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When it came to the money, though, I wasn’t about to spend ninety million dollars one grocery order at a time while Lakelyn stressed over bills and wondered what she was going to do next.

That money had always been meant to protect the people I loved if something happened to me.

Something had definitely fucking happened to me, so I got it where it belonged.

Getting Lakelyn’s banking information had been easy enough. Her phone was inside my house, which meant I could manipulate it the same way I could every other electronic device on my property. I found her routing and account numbers through her banking app, then used my laptop to access the private account holding the reserve.

I still remembered every login, security answer, and verification code connected to that mothafucka. I hadn’t built an account holding that kind of money with regular-ass transfer limits either. It was private banking, set up years ago to move serious money when I needed it moved.

Ninety million was a hell of a wire, but the account could handle it, and so could I.

By the time Lakelyn woke up, the transfer was already on its way.

⸺⸺⸺⸺

The second Lakelyn opened the front door, and I saw the man standing on the other side, I almost laughed.

When you’re a Black woman dealing with something you can’t explain, you call a priest.

Made sense.

What didn’t make sense was that the priest happened to be somebody I used to serve.

Well, I’ll be damned.

Marcellus Maxwell has found God.

The last time I saw that nigga while I was alive, he wasn’t walking around with a Bible tucked beneath his arm and a silver cross hanging against a black clerical shirt; he had been spending too much money getting high, disappearing into hotel rooms with women he paid not to ask questions, and making promises to people he couldn’t afford to keep. Now he had a collar and apparently enough respectability for my woman to call him when she thought her house needed spiritual intervention.

Life was funny as hell… death was worse.

I stood there in the foyer, arms crossed, just staring at the transformation.

The Marcellus I remembered had bloodshot eyes half the time, always looking over his shoulder, always owing somebody something.

That version standing in that doorway?

Clean-cut, pressed shirt, polished shoes, and hair lined up perfectly.

Everything about him said he’d been working on this new version of himself for a while.

“Father Maxwell, thank you so much for coming,” Lakelyn said, stepping aside.

“My pleasure.”

His voice was calm, professional, and peaceful as hell, the kind of voice that probably worked perfectly on nervous parishioners and people looking for spiritual guidance. Everything about the way he spoke was smooth and measured, like he’d spent years sanding every trace of the streets out of himself until nobody meeting him now would ever guess the kind of life he used to live.

Then he crossed my threshold and stopped cold.

Every bit of that peaceful composure disappeared from his face the second he saw me standing near the staircase with my arms folded, leaning against the banister like I owned the place.

Which, technically, I did… or at least I had when I was alive. Now I just haunted the mothafucka, but that felt like semantics.

His eyes came straight to me, not near me and damn sure not through me. He was looking directly at me, and there was no mistaking that kind of eye contact. He saw my face, my posture, probably even the same smirk I used to give him years ago when he’d show up looking for product and trying to act like he had his shit together.

I let my smile widen, slow and deliberate, just enough to make sure he understood the recognition went both ways.

“What’s up, Marcellus? I mean, Father Maxwell,” I taunted.