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He chuckled again. “Is that right? Orlando tell you the whole story, or just the part that makes him look like a victim?”

“You bored or something? Is this supposed to be a heart to heart?”

“Give me some grace, I haven’t seen you since you were a boy. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do. How’s business been? You lost four men, right? Been a lot of bad luck lately.”

“Solomon, do you have a point you’re trying to make or you just gonna keep running your mouth?” I was losing my patience. Bringing up what he did wasn’t the dig he thought it was.

“That shit at the port and with Orlando was a demonstration of the lengths I’m willing to go, Cardez,” he said. “That nigga took everything from me while he left me to rot in a cell. So understand me when I tell you I got twenty years of patience in me. You got a whole empire to keep track of and you can’t do it all at once.”

“You talk a lot of shit for a nigga in hiding.”

“Tell Orlando I said hello, young blood.” The line went dead.

29 LA’BELLE EVANS

Today was going to be a day. I could feel it in my bones. Cardez made good on his word and sent his assistant over to get started with wedding planning. The thought made me want to jump into the Hudson.

Then Siani texted that we needed a lunch date ASAPtually. I’d been dodging her for weeks and left her on read whenever she asked about me leaving Luxe.

I also owed my mother a visit, which was a whole other ordeal.

I prayed my sanity would stay intact.

Lorelei showed up at noon, dressed in cut off shorts, a mesh oversized chartreuse shirt, and a fresh pair of Uptowns, her curly blonde locs falling over her shoulder. She looked like she was headed to hang out with her homegirls, not help me plan a wedding. She was a little thing—couldn’t have been more than five feet tall and a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet.

She pushed her Chanel sunnies on her forehead and walked past me into the apartment. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

“Um, hi?” I said, locking the door behind her. “I’m Belle.”

“Lorelei.”

“I thought he was lying when he said he had an assistant,” I said as I joined her at the dining table.

“You think a man like that could manage his life with just an iPhone?” she tutted. “Cardez is good, but not that good.”

She pulled out a tablet with her intricately designed acrylic nails. From what I could tell, we were probably around the same age, late thirties. She had the energy of somebody who’d learned that looking unbothered was half the job.

“I didn’t know what kind of vibe you were going for, so I pulled six venues,” she said, turning the tablet to me.

The first one was a brownstone in Brooklyn—exposed brick, string lights, and beautiful floral arrangements. It was beautiful, but I felt nothing as I swiped through the pictures, just a hollow emptiness.

“How’d you get this on such short notice?” I asked.

“I didn’t book it yet, but there’s a hold on it. I got a list of folks that owe Cardez favors, people that want him to owe them favors, and people that are scared shitless to tell him no.”

“That’s not concerning at all.”

“Welcome to the family,” she said breezily. There was a different venue on the screen now.

I scrolled through slowly. Every venue was beautiful in that luxury-magazine way, the kind of place my mother would lose her mind over. I kept waiting to feel something. Even a preference. Nothing came.

“You’ve been working with Cardez a long time?” I asked.

“Three years. Priest’s my cousin. Dez helped me get out of a bad situation.”

I didn’t ask her to elaborate as I got up to get us some wine. Woman to woman, I could read between the lines about what that meant.

“What’s working for him like?”