But in the vacuum of a campus half-empty due to the pandemic, the rules of the street had only gotten sharper.

The real turning point came when Tariq discovered that the Tejadas had a secret: a makeshift lab in an abandoned bodega in the Bronx, churning out a high-grade synthetic product. But the chemist was sick—really sick. And he refused to work unless someone got him a ventilator for his asthmatic daughter.

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.