He looked over at me with lust in his eyes as he devilishly bit his bottom lip. He’d always known I was smart. But he loved seeing me make legit plays that didn’t involve guns or re-ups. I could feel it in the way he looked at me when I spoke, like my brain turned him on just as much as my body did.
His phone vibrated, and he checked it at a red light, sighed, then typed a response with his thumbs moving fast.
“What happened?”
Big A kept his eyes on the road. “Minor situation.”
I stared at him, not letting it go. He chuckled because he knew I wouldn’t.
He unlocked his phone and handed it to me. “Read it.”
I looked down at the messages.
One of the crew had texted:Money short with the runner. Dude acting slick. He claiming he paid. He didn’t.
Big A had replied:Pull the runner back. Don’t touch him yet. Get in the car and leave. Tomorrow, we’ll handle it.
I looked up from the screen. “Which spot is this?”
“One of our handoff spots on sixty-seventh.”
He kept driving like he wasn’t tempted to go handle it himself.
“That corner sits right off a neighborhood I’ve been tracking. It’s the kind of area where one messy incident can drop values overnight. If conflict starts over there, it spills into the blocks people are finally trying to rebuild, and it makes it harder for me to move buyers into those properties without them feeling scared.”
Big A glanced at me, chuckling. “And this is why I don’t want you knowing every street detail.”
I slightly rolled my eyes, but I understood it. He wasn’t shutting me out to be disrespectful. He was trying to keep my work legal, and I hated that he was right.
I seethed for half a second. I hated being excluded and being outside the war room. I missed that shit. Then I remembered why I had taken a step back. He wasn’t shutting me out. He was protecting the boundaries we’d set for our marriage.
He drove a little farther, then pulled into a quiet spot near the water, where the streets were empty and the noise didn’t reach.
Music played softly as his hand went to my thigh.
“How you been feeling?”
I stared out the windshield for a moment before I answered. “Better than I thought I would.”
“In what way?”
“I was scared stepping back would make me feel powerless. But it didn’t. It made me feel bigger.”
Big A’s eyes stayed on me. “Talk your shit.”
“These deals are mine and yours. These clients hire me for my brain. Not my last name. Not who my brothers are. They hire me because I’m good.”
He nodded once. “I like hearing you say that.”
The tension between him and my brothers had eased as time passed. The awkward moments didn’t linger anymore. Everybody moved like grown men. Even Sincere kept it cool.
I still felt like I was walking a tightrope sometimes. I was Cartier by blood and cartel-adjacent by love. I was determined not to be the reason my husband and my brothers ever went at each other again.
Big A squeezed my thigh. “Seeing you handle your business like this makes it easier for me. Because I know if all this street shit ever collapse, you still got something. And if I ever gotta fully walk away, you’re building a road with space for both of us. I hear you on the phone talking about, ‘My consulting fee is…’ That do something to me. I like when you don’t need anybody. Even me.”
“I watched women depend on men growing up. Men who could snatch everything away from their wives and children whenever they wanted to, or when they were killed or locked up. I promised myself I would never be in a position where I had to stay somewhere because I couldn’t afford to leave.”
“I get it.”
