That’s how stressed I was.
I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my eyes. The warehouse fire had been all over the news for two days now. WUSA9 had run a whole segment with aerial footage of what was left of the building, which was basically nothing. Charredwalls and ash where twenty-five years’ worth of aged barrels used to sit. Some of those barrels had been aging since before I took over as CEO. My father started them. Rita had recipes tied to those specific batches. Generational product, irreplaceable, gone in one night.
And I couldn’t find a single frame of footage that showed me who did it.
I pulled up the list I’d been building in my head since the fire. Enemies. People with motive. People with access.
The thing was, since Rashid died and the BCC dispersed, the streets had been in a state of reorganization. Rashid had run the Brick City Crew with an iron fist for decades, and when he died, the whole operation scattered like roaches when you flip the lights on. Some of the soldiers went independent, some retired, some got locked up, and a few tried to start their own little operations that weren’t worth my time or attention.
But here’s the thing about the BCC that most people didn’t understand. I never supplied them. Ever. Banks Reserve’s underworld connections ran through their rivals. We were the plug for pure, uncut cocaine to the crews that competed with the BCC, and we had been since the transport days when me, Justice, Mekhi, and Zephyr used the liquor distribution network to move product alongside premium spirits. That meant every dollar the BCC’s competitors made, a percentage flowed back to us. Which meant every time the BCC lost territory, we benefited.
Rashid knew this. He hated it. But he also respected the game enough to never come at us directly, because coming at the Banks family meant coming at Banks Reserve, and Banks Reserve was too visible, too connected, and too protected for a street war to be worth the cost.
But Rashid was dead now. And dead men don’t enforce truces.
So who was left? The BCC remnants were too disorganized to pull off something this precise. This wasn’t some corner boys with a gas can and a grudge. This was surgical. Whoever hit that warehouse knew the security rotation, knew the camera blind spots, knew which building to target for maximum financial damage without touching our actual product stash. That was inside information, and inside information meant somebody close.
I didn’t like that conclusion. But I couldn’t ignore it either.
My phone buzzed. It was Mekhi. Still nothing on the snake-tatted nigga.
Just as I was about to go through the footage again, I heard the front door open and close, followed by the unmistakable sound of shopping bags rustling against each other and a pair of heels clicking across the marble floor at a pace that suggested the woman wearing them had somewhere important to be but had stopped to buy things on the way there.
“Babyyyy! Oh my God, you will not BELIEVE the week I’ve had,” Lyric shrilled.
She appeared in the office doorway looking like she’d just walked off a magazine shoot, which, knowing her, she probably had. She was in full glam with lashes, contour, lips done, and a new black bussdown. She was wearing heels that were definitely red bottoms because Lyric didn’t believe in shoes that didn’t announce themselves. Lyric was a baddie but that wasn’t enough to keep me interested.
“Atlanta was INSANE. I linked up with this brand. You know the one I told you about? The athleisure line? Well, they’re talking about making me the face of their summer campaign. Like the whole campaign, babe. Billboards. Social media. Everything. And THEN, okay so get this, I ran into Lori Harvey at this event and she was so sweet, like we literally exchanged numbers and she said we should collab on something and Iwas like YES obviously, and then me and the girls went to this restaurant that just opened in Buckhead and the food was mid honestly but the vibes were immaculate and I got the cutest pictures for my feed?—”
She hadn’t looked at me once. Not once. She was talking to the room, to the air, to whatever invisible audience lived inside her head that she performed for twenty-four hours a day. She hadn’t asked me how I was doing. Hadn’t mentioned the warehouse fire that had been on every local news channel for forty-eight hours. Hadn’t noticed the three monitors behind me running security footage or the fact that I looked like I hadn’t slept in two days, because I hadn’t.
“—and I found this AMAZING boutique on Peachtree that had the most gorgeous leather bags, like handmade, and I may have gone a little crazy but it’s an investment, you know? Quality pieces hold their value. Oh! And I need to talk to you about Fashion Week because?—”
“Lyric.”
“—there’s this designer who wants me to walk in his show but I’d need to fly to Milan like two weeks early for fittings and?—”
“Lyric.”
“—honestly the exposure alone would be worth it but the flights and the hotel would probably be like?—”
“Lyric, shut the fuck up.”
She stopped mid-sentence, her mouth still partially open, “Excuse me?”
“Sit down.” I pointed to the chair across from my desk. “We need to talk.”
“Okay, first of all, don’t talk to me like?—”
“Sit. Down.”
Something in my voice must’ve hit different because she actually sat. Set her Birkin on the floor, crossed her legs, andlooked at me with the expression of a woman who was already building her defense before she even knew what the charge was.
I turned off the monitors. Leaned forward. Folded my hands on the desk.
“When’s the last time you asked me how I was doing?”
She tilted her head. “What?”
