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“Rain said that you’re the best planner she’s ever met. Said it’s your attention to detail and your ability to anticipate potential problems and plan contingencies for them.”
“I didn’t know she thought of me that way,” Ryder said, and it made her feel some kind of way, but it was a good way.
Carter laughed. “And then she told me a story about how you were ready to go up against Kirk and his partner by yourself.”
“I was, but she talked me out of it.” Now it was Ryder who laughed. “She told me that I was her family now and she needed me with her.”
“She also told me that you were the brains behind Jab. And that you were running his crew.”
Ryder laughed. “Yeah, I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but Jab was a stupid man with a gun.” And a big fat juicy dick, Ryder thought.
“So, here’s what’s going to happen going forward. You’re gonna go back to work.”
“Doing what?”
“Planning jobs for your crew.”
“My crew?”
“You been running things, right?”
“Yes.”
“Time that we make it official.”
“Hold up. What is you sayin’?”
“I’m sayin’ that I need somebody to step up and run that crew, and since you been running the crew, and everybody but Jab knew it—”
“He knew that shit, trust me,” Ryder said. And he would tell me all the time when I was throwin’ this jewel on him.
“I’ll make sure everybody knows that I know it too,” Carter said as Rain walked up to them.
“What’s up, Ryder?” Then Rain turned to Carter. “Let’s go. We got shit to do.”
“We’ll talk later,” Carter said to Ryder and then he left J.R.’s with Rain and he never spoke to Mileena.
She watched them making their way through the crowd thinking. Instead of coming to see me, he stops and talks to Ryder and then Rain comes along, and he leaves with her without ever looking my way.
Embarrassment wasn’t even the word for how she felt. Neglected was more like it and Mileena felt like a fool for thinking this time around it would be any different.
This is not what I expected, she thought as she watched Carter leave with Rain.
Chapter Seven
Once they left J.R.’s, Rain and Carter were going to Pago’s to see Ed Weather. Rain wanted to talk to him about the losses they had taken and rebuilding his crew which got decimated when DP’s men hit Paradise Fish and Chicken. An attack that claimed Ed’s wife, Delicia.
“You and Ryder settle y’all shit?”
“I think we have an understanding,” Carter said as th
ey got to his car and drove away from J.R.’s.
“She’s gonna do good for you,” Rain said. “Bitch got a nose for money and she know how to earn. What I want to see is if them niggas will respect her. Her telling Jab what to do is one thing; but getting a bunch of men to do what you say is something different.”
“I’ll make it plain to them that I stand behind her.”
“Good, but you should tell her that she needs to start recruiting her own people. Thems Jab’s people. What she need is people that’s gonna be loyal to her.”