That was the moral quagmire Tariq never expected. He wasn't just moving weight; he was now an accessory to healthcare fraud. Using his Stansfield credentials and a fake student relief fund, he bribed a hospital administrator. He watched as two men in hazmat suits loaded a ventilator into an unmarked van. For a moment, he saw his father’s reflection in the van’s tinted window—the same look of a man who had crossed a line for family, for survival.
The summer culminated in a rooftop confrontation. Not a shootout—ammo was too precious, and the sound would draw unwanted attention from the few cops still on patrol. Instead, it was a trial by fire. Monet, Cane, Dru, and Diana had Tariq cornered. They’d found out about the ventilator deal, realized he’d kept a cut for himself. Power Book II- Ghost -2020-2020
Tariq sat in his dorm room, the buzzing fluorescent light the only constant. His laptop screen flickered between a half-finished economics paper and a dark web portal. The pressure from Monet Tejada hadn't let up. If anything, the lockdown had made her more dangerous. With fewer cops on the street and everyone trapped inside their own fiefdoms, her rules were absolute. That was the moral quagmire Tariq never expected
Their first job was a disaster. A meet in a deserted parking garage under the Queensboro Bridge. The supplier, a jittery man with a hacking cough, tried to short them. Tariq, channeling the ghost of his father, didn’t flinch. He calmly pulled a small UV light—used for disinfecting mail—and shined it on the counterfeit bills the man had tried to pass. He watched as two men in hazmat suits
The man laughed, then coughed. Brayden instinctively reached for a hand sanitizer clipped to his belt. The tension broke for a split second, a surreal, darkly comic moment. Here they were, playing a life-or-death game of drug-dealer chess, while a global pandemic made every handshake a potential death sentence.