We settled in, ate, talked. Zainab and Samaya hit it off immediately, bonding over pregnancy stories and baby names. Bryce looked truly happy, surrounded by people who cared about him, hosting something in a space that was his, building a life with his own two hands that looked nothing like the circus we’d grown up in.
I went to the bathroom about an hour in. The hallway was narrow and the bathroom door was right next to the bedroom door, which was cracked open. I could hear voices on the other side. It was Keyvon, Bryce, and Jerome, talking in low tones that were meant to stay in that room.
“I’m telling you, bro, we need to slide on them niggas,” Keyvon said. His voice was tight with that kind of anger that’s been sitting for a while and is looking for a reason to move. “Dimonte was my blood. My fuckin’ cousin. And we just supposed to sit here and let that shit slide?”
“Key, Mega said to chill,” Bryce said. “He said we gotta lay low right now. Too much heat.”
“Fuck what Mega says. Mega ain’t lose a cousin. Mega sitting on his ass in his house counting his money while Dimonte is in the ground. We need to make them pay. All of them niggas.”
“I hear you, bro. But we gotta be smart about it.”
“Nah, we gotta be about it. I’m tired of being smart. Smart don’t bring Dimonte back.” Jerome’s voice now, quieter but just as sharp. “Key’s right. We need to move. Hit them where it hurts.”
The bathroom door was right there. I should’ve walked in and closed the door and pretended I hadn’t heard anything. But my feet were stuck to the floor because they’d said something that had turned my blood cold.
The mention of Mega’s name sent chills up my. spine. Was he referring to Serenity’s Mega? The man who was beating my best friend and feeding her cocaine. The man I’d just helped put her in rehab to escape from. That Mega was connected to my brother’s crew?
I forced myself into the bathroom, closed the door, and sat on the edge of the tub with my heart pounding. The connections were forming in my head but they didn’t make sense yet. Bryce worked for Mega.
I flushed the toilet for cover and washed my hands and went back out to the party. Bryce was cutting the cake and Samaya was taking pictures and Zainab was laughing at something one of the girls said and everything looked normal and happy and warm.
I pulled Bryce into the kitchen while everyone was distracted with cake.
“I need to talk to you.”
“What’s up, sis?”
“Are you working for Mega through the BCC? Tell me the truth.”
His face shifted. Just barely, just for a second, but I caught it. “Why you asking me that?”
“Because I know who Mega is, Bryce. I’ve heard his name before. He’s dangerous. He moves drugs. And whoever Dimonte is that Keyvon is so upset about… whatever happened to him, getting revenge is going to get you killed or locked up. And you’ve got a baby on the way.”
I nodded toward the living room where Samaya was licking icing off her fingers and rubbing her belly and laughing at a video on someone’s phone. That girl was about to be a mother and the father of her child was standing in a kitchen being warned by his sister for the second time.
“Mehar, I appreciate you. I do. But you gotta let me handle my business.” His voice was gentle but firm. “We’re gonna be okay. I promise.”
“You said that last time. And I’m telling you again be smart. You’ve got too much to lose now.”
“I hear you, sis.”
I looked at my little brother with his party hat still tilted on his head and I wanted to grab him and shake him. He was playing with fire.
But I couldn’t force him to listen to me. All I could do was love him and warn him and hope that his daughter would be enough of a reason to choose a different path than the one Dimonte’s ghost was pulling him toward.
“Be careful,” I said. “I mean it.”
“I will, sis. Always.”
He hugged me and went back to the party and I stood in the kitchen alone for a minute listening to the laughter and the music and trying to figure out how the most normal, happy afternoon I’d had in months had just become something that felt like a countdown.
33
QUEST
“How are we looking for security?” I asked as I lined up a shot on the pool table. Justice, Prime, Mekhi, and Zephyr were all there, spread around the basement of Silk and Sin with drinks in hand and the energy that comes from five men who built something together and were about to watch it open its doors.
The casino. Our casino. Years of planning, months of construction, and enough under-the-table maneuvering to give a federal prosecutor a heart attack. But we were finally here.
