Page 140 of Cruel Devotion

“Marcelo won't be happy about this at all.”

“He should be happy—”

“And why is that?”

“I've read the history between the Four Aces and Rowe Street Mob. You all are fair to think that negotiations and deals have been bullshit.”

“Lei always sided with Romeo due to Chanel having a leash on his cock. And the West hates the South.”

“Why?”

“Old history. Crownsville shit.”

“But, Banks, our people are from Crownsville too.”

“Yeah, but not all of Rowe Street Mob is like that. Some of these white boys with us. . .well, their great-grandfathers were really about that racist life. Now they're not, but. . .Killer Crows have a long memory.”

“They have to let it go.”

“There's something else. I don't know if you have caught it or not, but. . .”

“What?”

“Chanel and Romeo. Their last name is Jones.”

Now it was my turn to pause and even sit down on the bed.

Wait a minute. Is he for real? What are the odds?

“You heard me, Moni?”

“Y-yeah, but like. . .how close are they related to Ralph Jones?”

“That was their great grandfather.”

“Oh.” I widened my eyes. “Like. . .our great grandfather. Allegedly.”

“Don't start that allegedly shit, Moni.”

“Listen, Banks. Toward the end grandmother was a bit crazy. Remember how she would go outside in the rain in that housecoat and stare up at the sky like an alien ship was coming.”

“Grandma said that was her father. I believe it.”

An odd throbbing hit my head.

This is so fucking weird.

I had never for one second considered the fact that I could be related to Chanel. I wasn’t even sure how I would approach that with Lei.

You know what? Don’t stress. It may not be anything at all.

Our grandmother would watch us when we were kids and she always talked about how we got our family house.

According to grandmother, her mother had been Ralph Jones's secret mistress in the South. Apparently, he had given her a 5-bedroom house that we all considered thefamily home. It was where Banks lived now with his mother. But even more, if anybody in the family needed a place to stay, we understood that there was a room for us there.

“But back to Romeo and Chanel, their father was Kenneth Jones, Ralph Jones's son.”

For us, he had been an odd man who used to come to my grandmother's house every now and then, and hand her an envelope, then leave.

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