Cev looked at her and nodded approvingly. “I like her already.”
I looked my brother over again, allowing the reality of him standing there to settle. “I’m serious, though. You trying to make some real money, I can put you on. Come into the real estate business with me. Learn the development side. You’ll be straight.”
Cev rolled the ice around his glass while considering it. “Real estate?”
“Yeah.”
“You want me walking through houses talking about natural light and open floor plans?”
“You make enough money; you can call it whatever you want.”
Mike laughed. “I’d pay to see that.”
Cev gave him a flat look. “Ain’t nobody ask you.”
“I got room for you,” I continued. “You don’t have to start from the bottom either. I’ll show you everything.”
It wasn’t charity because Cev was too smart for that, and I respected him too much to offer it. He had a way of reading people, understanding leverage, and seeing moves before anybody else realized a game had started. If he brought half of what he had used in the streets into something legitimate, he could build whatever life he wanted. I knew he had money put up, but how long would that last? He knew that was what I was offering. He also knew I wasn’t going to keep asking.
Cev took another drink, then looked around the ballroom. His gaze moved over the flowers, the packed dance floor, the family that hadn’t stopped smiling since he arrived, and finally landed on me.
“Hell nah.”
I frowned. “Hell nah what?”
“I ain’t joining your real estate business.”
“You ain’t even thought about it.”
“I thought about it while you was talking.”
“That fast?”
“Didn’t take long.”
Mike leaned toward him. “So what you trying to do?”
Cev adjusted one of his cuffs and glanced at Navy before looking back at me. That slow, trouble filled smile spread across his face again, the one that had gotten both of us into more shit than I cared to remember. “I just did years sitting in a cell hearing about everything Lev had going on,” he said. “His money, his businesses, his problems, his woman. Now I’m finally out, and the first thing y’all trying to do is make me part of his shit.”
“I’m offering you an opportunity,” I corrected him.
“You offering me a supporting role.”
Navy covered her laugh with her hand. I stared at him. “Boy, what the fuck you talking about?”
“I ain’t trying to be part of your story.” He lifted his glass toward me, with his smile widening when he saw my expression. “I got my own.”
Mike’s face broke into a grin. “Oh, you came home talking big already?”
“I ain’t talking big. I’m telling y’all what it is.”
“And what is it?” I asked.
Cev looked from me to Navy, then toward the family gathered around us. He had been home for only a few hours, but there was already something restless in his eyes, something hungry and unfinished. Prison might have held his body for a few years, but it hadn’t convinced him his life was over. Standing there in that black suit with the whole room waiting to see whathe would say, he looked like a man who had already decided the world owed him back every night it had stolen. I had my wife on one side, my brother home on the other, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, there was nothing missing from the room. I looked down at Navy, then back at Cev. Maybe he was right, this wasn’t his place in my story. His was just getting started.
“Well,” I asked him. “What is it gone be?”
He raised his glass and gave me one last grin while shaking his head. “Tell everybody to stay tuned for Ceveyn Nights, I’m about to turn this bitch up.”
