14. Cash “Money” Banks
Aspen Sydney Banks.
Seven pounds, five ounces.
After three hours of labor, my baby girl came out screaming and let the whole world know she was here. Despite everything that happened that day, Jasmine handled that shit like a champ.
It was a week later, and Jasmine’s mom, Vera, was staying with us until we found a night doula. Right now, Vera was over at my mama’s house—those two had become thick as thieves right after Jas and I got engaged. I knew they were already planning all the ways to spoil Aspen rotten.
I couldn’t stop staring at her.
Beautiful brown skin, head full of dark curls, her tiny fingers wrapped around mine like she knew she’d already become the center of my world. She had her mama’s eyes, but that mouth and nose? All me. She was perfect.
“Can you believe we did that?” Jasmine asked from the bed, her voice soft but full of awe.
I looked up at her as Aspen stretched across my chest.
“Yeah, I can,” I said with a smirk. “Told you I was finna put a baby in you.”
She rolled her eyes with a tired smile. “You so damn stupid.”
Aspen started to fuss. I stood, handed her over, and watched Jas get the baby latched like she’d done this a thousand times.
“What’s going on, Cash?” she asked, looking over at me again.
I paused, halfway back to the chair. “What you mean?”
She gave me a look. “Money, my baby shower got shot up. Now’s not the time to act stupid.”
I rubbed the back of my neck, not even sure where to start.
On our first date, I told her I’d keep her out of my mess.
That if it came down to it, she’d have a choice about how close she wanted to get to that part of my life.
The Marcus situation made it crystal clear I couldn’t straddle both sides.
I couldn’t live this life and risk having her in harm’s way.
She never made me choose—but I did anyway.
I’d come too close to losing her once but as long as I had enemies, she’d always be a target.
So I fell back from BC. Gave the reins to Jelani and poured everything into the legit shit—real estate, development, anything that could wash our money. Every move was about keeping us safe. Keeping her safe. I wasn’t trying to end up like my pops.
But then Nairobi came back and flipped all that shit. She came home to a mess she didn’t even make. And because Fontaine was always gonna ride for her, that mess was ours by default.
I knew it wasn’t her fault. But I still hadn’t called Fontaine. Or her. Not after I swung first and said some wild, hurtful shit.
“Cash,” Jas said again, more gently this time. She was looking at me over our daughter’s head. “You can talk to me.”
I sat slowly as I ran a hand over my face.
“It’s some shit with Nai’s pops,” I said finally. “He was tied into some stuff with a group no one knew about and owes them money. They’re trying to make her pay and since she’s tied to us, we all in it.”
She hummed, pulling Aspen off her chest and patting her gently to burp. “So you feel some type of way because you don’t know the threat and you’re not in control. You’re scared, because it’s bigger than BC—it’s me and the baby too.”
Her words hit me straight in the chest.
“But the thing is,” she went on. “I chose to stay. Even when you stepped back, I wasn’t na?ve.
You’re still Big Money Banks. I know what that means.
Jelani might be the face, but everybody knows who built this empire.
And at the end of the day, I know you’d jump in front of a bullet for me. I’m not scared, I’m just aware.”
“I would die if anything happened to you, Jas,” I said softly. “That shit would break me, forreal.”
“I know, baby.” She smiled at me. “But Fontaine’s your brother as much as Jelani is. You hit him because you were scared. I get it, I promise I do. But you lashed out at the people who’ve always ridden for you.”
I sighed, feeling the guilt heavy in me.
“Didn’t I tell you to let them find their way back to each other?” she asked. “They did. Fontaine’s just trying to figure out how to help Nairobi. You gotta be part of that too, not against it.”
I let out a frustrated breath because I knew she was right. He waited two years for a sign, and he’d finally got it when she came back.
“I like Nairobi,” she added, surprising me. “She don’t talk much, but she has good energy. You can tell she’s carrying more than she’ll ever admit, but I know she’s got a good heart. I like having her around. Plus, she owes me shooting lessons.”
I groaned. “You and this gun shit.”
She scowled. “Niggas shot up my baby shower! Next time, I’m shooting back. The fuck?”
That pulled a laugh out of me, the first real one in days.
“Alright,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll reach out to him.”
“Good,” she said as she leaned back against the headboard with a small smile. “‘Cause I can’t deal with you moping around while we got a whole newborn in the house.”
Another day had passed before I decided to finally pull up on Fontaine. Lani said he was at one of the stash houses on the East side updating the security systems. Jas’s mom was helping her with the baby when I left.
She didn’t ask where I was going—just kissed me and said, “Go make it right.”
So here I was.
Fontaine’s truck was parked out front, along with a few other cars I recognized.
I frowned when I noticed the door was unlocked.
The smell of weed greeted me when I walked in, and a few of the young dudes were scattered about.
Some were on the couch playing COD and others were around the dining room table shooting the shit and counting money.
“‘Sup, Money?” Calvin said from the couch.
I nodded at him. He was one of the ones I’d brought in a few years back before I stepped down.
He was a young dude from around the way aging out of the foster care system with no real direction.
So we set him up here. Gave him a place to live, and as long as he worked and stayed solid, he had a roof over his head with steady paper.
“Why the hell the door unlocked?” I asked, glancing around.
“Fontaine said you were outside,” Darnell replied, not looking up as he fed another stack into the money counter. “He’s in the office.”
I grunted and headed upstairs. People automatically assume a stash house was a run-down bando in the middle of the hood.
I made sure our shit was different. I didn’t care that we were moving drugs, that didn’t mean we had to be sitting in a funky-ass house doing it.
I bought the bandos, gutted, and refurbished them.
The neighborhood was still working class, but the folks here kept their houses looking nice.
I wasn’t about to bring no raggedy shit when there were kids in the area.
The office door was cracked. Inside, Fontaine was behind his desk, typing away on his laptop.
He didn’t look up when I stepped inside. “‘Sup?”
I scoffed and took a few steps in. “You still mad?”
He finally looked up and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that? You swung on me, nigga.”
“Yeah,” I said as I eased into the chair across from him. “Guess I did.”
He shook his head, the faintest hint of a grin tugging at his mouth before he went back to the screen.
“I came to apologize,” I said. “Seeing Jas like that… shit took me to a dark place, bruh.”
Fontaine studied me for a second. “You were scared, I get it.”
“Fucking terrified. But I shouldn’t have hit you. Or said that shit to Nai, that was out of pocket.”
He didn’t respond right away—just let the apology hang there for a second.
“You know we’d never let anything happen to y’all, right?”
“I know,” I said, nodding slowly. “But I need to know what we’re dealing with. I wanna help—but I gotta protect my family too.”
Fontaine exhaled and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. “I’ve been going through the files Bruno sent over. I found some shit I haven’t told Nai about yet.”
“Like what?”
“Sterling wasn’t just playing high-stakes poker,” he said. “He was doing business with the Order—I found a few properties in Japan tied to his name.”
“Japan? The fuck?”
“Yeah. And that’s not the craziest part.”
“Of course it isn’t,” I chuckled dryly.
He turned the laptop toward me. “There was a garbage file of pictures. Probably Bruno’s insurance policy. It looks like it identifies the people who run the Order. These are people who’re supposed to be ghosts. They don’t exist. I couldn't even find this information on the dark web.”
“Now how the hell that slimy mothafucker got a hold of that?”
Fontaine shrugged. “No idea. But look at this.” He enlarged one of the pictures.
I leaned in and scanned the image. About a dozen people in tailored suits and designer dresses mingled in what appeared to be a boardroom.
With champagne flutes in hand, the picture screamed wealth and power.
One face stopped me cold—a woman at the far end.
She had light brown skin and thick, wavy dark hair.
It was clear she was mixed, half-Asian, half-Black if I had to guess.
But there was something about the shape of her nose, her cheekbones.
I looked up at Fontaine. “She looks like?—”
“Nairobi,” he finished.
“You think they’re related?” I asked.
“I think Sterling might’ve had another kid,” he said. “And whoever she is, she’s definitely a top dog within their organization.”
“You think she’s the one behind them coming for Nai?”
He nodded. “It’d make sense. If she’s blood, she might be trying to bring Nai in by force. Either way, there’s a resemblance that’s a little too close for comfort.”
I blew out a long breath. “Well, shit.”
“I haven’t told her yet,” Fontaine said as he rubbed a hand over his head. “But if I’m right, this thing goes way deeper than Sterling selling her out to work for them.”
Silence fell between us again and I glanced back at the photo.
“Yeah. This just got a whole lot messier.”
Fontaine and I chopped it up for another hour, with him promising to stop by to see Jasmine and Aspen before I headed out.
It was late afternoon by the time I pulled up to the Emerald Lounge. The sun was starting to dip low behind the buildings.
The lounge was mostly empty—still too early for the evening crowd. Monica’s “So Gone” played low through the speakers as the staff continued prepping for their shift.
I spotted Nairobi sitting at the bar, nursing a glass of red wine. She looked calm, but there was a heaviness in her eyes that suggested she hadn’t been sleeping much.
“Thanks for meeting me,” I said.
She turned to face me. “Your friend said you wanted to talk.”
“I wanted to apologize.”
She raised a brow. I could tell she still wasn’t feeling me.
“I was wrong for how I came at you,” I continued. “Like I told Fontaine, seeing Jasmine like that, everything happening at my mama’s house—I blacked out. I needed someone to blame, and you were the easiest target. That wasn’t fair.”
Nairobi’s lips pressed together as if she was having a flashback, but she didn’t interrupt me.
“I said some real foul shit, and then I hit Fontaine…I was spiraling. I couldn’t control anything and instead of stepping back, I lashed out on my friends.”
“I don’t fear much, but it’s been scaring the shit out of me that this might touch y’all.
They’re pissed because I said yes, but hadn’t followed through yet.
I guess they wanted to remind me that I’m not bigger than the program…
” She trailed off, closing her eyes for a brief moment. “This shit is so exhausting, yo.”
She looked down at her glass, swirling the contents before taking another long sip. “I just needed you to trust that I’m doing what I can.”
“Heard,” I nodded. “Fontaine gave me a little more insight, and I’m in—whatever that looks like.”
“How does your wife feel about that?”
I chuckled. “Jasmine thinks she’s Boosie Bad Ass. She knows what life with me means. Told me you still owe her a shooting lesson because next time she wanna shoot back.”
Nairobi laughed. “She not letting up on that, huh?”
“Nope.” I shook my head. “She likes you. Says you got good energy. She really wants to be your friend. And your ass really could use them. You can’t be hanging with the niggas all the time—you not even a tomboy.”
Nairobi smirked. “She’s cool people. I got her. I like her. Monica too.”
“Good,” I said. “You know most of her people are in New York. She needs friends here.”
She reached for the bottle behind the bar and grabbed an empty glass. “To peace… however temporary,” she said after pouring some out and handing it to me.
I raised it. “To family. However messy.”
We clinked glasses and for the first time in a week, it felt like we were on the same side again. “You need anything, I got you.”
“I know,” she said, voice steady. “I’m happy for you, Cash. Jasmine and Aspen are beautiful. You got lucky.”
“Yeah. And I’m happy you and Fontaine stopped all the bullshit and finally decided to make shit official.”
I left her sitting there, the early 2000s R&B fading behind me as I stepped out into the crisp evening.