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I woke up before her and headed to the kitchen to make coffee. I moved around with ease, since I already knew where she kept everything. The mugs were in the cabinet to the left of the stove, coffee in the one next to it.

When the coffee maker clicked off, I poured myself a cup. As I set the pot down, I heard her footsteps padding across the hardwood floor.

“You just making yourself at home?”

I turned to see her rubbing her eyes, voice still thick with sleep. She was giving me a look that was supposed to convince me my presence was a nuisance.

“Good morning to you too,” I said. “Want some coffee?”

“I can make my own damn coffee,” she grumbled. She brushed past me and took the other mug I’d taken out and started making her coffee—three Splenda and a nice amount of oat milk.

“How’d you know where my stuff was?” she asked after she’d taken a sip.

“I looked through the cabinets ‘til I found what I needed.”

“Why are you up so early?” she asked.

“It’s almost 9:30.”

“On a Sunday. That’s early.”

“I got things to handle.”

She waved her hand toward the door. “Then go handle it.”

“Would you have preferred me dipping without saying anything?”

She shrugged and went to sit at her dining room table. “Makes no difference to me. Shouldn’t have been here anyway.”

“Aight, Belle,” I chuckled. “Wasn’t saying that last night with a mouthful of dick.”

She flipped me off and went back to her coffee. I watched her, thinking about what it was going to take for this woman to stop fighting the inevitable. I understood that she wanted to be in control—I just wasn’t going to let it happen.

“I’ma call you later,” I said as I rinsed my mug at the sink.

I walked over to her, and she tilted her chin up to meet me. I kissed her slowly, noting how her body visibly relaxed when I touched her.

“Running that mouth, and you still know to give Papa his kiss.”

She looked away from me quickly, embarrassed. “Fuck you, Dez.”

I laughed. “I got you later.”

I stopped by my crib to shower and change before the meeting at Jerome’s. Yomi, Marco, Priest, and my pops were all coming through so we could get to the bottom of this hit on the Tremont house. All in all, we’d lost $300,000, and that wasn’t counting the guns. Whoever took them removed the trackers a few blocks out. The timing wasn’t a coincidence either—they moved on us while I was out of town.

Somebody had been watching me long enough to know exactly when to move.

Jerome’s was a casual breakfast and lunch spot with a sizable meeting room in the back. Its namesake nodded at me as I walked in. He’d been holding it down for my father since before I was born—the restaurant was as much ours as it was his.

Everyone was already there when I got in. Yomi had his laptop open. Marco was bustin’ down a breakfast platter because it didn’t matter what we were dealing with, the nigga was gonna eat if he was hungry. Priest looked like he hadn’t slept, which meant he’d been in the streets trying to find shit out and tightening things up at our other spots.

“What’s good, y’all?” I made my rounds dapping everyone up before settling into the booth next to Marco. “Where we at?”

“Talked to Santos this morning,” Marco said between bites. Santos was our narcotics connect. “The fire marshal ruled it arson, which we already knew. The bodies are being handled as low priority homicides. A trap house went up, them niggas not exactly rushing to solve it.”

“So, we’re on our own,” I said.

“Like always,” Priest said. “But I’ve been putting pressure on some people. Whoever did this used outside help.”