Chapter Two
Malachi “Crown” Devereaux
When I was nine, I broke my cousin’s finger because he moved a spoon.
It wasn’t the violence that concerned my mother.
It was the spoon.
Breakfast in our house happened at seven fifteen every morning. My plate sat six inches from the table’s edge. Eggs remained on the left, toast on the right, and my spoon rested perfectly parallel to my knife.
Julian moved it as a joke.
The next thing I remembered was my father pulling me away while my cousin screamed.
My mother took me to a specialist the following week.
By eleven, I had been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, ADHD, and sensory-processing issues. My family treated those words like defects that money should be able to remove.
My mother treated them like instructions.
She learned my triggers. She warned me before touching me. She never rearranged my room and made sure my food didn’t touch unless I placed it that way myself.
My father didn’t understand everything, but he tried.
“Your mind ain’t broken,” he told me. “It just got its own rules.”
For years, those were the only words that mattered.
Then someone murdered him.
I was seventeen when my father’s car exploded on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
The police claimed my mother had been in the passenger seat.
No identifiable remains belonging to her were recovered.
My uncle Victor still held a funeral and buried an empty coffin beside my father.
That was the first reason I knew he was lying.
The second was that my mother hated riding in my father’s car. The leather treatment gave her migraines, and she had a driver of her own.
The third was Victor’s story changing every time I questioned him.
First, my parents had been returning from dinner. Then they were headed to the airport. By the funeral, he claimed they were meeting an investor.
Everyone told me grief had made me suspicious.
They were right.
It had also made me patient.
I stood between my younger siblings at the cemetery. Asha was thirteen, Micah was eight, and Noelle had just turned five.
People embraced us, cried over us, and promised we would never be alone.
By the following month, we were alone in a house Victor purchased far enough from his estate that he wouldn’t have to see us.
He gave us money.
What he didn’t give us was himself.
Miss Celeste and her daughter, Simone, moved in to care for us. Celeste was supposed to be temporary. Instead, she stayed until Noelle graduated from high school.
She learned my routines the way my mother had. When my compulsions worsened after the funeral, Celeste didn’t shame me.
She placed every label forward in the pantry. She kept strangers out of my room. When I couldn’t sleep, she sat on the opposite side of the kitchen and drank tea until my breathing returned to normal.
Simone was only two years older than Asha, but she appointed herself my keeper.
Even now, at thirty-four, she still walked into my office without knocking whenever she believed I hadn’t eaten.
The door opened.
“You missed breakfast.”
I looked up from the security photographs covering my desk.
Simone entered carrying a green smoothie and a container of boiled eggs.
“You don’t work here,” I reminded her.
“I practically run your life.”
“You work for my sister.”
“And Asha told me to make sure you ate.”
“Then both of you are fired.”
“You can’t fire your sister.”
“I can try.”
She placed the food beside me and studied the photographs.
“Is that the girl?”
“Kenzie Vale.”
A photograph showed Kenzie exiting an accountant’s apartment with a travel bag.
The accountant, Peter Lang, had worked for Devereaux Holdings for fourteen years. Three weeks earlier, he copied an encrypted archive from one of our private servers.
Then he disappeared.
Kenzie had collected the drive before he vanished.
“What’s on it?” Simone asked.
“Information about my father.”
Her expression changed.
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
That was why I needed it.
A call from Peter had reached me the night before he disappeared.
He claimed to have found records proving my father’s death had been ordered by someone inside the Devereaux family.
He wanted five million dollars for the information.
I agreed.
Before the meeting, Peter vanished and the drive appeared in Kenzie’s possession.
Now a faceless broker calling himself Bishop planned to auction it to my enemies.
I moved the photograph of Kenzie aside.
Beneath it was another woman.
Jayla Bennett.
Her curls were piled into a careless knot. Paint covered her denim overalls, and she was laughing while holding a pair of custom sneakers.
She didn’t resemble a thief.
Neither did most people before enough money was placed in front of them.
“Who is she?” Simone asked.
“Kenzie’s friend.”
“She involved?”
“Corbin doesn’t think so.”
“And you?”
“I think innocence is often another word for uninformed.”
According to our investigation, twelve thousand dollars had been transferred to Jayla’s business that morning. Hours later, she ordered material matching the specifications Bishop sent Kenzie.
The drive was being moved inside a pair of custom sneakers.
The artwork surrounding it would serve as the cipher.
Clever.
Not clever enough.
Simone examined Jayla’s photograph.
“She looks sweet.”
“Sweet people lie.”
“So do bitter people. You don’t see me profiling you.”
I ignored her.
My phone vibrated.
Corbin’s name appeared.
“Talk.”
“We found the connection,” he said. “Jayla’s grandmother worked for Devereaux Maritime.”
I sat straighter.
“When?”
“Nineteen eighty-nine through 2006. Evelyn Bennett worked in archives before becoming executive secretary to your grandfather.”
“What happened in 2006?”
“She left without collecting her pension.”
Nobody voluntarily abandoned money owed by my grandfather.
“Why?”
“Officially, health reasons. Unofficially, her personnel file was sealed.”
“By whom?”
“Victor.”
My jaw tightened.
The list of people connected to my father’s murder continued circling back to my uncle.
Victor had underestimated me when my parents died. He believed leaving us in a comfortable house with enough money would keep me grateful.
Instead, I turned eighteen, petitioned for custody of my siblings, and stopped accepting his checks.
Dorian Cole—my oldest friend—and Celeste helped me raise them. I built private security companies before expanding into freight, hospitality, and real estate.
By thirty, I no longer needed the Devereaux name to enter powerful rooms.
At thirty-two, I used evidence of Victor’s theft to remove him as head of the family.
He died six months later.
Officially, his heart failed.
Unofficially, he had enemies who believed death was kinder than what he deserved.
People started calling me Crown after I took his seat.
I hated the name.
That guaranteed it would stick.
“Where is Jayla now?” I asked.
“At her studio.”
“Does she know what she’s carrying?”
“No indication that she does.”
“Her brother?”
“Nasir Bennett. Incarcerated at Green Haven. Bishop contacted him this afternoon.”
A familiar pressure formed behind my eyes.
Bishop wasn’t simply using Kenzie.
He was controlling everyone around her.
“Move Nasir somewhere secure.”
“Without telling Jayla?”
“If we tell her now, she’ll panic.”
“She might panic anyway when she learns a private security company transferred her brother.”
“Then keep her alive long enough to be angry.”
Simone frowned.
“You’re dragging an innocent woman into a family war.”
“She’s already in it.”
“Then get her out.”
“I can’t until I recover the drive.”
“And afterward?”
I looked at Jayla’s photograph.
There was something familiar about her eyes.
I opened an archived image Corbin had sent. My parents stood at a company holiday party years before I was born. Beside my father was a young woman wearing a blue dress.
Evelyn Bennett.
Jayla’s grandmother.
She held a folder against her chest while looking directly at the camera.
A handwritten note appeared on the back of the photograph.
If anything happens, Evelyn knows where the originals are.
My father’s handwriting.
Jayla wasn’t merely an unsuspecting courier.
Her grandmother had been guarding a secret for almost thirty years.
“Afterward,” I said, “I find out what Evelyn Bennett knew.”
“And Jayla?”
I aligned her photograph with the edge of the desk.
“Jayla is going to help me.”
“What if she refuses?”
“She will.”
“You sound sure.”
“Bishop threatened her brother, Kenzie used her business, and somebody paid her with stolen funds. By the time she understands the truth, she won’t know who to trust.”
Simone stared at me.
“That doesn’t mean she’ll trust you.”
“No.”
I looked down at Jayla’s smiling face.
“It means she won’t have anyone else.”