CHAPTER 23
LAST RIDE
Word about Moose reached Varnell before he'd even fully settled back into Newark — a federal sweep months in the making finally closing its net, Moose picked up on charges serious enough that bail wasn't a realistic conversation, the empire he'd spent years quietly assembling suddenly rudderless at the top.
It explained, retroactively, the silence that had swallowed him whole back before the ambush that killed Rico — federal surveillance closing in slow and careful, Moose likely gone dark trying to outmaneuver a net that had ultimately caught him anyway.
Hamid was the one holding what remained of the structure together when Varnell finally found him, older around the eyes than the last time they'd stood together, the wound from the ambush long healed but something heavier sitting in its place.
"Heard you made it out," Hamid said, studying Varnell with careful, evaluating eyes, same as always. "Heard Chucky didn't."
"Yeah." Varnell's voice caught slightly on the word, grief still sharp enough to ambush him at unexpected moments. "He didn't."
They sat together in a quiet room away from prying ears, Hamid listening without interruption as Varnell laid out everything that had happened since the fire — New Orleans, Steve, Vanilla, the ambush, Chucky J's death, the wound, the hospital, the diagnosis he'd fled from before ever hearing its full shape.
"And you still don't know," Hamid said slowly, once Varnell finished, "how bad it's gotten."
"No. But I know enough. Feel it in ways I can't explain to nobody who ain't living in this body. I'm running out of time, Hamid. Not eventually. Soon."
Hamid was quiet a long moment, something old and tired passing behind his composed exterior. "I suspected as much, watching you these past months. Body don't lie forever, even to the person carrying it."
"I need somebody to run things," Varnell said, direct now, the whole point of the conversation finally surfacing.
"Somebody who can hold this together once I'm gone, keep it from falling apart the way it almost did with Moose locked up and nobody steady at the top.
I trust you more than anybody left standing. "
Hamid's expression shifted into something complicated, weariness finally breaking through the careful control he'd maintained through every previous conversation Varnell had witnessed. "I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm tired, Varnell. Genuinely, all the way through, tired.
" Hamid rubbed a hand over his face, years of accumulated exhaustion suddenly visible in a way he'd never let show before.
"I been in this since before you were old enough to understand what it cost. Watched Rico die.
Watched you nearly die more than once. Watched this life eat people whole, one after another, and told myself it was worth it 'cause I ain't had nothing better waiting on the other side of walking away. "
He paused, something almost gentle entering his voice despite the weight of what he was saying.
"But watching you — watching somebody your age carry what you carrying, knowing what's coming for you — it broke something in me I didn't know was still breakable.
I don't want to be the next name added to what this life takes.
I want out, clean, before it takes anything else from anybody I care about.
And I do care about you, whatever that's worth coming from somebody like me. "
Varnell sat with that, disappointment and understanding tangled together in equal measure, unable to fully begrudge a man for choosing his own survival after everything Hamid had already given to a life that had cost him and everyone around him so much.
"I understand," Varnell said finally, quiet. "Wish it was different. But I understand."
? ? ?
Before parting, Varnell told him about the property in Miami — the deed Demarcus had quietly secured in his name, a piece of something real and legitimate waiting for him regardless of how the rest of his life played out.
"I want to see it," Varnell said. "Before everything's said and done. Want to stand on something that's actually mine, even just once, without a gun in my hand or a deal on the table."
Hamid nodded slow, something understanding in the gesture. "I'll help however I still can. Ain't fully out yet. Not till you're settled."
"I need one more thing from you, then. A last ride. One final push before I hand off whatever's left of this to whoever ends up steady enough to hold it. Something big enough to set things right — Rico, Chucky, everything this life's taken — before I'm not around to see it through myself."
Hamid studied him a long, careful moment, weighing the request against everything he'd just said about wanting out. "What kind of commotion we talking?"
"Big enough that when it's done, ain't nobody left who'd dare come at what's mine again. Big enough that Demarcus, Ma, Angellisa — everybody I'm leaving behind — got real peace instead of looking over their shoulder waiting for the next fire."
Hamid was quiet a long time, old loyalty and genuine exhaustion warring visibly behind his eyes, before he finally nodded, slow and resigned. "One last ride. For you. Then I'm done, whatever happens after."
"That's all I'm asking."
They began planning that same night, maps and names and old grievances spread out between them, assembling the shape of something neither of them fully knew yet how far it would need to reach before it was finished — a reckoning years in the making, arriving finally, on borrowed time that both of them understood, without needing to say it aloud, was running shorter than either wanted to admit.