CHAPTER 8
Rico came first, loud about it the way he'd always been loud about Varnell, sending word through the same channels that had threatened him back when he was just a kid slinging in school hallways.
Hamid stayed quieter about it, watching more than talking, which somehow unsettled Varnell more than Rico's noise did.
"They pressed," Chucky J said one evening, going over numbers with Varnell in the back room of the operation. "We cutting into they money and they know it."
"So what we do."
"We could go to war over it. Or you could be smart about it, like I know you got in you." Chucky J studied him. "You want to talk to Moose?"
Varnell hadn't expected that offer, hadn't expected to be trusted with something that significant this early. "Me?"
"You the one they got beef with directly. Show up respectful, diplomatic, let him see you ain't reckless. Might smooth more than a fight ever could."
The meeting happened on neutral ground, a diner on the edge of both their territories, Moose sliding into the booth across from Varnell with an unreadable calm that made the younger boy's pulse pick up despite himself.
Chucky J sat beside him, present but quiet, letting Varnell carry the conversation.
"I ain't come to start nothing," Varnell said, keeping his voice even. "I know we cutting into your money. I ain't trying to be disrespectful about it. Just trying to eat, same as everybody."
Moose studied him a long moment, something calculating behind the stillness of his face. "You talk grown for somebody your age."
"Had to grow up quick."
Moose almost smiled at that, some flicker of respect passing over his features before it disappeared back into careful neutrality. "Rico want war. Hamid want structure. I want money, and money don't come from war, it comes from structure." He glanced at Chucky J. "You vouching for him?"
"With my life," Chucky J said, simple, no hesitation.
Moose considered that, weighing it, before he nodded slow. "We'll talk. See what makes sense for everybody 'stead of everybody bleeding over blocks."
It took another week of back and forth, most of it handled through Chucky J's steady diplomacy, but eventually it settled — Chucky J brokering a deal that gave Varnell's operation room to breathe without directly warring over OE10's core territory, a compromise that left Rico visibly unsatisfied but unable to override Moose's decision.
Part of the deal involved expansion instead of confrontation — Chucky J using his Bronx connections to set up a shop across the river, a foothold in New York that gave the operation room to grow without stepping on OE10 toes any further than they already had.
"This bigger than Newark now," Chucky J told him, driving back from the first NYC run, city lights stretching out ahead of them. "You ready for that?"
Varnell looked out at the skyline, something in his chest expanding at the size of what they were building, even as another part of him — quieter, more honest — wondered how far this could go before it swallowed something he wasn't ready to lose.
? ? ?
He wasn't ready, either, for how much distance the expansion put between him and home.
Days stretched into nights he didn't make it back for, sleep caught in stolen hours between runs, phone calls from Vanessa going unanswered more often than not, not out of disrespect but out of exhaustion so complete he sometimes didn't hear the ring at all.
Vanessa's worry curdled into something sharper the longer it went unanswered. She started calling around — Ellis at the gym, a couple of Varnell's old classmates, anyone who might know where her son had disappeared to for days at a stretch.
She found him, eventually, catching him coming up the stairs at two in the morning, exhaustion written all over him in a way that made her fear worse before he'd even said a word.
"Where the hell have you been."
"Working, Ma."
"Working where. Doing what. This ain't no youth program, Varnell, don't insult me by acting like I'm stupid."
He hesitated, the lie sitting heavier in his mouth than it had the first time he'd told it, before something in him — exhaustion, maybe, or just the weight of carrying too many secrets at once — made him tell her more truth than he'd planned to.
"I talked to Ivo," he said. "The cop. My— he's my father, Ma. I met him."
Vanessa went very still, color draining from her face. "How do you—"
"And I met Demarcus too," Varnell pushed on, the words spilling now that the dam had cracked. "He's my brother. Your son. He told me everything, or some of it, and I been working with him, that's where the money's coming from, that's where I been."
The silence that followed was worse than any yelling could've been, Vanessa's face cycling through shock and grief and something that looked almost like fear, old wounds Varnell hadn't known existed suddenly torn back open in front of him.
"You had no right," she said finally, voice shaking. "No right to go digging up things that ain't yours to dig up."
"They're my family too!"
"You don't know what you opened up." Her voice cracked on the last word, and she turned away from him, unable to look at him a moment longer, the argument collapsing into something too raw for either of them to keep standing in.
Varnell left without another word, walking the cold streets until he ended up at Chucky J's door, crashing on his couch that night and several nights after, unable to face going home to a silence he didn't know how to fix.
? ? ?
Three days into the standoff, Vanessa's phone rang with a number she didn't recognize, and something in her gut told her to answer it anyway.
"Hello?"
A pause on the other end, long enough that she almost hung up, before a voice she hadn't heard in over a decade came through, older, steadier, but unmistakable underneath it all.
"Vanessa. It's Demarcus."
Her hand tightened around the phone, breath catching somewhere between her chest and her throat. "Demarcus."
"I know you probably don't want to hear from me.
I know I got no right calling you out the blue like this.
" He paused again, and when he continued, some of the composure slipped, something younger and more uncertain showing through.
"But your son came to me. Both your sons, I guess, now that I'm saying it out loud. "
"You had no business pulling him into anything," Vanessa said, though the anger in it sounded thinner than it had aimed at Varnell, worn down by something closer to grief.
"I didn't pull him in. He was already in it before he ever found me.
I'm trying to make sure whatever he's doing, he's doing it with somebody who'll actually look out for him instead of using him and leaving him exposed.
" A beat. "I know that's not much comfort, coming from me.
I know I got a lot I never said to you, and this ain't the conversation for all of it over the phone.
But I wanted you to hear my voice instead of just hearing about me secondhand through a scared kid. "
Vanessa was quiet a long moment, old grief and new fear tangled together in her chest, unsure which one to address first. "Is he safe."
"Safer with me than without me," Demarcus said. "That's the truth, even if it ain't the answer you want."
"I want my son to have a childhood, Demarcus. Not this."
"I know," he said, quiet now, something almost gentle in it despite everything sitting unresolved between them. "I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying it's already happening, and I'd rather be the one making sure he comes home every night than leave that to chance."
Vanessa closed her eyes, exhaustion and fear and something like reluctant relief all crowding into the same breath. "I want to see you," she said finally, surprising herself with how much she meant it. "Face to face. Not like this."
"Okay," Demarcus said. "We'll figure that out. I'll have him call you tonight — let you know he's alright, at least, till we can all sit down proper."
The call ended without resolution, without forgiveness fully extended or fully withheld, but something had cracked open between them that had been sealed shut for over a decade, and Vanessa sat with the phone in her lap a long while after, unsure whether what she felt was dread or the first thin edge of hope.