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I hesitated. Not because I was trying to protect Ghost. I just knew once I said the next part out loud, this shit was going somewhere it couldn’t come back from.

“His name is Ghost.”

Sha’s eyes narrowed. The name meant nothing to him, and I knew that. I never gave up Ghost when we had taken those bricks from MBs. All of this shit was about to come full circle. I pushed away from the wall and rubbed my hand over my mouth.

“Well, he ain’t really just my old homie.”

Sha continued staring at me. He was waiting for me to get on with my story. I looked toward the elevators before bringing my eyes back to him.

“He’s my brother,” I admitted.

I hadn’t even told Mr. Browne that piece of information yet. Sha’s eyebrows pulled together.

“Your brother?”

“Yeah,” I nodded slowly, “My real-life brother.”

The whole thing was still a shock to me. And a piece of me felt guilty because this person causing all of this drama was tied to me. Sha looked me up and down slowly.

“Now why the fuck would your brother wanna do some shit like this?”

“Listen, I don’t ever think he was Mali’s biggest fan.”

Sha’s eyebrows pulled together.

“I just found out we were brothers not too long ago. The shit is complicated. But he ain’t take it too well when I made it clear that I was choosing me first. I want a better life, and I have that now that I left him and all his bullshit alone. He did this shit…”

So many times, I had replayed this shit in my head. I still couldn’t understand why he would do something like this. Sha watched me go through the motions and didn’t say anything.

“When I came running out after I heard the shots, I saw a black Camry pulling off.”

“And?”

“Ghost was in it.”

That changed something in Sha’s face. I was being descriptive, and I could see that he was picturing his best friend getting shot. The change in his expression wasn’t much, but I caught it. His eyes shifted away from me, and his jaw tightened as he stared at the wall beside my head. I could damn near see his mind working. I stayed quiet and let him think. After a few seconds, his eyes came back to me.

“You sure it was him?”

It was like he wanted to confirm things before shit went left.

“Positive.”

His jaw flexed again. Then he stepped away from me and ran a hand over his face. I watched him closely. Whatever was moving around in his head, I could tell he didn’t like where it was taking him.

GHOST

I had been staring at the same news report for almost ten minutes, waiting for them to tell me something they clearly didn’t know yet. The television showed everything except what I needed to see. Police cars surrounded the area while yellow tape stretched across the parking lot, blocking off the section where the shooting happened. Every few minutes, the camera switched back to the reporter standing near the scene. She was repeating the same information about shots being fired and at least one person being transported to the hospital. Not one fucking name had been released.

I dragged my hand across my mouth as I paced between the living room and the kitchen. Sweat had been collecting along my forehead for the last hour, and every time I wiped it away, more seemed to replace it. I didn’t know if Maliah was dead. That was the problem. I had left before I could find out what happened, and now there wasn’t a damn thing I could do but watch the news and wait for somebody to confirm whether everything had gone the way it was supposed to. The way I had wanted things to go. My phone vibrated on the kitchen counter. I glanced toward it and immediately looked away when I saw Ryan’s name. That nigga had been calling me since earlier, and every unanswered call only added to the pressure already sitting on my chest.

Ryan had been on my ass about setting up that meeting. The more I put him on ice, the more shit with him didn’t make any sense. No one else from the FBI had reached out; he was the only one who had been hassling me. He was passionate about getting to whoever was the source of the bricks. He wanted this meet so damn bad that he was basically stalking my ass. The timer that he had put me on was officially at its end. I was floating on time that I was officially out of. My phone stopped vibrating before starting again less than a minute later. I stared at it from across the room.

Between Ryan pressing me for a meeting I couldn’t arrange and what had happened today, I knew staying around wasn’t an option anymore. Too much shit was closing in at the same time, and I wasn’t about to sit in this apartment waiting to see which problem reached my door first. I walked into my bedroom and grabbed the backpack sitting beside my dresser. Pulling open the first drawer, I started filling it with enough clothes to get me through the next few days. I didn’t bother folding anything or trying to figure out exactly what I would need. I grabbed shirts, jeans, underwear, socks, and whatever else was close enough to reach before forcing the zipper shut.

I still didn’t know where I was going. I would figure that shit out once I got far enough away from here to think. The problem is I was making moves without thinking. Space is what I needed to think. I dropped to one knee beside my bed. I reached underneath it until my hand found the strap of the black duffle I’d pushed toward the back months ago. I pulled it out, sat it on the floor in front of me, and slowly unzipped it. Stacks of money filled the bag. I stared down at them for a moment before running my hand across the top of one of the bundles.

Everybody thought I was broke, and that’s the way I liked it. I had played that role so well that after a while nobody questioned it. Not Trigga. Not my mother. Not anybody else who had watched me move around like I was trying to figure out where my next dollar was coming from.