We sat there for a few more minutes talking about the twins and Prime and how Zainab was adjusting to motherhood and whether the medspa idea was still on track. Normal sister stuff. The conversations we used to have before kidnappings and casino shootings and missing family members turned every gathering into a crisis meeting. I missed it. I missed just being Zainab’s sister without the world being on fire.
The screen door opened and Rita stepped out onto the patio. She moved slow with one hand on the doorframe and the other gripping her cane. Her face was set in something hard and heavythat I’d only seen once before, the night Vivica showed up at her birthday party.
“Everybody come inside,” she said. “I need to say something.”
We followed her back in. The living room got quiet fast because when Rita spoke, everybody listened. Quest stopped pacing. Prime stood up from the couch with a twin on each hip. Justice muted his phone. Even the kids seemed to sense that something was happening and settled down.
Rita sat in her chair at the head of the room and folded her hands in her lap and took a breath that seemed to pull the air out of the entire house.
“I think Serenity is pregnant,” she said.
The room went dead. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.
“What?” Quest said. His voice was barely there.
“The last few days she was here, she was sick every morning. Trying to hide it from me but I could hear her in the bathroom throwing up before she thought I was awake. She was eating differently too. Avoiding certain smells, picking at her food, going to bed earlier than usual. And she was touching her stomach. I can’t see but I can hear hands moving and I heard her hands on her belly more than once when she didn’t think anybody was paying attention.” Rita’s voice was steady but her chin trembled once before she locked it down. “I know the signs. That girl is carrying a baby.”
“Mega’s baby,” Justice said quietly.
Nobody corrected him because the math was obvious. If Serenity was pregnant, the father was the man who’d been abusing her, the man who’d gotten her hooked on coke, the man who was now holding her captive somewhere in Virginia, no doubt with drugs and zip ties.
Quest sat down for the first time all night. Just dropped into a chair like his legs had finally given up on him. He put hishead in his hands and stayed there for a long time and nobody interrupted him because there was nothing to say that would make this better.
“We’re going to Dante’s,” Quest said, lifting his head. His eyes were red but dry. “He set her up. She went to his house and never came back. That means he knows something.” He stood up and looked at Prime and Justice. “Both of you, let’s go. Now.”
Prime handed the twins to Zainab without a word. Justice was already grabbing his keys.
Quest walked over to me and put his hands on my face and kissed my forehead. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t need to. His eyes said it all. I’ll be back. I’m going to find her. Don’t worry about me.
“Be careful,” I said.
“Always.”
He wasn’t always careful. He was never careful. But I let him say it because we both needed the lie right now.
I stood at the window and watched the three Banks brothers walk out of Rita’s house and get into the Maybach together. Quest driving, Prime in the passenger seat, Justice in the back already on the phone. They pulled away from the curb and the taillights disappeared down the street and the house felt emptier the second they were gone.
Rita was still sitting in her chair with her hands folded and her face pointed toward the window she couldn’t see through.
“They’ll find her,” I said, because somebody needed to say it out loud.
“They better,” Rita said. “Because if that man hurts my grandbaby or the child she’s carrying, there won’t be enough of him left to bury.”
26
Quest
My mother’s bitchass ex-husband opened his front door on the second knock and I hit him before he finished saying hello. He stumbled backward into the hallway and I followed him inside and hit him again, harder, and he crashed into the wall and slid down to the floor with blood already coming from his nose.
“Where is my sister?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I swear to God, Quest, I don’t know where she is.” He was holding his hands up, palms out, cowering against the baseboard like a man who had spent his entire life being smaller than the people around him. “Mega told me to call her. He told me to get her to my house and then he told me to leave. That’s all I know. I left and when I came back they were both gone.”
“You set your own daughter up.” I crouched down to his level. “You called her, lied to her, told her you wanted to reconnect, and then you handed her to a man who beats women. Your daughter, Dante. Your flesh and blood.”
“Vivica told me to cooperate with him. I didn’t have a choice.”
“You had a choice. You just made the wrong one.” Vivica? In an instant it clicked that she was behind it all.
