In the weeks after the robbery, Skyy’s life fell apart. Her job had been her life, and now it was over.

“For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to do it anymore,” she remembers now. “He not only took my personal belongings, he took my career.”

She gets teary at the memory. “He took my life that I once knew. And he left me with fear. He left me with anxiety. He left me in debt because clients start pulling out back and forth. No one wants to be involved with the woman who’s so high-controversy where she’s getting guns pulled on her in New York.”

By January, she quit the music business and moved to L.A. to become a comedian.

That wouldn’t be the only effect, though. In late September, while 6ix9ine was in Dubai, federal agents and the NYPD raided his house. What did they find? D!zzy’s backpack. That accidental trophy would help the police cement their case against Nine Trey. When it all came crashing down less than two months later, the robbery would be Counts 3, 4, and 5 of the indictment against Shotti, Ish, Crippy, and 6ix9ine.

In the end, they would all plead guilty. Ish got 60 months in prison. Crippy, 62. Shotti got 60 months for the robbery, and another 120 months for a shooting a few weeks later. For 6ix9ine, who pleaded guilty to nine counts, that robbery was numbers 5 and 6.

Harv’s anger at 6ix9ine and Shotti grew for months after the fiasco of the Texas trip. It culminated on the night of July 22, 2018, when Harv and a friend kidnapped, assaulted, and robbed 6ix9ine. But the over $300,000 in jewelry they got, while nice, wasn’t the point. Instead, they wanted to prove to everyone that 6ix9ine wasn’t really a gangster.

“Billy” was slang for being a member of Nine Trey. 6ix9ine added it to his vocabulary after meeting Seqo, even using it in the lyrics to “Gummo.” Some guys, like Seqo Billy and Billy Ado, adopted it into their names. So as his friend was punching 6ix9ine in the back of the head, Harv used his phone to record the incident. They told him to repeat a sentence on camera. Harv wanted to show the world that the rainbow-haired rapper was a fraud. There was only one thing they wanted to hear 6ix9ine proclaim.

“Say you not Billy.”

He did.

In the aftermath of the kidnapping, everything got even more tense. The next day, Shotti and 6ix9ine went into damage control mode. They called Pvnch and asked him to interview them right outside of 6ix9ine’s childhood home in Bushwick, whose address he’d tauntingly shouted out in previous interviews. They wanted to set the narrative. 6ix9ine was “good, strong, healthy.” He was back from a sold-out world tour. He was outside, still in public, still in the streets.

And the kidnapping? 6ix9ine had temporarily “lost touch with reality,” he explained to the camera. He was a superstar now, after all. He thought he could walk around in the hood like he used to. And he “slipped up.” He acknowledged on camera: “There’s no more being regular.”

6ix9ine did his best to humanize himself. He talked about being in the back of the car with his kidnappers, pleading to see his daughter again. He mentioned thinking about XXXTentacion’s then-recent murder. He was alternately reflective and boastful. While the details he gave were accurate, he said nothing about who was responsible. True to form, he was entirely focused on how “Fefe,” his Nicki Minaj collab that had just been released, was performing online. He even checked its YouTube view count in the middle of the interview.

Shotti appeared lighthearted, joking about his love for Nicki and relishing the fact that “Treyway” had become the hottest catchphrase of the year. He even tried to make light of the previous day’s kidnapping: “Shoutout to y’all for borrowing his jewelry. He need a new look, anyway.”

But behind the scenes, things weren’t quite so happy. A few days later, Shotti, Crippy, 6ix9ine, and Jorge were together in Jorge’s car. Shotti unloaded on his star artist with a nearly 20-minute harangue. He was unaware that by that time, Jorge was cooperating with the government, and his every word was being recorded and would be turned over to the ADA.

“You can’t put us in situations where we gon’ be at risk, nigga,” he bellowed. “Especially when we got hella beef with these niggas that we ain’t drop. Nigga still got your jewelry, bro.”

Shotti was upset that 6ix9ine was still moving around like he wasn’t famous. And now it had backfired, severely.

“Yo, we really gotta know what we’re doing to move correctly, scrap,” Shotti said. “And keep your name fucking lit. And the way to do that is not being in the fucking neighborhood where you could get touched.”

The pressure was on Shotti to retaliate, and he was not happy about it. “It’s gonna be a shoot-out, bro. And we gotta kill somebody.”

He knew how violent Harv was, even before this.

“I ride around with a fucking semi-automatic assault rifle, bro,” Shotti explained. “Harv, I taught him that.”

He laid it out as plainly as he could. “Harv put his hands on you. You know Harv, I know Harv. He been trying to intimidate you from day one. Now, what the fuck you gonna do about it?”

Shotti knew what he was gonna do about it. Even before the kidnapping, Shotti was already trying to make Smurf Village, the housing project where Harv lived, hot. A week before Harv kidnapped 6ix9ine, Shotti directed a crew of his guys to go into Smurf Village with guns blazing after he saw Billy Ado out there on Instagram Live, shooting a music video. But they missed Ado, and hit a woman in the foot. Now, Shotti was determined to raise the temperature even higher.

By October, the Nine Trey members in prison—the ones who called the shots—had given Shotti carte blanche to go to war in Smurf Village. Shotti’s man Gunz was determined to do his part. On October 24, Gunz took Shotti’s black Benz and went with his friend Pablo to Smurf Village, intending to shoot Harv. Instead, he hit one of Harv’s friends, paralyzing him. Harv, enraged and seeking revenge, slashed a young guy named Mark who he knew was close to Gunz, sending him to the hospital.

Just two days after that, Shotti and Crippy, along with an ex-boxer named Zachary Bunce, would attempt to muscle their way into a meeting between 6ix9ine and his label head Elliot Grainge. Grainge’s security, some off-duty NYPD officers, weren’t about to let that happen. Crippy ended up shot and hospitalized, and Shotti and Bunce were arrested.

That incident marked the beginning of the end. Just weeks later, 6ix9ine would publicly disavow Nine Trey, first on Instagram, and then a day later on The Breakfast Club in front of millions. And right after that, the NYPD, Homeland Security, and the FBI would culminate their five-year investigation into the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods by arresting 6ix9ine, Shotti, Crippy, and Ish, along with Shotti’s OG Mel Murda and the gang’s shooter Fu Banger. Harv, who was already behind bars and charged with 6ix9ine’s kidnapping, would be added to their case in January. He would ultimately be found guilty of the kidnapping (despite his protestations that 6ix9ine set it all up for public sympathy) and of Mark’s slashing.

With his arrest, 6ix9ine’s dramatic run to the top of rap was over. He faced decades, if not life, behind bars—unless he did something drastic.

It took him one day to decide to cooperate.