Page 39 of Omar

We both knew what he meant. Different circumstances a year ago, same result. That time we could call it self-defense. This time we couldn't call it anything.

Kadeem poured us a whisky from Ma's cabinet and pushed one across the table. We drank in silence for a while. Somewhere upstairs Ma was sleeping and she didn't know her youngest had just beaten a man half to death over a name none of us could let go of.

"He ain't gonna stop," I said.

Kadeem looked at me. His face was tired in a way that had nothing to do with the hour. "That's the problem."

Kadeem rinsed the glasses and put them in the drainer. "Go home. Get some rest."

"You?"

"Same."

We left through the back door. The street was cold and empty. I drove back to Bed-Stuy and sat in my car outside my building with the engine off.

My phone buzzed. Devon: He's stable. Barely.

I read the message and closed my phone. The street was quiet. A couple walked past on the opposite sidewalk, laughing about something, living in a version of Brooklyn that had nothing to do with mine.

Then I thought about Asha. Not about the kiss or the park or the conversation. Just her. The exhaustion in her voice when she'd told me about Supreme. The three years she'd been holding it down and the money she was saving and the fact that she was trapped inside a life she'd never chosen.

I was going to get her out of there.

Not the smart way. Not the careful way. Not the way Kadeem and the Associates would approve. But I was going to do it.

I opened my phone and scrolled to the number I'd saved from her Instagram page. Her booking line. I stared at it. My thumb hovered over the call button and I let it sit there for a long time, weighing it up. Calling her was stupid. Texting her was stupid. Anything that left a trail between my phone and hers was a direct line back to Supreme if anyone ever looked.

But I saved the number under a name that meant nothing to anyone but me.

I got out of the car and went upstairs.

Tomorrow I'd deal with the rest of it.

Chapter 15

Omar

Devon called me while I was leaving APEX. "Rashid just called. Said two men followed him from The 4Q to his studio. He made it inside before they got to him but they're sitting in a car on the block."

"Kyran's people?"

"That's what Rashid thinks. They were at the show the other night. He recognized one of them from the crowd."

"Where's he now?"

"Locked in the studio. Tre's with him. He's fine, just shaken up."

I hung up, called James, and told him to meet me at Rashid's building in twenty minutes.

James was already there when I pulled up. He was parked across the street in his car, engine off, watching the block through the windshield. I got in his passenger side and he pointed to an empty space three buildings down.

"The car was right there," James told me. "Black Camry, tinted windows. They bounced about ten minutes ago when they saw me pull up. I got the plate before they turned the corner."

"Run it."

"Already did. Registered to a Darren Yates, address in Flatbush. Devon's pulling his known associates now."

I texted Rashid: You good?