“I’m not.”
“You’re lying, but whatever.” She leaned back. “Rahmel was poaching from y’all to fund his own operation.”
I burst out laughing. “That dumbass thought he could go to my suppliers behind my back? They’ve been working with us since before my daddy died.”
My pops solidified those connections decades ago. When he got killed, a few tried to take the crew from me, but I put foot to ass and made it clear this empire was staying in the Banks family.
“That’s why he went and found a plug in New York,” she said, pausing as the waiter dropped off our drinks.
I rubbed my jaw. “I still don’t get how they thought this could work without running into problems.”
“You were supposed to be dead,” she said plainly. “They figured BC would eat itself from the inside out.”
I snorted. “And they thought Lani would sit back and let that happen? These niggas don’t know my brother for real. He got a few screws loose.”
Jelani might joke, but he didn’t fuck around when it came to me or the business. If I hadn’t made it that day, the city would’ve burned.
“I wonder where he gets it from,” Nairobi smirked as she sipped her drink.
“Haha, smart ass,” I said, sipping my lemonade. “Can you get the names of these snake-ass niggas? And who the fuck shot me?”
“Still working on the first part. They’re pretty tight-lipped about the shooting when I’m around. But if I had to guess? Rahmel’s people.”
Rahmel’s cousins were small-time hustlers from the Eastside, barely scraping by on the shit they moved. They were fucking bums. Rahmel came to me because he knew I was his only shot out of the projects; if he’d stayed with them, he’d be working out of dirty trap houses into his fifties.
I was getting too old for this shit. I knew I couldn’t fully leave the game, but I was ready to fall back. At thirty-eight, I wanted something real—a wife, a couple of kids. I’d been laying the foundation for my exit over the past few years. Jelani could have the streets. He loved this life more than I ever did.
Growing up, he was Pops’ shadow, trying to learn everything. I had to force him to finish college, just so one of us could. The minute he graduated, he came home ready to be my right hand.
I dragged a hand down my face. “Alright, let me run this by Lani and figure out how we finna deal with these Eastland niggas.”
* * *
After lunch, I swung by my mother’s house. I wasn’t surprised to see Jelani’s BMW parked in the driveway.
“Hey, baby,” she called from the kitchen as I walked in. Jelani was at the island, inhaling a plate of food. He nodded at me mid-bite.
“Hey, Ma.” I leaned in, kissing her forehead. “What up, Lani?”
“What you doing here?” Ma asked, eyeing me like she knew I didn’t just stop by for a casual visit. “You hungry?”
“Nah, I just ate.”
She nodded. “Alright, I’ll fix you a plate to take home.”
Sydney Banks never co-signed what our daddy did, but she loved Ricardo Banks— and the lifestyle his money bought. It was easy to look the other way when your man moved you and your kids out the hood and into a mini-mansion. She made me promise I wouldn’t follow in his footsteps. That promise went out the window after he got killed. I didn’t have a choice.
Pops was a genius at moving product. The issue was he had no long-term vision—there were no legit investments, no properties in Ma’s name. Not even a life insurance policy. Just stacks of cash that couldn’t stretch forever. She’d become a stay-at-home mother since Jelani was born, and by the time he died, she hadn’t worked in twenty years. So, I stepped up and made sure she and my brother were straight—no matter what it cost me.
“Lani, let me rap with you real quick,” I said, catching his eye while Ma packed my to-go plate.
“Ma, make me a plate, too,” Jelani added, rinsing his plate in the sink. “That cabbage was good as hell.”
We went into the back room, out of earshot from Ma—we never talked business in front of her.
“Rahmel and Kyree were recruiting niggas from inside the crew to help them set up their own operation,” I said, dropping into an armchair.
Jelani let out a low whistle and leaned against a bookshelf. “So we got some disloyal ass niggas in the circle?”
