“You’re crazy,” he said and quit.
After talking to ten investigators about taking the job and getting turned down by all of them, DP found one. He was an ex-police sergeant named Lenny Greeley. He was a washed-out drunk, but he was able to reach out to some of his old police contacts and they gave Greeley all the information that DP wanted. That, coupled with what Sterling knew, DP knew all he needed to know about Rain Robinson.
Though he still wanted to fuck her, DP’s eyes got big when he began thinking that he could simply kill Rain and her captains, and everything would fall apart. Then, in the confusion, he could then move in with his drug people and pick up the pieces.
“Hell no,” Sterling said. “I don’t want no parts of that plan. And you ain’t usin’ none of my people to get it done.”
And that’s when DP was forced to turn to Kwame Coleman. He had always envied the scope of Black’s organization and since he had always seen himself as somebody who could play on that level, Kwame was down with it.
“Your daddy know about this?” Kwame asked.
“No, I haven’t told him yet.”
“What you gonna tell him?”
“Nothing, yet. I’m gonna wait until our plan is operational and then I’ll tell him,” DP said.
“Good,” Kwame said. “He’ll just shit all over the idea like he always does.” He blamed Milton for him not being a player on that level. “It ain’t a good idea unless it’s his.”
“Don’t I know it,” DP said. “That’s why I’m talking to you and not him.”
The following day, Rain told Yarissa to get in touch with Carla Assante and have her meet Rain at J.R.’s that night. When Carla arrived, Rain told her to look into David Petty.
“And nobody, not Monika, not even Xavier needs to know what you’re doing for me. But I need to know if David Petty is Milton Petty’s son. Understand?”
“Understood.”
Chapter Three
While Rain was thinking about David ‘DP’ Petty, he was thinking about her. At this point, DP was feeling pretty good about the way things had turned out. Sure, his bid to take over The Family was unsuccessful, and he was a little disappointed that his father, Milton had skipped to Venezuela. But DP was alive and still in business.
He had watched Carmen Taylor on TV as she reported the Breaking News of how she smashed a human trafficking ring with the arrest of Walter Bonner at Enzo’s Palace. But the truth was something completely different. DP was now in business with men, who were already in the human trafficking industry, to ship the women to his overseas clients. He had the new spot for the online operation up and ready to go long before the police ever set foot in Enzo’s. The new operation was being run out of a warehouse in the South Bronx.
So, DP was feeling good because everything else that Rain and her people destroyed were his father’s businesses. The only loose end left was Bonner, and the plan for him to hang himself in his cell was in progress. Once that was taken care of, he could put this matter behind him and try to forget it ever happened.
But the one thing that he coul
dn’t put behind him, the thing that he’d tried but couldn’t move on from was Lucy.
I don’t know why I still wanna call her that, DP thought. The truth of the matter was that Rain Robinson had put some shit on him and he wanted her. Wanted her badly.
Still want her.
And while he was having this moment of truth and clarity, DP had to admit that the whole takeover thing was more because he was mad. DP was a man who was used to getting what he wanted and so getting humped and dumped was totally unfathomable to him. I put some shit on her sexy ass, DP thought, so he couldn’t understand what the problem was. Now what? That was the question.
Maybe if I start hanging around J.R.’s, I could just bump into her, you know, by accident, he thought, but then thought better of it. Rain had burned all of his father’s operations to the ground in one night. If they were able to tie any of those businesses to his father, that would lead straight to him. Maybe that’s why Pop skipped the country, and why he should seriously consider it.
“Where you at, Dee!”
“Huh?”
“Where you at?” Sterling asked.
“I was just thinking,” DP said and picked up his drink.
“Whatever it is, it must be some deep shit.”
“Trust me, it is,” DP said to his oldest friend and business partner. They were sitting in the office at the warehouse that the online operation was now being run out of.