In the car, I sat with my phone in my hand for a long time. Serenity was spiraling and she couldn’t see it. Mega had her so deep in his orbit that she’d defend him to the one person who actually understood what control looked like. And the drugs were making it worse. They were clouding her judgment, dimming her instincts, turning the sharpest girl I knew into someone who confused surveillance with safety.
Her brothers needed to know. Prime was settled with Zainab and the twins. Justice was buried in the casino. And Quest?—
Quest.
I opened my messages and found his name. We’d exchanged numbers at some point but I’d never texted him first. Every interaction we’d had was him showing up in my space, him making the move, him initiating. This would be the first time I reached out. And I was doing it not because of the roller rink or the hallway or the way his cologne followed me into my dreams, but because his sister needed help and I was the only one who’d seen it up close.
Hey. It’s Mehar. Can we talk? It’s about Serenity.
I hit send before I could overthink it. Then I put the phone in my lap and stared at the steering wheel and waited.
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
I’m free now. Call me.
21
SERENITY
This is exactly why I’ve distanced myself from my family. Mehar has some nerve talking about my boyfriend being controlling, when that’s my entire family, and now her too. My brothers have always had their heads too far in my business. And the crazy thing is, they don’t know me that well.
Our mother sent me away to boarding school when I was just thirteen. The next five years were some of the toughest in my life. My brothers think that I’m just a weak little girl, but if they knew the things I’ve seen, the things I’ve been through, and the things I’ve done, they wouldn’t be looking at me that way.
I sat in my car outside Founding Farmers, breathing deeply before starting the engine, and pulled out my phone to scroll my socials for a minute. For whatever reason, I still hadn’t blocked Julius and Ivy from my Facebook profile. I barely used it anyway. But there they were in my feed, holding their infant. A healthy baby boy with Julius’s eyes and Ivy’s dimples. The baby that should’ve been mine.
After everything I’d done for them, they betrayed me in the worst way. Julius must’ve forgotten that I held some of his darkest secrets. But I hadn’t. And when the time was right, Iwould exact my revenge. I wanted him to get so comfortable that he wouldn’t see what hit him.
I closed the app and pulled onto the road toward home.
Home was a McMansion uptown that Mega had been renting since before we got together. Five bedrooms, a finished basement, a three-car garage, and a backyard with a hot tub he barely used. It was flashy and had a big TV mounted over the fireplace, designer furniture that didn’t quite match, a kitchen with all the upgrades and nothing in the fridge. But I’d made it feel like a home with candles, throw pillows, and those small touches that softened the edges of a house built on dirty money.
When I turned onto our street, I saw the motorcycles. Three of them, lined up in the driveway. There were two Kawasakis and a Yamaha, all dark colored with custom work. I recognized them because they’d been showing up more frequently over the past couple of months.
Since I’d taken over as BCC’s accountant, I’d had a front-row seat to every financial decision Mega made. And recently, he’d been bringing in these young kids from Baltimore—a small crew called the Black Vipers who rode together and moved as a unit. They were young, hungry, and loyal in the way that only broke people with no other options can be. Mega hired them as muscle, though I didn’t know the specifics of what he had them doing. What I did know was that I’d been cutting their checks and washing the payments through a series of shell accounts that made the money look like construction consulting fees.
The BCC had been struggling since Rashid’s death. That was the truth nobody wanted to say out loud. Rashid had been the connect, the brain, the one who made suppliers trust the operation enough to front product and extend credit. Mega had ambition but he didn’t have Rashid’s reputation. Plugs didn’t return his calls the way they used to return Rashid’s. Shipments were inconsistent. Revenue was down. And Mega was spendingmore than he was bringing in, which I could see clear as day in the books but couldn’t say to his face without starting a war.
I loved him though. I did. When he was sober and present, Mega was charming and attentive and made me feel like I was the center of his universe. He was fine too—tall, dark, with a jaw that could cut glass and arms that made me feel small in a way I liked. When things were good between us, they were really good. Miami was proof of that. The way he’d surprised me with the trip, the way he’d held my hand on the beach, the way he’d looked at me over dinner like I was the only woman in the world.
But when he got high, something behind his eyes changed. The warmth would drain out, and something colder would take its place, something mean and paranoid and looking for a reason to be angry. I’d learned to read the shift the way you learn to read weather. Clear skies could turn dark in seconds and all it took was one wrong word, one wrong look, one wrong breath.
I parked behind the motorcycles and checked my face in the mirror. Eyes still a little red from crying at the restaurant. I fixed my makeup, took a breath, and went inside.
The living room was full of smoke and bass-heavy music. Mega was on the couch with three young guys I’d seen a few times before. They were all lean and young, early twenties at the oldest, wearing dark hoodies and jeans. I noticed the tattoos immediately. They were of vipers inked on their hands, their wrists, the sides of their necks. Coiled and detailed, each one slightly different but unmistakably the same symbol. Their thing.
Mega looked up when I walked in. He was shirtless, chain hanging, a blunt between his fingers and his jaw set in that way that told me he’d been doing more than smoking. I could see the residue on the coffee table. There were lines of white powder cut into neat rows next to a rolled-up bill. He was high. The mean kind of high.
“Hey baby,” I said, walking over to kiss him. I kept it light and quick because I could already feel the temperature in the room, and it wasn’t warm. “I didn’t know you had company.”
“Yeah,” he said, not returning the kiss. Just watching me. “We was handling business.”
I turned to the guys on the couch and offered a polite smile. “Hey y’all.”
One of them nodded. Another lifted his chin. The third gave a small wave and a half-smile that seemed genuine.
I didn’t make it two steps toward the kitchen.
The crash behind me was so sudden and so loud that I flinched before I even turned around. Mega had kicked the coffee table over. The coke scattered across the hardwood, the rolled-up bill flew somewhere under the couch, and the ashtray shattered against the floor, sending ash and glass in every direction.
