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I put the phone down. Kyenna wanted me to prove I could build something real with her. First, I had to make damn sure the life I had just destroyed didn’t come back and destroy mine.

CHAPTER 36

KYENNA

The thing about paperwork was that people underestimated how much of their business they left sitting inside of it. Men could make somebody disappear, change routes overnight, and move money without touching a bank. It was something about putting a stack of contracts, corporate filings, financial statements, or property records in front of their ass, and they would probably throw the whole pile away and tell somebody else to figure it out. That was where I had an advantage. Numbers and paperwork talked to me in my sleep. Paper trails made sense. Once I took the time to recognize what I was looking for, I could sit in one place for hours until something stopped looking right.

I had been at Royal Flush since eight this morning, but I hadn't done a lick of work that had anything to do with the casino. My operations manager had everything under control, and I told my staff not to bother me unless the building was on fire or somebody died. After dealing with Shameek and everything he dropped in my lap about Nikki, I needed something I could actually control. Finding out what the fuck Q had been doing around King distribution gave me that. I had every paper printed from Rah’s office spread across the conference table. I had them organized by who owned the LLC. I kept going back to the text D12 money clears Friday. Once it does, east route is fully funded.

“Why the fuck is the nightclub money funding a distribution route?” I asked myself.

I kind of knew the answer. I just didn’t have enough proof to accuse anybody of shit. My phone was sitting beside me, and for the first time I didn’t have the urge to call Shameek and ask him. I trusted him to know what the streets meant when paperwork stopped making sense to me. Then he told me he killed Nikki. I believed him when he said he wouldn’t hurt me. But believing he wouldn’t hurt me personally and believing I should hand him every secret I found were two completely different things. Nikki found something she wasn’t supposed to have, and she ended up dead. That alone was enough for me to keep my mouth shut until I knew exactly what I was dealing with.

I closed the financial records and opened another folder. It was one of the investigation files from after the murder. I had avoided them for months. I didn’t want to relive the worst night of my life from somebody else’s perspective. Now I didn’t have the luxury of being scared of it. I flipped through the first few pages quickly. Those pages were only the time of dispatch and statements from the officers on duty. Then I found a report from the private security company that monitored our compound. The Kings didn’t rely solely on police when Rah died. Pops had everybody with a badge, camera, or street connection digging for something. According to the report, security pulled footage from several properties along the road leading towards our private road. The majority of it was useless, with bad angles and dark views. There was a still image of two black SUVs. The image was grainy as hell, but the timestamp was less than fifteen minutes before Rah was shot. I stared at it. Underneath the image was a note: Vehicle 1: plate unreadable. Vehicle 2: partial plate obtained from secondary camera. Registration returned to Northline Fleet Services. Vehicle reported leased commercially.

I wrote down Northline Fleet Services. There were several pages behind it documenting attempts to trace who had leased the vehicle. After that, there were just notes saying that Northline refused to release client information without a subpoena. By the time investigators pursued it, the vehicle had already been returned and reassigned.

“How the fuck did everybody just let that go?”

I opened the laptop and searched the company. It was owned by Harrison Mobility Partners. I went to search that, and another company popped up.

“Y’all niggas love an LLC,” I said with an attitude.

I kept going until the structure finally ended. My heart dropped when I saw WR Capital Group as a new investor right before Rah died. His name was doing too much circling. I picked up my phone and dialed Grif.

“Hey, boss lady. What do you need?”

“Can you come to the conference room? Make sure you come alone.”

“On the way.”

Five minutes later, he walked in and closed the door behind him. His eyes went to the papers.

“Sit down,” I told him.

Grif took the chair across from me, and I slid the still image toward him.

“You remember this?”

“Not these specifically. Meek and Pops took over most of the investigation after we turned our statements and security footage over.”

“It says these were pulled from cameras along Rah’s normal route. Two SUVs were in the area shortly before the shooting.”

“Who found it?”

“The private investigator Pops hired.”

“Do you remember anybody working security closer to the compound saying they saw anything unusual?”

He thought about it. “Reggie might.”

“Who the fuck is Reggie?”

“He worked the secondary gate back then. He always had the position closer to the road than the rest of us. I remember him saying something about headlights farther down that night. Nobody could ever prove whether it had anything to do with Rah, though.”

“Where is Reggie now? Strangely, I never knew Reggie, and I know all the security.”

“He moved out of state after all that happened to Rah.”