Page 9

The front of the warehouse was a distribution hub for commercial restaurant supplies—hundreds of pallets of cooking oil, pasta, rice, oven pans. The back of the warehouse was where my money maker was.

Yomi was waiting by the loading dock outside, with his tablet and phone in hand. He dressed casually, in a Nike tech set, built like a football player, wearing an expression that was the closest thing to irritation I’d ever seen on him.

“The Castellano shipment is forty short,” he said as I approached, and handed me the tablet. “Castellano’s people are saying it’s on our end, but I double checked the manifest. Our count was right.”

I skimmed through the manifest, reviewing the numbers myself. My boy was thorough as fuck—I hadn’t made him one of my capos for nothing. But I needed to see shit with my own eyes before I decided how angry to be.

The count was right, like I knew it would be. Plus, I had cameras all through this bitch. Niggas would have to be very bold to try and steal from me. So somehow, forty units just evaporated between the port in Newark and our dock, and this motherfucker was trying to pin it on us rather than admit he had a leak. Victor Castellano ran with the Fiore family out of Jersey. He wasn’t an enemy or a friend, just a man my father had done business with for twenty years and expected me to keep doing business despite his shady practices.

“Get Victor on the phone,” I said.

I walked the floor while Yomi made the call. The guys who worked the morning shift straightened up as I passed them. I didn’t come to the warehouse more than once a month, so when I was here between my usual check-ins, they knew it was for something serious.

My phone vibrated in my pocket.

Tariq

The day party was lit yesterday, big cuz. Appreciate you helping me get that together.

I smiled. Riq was the closest thing I had to a little brother. His mother—my aunt Gloria—helped raise me after my mother died, and Riq had been attached to me since he was old enough to walk. He was almost thirty-one, and still reckless in the way young niggas with too much money and not enough responsibility were, but he had a good heart. I’d put him through undergrad, and he was in his second year of law school. I was trying to keep his hands as clean as possible, but it didn’t hurt to have a lawyer in the family.

No doubt. Why you ain’t leave with your girl last night?

Tariq

Who? Siani? Mannn, she keep telling me we gotta take things slow because she tryna get to know a nigga.

You like her?

Tariq

She’s cool. But what about her homegirl? She curve you or something? I ain’t never seen you give your card out to no female before.

I shook my head and pocketed my phone. I wasn’t about to get into that with him.

But ol’ girl had been in my head since yesterday, which was aggravating as fuck when I was forty units short and couldn’t stop thinking about a woman who hadn’t even given me her number.

I’m not the type of nigga to obsess over rejection. If a woman says no, I respect it. It’s just not something I hear often, and when I do, it’s usually because she’s already in a situation. Belle didn’t seem like she was in a relationship. Well, at least not by the nigga that was up in her face at the party, because she looked zoned out the entire time he was talking to her.

Me and half the men at the party noticed her and Siani when they came in. But Belle’s aura pulled me in immediately. Her sable brown skin seemed to drink up the sunlight, and I could see her ass from the front. I watched her keep that unbothered mask on her face all evening, even when I approached her. That was until I touched her. It was subtle, but I noticed the way her breath hitched slightly, like something in her reacted before she could stop it.

Her no was half-assed. The look she gave me before was the truth.

Yomi came back with the phone. “Victor’s on.”

“Cardez, my friend⁠—”

“Let’s skip the pleasantries, Victor. You’re forty short on my shipment and your people are saying the miscount is on us. I’m looking at the manifest right now, and I already know what I’m not going to find when I pull the footage from last night.”

Victor exhaled on the other end. He wasn’t stupid, he knew pushing me would put him somewhere he didn’t want to be.

“There may have been a… discrepancy on our end. I’ll have my guys look into it.”

“You’ve got until Friday. If I have to come to Jersey to have this conversation in person, I’m adding interest.”

I hung up and handed the phone back to Yomi. “If he shorts us again, we’re done with Castellano.”

He nodded. “I’ll put some feelers out for alternatives.”