Page 33 of The Prodigy 2: Rise of a Queen

“That ain’t gon’ get it done, E.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You love her?”

“Where that come from?”

“It seems like you love her.”

“How does it seem like that? You can’tseemlike an emotion. You are or you not.”

Eris laughed and held his hands up. “You got it, boss. My mistake.”

I glared at him until the smile dropped off his face. “What?” he demanded.

“Nah, but seriously. What makes me seem like I love her or whatever?”

“Just…I don’t know, man. You different. You be showin’ all ya teeth when y’all on the phone. When y’all together, y’all be leanin’ on each other, touchin’ on each other. And you kinda be in lion mode with her.”

“Oh. That don’t mean shit. It’s like Pop always said—”

“Nah, nigga. Lemme stop you right there. Don’t put that shit on Pop. You treat that girl good cuz she’s your wife and you love her.” He paused. “You ain’t gotta front with me, J. You can admit it.”

I set the box down at my feet and leaned up against the wall. “Honestly…I don’t know. Our shit started off hella fucked up. It ain’t like we went on a date at a restaurant and started feeling each other. I made her marry me and then—” I stopped myself before I went too far and started spilling details. “She had a life before me that wasn’t near as dangerous or chaotic as ours. She ain’t used to this.”

“Interesting.” He ran his fingers through his beard. “So she was willing to give up that simple life to stay married to you. Ain’t that a hint that she loves you back?”

“You know what? It don’t matter. I need to take my shit in there, unpack, and get my head back in the game. We got a lot of moves we gotta make, so…maybe this is good. No more distractions, you feel me?”

“Yeah, okay.” He was giving me the skeptical face. “Whatever you say.”

Ignoring that, I grabbed my shit and headed to the guest room. It was really Eris’ office with a bed in it, but that suited me just fine. I don’t know why that nigga had an office anyway except to cosplay as a businessman. Which, I guess he kinda was, so let me stop hating.

His job was simple. He coordinated the money drops. My pops had set it all up just right so that there were two layers between the drugs and any motherfucker named Windermere.

The dope money came off the street dirty and went to the runners. We didn’t pay them. We paid the mailmen. They weren’t mailmen for real, and half of them were women, but we called them that cuz they delivered the money to Eris’ people at the shops. From there, Eris made sure the money flowed through our businesses as sales. By the time our daily bank deposits hit the account, that money was squeaky clean.

Very few niggas in a sleepy ass town like Midling know how to do what my daddy did. It’s easy as fuck to move weight. It’s even easy to clean the money. The problem comes when you gotta get that shit back to the dealers.

My daddy had all of ‘em set up shell companies. Mind you, these were niggas who didn’t even know how to start LLCs. But my daddy brought in some bankers, lawyers, and a few local politicians to make sure he got them niggas on point. And he did.

Midling doesn’t have enough drug traffic to attract attention like it would in Atlanta, so shit was pretty laid back. We didn’t make trouble. Never really had to use force. We just took our twenty percent off top and did what we had to do. Last I checked, we were clearing about five million a year total, but as the family grows, expenses grow. I had a few ideas, but that would have to wait.

I still had a traitor to deal with.

Eris made us lunch. Little nigga thought he was a chef just cuz some hoe took him to a cooking class on a date once. But I can’t even front. The blackened chicken was good as hell. He made some kinda mango salsa to go on top. I was good and happy after I cleaned my plate.

After lunch, I got ahold of Joe and sat on my bed to hear him out. I knew he was pissed that I hadn’t been returning his calls, but I wasn’t worried about that. Joe would fall in line. My father trained him to play his position.

“Everything okay?” The way he asked it told me he knew what was going on. But I just said, “Yep,” so we could move things along. There was too much to do.

“Alright, I have some news.”

“Lemme hear it.”

“Before you react, know that this might not mean anything.”

“What’s up, Joe? Spit it out.”

“I looked at Prez’ phone records.” He paused to take a breath. “He’s been talking to your mother. A lot.”

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