Page 187 of The Echo of Forever

My earpiece crackled to life, reminding me I had it in.

“I don’t think they’re keeping girls here,” Solei murmured, her voice low. “Going dark for now.”

I tapped the mic twice to acknowledge without speaking. If the girls weren’t at the auction site, that meant we were dealing with a preview event, not the main sale.

The sound of boots hitting the fire escape behind me echoed through my thoughts. I didn’t turn around, just waited for the invited guest to speak.

“You shoot?” Amal asked, stepping beside where I knelt.

Violet and Lucia were positioned strategically on the ground and an adjacent building, ready to take a shot if this second attempt at a family reunion went sideways.

“Little bit,” I replied, taking one more look through the scope before lowering the rifle and standing.

I chuckled at the dark bruising around his eye, from where I’d pistol-whipped him.

“Damn, your eye fucked up.”

He touched it and grinned, leaning against the raised ledge like he didn’t have a care in the world. But I noticed the way his eyes scanned the perimeter, the slight tension in his shoulders. He was just as alert as I was.

“Look, I only came here to say you can take a step back, little brother…” His eyes were filled with amusement, but I didn’t find shit funny. “No need to rumble with niggas like Solomon when you got an entire family to look after. An entire community, really…” His gaze turned serious, any hint of teasing gone.“You don’t know me, and I don’t know shit about you besides whispers. We can walk around this bitch and pretend we don’t know what’s up, or you can become my ally and we shift the narrative.”

I studied his face, looking at a version of myself that had taken a different path. Forever had been right to stop me from killing him at The Vault.

“You expect me to step back from something that affected my wife? Something that’s still hurting girls across this city?” I asked.

“I expect you to continue being smart about which battles you fight personally,” he countered. “You’ve got people. Use them.”

My earpiece crackled again, and Solei’s voice came through. “Jayden is here. I repeat, Jayden is here.”

There was laughter in her voice as she said it.

A smile spread across my face at that news. I’d forgotten all about him, let his irritating face slip from my mental list of niggas who needed to die.

At first it was about Forever, now it was about him actively going against what his mother was fighting to demolish. Both her sons were better off dead.

“You want to be my ally, big brother?” I asked, leaning into the joke. “Kill a nigga for me and I’ll think about it.”

Amal chuckled and turned to leave.

“Drop a name with Lucien and I’ll see what I can do.” He paused at the top of the fire escape. “And Solomon ain’t showing face at this auction. He’s linked himself with a fallen Albanian crime family from New York to expand his reach. Pretty sure you know exactly what family I speak of.”

The Albanian family I used to get close to the O’Sullivans. If Solomon was building those connections, he was playing a much bigger game than we’d realized.

I watched Amal disappear down the fire escape, then chuckled to myself and hit the mic to address Violet.

“You hear that, Moonlight? Your brother-in-law let a loose end slip.”

She didn’t respond, never one to waste words. But Finnegan’s voice came through the earpiece instead.

“Call her Moonlight again. And watch your mouth about my brother,” he threatened, though there wasn’t much bass behind it. “Don’t worry, we got shit handled in our neck of the woods. Worry about this creepy ass city you call home.”

That pulled a genuine laugh from me. Finnegan’s protectiveness of his brother was something I understood completely. Family was family, especially when they were solid. And Sean O’Sullivan fit the bill.

“Pull back,” I said, tapping the earpiece to address Solei. “And don’t engage with Jayden.”

She replied with an affirmative and I broke down and packed up my rifle, chuckling at how much slower I was compared to Violet before heading home to my wife.

I pulled into our driveway not long after, happy to see Forever’s car already parked there. She was home early as promised.