It’s love and bullets—Dickey style—in this blistering novel about  a couple who say yes to big time risks when playing it safe stops paying off... Dmytryk and Cora Knight were a respectable couple with a solid, comfortable life on the affluent side of Detroit—until a crippling recession annihilates their careers, and they find themselves desperate to hold on. Then a powerful crime boss gives them an opportunity to buy back their old lives. All Dmytryk has to do is rob a few banks: two minutes, in and out, nobody gets hurt. But no sooner does he begin his new life of crime than Cora disappears without a trace.  Now, more determined than ever to get his life back on track, Dmytryk is only one bank job away from moving on and finding Cora. But when the job goes dangerously wrong, Dmytryk realizes that destiny has other plans for him. Praise for Eric Jerome Dickey “[O]ne of the most successful Black authors of the last quarter-century.”— The New York Times “Eric Jerome Dickey’s work is a master class in Black joy....[his] characters—bold, smart women oozing sexuality and vulnerability—navigate interpersonal conflicts using dialogue that crackles with authenticity.”— The Atlantic   “[Eric Jerome Dickey is] the king of African American fiction.”— Entertainment Weekly Eric Jerome Dickey (1961–2021) was the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of twenty-nine novels, as well as a six-issue miniseries of graphic novels featuring Storm ( X-Men ) and the Black Panther. His novel Sister, Sister was honored as one of Essence ’s “50 Most Impactful Black Books of the Last 50 Years,” and A Wanted Woman won the NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding Literary Work in 2014. His most recent novels include The Blackbirds , Finding Gideon , Bad Men and Wicked Women , Before We Were Wicked , The Business of Lovers , and The Son of Mr. Suleman . Prologue Eddie Coyle had parked on the right shoulder of I-94 and left the engine running and the heater on low. It was below freezing in the Motor City. My seat warmer was on low, but the heat became too much and I turned it off. Eddie Coyle said, "Back in '97 there was the Loomis Fargo Bank robbery." His words pulled me out of my trance. His voice was powerful. I asked, "Where was that?" "Charlotte, North Carolina. They withdrew over seventeen million dollars." "That's a lot of money." "Seventeen million." "Where are they now?" "Jail." I removed my black fedora, then reached inside my suit coat and pulled out my pocket watch, checked my time against the time on the dash. He said, "Two minutes. That's how long it took Dillinger to rob a bank. When you're on the job, keep that number in mind. Two minutes. I'll cover the rest with you next week." "Violence and injury occur in less than three percent of bank robberies." "You did some research." "Less than one percent involve murder, kidnapping, or hostages." "I never did the research. The only numbers that matter to me are on the front of money." "Well, I like to know my odds. They don't look good, but they're better than the odds in the unemployment line. I'm starting to feel I have a better chance of winning the lottery than getting a job." Sheltered from the inclement weather, I was sitting at the crossroads with the devil. Sometimes the only choices a man has left are bad ones. Eddie Coyle asked, "How long have you been out of work?" "Over two years." "You speak a handful of languages." "I do." "Your wife said that you used to be an executive." "I was. For a while, I was." "And can't find a decent job." "Welcome to America. The long line on the left is the line for the disenfranchised." "A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage." "Add that to the long list of lies." "That's not the way it's supposed to be." "I know." "It goes against the grain of the American dream. Doesn't make sense to me." "I worked on the line too. I was blue-collar too. Yep, I was laid off, lost my white-collar job, took a drastic pay cut, and ended up on the line for nine years. Seven years white-collar, seven blue-collar. I was willing to work wherever I could work, despite my education." "Not many executives are willing to take a blue-collar job when things get rough." "Not many." He looked at his watch and I thought about my own future, a future as dark as the night. I pulled down the visor, flipped open the vanity mirror, and when it illuminated I stared at my image. My father's image. My face was Henrick's face. The face of a real man, a face not made for billboards and magazines. I used his pocket watch, a timepiece that had been his father's timepiece, a pocket watch that had kept time for decades. But the world had changed since Henrick walked on top of this littered soil, and not for the better. No one would say it was the best of times. It was bad for Wall Street, the housing industry, and law enforcement, and a travesty for the car industry. I didn't see another way out. As the SUV hummed, I ask