“I’m good, I’m good,” Zephyr kept saying, but he was fucked up.
“Shut up and stay still,” I told him. “Ambulance is coming.”
“Did you get them?”
“Both down. One in the chest, one in the leg. They’re not going anywhere.”
“Good.” He winced. “This is a nice-ass casino, though. Shame about the blood on the floor.”
“I’ll send you the cleaning bill.”
He laughed and then coughed and then groaned and Mekhi told both of us to shut up because nothing about this was funny. He was right, but humor was how we processed gunfire and it always had been.
The police came in hot with a tactical team first, then uniforms, then detectives. The two shooters were still on the floor, both alive, both in bad shape. Paramedics loaded them onto stretchers and I watched the one with the leg wound get wheeled past me. He was conscious, staring at the ceiling, and when the stretcher passed me our eyes locked for about two seconds.
I didn’t say a word. Didn’t have to. He saw my face and he knew. The hospital was a pit stop. What came after the hospital was going to be a lot less comfortable.
Zephyr went to the ambulance next. Mekhi rode with him. I stood in the middle of my casino with broken glass on the floor and bullet holes in the walls and blood drying on marble, and I thought about the name that kid had screamed before the first shot.
Dimonte was dead because he robbed my trucks and that was a consequence he earned. But these Viper boys didn’t walk into a casino grand opening on their own initiative. Somebody sent them. Somebody was pulling the strings behind a crew of young niggas from Baltimore who had no business being at war with the Banks family. The warehouse fire, the truck robbery, and now the casino shooting were all connected and all pointing at somebody with enough resources and enough hate to coordinate attacks on everything I’d built.
I was going to find that somebody. And the two kids bleeding on stretchers right now were going to lead me straight to them.
My phone buzzed.
Mehar:I’m safe. Zainab is safe. Are you okay?
Me:I’m good. Stay where you are. I’ll come to you when this is done.
The detective approached me with a notepad. Wanted statements. Wanted to understand why two young men with gang tattoos had walked into a casino grand opening and started shooting. Everyone’s weapons were registered and legal. Nobody on our side was getting arrested tonight. But the questions were just beginning.
I took a deep breath and started talking.
42
MEGA
“Yo, what the fuck were y’all thinkin’?!” I barked at these young niggas sitting in my living room looking like kids who got caught stealing out the corner store. That’s exactly what they were too. Kids. Stupid, emotional, reckless-ass kids who I’d hired to do my dirty work because I was at that age where I ain’t tryna be in the streets. I’m running this shit from a distance. Moving pieces on the board. Operating like a boss is supposed to operate.
Except my pieces just went rogue and shot up a casino on opening night in front of the press and the acting mayor and about four hundred witnesses, and now two of them were laid up in the hospital with bullet wounds and viper tattoos visible for anybody with eyes to connect dots.
Bryce was on the couch with his head in his hands. Elijah was by the door, looking like he wanted to leave. Stephen was in the kitchen pretending to get water, but really just trying to be invisible. The only two who weren’t here were the two who caused the problem. Keyvon, who took one in the leg and was currently handcuffed to a hospital bed, and Jerome, who took two to the chest and was in the ICU fighting for his life.
“I tried to talk them out of it,” Bryce said, lifting his head. “I told them Mega said chill. Keyvon wasn’t hearing me. He’s been on one ever since Dimonte got killed, and I couldn’t…”
“You couldn’t what? Control your boys? That’s your fuckin’ job, Bryce. I put you in charge of them because you were supposed to be the level-headed one. The one with sense. And now I got two soldiers in the hospital, the cops sniffing around, and the Banks family on high alert because your boys wanted to play Rambo at a fuckin’ grand opening.”
I paced the living room. The McMansion was quiet except for my voice bouncing off the vaulted ceilings. Five bedrooms, three-car garage, hot tub out back, and it all felt hollow without Serenity in it. Not that I missed her exactly. I missed what she provided. The warmth. The meals. The way she’d sit on the couch and scroll her phone while I worked and I could reach over and touch her whenever I wanted to. The access.
Mostly the access.
I stopped pacing long enough to cut a line on the glass coffee table. The coke was good tonight; clean, white, no cut. I’d been going through about a gram a day since Serenity disappeared and the supply was my one expense I never skimped on. I leaned down, snorted the line through a rolled hundred, and felt that familiar burn followed by the rush that made everything sharper and nothing matter.
“Y’all have any idea how much heat this brings?” I said, wiping my nose with the back of my hand while these young boys watched me do a line in the middle of disciplining them. I didn’t give a fuck. I was the boss. Bosses did what they wanted. “The cops are gonna be crawling all over this shit. Keyvon’s got a viper tat on his neck that connects him to the crew. Jerome too. If either one of them talks…”
“They ain’t gonna talk,” Bryce said.
“You said they weren’t gonna shoot up the casino either, and here we are.” I pointed at him. “Everybody lays low. Starting now. No bikes, no crew meetups, no nothing. Y’all are invisible until I say otherwise. And if anybody—anybody—goes rogue again, I’m handling it myself. And y’all know how I handle shit.”
