Page 1 of Cash

Chapter One

Cho “Brick” Brixton took a long sip of coffee, sighed deeply, and admired the vision of the morning light glistening off the dew clinging to the four-foot-tall rainbow-colored flamingo in his yard.

He was known for having the gay house on West Lane Street, an otherwise demure and conservative part of downtown Raleigh.

To his left was Saint Mary’s Street, so named for Saint Mary’s School, an all-girl high school founded in 1842. The Wiley Elementary School was right next to it, an esteemed magnet school whose building dated back to 1923.

Brown-Wynne Funeral Home was right across from him, the oldest business in the city and the oldest funeral home in the state, having been in operation since 1836.

To his right and down two blocks was Glenwood Avenue, a street that a hundred years ago was nothing but a row of warehouses that had now been transformed into a hub of award-winning restaurants and bars now dubbed Glenwood South.

The birthplace of President Andrew Johnson, the man who took over the presidency following Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, was only a short drive away over on Mimosa Street.

All this area of the city had to do was breathe and out would pop a historical anecdote. Every place had a tale, each name a meaning, and everywhere were echoes of the countless decades that had come before. It was a city full of trees, large luscious oaks, and even they seemed like they had countless stories to tell if only one could hear them. There were historical markers dotting countless streets, and it was known as the “Smithsonian of the South” because of the many museums.

And then right smack in the middle of all this culture and rich history was Brick’s very gay house.

He hadn’t set out to have the gayest home in all of Wake County, and it was his next-door neighbors’ fault. They’d had some very choice words with Brick when he first moved in over a seemingly innocuous rainbow flag that he’d hung on the front porch. After refusing to take it down and a few choice words of his own, Brick decided to take his pride up a notch.

He started with rainbow wind chimes, a bigger flag, and then giant wooden welcome signs painted in rainbow swirls to frame his door. He added lanterns to hang off the porch railing, lamps to line his walkway, and all manner of lawn ornaments from plastic rainbow flowers to prismatic gazing balls to the flamingo that now stood proudly beside the large oak tree in his front yard.

It was a lot. It was definitely tacky. It had no end in sight.

Brick loved it.

Thankfully, the asshole neighbors were long gone now. They’d sold their place on the corner of West Lane and Saint Mary’s a year ago, and that house plus a few more south of there had been bought out and torn down to build a row of swanky million dollar townhomes.

Brick’s centenarian bungalow home was dwarfed by the massive construction right next door, and his once scenic view of Saint Mary’s Street was almost completely obscured by the three-story monolithic monstrosity of a building.

The townhomes were dark gray brick with alternating angular strips of wooden siding, and each doorway had a giant stark white overhang framing the door with another white square framing the second story windows. They were absolutely hideous, too modern, and stuck out more than Brick’s colorful pride festival of a yard in the otherwise quaint historic neighborhood.

The front of them faced out to Saint Mary’s Street, so all Brick saw from his front porch was the equally unattractive rear of the buildings. It was one flat slate of gray with square windows and garages for each individual home. The unit on the corner had remained unoccupied since construction was completed, and it was by far the largest and the only one with a luxurious sundeck.

Having nothing else to look at, Brick would often stare up at the empty deck, imagining what it would be like to have the kind of money to afford a fancy place like that.

Not that he didn’t do well for himself, but million dollar condos were definitely out of a professional translator’s salary range.

Brick’s father, Norman Brixton, was an American who had fallen in love with Korean culture. On one fateful visit to Seoul, he then fell in love with a Korean woman, Chae-Won, and asked her to marry him after one date. She left Korea with him, and they’d been happily married ever since for over forty years.

Having grown up speaking both English and Korean, Brick had decided to use his knowledge to pursue a job with a publishing company. He translated everything from menus, textbooks, instruction manuals, and the occasional side job for a romance imprint. It could be meticulous and occasionally frustrating because some damn things just did not translate well—especially going from Korean into English—but he truly enjoyed what he did, and it had the added bonus of working from home.

Brick’s house had belonged to his paternal grandparents, both of whom had passed away a few years ago. Brick had been living in an apartment at the time, and his parents insisted that he take the house. His mother in particular always fussed over him, especially with him being an only child.

It was too good an offer to refuse—how many people could say their parents just gave them a house?—and Brick had moved in just shy of three years ago.

The house had been built in 1910, constructed from a home kit purchased out of the Sears Craftsman catalog. The siding was a pale olive green, and the porch was painted white with a red brick foundation. The front door was framed with grilled windows, and there were three double-hung windows overlooking the roof of the porch from the pitched second floor master bedroom. A lot of the homes in this area were constructed from similar Sears home kits—there was in fact an exact duplicate of Brick’s home just two blocks east but in a different color.

After taking another long sip of coffee, Brick glanced over at the big townhouse deck. He thought he’d seen something. A closer look revealed an unfamiliar car parked in the now open garage, and the deck doors were also open.

Brick wondered if someone was showing the home, but it was barely eight o’clock in the morning.

Bit early for a realtor, but perhaps they were just really dedicated.

Oh, but then Brick saw him.

It was a man standing on the deck, monstrous in stature with a barrel chest and thick muscular arms. Even from this distance, Brick could tell the guy was an absolute beast. He didn’t know how tall that deck ceiling was, but he’d definitely clocked how the man had to duck to make it through the doorway.

“Woof,” Brick mumbled into his mug.

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