Page 233 of When a Soul Cries

Hollis.

And Desmond fucking Vance.

I’d spent years making sure the Devereaux name meant something different from what it used to.

Whatever Desmond was trying to drag back to our doorstep, my brother and I were about to find out.

I had been sitting in the dark for damn near forty minutes watching grown men walk in and out of a warehouse like nobody knew what the hell they were doing inside.

That was the thing about street niggas. The longer they got away with something, the sloppier they got. Eventually, hiding stopped feeling necessary because they started believing nobody was watching.

Tonight, I was.

I sat low behind the wheel, parked in the cut far enough down the block that anybody coming in or out wouldn't pay much attention to me. Thick bushes along the edge of the abandoned lot hid most of my car while still giving me a clear view of the warehouse—faded brick, rusted loading doors, cracked pavement, and one flickering security light above the side entrance.

Nothing about it screamed money.

According to Darius, plenty of money moved through that motherfucker.

I lifted the binoculars when another dark SUV rolled around back. Two men climbed out, one carrying a duffel bag, and disappeared through a metal door.

“Damn, Desmond,” I muttered. “You been busy.”

The folder Darius gave me rested on the passenger seat. Shell companies. Business registrations. Financial transfers. Different names with the same people connected underneath them.

Then there was the warehouse.

Rome and I knew Desmond never completely walked away from the streets, but we hadn't known he was this deep. More importantly, we hadn't known his street shit had started bleeding into our legitimate business.

At first, I thought Hollis was regular competition. Another company had come in late with numbers good enough to make Hollis reconsider signing with us.

Then I called Darius.

That nigga excavated.

Within days, he'd connected the competing company back to Desmond through several businesses and financial relationships. Then the rest unraveled. Some of the experience listed in their proposal didn't belong to them. Certifications had been misrepresented. Projects they claimed couldn't be connected to them.

Desmond wasn't trying to beat us.

He was trying to cheat us.

Darius had also heard Desmond was telling people Rome and I had forgotten who helped us back in the streets. Somewhere in his fucked-up version of history, because he'd made money with us and introduced us to certain people, we owed him a piece of whatever we built afterward.

Fuck that.

Rome and I had worked too hard to leave that life behind. We'd invested, bought property, lost money, made money, learned business the hard way, and built Devereaux Development from the ground up.

Desmond didn't build shit for us.

Headlights appeared in my rearview mirror.

Finally.

Rome's SUV slowed behind me before the lights cut off. A moment later, he made his way through the bushes and opened my passenger door.

“You took long enough.”

“I came when you called.”