I leaned into his hand and closed my eyes and for a second everything felt manageable. The secret was out. He wasn’t angry. He was going to handle it.
His phone rang.
He pulled it out and looked at the screen. “Rita,” he said, and answered. “Hey, Grandma. What’s up?”
I watched his face change in real time. Whatever Rita was saying collapsed everything he’d just built. His jaw locked, his eyes went cold, and his hand dropped from my face.
“What do you mean she didn’t come home?” he said. “When did she leave? Where did she go?”
I sat up straight because the room had just turned ice cold.
“She went to see Dante? Who told her to go see Dante?” He was pacing now, his free hand balled into a fist. “Grandma, I need you to calm down. I’m going to find her. I’m leaving right now.”
He hung up and looked at me and the man standing in front of me was not the same man who’d just had me on his desk. This was the other Quest.
“Serenity’s missing,” he said. “She went to Dante’s house yesterday and never came back.”
23
Mekhi
Zephyr was sitting up in the hospital bed sipping that watered-down apple juice they give patients when I walked in. He looked better than last week. More color in his face, more strength in his upper body. The physical therapy was working on the parts of him that still responded. The rest of him, everything below the waist, was the same. Wasn’t changing. Wasn’t coming back.
“You and Quest ain’t work that shit out, bruh?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“The niggas that actually shot you have been arrested though.”
“You know that ain’t good enough for me.” He set the juice down on the tray and looked at me and his eyes were clear and hard. “I want that whole crew dead, Khi. Every last one of them. I ain’t never gon’ be the same again. I can’t walk. I can’t play with my daughter. I can’t stand up and take a piss without help. Somebody gotta pay for that beyond sitting in a cell getting three meals a day.”
As tough as I was, hearing my little brother say that broke my heart. This was the same nigga who used to race me down the block when we were kids. Who played varsity basketballhis sophomore year. Who danced at every cookout like he was auditioning for a music video. And now he was in a hospital bed negotiating with gravity just to sit upright.
“I’m working on it,” I said. “I promise you that.”
“Work faster.”
I stayed with him for another hour. We watched SportsCenter and argued about the Commanders and I pretended everything was normal because that’s what Zephyr needed from me. Not grief, not rage, just his big brother sitting in a plastic chair talking shit about football like the world outside this room wasn’t falling apart.
I was in the parking garage walking to my truck when my phone rang. Unknown number. I almost let it go to voicemail but something told me to answer.
“Mr. Black. My name is Mateo Rios. I’m a businessman in the DMV area and I’ve been looking for someone with your logistics expertise. I think we could be valuable to each other.”
I stopped walking. I knew the name. Rios was a real estate developer on paper and a cocaine supplier underneath. He’d been moving product through Banks Reserve trucks for years. I’d seen his shipments come through our logistics network more than once. He was connected, well-funded, and from what I’d heard, backed by a family that operated out of South America.
“How’d you get my number?” I asked.
“I’m resourceful. It’s one of my better qualities.” His voice was calm and measured. “I’d like to sit down. Somewhere quiet. Later this evening works for me.”
I should’ve said no. I should’ve hung up and deleted the number and kept my business with Quest’s enemies out of my business entirely. But Quest had cut me off. Terminated the transport contracts, severed the casino laundering, ripped out the financial infrastructure I’d spent twenty years helping him build. I had a paralyzed brother in a hospital bed asking me towork faster and no clean revenue stream to fund what needed to happen next.
“Send me the address,” I said.
We met later that evening at a private dining room in a steakhouse in Georgetown. Rios was already seated when I arrived, a glass of red wine in front of him and a menu he hadn’t opened. He stood when I walked in and extended his hand and I shook it because business was business even when the business felt like betrayal.
He was taller than I expected. Sharp suit, no tie, hair slicked back. He carried himself like a man who’d never been told no by anyone who mattered. I’d been around powerful men my whole life and I could tell the difference between men who performed power and men who actually had it. Rios had it. It sat on him easy, natural, not forced.
I sat across from him and ordered a whiskey neat because I needed something in my hand that wasn’t a weapon.
