Page 57 of Omar

"If I leave," I said carefully, "Supreme will come looking."

"Let him look."

"Omar."

"I said let him look." His voice was level but the weight underneath it was something else entirely. "He can look all he wants."

I pressed my cheek against his chest. His heartbeat was steady and strong underneath my ear. "You can't fight him alone."

"Who said anything about alone?"

I lifted my head and looked at him. His eyes were fixed on the far wall, his expression calm, calculated, already working through something in his head that he wasn't ready to say out loud yet.

"What are you thinking?" I asked.

"I'm thinking that when the time comes, you won't be doing this by yourself. That's all you need to know right now."

I put my head back on his chest. He tightened his arm around me. We stayed like that until I had to leave, neither of us talking, the silence doing more than words could have managed.

I got dressed, kissed him at the door like last time, texted Cee my location, and walked to the pickup spot. Eight minutes to spare.

"Everything go okay?" Cee asked when I got in.

"Yeah, all good. Took longer than I expected."

"No worries."

Supreme was out when I got home. Meeting, probably. I went to the bathroom, locked the door, and sat on the edge of the tub.

Two thousand five hundred away.

Omar's voice in my head: Let him look.

For the first time since Supreme, I believed somebody when they said it was going to be okay.

That terrified me more than Supreme ever had.

Chapter 22

Omar

Devon laid it out on the table at APEX like a case file. Printouts, spreadsheets, transaction logs, corporate filings. He'd been pulling threads for two days straight and what he'd found was bigger than either of us had expected.

Before we got into it he gave me a quick update on the Kyran situation. "Nobody's been near Rashid's studio or apartment since your visit to that barbershop. Yates and Mills both went quiet. Kyran hasn't been seen on our blocks."

"Good. Keep the coverage on Rashid for another week."

"Already planned." Devon pushed the Kyran file aside and opened the one he'd been waiting to show me. "Now. TK isn't a separate operation. He's Supreme's proxy."

He walked me through it. The shell company structure connecting Supreme's real estate holdings to TK's street-level distribution was deep, layered across four entities with shared signatories and interlocking bank accounts. The money flowed from Supreme's legitimate businesses down through Greyline Holdings and two sister companies into TK's supply chain. TK ran the product, collected the cash, funneled it back up through the shells where it got cleaned and redistributed into Supreme's property portfolio.

"They've been running this way for at least three years," Devon continued, spreading a timeline across the table. "Probably longer. Supreme keeps his hands clean because TK handles the exposure. TK takes the heat, takes the risk, takes the street casualties. Supreme collects the money and buys buildings."

"And when TK pushes into our territory?"

"Supreme lets it happen because it weakens us without his fingerprints on it. TK does the damage, Supreme stays above it, and if we ever go after TK, we're only cutting one head off a body that grows another."

The paperwork was right there in front of me. Everything we'd been fighting on the street level for the past two years, every territory incursion, every runner showing up on our corners, every confrontation with TK's people. All of it was Supreme. The man Kadeem had been sitting across from at meetings, negotiating with, sharing territory agreements with. The man whose hand I'd watched Asha stand behind while he talked about mutual interests.