“One of the shops got robbed.”
There was a pause on the line.
“What the fuck? How? Who?” He paused, and then I knew that he was thinking about something deeper. “Which location, bro?”
I clenched my jaw as I scanned the wreckage again.
“The one on 25thTerrace.”
“Fuckkkkk,” he yelled in my ear, “bro, check the supply closet and tell me if it’s?—”
“It’s empty,” I cut him off.
“I’m on my way to you,” he said instantly.
I didn’t even bother to respond because I was still in utter shock. If Sha was panicking, then that meant he had left some shit in this shop. We had a whole warehouse that was under lock and key for this very reason. Whoever did this must have known what they were after.
They knew exactly where to hit. That wasn’t a random smash-and-grab. This felt professional and calculated. I stepped deeper inside the storage room and kicked aside a fallen toolbox in anger. My eyes scanned for anything. I was looking for prints, tracks, anything that could give me a lead. The whole situation had a high sense of audacity attached to it.Who the fuck thinks they can steal from me? My thoughts were all over the place. It was clear that they had no idea who the fuck I was.
I was in so much shock that I still had the phone placed at the side of my head, although no one was on the other line. I shook my head, more to steady myself than anything. And as I stood there, taking in the devastation, one thought piqued my interest more than anything else. I had to step my ass back into the streets. The dog had to come out to play, and I didn’t know if I was quite ready for that.
Chapter 7
Trigga
The sun was barely up, but the room already felt too bright. Light cut through the broken blinds, and it stretched across the table like it was trying to expose everything we had going on. There was money stacked in sloppy piles. The sound of rubber bands popping could be heard, and the faint smell of oil and metal still clung to the air from the auto parts we dragged in. When I say that we cleaned house, I mean it. Ghost’s ass even took the Keurig coffee maker out of the break room. I sat there on a folding chair with my elbows on my knees as I thumbed through a thick stack of hundreds. The crisp sound of a new bill could be heard with every flick. That was the only thing breaking the silence. We came up on money, and a whole lot of it at that.
“Damn,” I muttered under my breath, more to myself than anything. As I looked over the table, I cracked a slight grin. “We cleaned house.”
Across from me, Ghost didn’t even react. He just kept stacking his piles neatly and precisely. He hadn’t said much since we finished the robbery. For a nigga who always had much to say, he resorted to silence whenever we finished a job. I guess that was his own personal way of coping with the crime we hadcommitted. At his feet, a black duffel bag sat halfway unzipped. Ten bricks of cocaine were tucked inside that now belonged to us. I glanced at it for a second longer than I meant to, then leaned back in my chair while stretching my neck side to side. A nigga was truly exhausted.
“Let me guess,” I said, my voice coming out rough from being up all night. “You already got something lined up for that, or are we just going to be sitting on it looking stupid?”
Ghost didn’t answer right away. We were naturally born stick-up kids who knew nothing about moving coke. So, although we were sitting on enough weight to change our lives, if we didn’t put it in the right hands, it meant nothing to us.
I knew that Ghost was thinking before he responded, just by the way his face turned up. I knew that nigga inside and out. After letting me sit in silence for a few more moments, he finally responded.
“I made a call.”
I let out a short laugh while shaking my head.
“A call ain’t a play, bruh.”
That made him pause, just for a second, before he wrapped a rubber band around the stack he had just finished counting, and looked up at me.
“Who I spoke to is interested.”
“Interested?” I repeated while raising a brow. “Man, we ain’t got time for interested.”
I leaned forward and rested my forearms on the table while lowering my voice a little.
“That’s ten bricks, Ghost, not no corner baggies. If we move that wrong, we are going to have folks talking. And we damn sure don’t need people knowing what we got if they aren’t going to be a guaranteed buyer.”
He held my gaze, and he was calm as ever.
“The dude I spoke to is solid.”
I studied him for a second and then nodded once. If Ghost vouched for him, it was worth the risk. I reached over, grabbed the stack of money I had just finished counting, and tightened the rubber band around it until it snapped snug.
