Page 50 of Maceo

“Something ain’t right, Jae. Every time I’ve had a feeling about a bitch, I was right. If I trust nothing else, I trust my intuition. Your brother is brushing it off like it’s no big deal. He thinks I think she just wants to fuck him. Maybe she does, but that ain’t it. And this big scary looking nigga she’s hooked up with? Something about that man makes me quiver, Jaeda, and not in a good way. That’s why I need you to look into them.”

“I don’t know, Shar. I hate keeping secrets from my brothers about business.”

“I’m not asking you to keep a secret. I just need a peace of mind. If she is who she says she is, I’ll let it go.”

She eyed me for a second before sighing. “Fine. Follow me.”

She stood and led me down the hall to a door with a keypad on it. After verifying her fingerprints, the door unlocked, and she led me inside.

“What in the Penelope Garcia…” I mumbled, looking around.

She laughed. “Salima said the same thing. I love Penelope.”

“You really could work for the FBI, Jae.”

“Girl, my daddy has several government agencies in his back pocket. They take the credit, and we take a payout.”

“Not Senior having pull like that. How did he even get into this shit?”

She hung her head. “He um… there was an incident. A lot of innocent people got hurt, and he wasn’t the same after that. He came out of pocket for the families of the victims, but that didn’t make it any better. I think helping people and going legit is his way of trying to make up for what he took from those families. Itdoesn’t bring their loved ones back, but he’s never taken another life that wasn’t warranted again.

“That’s why he keeps the organization mostly within the family. Most of the time, we are all we have, Shar. The ones of us that try to do good still get the backlash from the ones that are out here being reckless. I love my uncle Blake, but I don’t agree with him pushing that poison in our community. My father worked hard to combat that. When people say we own half the city, they aren’t lying. Senior put a lot of money back into the same community Uncle Blake is running his drugs through. That’s his brother, and he loves him. If he can’t stop him, he at least tries to make up for it.”

I knew Senior had a good heart. He was a lot of things… a lot of things… but he had good in him. Jaeda shook her head as she took a seat at her desk. Monitors were everywhere. She switched them on, and my eyes widened at the mountain of information she was working on. Maceo told me how smart and efficient she was, and I was low-key excited to see her in action.

She started typing away on her keyboard. Windows popped open on several of the monitors.

“What’s the name she gave you?”

“Charity Lynn.”

“Is that first and middle or first and last?”

“First and last.”

“And do you have a picture of her? I can run it against my facial recognition software.”

“I do, actually. I snapped it at brunch.”

“Send it to me.”

I sent the picture to her phone. After messing around with it for a few seconds, the picture populated on a screen.

“I’m gonna run her image and name against DMV records to see what I can find.”

She clicked away at the keyboard for a minute or so before a license popped up.

“Charity Lynn. Age twenty-seven. From Petersville, Georgia. Is that where she was supposedly taken from?”

“I don’t know. Maceo had an officer come speak to them. We weren’t present for that.”

“The local police department?”

“Yes.”

“Give me a minute. I have to access their database.”

“You can do that?”

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