Page 9 of Omar

Asha. Asha Cole. I said her name in my head and it landed the same as it had landed at sixteen, which was a problem. She'd walked through a side door at Supreme's place last night, and I'd spent every hour since pretending I hadn't seen her, pretending her eyes finding mine across that table was something I could put away with the rest of the day's intel. It wasn't. I'd known that within ten seconds of sitting back down in the Range Rover after the meeting. I'd spent the entire day refusing to admit it to myself.

She hadn't looked at me when she walked out. She'd walked past me with her chin up and her face giving nothing away, the same control I remembered from when we were teens.

I sat thirty more minutes before I started the engine and pulled away from the curb, and I drove back to Bed-Stuy with my thumb moving across the stitching on the wheel.

By morning Devon would have the company filings on the East Flatbush import-export, and Stone would have whatever he wanted on the old intermediary. I'd have a real, documented, justifiable reason to be in Supreme's part of the borough on a piece of work that connected him to the man currently roughing his own woman around as a performance for the room.

That was my reason for tomorrow.

For tonight, I had nothing but a name in my head I hadn't let myself say out loud in fourteen years.

Chapter 4

Omar

Rashid's studio was on the third floor of a converted warehouse in Bushwick, above a screen-printing shop and a yoga place that never seemed to have any students. The building had no elevator, no security, and a front door that didn't lock properly. I'd told him three times to move somewhere with better access control. He'd told me three times to stop being paranoid.

I took the stairs and knocked on the studio door. Music was playing on the other side, something with a heavy bass line and Rashid's voice layered over it, running the same four bars on repeat. He was in editing mode.

"It's me," I called through the door.

The music stopped. Locks clicked. Rashid opened the door in a white t-shirt, grey sweats, headphones around his neck, and a grin that made him look about fifteen years old.

"Big bro!" He pulled me in for a half-hug, one arm around my shoulder, the other still holding his phone. "What you doing all the way out in Bushwick?"

"Checking on you."

"You mean checking up on me." He walked back to the mixing desk where his producer, a quiet man named Tre who wore the same black hoodie every time I'd ever seen him, was adjusting something on the board. "Tre, you remember my brother Omar."

Tre nodded at me without looking up from the screen. "What's good."

"What's good, Tre."

The studio was small. Soundproofing on the walls, a vocal booth in the corner with the light off, two monitors showing waveforms I didn't understand. Rashid had his notebook open on the desk, pages covered in his handwriting, lyrics crossed out and rewritten and crossed out again. A half-eaten sandwich was sitting on top of an amplifier.

"You eating?" I asked, nodding at the sandwich.

"That's from yesterday."

"Rashid."

"I been working, O. You know how it is when I get in the zone. Eating's secondary." He dropped into the chair beside Tre and spun it to face me. "So what's really going on? You don't come to Bushwick unless something's up."

"Can't a brother just visit?"

"Kadeem visits. You show up." He raised an eyebrow. "There's a difference."

He wasn't wrong. Kadeem came to the studio to be supportive, to listen to tracks, to ask about the business side. I came when something was on my mind and I needed to see Rashid's face while I figured out how to say it.

"How's the music going?" I asked instead.

"Fire." Rashid turned back to the monitors and pulled up a track. "Listen to this. Tre laid this beat down yesterday and I been writing to it all morning. It's different from the usual stuff, more personal. Less hype, more... I don't know. Real."

He hit play. The beat filled the small room, something slower than his usual style, a piano loop underneath a drum pattern that had space in it. Rashid's voice came in on the second bar, raw, unfiltered, talking about growing up in Bed-Stuy with a father who disappeared and a name that opened doors he didn't always want to walk through.

I listened to the whole track without interrupting. When it finished Rashid was looking at me with his chin in his hand, waiting.

"That's good," I told him. "That's really good."