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I went to the kitchen and poured myself a drink. Belle was still fuming, but there was something else underneath it, the same energy that had been hovering over her like a dark cloud since before she ran off to Catalina Cove.

“What else is going on with you?” I asked.

“Ain’t shit going on except you fucking up my life over money that’s inconsequential to you.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know why you keep lying to me. I told you—you’ve been different for weeks.”

“There’s nothing else, Cardez.”

“Prin—Belle.” I caught it before it came all the way out, because we weren’t that anymore. “Whatever. Money is your motivation and now you have access to more than you’ll ever spend.”

I left her and went to my room. I was doing all this to make a point and solve a problem. But my emotions, the shit I’d thought I had compartmentalized when I decided to go this route, were still getting in the way. I needed to figure out what I was going to do about that.

“Morning,” I said to Belle when she came into the kitchen.

She ignored me, grabbing her mug of coffee and the plate of scrambled eggs with toast I’d left out for her. She switched her hips extra hard on the way back to the guest room and made sure to slam the door behind her.

This had been our routine for about a week now.

I don’t even know why I was trying with her ass. She was a scammer and a thief. She could be mad that I was forcing her into this marriage, but if I moved like the old heads on the High Table, she’d be dead.

I finished checking emails and got dressed, then headed out to meet Luther, who’d called me back about the sit-down.

Marco drove me out to Jamaica Estates and parked on the private road Luther lived on that was lined with homes that screamed old money.

Luther opened the door dressed in a custom Italian suit— old heads loved wearing dress clothes in their own homes. I was wearing basketball shorts and a white tee. I didn’t give a fuck about formalities, and I wanted the Table to know as much.

Two of the heads of the table, Gilberto Castro from Staten Island, and Maxwell Haynes from Brooklyn, were in the sitting room, nursing glasses of bourbon. I nodded at them and sat down.

“What’s this about, Cardez?” Gilberto asked, walking over to the bar cart to pour me a drink.

“Damn, y’all not even gonna at least ask how my Pops is doing first?” I joked.

“I spoke to him today,” Maxwell said in his heavy Trinidadian accent. “But he didn’t say why you called this meeting.”

I took the glass from Gilberto and leaned back. “I’m getting married.”

Luther spat out his drink while Gilberto and Maxwell stared at me.

“Married,” Maxwell repeated as Luther tried to recover from spitting his drink all over his Persian rug.

“That’s what I said.”

“To who?” Gilberto asked.

“La’Belle Evans.”

“Who the hell is that?” Maxwell asked.

“My fiancée…like I said.”

Luther cleared his throat when I didn’t elaborate. “And her family?”

“What about them?” I asked before taking a sip of bourbon.

“What family is she from, Cardez? Do we know her people?”

“No.”