Page 53 of Omar

But I couldn't tell James that. Couldn't tell anyone. Asha was inside Supreme's operation, sleeping in his bed, performing for him every night. If anyone found out about us, the consequences wouldn't fall on me. They'd fall on her.

"Eyes on the road, James," I said.

He smiled. "Whatever you say, boss."

We drove back to Bed-Stuy. I dropped James at APEX, then sat in my car in the parking lot for a minute. My phone buzzed. Asha: Thinking about you.

I read it twice, deleted it, and typed back: Same. Be safe.

Deleted that too. Both sides of the conversation erased, the way we did it every time. Two people talking to each other through disappearing words.

I pulled out of the lot and drove home.

Dwayne's money would come in within the week. I was sure of that because I'd seen his face when I stood over him and he'd understood what the alternative was. Most people paid after the first visit. The ones who didn't pay after the first visit always paid after the second. I'd never had to make a third.

That was the job. Kadeem ran the business, Devon ran the intel, Stone gave the advice, and I made sure everybody played by the rules. Enforcer wasn't a title anyone put on a business card. It was a function. A necessity. The thing that made everything else possible.

I was good at it. I didn't enjoy it but I was good at it. And right now, with Asha's text sitting in my recently deleted folder and Dwayne's sweat still drying on his desk, I was thinking about what it would mean to be something else. Someone who came home to a woman who was waiting for him because she wanted to be there, not because she was trapped.

That thought was dangerous. I let myself have it for exactly ten seconds. Then I put it away and went upstairs.

Chapter 20

Omar

Devon called me into APEX before I'd finished my coffee. He had the projector running, three laptops open on the desk, paper spread across the table in the pattern that meant he'd been up all night.

"You need to see this," he said, pulling a chair out for me.

The financial trail from TK's operation had been running through shell companies for months. Devon had started pulling the thread after what the brother told me at the warehouse, the one who'd been wearing Pops' watch. He'd said the money behind TK was connected to Pops' disappearance, that whoever was running it was close. Devon had been tracking the money one layer at a time since then, peeling back registrations, matching names to addresses to bank accounts. Most of it was noise. False fronts, dead ends, names that led nowhere.

But one of the shells connected to a name that also appeared in Supreme's business structure.

"Look at this." Devon pointed to a spreadsheet on the center laptop. "Greyline Holdings. Registered in Delaware two years ago. It shows up in TK's supply chain as a distribution intermediary. But here..." He pulled up another document. "Same company name, same registration number, appears as a subsidiary in Supreme's real estate portfolio."

"Could be a coincidence," I said. "Shared accountant, shared lawyer. Happens all the time."

"That's what I thought." Devon clicked through to a third screen. "Until I found the signatory. Same name on both accounts. Darnell Webb."

I looked at him. "Darnell Webb is TK's money man."

"And Supreme's property manager." Devon leaned back in his chair. "That ain't a coincidence."

"There's something else." Devon pulled up a registration document. "Greyline Holdings was originally incorporated around the same time Pops went missing. Two years ago. Same window."

The room got quiet.

"Keep pulling," I told Devon. "Everything connected to Greyline. Every name, every transaction, every address. I want the full picture before we take this to Kadeem."

Devon nodded. "Give me two days."

I left APEX and drove to Kadeem's. He was in the office at the back of the house. Shanay's coat was on the hook by the door so she was upstairs. I sat down across from him and laid out what Devon had found.

Kadeem listened without interrupting. He went through the printouts I'd brought, turned pages slowly, ran his finger along the columns of numbers like he was reading music.

"Greyline Holdings," he said, tapping the name. "I've seen this before."

"Where?"