“Okay.” I nod and flip through the projection pages that show the future plans for the neighborhood. “Sometimes a company tries to push their luck. Get in ahead of the competition. Or ahead of anyone who might want to stop them. Same as a gang or any other criminal enterprise.”

I look at the clean, reimagined future of the neighborhood; this is what was sold to me and Kim by the realtors. They’d talked of revitalization and changing demographics and I’d nodded along because of course that had nothing to do with me, but I’d still get to reap the benefits. And when there are benefits to be reaped, there’s always someone ready to do some illegal shit to get even more of them.

I know that all too well.

Sydney sits on the floor beside the duffel bag and wraps her arms around her knees, staring at the couch as she thinks.

“I’m worried about Kavaughn, too. Len said he went down south, but it’s not like him to just dip like that.”

Kavaughn, the guy I replaced as her researcher, the reason I inserted myself into this mess to begin with.

She grabs her phone again and makes a call, putting it on speaker this time. We both stare at the picture of the thick-necked man on the screen.

“Jesus Christ.” I pick up the phone as an automated message announces that the number is no longer in service.

Sydney looks up at me. “What is it?”

I wave the phone from side to side as his picture fades away. “This is the guy that came at me in front of the medical center that I tried to tell you about. He was on something. I assumed he was just your average methhead—”

“Meth isn’t the drug of choice here, Theo. And especially not for Kavaughn.”

“Okay, whatever. He was high. But at the meeting, Len said Kavaughn went to visit his grandmother, right? And if he was high and roaming around grabbing people, wouldn’t someone in the neighborhood know he was back? I can’t have been the only person to have seen him.”

“Kavaughn doesn’t mess with drugs,” she says, shaking her head. “He is absolutely a ‘drugs are a tool of the oppressor’ type dude. He doesn’t even drink coffee. Are you sure it was him?”

I close my eyes and bang my fist lightly against my forehead as I remember when he bumped into me. I’d assumed he was trying to attack me, but in retrospect . . . I saw that fear in his eyes.

“Please. Money.”

Was that really what he’d been saying?

“Mommy is in the garden. Mommy.” That’s what Sydney said. I’m not used to adults calling their mothers that, but . . .

My stomach lurches.

“Did he live with his mother?” I ask.

“With his grandmother, but she raised him, so she was basically his mom.”

His garbled words repeat in my head, but this time I don’t imagine he’s begging for money for his next fix. I imagine he’s asking for what most disoriented people ask for when they’re terrified. The sounds are so similar.

“Mommy? Bring Mommy. Help. Please! Please!”

I’d reacted to what I was taught to think when a large Black man ran up to me acting strangely.

Drugs.

Crime.

Danger.

And when the cops asked me where he’d gone, I ratted him out. A couple days later, I’d glibly pulled on a Black Lives Matter T-shirt and got pissy when I was called on it.

“Was it him?” she asks again.

I want to lie to her, to ignore my disgust with myself and the fear growing into a palpable presence in my torso.

“It was him. For sure.” I look at her. “I’d stopped because I thought I saw something moving through the window in the old hospital. And when he attacked me . . . it was right after I asked him if he wanted to go to the hospital.”

She stares at me, that distance in her gaze again, and I don’t volunteer that I snitched on him to the cops.

“Okay, let’s just . . . process for a minute,” she says.

I pull out my own phone and sit beside her. At my last job, I learned that most companies have their fingers in many pies, no matter what their business. Hell, even before that, working with my dad in low-level shit had taught me how a front operates. How dirty money gets clean.

“Most of this stuff happened after the VerenTech announcement,” I say.

She nods.

I hear William’s kaboosh again.

I Google “VerenTech + Brooklyn + Real Estate.” The first few pages are a mix of articles from this week celebrating the borough’s winning the VerenTech contracts and older ones warning of the harm the company might bring. Nothing stands out, but I scroll until something snags my eye:

VerenTech, which is primarily known for its pharmaceutical endeavors but is also the primary shareholder in Bevruch Ten Properties (BVT Realty) . . .

That’s the agency Kim and I used. I flash Sydney my screen.

“They’re the ones putting up all those condos,” she says, her voice surprisingly subdued.

As Sydney gazes over my shoulder, I Google “VerenTech + Bevruch Ten Properties.”

This time only a handful of results show up. One is a link to an r/shadybusiness forum page about the VerenTech campus search.

Brooklyn can have them. Everyone forgets about the town they bought in Connecticut in the early 00s. Promised tons of wealth, but they used eminent domain to kick people out of their houses and then never built their location there. Local businesses all closed down because they had no customers. Politicians and investors all lost big. It turned into a ghost town.

There’s a link in response that I hesitate to click on but do.

A diagram of all the businesses connected to VerenTech pops up in a new tab. Smaller or larger circles reflect how much money each subsidiary produces for the company overall. VerenTech (pharmaceuticals) is large, but only slightly smaller is the circle representing Civil Communities Inc. (private prison company).

“These motherfuckers,” Sydney growls.

Several smaller circles cluster around that, offshoots of that company. The third-largest circle is BVT Realty, and the fourth is . . .

“Veritas Bank. Isn’t that the one you told me about?” Sydney asks. “The one the former slaveowner started?”

“Yeah. And when I looked them up, a lot of the headlines were people calling them out for offering subprime loans to minorities in the lead-up to the 2008 housing bubble bursting.”

“Gaining how many houses when the foreclosures started rolling out,” Sydney says bitterly. She expands the circle around BVT Realty so that a pixelated name in a smaller circle takes up most of the screen: Good Neighbors LLC.

“Those are the people who stole Mommy’s house. Drea—” She takes a deep breath. “Drea once told me that BVT got special treatment, which is why they’re building here more than anyone else. She also said someone had pulled lots of strings for the VerenTech deal.”

“I’m no Robin Hood, but one of the reasons I felt okay stealing from my job was because so much of the money coming in was graft, pure and simple,” I say. “They laundered more cleanly than the job I had before, but people who have money use that money to make more of it, and they don’t care who they hurt while doing that. VerenTech has more money than most of us can imagine.”

“They chose Brooklyn, out of all the places vying for their new campus,” Sydney says. “The most expensive place, but the one that would make them the most money once they got us all out of here. If they’ve been collecting houses since the earlier housing crises . . .”

“Yeah. It’s possible that this has been years in the making.”

Sydney meets my gaze, and I confirm what she said a minute ago, because something like this bears repeating to make it real.

“Something shady is going on here, and it’s connected to them.”

Chapter 18

Sydney

I WRAP MY ARMS AROUND MY KNEES.

“You know, sometimes my mother used to send me these illuminati videos she got from her friends—she barely knew how to text but could forward those—and I would shake my head like she was being foolish. But this whole situation makes those videos seem quaint.”

I squeeze my eyes shut as the connections keep forming in my head, lighting up as they do.

The police presence has exploded over the last few years, with cops stationed en masse at subway entrances and stepped-up foot patrols that were supposed to increase safety, but haven’t for the people who lived here. Preston and the many other people in the neighborhood who’ve been arrested over the last couple of years have likely been taken to VerenTech’s jails and prisons. All the new condos going up in any available slice of land are owned by BVT. Veritas Bank, the biggest lender to the new businesses opening—and the owner of so many of the defaulted loans of the past—is part of VerenTech.

And all the people who moved away and never checked in with old neighborhood friends. Where were they?

“We can’t tell anyone this, can we? This is lock-you-up-and-sedate-you shit.” I shake my head, trying to stop the conspiracy theory domino rally. “Even if it’s true.”

“Especially if it’s true,” Theo says.