CHAPTER 13
FAMILY BUSINESS
Lunch with Ivo finally happened on a slow Sunday, quiet and awkward in the way first attempts at something overdue tend to be — neither of them fully sure how to occupy the space between strangers and family, trading careful small talk over food neither of them finished.
Nothing got resolved in any dramatic sense, no tearful reckoning, just two people agreeing, wordlessly, to keep trying.
Varnell left it feeling lighter than he expected, one more loose thread in his life pulled a little less taut.
He didn't have long to sit with that feeling before Demarcus pulled him back into the more pressing matters of the operation, this time with an expansion Varnell hadn't fully anticipated.
"Filed paperwork last week," Demarcus said, sliding a folder across his desk.
"Opening a mortuary down in Florida. Legitimate business on paper, same as up here — gives us cover, gives us reach, gives us a reason to be moving money and bodies through a state we're already operating product through anyway. "
Varnell flipped through the paperwork, most of it over his head in its formality, though the shape of the strategy made sense even without understanding every clause. "You gonna run it yourself?"
"Gonna take a trip down, scope locations, see what's worth building versus what's worth buying outright. Figured you and Chucky should come. Time you both understood this side of things, not just the street level."
? ? ?
The trip south carried a different energy than Varnell and Chucky J's earlier Miami runs — less urgency, more calculated groundwork, Demarcus walking them through properties and permits and the quiet mechanics of laundering money through legitimate-looking business the way he might've walked through inventory at any ordinary company.
"This part matters more than the flash," Demarcus told them, standing in an empty lot that would eventually become the second location, weighing its potential with a practiced eye.
"Anybody can move product. Building something that survives past the moving is different work. Cleaner work, in its own way."
He tried, over those few days, to actually teach them — the numbers behind the business, how properties got valued, how paperwork got structured to keep everything defensible on the surface even while the deeper purpose stayed hidden underneath.
Chucky J leaned in close, taking mental notes with the same hunger he brought to everything, but Varnell found his attention drifting more than it should've, thoughts pulled toward Angellisa, toward how his body had been feeling lately, toward a hundred smaller concerns that made a lecture on business structuring feel abstract and far away.
"You listening?" Demarcus asked at one point, catching Varnell's eyes somewhere else entirely.
"Yeah. Mortuary. Legit front. Got it."
Demarcus studied him a beat too long, something concerned flickering behind his composed exterior, before he let it go and continued the walkthrough.
Chucky J noticed it too, later, the two of them alone for a stretch while Demarcus took a call outside.
"You good?" Chucky J asked, watching him carefully. "You been somewhere else the last few days."
"I'm here."
"Nah, you ain't. Not all the way." Chucky J's usual easy demeanor sharpened into something more serious. "This the kind of thing you supposed to be paying attention to, Varnell. This the stuff that keep us safe long after the street stuff dry up or get too hot. You checking out on it worry me."
Varnell wanted to explain — the fatigue that seemed to be settling deeper into his bones lately, the strange new ache that came and went without clear cause, the exhausting effort of holding together five different versions of his life at once — but something kept him from voicing any of it, some instinct toward protecting the people around him from worry they couldn't fix anyway.
"I'm good," he said instead. "Just tired. Long few weeks."
Chucky J didn't look convinced, but he let it sit, filing the concern away rather than pushing it further in the moment.
? ? ?
Before they wrapped the trip, Demarcus called Varnell aside privately, away from Chucky J, something more serious in his demeanor than the easy business lessons of the past few days.
"I put a few things in your name," Demarcus said, direct, no preamble.
"A property. A small stake in the mortuary here.
Nothing that draws attention on its own, but enough that if something happens — to me, to the operation, whatever — you got something real standing under your feet instead of nothing. "
"Why me?"
"Because you're my brother, and because whatever time you got, I want you to spend some of it knowing you built something that's actually yours. Not just product moving through your hands. Something with your name on the paper."
Varnell sat with that, throat tight in a way he didn't fully expect. "Ma know about this?"
"Not yet. Didn't want to worry her with numbers before there was something solid to show her.
" Demarcus paused, something almost sheepish crossing his usually composed face.
"Had to move some money quicker than I planned, to get some of this locked in before it drew questions.
Spent more than I meant to, faster than I meant to, just to keep it clean and quiet.
Wanted you to know that, in case it ever comes up. Wasn't hiding it. Just handling it."
"I trust you."
Demarcus nodded, something relieved in the gesture, and reached into his jacket, pulling out a small set of keys along with a folded slip of paper bearing an address written in his own careful handwriting.
"This is yours too. Don't ask me more about it right now — just hold onto it, and when the time's right, you'll understand why I gave it to you."
Varnell took the keys, turning them over once in his palm, weight settling into his hand heavier than metal should account for. "This a house?"
"Something like that," Demarcus said, already turning to head back toward the car, leaving the rest of the explanation for a day he clearly hadn't decided the shape of yet. "Come on. Chucky's waiting. Let's get back north before Ma starts calling both our phones asking where her sons at."
Varnell pocketed the keys carefully, the address folded small beside them, one more piece of a life expanding faster than he sometimes felt equipped to hold onto.