Chapter 7
CASH “MONEY” BANKS
“You’ve got a big problem, boss man,” Nairobi said as she skimmed the menu.
We were meeting up in Midtown so she could update me on Kyree. Getting shot had thrown everything off. A situation that should’ve taken a few weeks to wrap up was pushing on almost three months.
Nairobi had agreed to stay on a little longer and started working at Stilettos—the strip club where Kyree spent most of his free time flexing his BC affiliation.
He had a weakness for long legs, and Nai played right into it, giving him enough extra attention to hook him.
A few private dances quickly escalated into backroom meetings with his makeshift crew, with him parading her around like she was his girl.
“What could be bigger than niggas trying to kill me?” I asked, sipping my water.
My mind drifted back to Jasmine. It’d been a week since the party, and I still couldn’t get her pretty ass out of my head. She was sexy, and that slick mouth made my dick hard. I wanted her real bad.
“Cash!” Nairobi snapped her fingers in front of my face.
I blinked, snapping out of it. “My bad, Nai. Say that again?”
She gave me a sharp look and opened her mouth to speak, but clamped it shut as the waiter approached the table.
“You guys ready to order?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, handing him her menu. “I’ll have the cod and a glass of white sangria.”
“And let me get the ribeye—medium rare—with mashed potatoes and broccoli. Oh, and a lavender lemonade.” I said.
“Lavender lemonade?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“That shit’s good,” I shrugged.
“You’re distracted.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re lying, but whatever.” She leaned back. “Rahmel was poaching from y’all to fund his own operation.”
I burst out laughing. “That dumbass thought he could go to my suppliers behind my back? They’ve been working with us since before my daddy died.”
My pops solidified those connections decades ago. When he got killed, a few tried to take the crew from me, but I put foot to ass and made it clear this empire was staying in the Banks family.
“That’s why he went and found a plug in New York,” she said, pausing as the waiter dropped off our drinks.
I rubbed my jaw. “I still don’t get how they thought this could work without running into problems.”
“You were supposed to be dead,” she said plainly. “They figured BC would eat itself from the inside out.”
I snorted. “And they thought Lani would sit back and let that happen? These niggas don’t know my brother for real. He got a few screws loose.”
Jelani might joke, but he didn’t fuck around when it came to me or the business. If I hadn’t made it that day, the city would’ve burned.
“I wonder where he gets it from,” Nairobi smirked as she sipped her drink.
“Haha, smart ass,” I said, sipping my lemonade. “Can you get the names of these snake-ass niggas? And who the fuck shot me?”
“Still working on the first part. They’re pretty tight-lipped about the shooting when I’m around. But if I had to guess? Rahmel’s people.”
Rahmel’s cousins were small-time hustlers from the Eastside, barely scraping by on the shit they moved. They were fucking bums. Rahmel came to me because he knew I was his only shot out of the projects; if he’d stayed with them, he’d be working out of dirty trap houses into his fifties.
I was getting too old for this shit. I knew I couldn’t fully leave the game, but I was ready to fall back.
At thirty-eight, I wanted something real—a wife, a couple of kids.
I’d been laying the foundation for my exit over the past few years.
Jelani could have the streets. He loved this life more than I ever did.
Growing up, he was Pops’ shadow, trying to learn everything. I had to force him to finish college, just so one of us could. The minute he graduated, he came home ready to be my right hand.
I dragged a hand down my face. “Alright, let me run this by Lani and figure out how we finna deal with these Eastland niggas.”
* * *
After lunch, I swung by my mother’s house. I wasn’t surprised to see Jelani’s BMW parked in the driveway.
“Hey, baby,” she called from the kitchen as I walked in. Jelani was at the island, inhaling a plate of food. He nodded at me mid-bite.
“Hey, Ma.” I leaned in, kissing her forehead. “What up, Lani?”
“What you doing here?” Ma asked, eyeing me like she knew I didn’t just stop by for a casual visit. “You hungry?”
“Nah, I just ate.”
She nodded. “Alright, I’ll fix you a plate to take home.”
Sydney Banks never co-signed what our daddy did, but she loved Ricardo Banks— and the lifestyle his money bought.
It was easy to look the other way when your man moved you and your kids out the hood and into a mini-mansion.
She made me promise I wouldn’t follow in his footsteps.
That promise went out the window after he got killed. I didn’t have a choice.
Pops was a genius at moving product. The issue was he had no long-term vision—there were no legit investments, no properties in Ma’s name.
Not even a life insurance policy. Just stacks of cash that couldn’t stretch forever.
She’d become a stay-at-home mother since Jelani was born, and by the time he died, she hadn’t worked in twenty years.
So, I stepped up and made sure she and my brother were straight—no matter what it cost me.
“Lani, let me rap with you real quick,” I said, catching his eye while Ma packed my to-go plate.
“Ma, make me a plate, too,” Jelani added, rinsing his plate in the sink. “That cabbage was good as hell.”
We went into the back room, out of earshot from Ma—we never talked business in front of her.
“Rahmel and Kyree were recruiting niggas from inside the crew to help them set up their own operation,” I said, dropping into an armchair.
Jelani let out a low whistle and leaned against a bookshelf. “So we got some disloyal ass niggas in the circle?”
“Looks like it,” I said, stretching out and kicking my feet onto the ottoman. “Nai’s still digging and trying to get names. Shouldn’t be much longer.”
“What about who shot you?”
“She thinks it’s them Eastland niggas. But I want to be sure before we move on to them.”
Jelani frowned and then snapped his fingers as something clicked. “I used to talk to a chick out that way. Let me holla at her and see if she knows something.”
I gave him a look. “Why the hell you messing with a bitch from over there?”
“She’s pretty, got a fat ass, and sucks a mean dick,” he said, ticking off each point on his fingers. “What can I say?”
I shook my head as my phone buzzed in my pocket.
Fontaine: Jerome said he just seen your nurse walk into Blue Sky with some square looking nigga.
Bet.
“You talk to that nurse?” Jelani asked, switching the subject. I frowned.
“How I’m supposed to talk to her without her number?”
He held up both hands, laughing. “You mad, bruh? Why you actin’ like Fontaine can’t hack the damn planet and get you her info?”
“She’ll give it to me,” I muttered, slipping my phone back in my pocket.
Jasmine seemed stubborn, but the way she was squirming in my lap at the party? She was definitely feeling me.
“So you are stalking her!” Jelani teased.
“Whatever, nigga. You all in my shit—what about you? I saw you sucking on her friend’s face at the club.”
“Monica? She cool. I might hit her up tonight,” he said. “Oh—and you know Jasmine’s just here on a contract, right? She’s a travel nurse.”
“Damn, why you know so much about her?” I asked, feeling a weird twinge in my chest that I chalked up to my wound acting up.
“Women talk. Monica and I been texting.”
“Yeah, well, worry about your own shit,” I muttered.
All this meant was that I had to apply some pressure. And lucky for me, that was my speciality.