashes Like My Father
The news report the next day spoke of a shootout in a warehouse, five dead, two injured, building destroyed by fire. Among the dead was a young man in his twenties. No ID, just a tattoo of a lion and a locket in his pocket—the only thing that survived the flames. Inside the locket was a photo: a boy, maybe seven, sitting in his mother's lap, smiling like he hadn't yet learned how hard the world could be.
Jamal died like his father—alone, angry, and burned by the choices he made.
The cycle ended, but not the way Lena had prayed.
Epilogue:
The city moved on. Another boy stood on another corner, watching the same cars, hearing the same promises. Somewhere, another mother wept.
And the ceiling kept cracking.