Chapter 4 SMOKE AND MIRRORS

The next morning, Meekey sat in the corner of a greasy diner on 112th, nursing a black coffee that had long gone cold. A cracked window let in the steady hum of traffic, and from her booth she had a clear view of the boxing gym. Steele’s.

Drew was in there.

He came and went like clockwork now—clean cut, polished, punctual. A man who used to live in the shadows but now walked like he owned the damn sun. She watched him for two days. No crew. No muscle tailing him. Just a steady flow of young guys coming in and out of the gym, laughing, sweating, training.

Too clean. Too easy.

She wasn’t buying it.

Drew didn’t leave the game. People like them didn’t get a graceful exit not without burying bodies or burning bridges. And Drew? He was the kind who left others to carry the torch while he lit cigars with hundred dollar bills.

Meekey knew the look of someone hiding something in plain sight. The gym was a front. It always had been. The question was, what was he running now?

She left the diner and walked the block, slow and steady, head down, blending in. Across the street, a skinny kid in a hoodie sat on a stoop, eyes sharp behind the screen of a cracked phone. A lookout. Meekey caught the quick flick of his gaze as she passed, too casual to be casual.

Another block over, she spotted two guys leaning against a black SUV. Not gym rats. Too clean. Too quiet. Muscle, dressed down. Like they’d been trained to look harmless.

She circled around the block again and ducked into the alley behind the gym. The loading dock was locked, but a fresh tire track was stamped into the dirt. No deliveries were scheduled for Sundays, yet here they were—clear signs of movement.

Meekey crouched by a dumpster and waited. Sure enough, thirty minutes later, a beat-up gray van rolled down the alley, paused at the door, and honked twice. The back opened from the inside. Fast hands passed out crates—marked “Equipment” in bold stencil. She wasn’t close enough to see what was really in them, but she knew it wasn’t jump ropes.

Drugs. Maybe weapons. Maybe both.

Same old Drew.

But cleaner and Smarter.

And now, Meekey needed a way in.

She walked the length of the alley, counting exits, memorizing shadows. Then she doubled back, waited until the van disappeared, and walked straight into the gym like she belonged there.

Inside, it smelled like sweat, bleach, and testosterone. Guys were sparring in the ring. Music bumped low from a speaker in the corner. No one paid her much attention, just another girl from the block probably looking for her man.

But she wasn’t looking for any man.

She was looking for Javon.

He’d been Drew's right hand before the trial—quiet, slick, always in the background but always watching. Word on the street was that he’d taken over operations while Drew cleaned up his image.

She found him in the back room, going over paperwork like a man who suddenly gave a damn about legal fronts.

“Meekey?” he said, startled.

“Relax,” she said, stepping in and shutting the door behind her. “I’m not here to cause trouble.”

“That so?” He leaned back in his chair. “Last I heard, you were gone. Now you're back and poking around.”

“I just want to know what Drew's up to. And what he built with what I paid for.”

Javon eyed her like he was calculating the exact risk of telling her anything.

“You stayed quiet,” he said finally. “Fourteen years. That earns you something. But Drew? He’s got people now. Real people. You start sniffing around, they’ll notice. And they won’t care who took the fall.”

Meekey smirked. “Let ‘em notice.”

“You trying to get revenge?”

She shook her head. “Not revenge.”

He looked at her a long moment. “Then what?”

“Balance.”