“They better be.”
They sat on the couch together and I leaned against the wall and listened because this was her time with her brother and I wasn’t going to center myself in it. Justice stood near the stairs doing the same thing. Two men giving two siblings the space to talk while staying close enough to hear everything that mattered.
“I need y’all to do something for me,” Bryce said, looking between me and Mehar. “Samaya is out there by herself. She’s pregnant and she doesn’t know where I am and she’s probablylosing her mind. Can y’all get her somewhere safe and bring her here?”
“We’ll get her,” Mehar said before I could respond. “I’ll make sure she’s okay.”
“And I need to get some money to her for the baby. And to my peoples in Baltimore. I been taking care of some of the family out there, sending money every month. Our father’s store hasn’t been doing well since he got fucked up and he can’t hardly work. Some of my younger siblings depend on what I send.”
Mehar looked at me. I nodded. We’d handle it.
“What else can you give us on Mega?” I asked.
Bryce leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “His house is on Riggs Road in Northeast. Big house, white shutters, you can’t miss it. He’s got a stash house too, off Benning Road. I don’t know the exact address but it’s the tan rowhouse on the corner with the green door. That’s where he keeps the product and the cash.” He paused. “And he’s working for somebody. I don’t know who. But there’s somebody above him calling shots. He’d get phone calls sometimes and leave the room and come back different, like whoever was on the other end had authority over him. I never heard a name.”
Somebody above Mega. That was new information and it changed things. I’d been operating under the assumption that Mega was running the show on his own, making sloppy moves fueled by coke and ambition. But if somebody was pulling his strings, somebody with authority, then the Vipers, the warehouse fire, the casino shooting, all of it was bigger than one desperate nigga with a drug habit. I needed to find out who was on the other end of those phone calls. “You better not be lying to me, Bryce,” I said. “Because if any of this intel is bad and it gets one of my people hurt, we’re going to have a very different conversation.”
Mehar’s head snapped toward me so fast I felt the wind from it. “Don’t threaten my brother.”
“I’m not threatening him. I’m being clear about expectations.”
“No, you are threatening him.” She stood up from the couch and her voice had that edge I’d first heard the night she pulled a switchblade on me in a parking lot. “Bryce is my blood. The same way Mekhi’s sister is his blood and he was willing to go to war over her, I will go to war over my brother.”
I looked at her. She looked back at me. And I knew she had lost her motherfuckin’ mind.
The room was quiet. Justice was studying the ceiling like it had suddenly become the most interesting thing in the house. Bryce was looking between us with the expression of a man who’d just watched a grenade land and was waiting to see if it was live.
“Yeah,he’s alive now because he’s your blood. Check your motherfuckin’ mouth before you speak to me like that. If Bryce is lying, it’s gon’ be a problem. He’s caused severe damage to our business and one of my men is paralyzed.”
She rolled her eyes and didn’t respond.
“Bye Bryce.” Mehar hugged him again and told him she’d bring Samaya soon and to stay put and stay off his phone. He nodded and she kissed his forehead.
The car ride back to Virginia was uncomfortably silent. I knew she was pissed and she loved her brother but I wasn’t going to walk on eggshells. If I needed to kill that lil nigga I would.
I meant what I said to Bryce. The kid had robbed me and burned down my warehouse and if his intel was bad, people Iloved were going to get hurt. I wasn’t apologizing for protecting my family. Not even to her.
So I drove in silence and she sat in silence and neither of us broke it for forty-five minutes.
When we pulled up to the estate, the black SUV was already parked near the front entrance. Creed’s guys had arrived. Two men, both built like they’d been raised on protein and discipline, standing near the vehicle in plain clothes with earpieces and the calm posture of men who’d done this kind of work in places significantly more dangerous than rural Virginia.
“That’s your detail,” I said. “Davis and Rider. They’ll be here in shifts around the clock. The SUV is armored, bulletproof glass, reinforced panels. When I’m not here, they go where you go.”
She looked at the men, then at the truck, then at me. She still didn’t speak. But she nodded once, which was enough.
I carried her bag inside and set it on the bed. She walked past me to the bathroom without a word and closed the door. I stood in the bedroom, listened to the water run, and thought about going in there and trying to fix this but decided against it because Mehar didn’t want to be fixed right now. She wanted to be angry, and she’d earned the right to be.
“I have to go back to the city,” I said through the bathroom door. “I’ve got business that can’t wait. I’ll be back tomorrow. Don’t go anywhere without being in that truck. Please.”
A pause. Then, through the door: “Fine.”
One word. Flat and short and carrying about six different emotions, none of which were forgiveness.
I left. Got in my whip and pulled down the long driveway and onto the main road heading back toward DC. I had a company to run and a war to rage.
Mehar was going to have to accept all aspects of me. Even the one that could kill her brother.
15
