“What happened to you?” I asked even though I already knew.
“Quest.” He said the name like it tasted sour in his mouth. “He came to my house looking for Serenity. He knows about Mega, Vivica. He knows I helped set her up. He beat me until I passed out and when I woke up they were gone.”
“Did you tell him anything?”
“I told him I didn’t know where Mega took her. Because I don’t.”
“Did you tell him about me?”
“No. I swear I didn’t. But Vivica, it’s only a matter of time. If Mega talks, and he will talk because that boy is weak, Quest is going to find out everything. The Vipers, the warehouse, the casino, all of it traces back to you.”
I looked at this man I’d once been married to. This soft, frightened, obedient man who did what I told him because he’d never learned how to do anything else. He’d been useful for a season. That season was ending.
“I need you to do one more thing for me,” I said.
“Vivica, I can’t. They’re watching me now. If Quest finds out I’m still helping you, he’ll kill me. He’s not playing anymore.”
“Quest has been playing his entire life. He just doesn’t know who taught him the game.” I leaned forward. “I need you to get in contact with someone. Her name is Farah. She’s Rashid’s daughter.”
Dante’s face went pale. “Rashid? As intheRashid…Shadow? Vivica, that family is…”
“I know exactly what that family is. That’s why I need her. Now go find her and tell her Vivica Banks wants to have a conversation. Tell her it’s about the people who destroyed her father. She’ll know what that means.”
Dante stared at me for a long time. Then he stood, pushed the chair back, and left without saying goodbye. He’d do it. He always did what I told him. That was the one quality that had survived our marriage.
I sat in the visitation room, folded my hands on the table, and thought about the board. Mega was compromised. My sons were closing in. Gerald was filing motions. India was a ghost. And somewhere out there, Rashid’s daughter was carrying a grudge heavy enough to burn down everything the Banks brothers had built.
All she needed was a match. And I was very good with fire.
30
Mehar
The Mountain View Inn looked like a place people came to disappear. One story, twelve rooms, a gravel parking lot with weeds growing through the cracks. The sign was missing half its letters and the office window had a handwritten note taped to it that said CASH ONLY. Room 6 was at the end of the row with the curtains drawn and no light coming through.
Quest was out of the car before it stopped moving. Rider pulled Mega from the backseat and shoved him face-first into the gravel and kept a gun on him while Quest walked to the door. He didn’t knock. He kicked it open on the first try and the lock splintered out of the frame and the door swung inward and the smell hit us before the light did. Stale sweat, urine, and weed.
Serenity was on the bed. Wrists zip-tied to the metal headboard, clothes dirty, hair matted to her face. She was thinner than the last time I’d seen her and her eyes were glassy and unfocused and when the light from the open door hit her face she flinched like she’d been living in the dark so long that daylight hurt.
“Ren.” Quest’s voice cracked on her name. He crossed the room and pulled a knife from his pocket and cut the zip ties andthey fell away from her wrists and the skin underneath was raw and bloody from days of pulling against them.
She looked up at him and her face crumbled and she reached for him and he pulled her off the bed and held her against his chest and she sobbed into his shirt with the force of a woman who had been holding herself together for days on nothing but willpower and the belief that her brothers were coming.
I came in behind Quest and put my hand on her back and she turned and saw me and grabbed me and held on with both arms like I was the only solid thing in the room. I held her tight and felt her body trembling against mine and smelled the drugs on her skin and the tears on her face and I wanted to kill Mega my damn self.
“I got you,” I whispered. “You’re safe. It’s over.”
She cried into my shoulder for a long time. I let her. Some things can’t be rushed and grief on the other side of survival is one of them. Quest stood behind us with his jaw locked and his fists opening and closing and I could see him calculating how long Mega had left to breathe.
He turned and walked back toward the door.
“Bring him in,” Quest said to Rider.
Rider dragged Mega through the doorway by the collar of his shirt and dropped him on the floor of the motel room. Mega was still bleeding from the beating at Camille’s condo. His nose was crooked, his eye was swollen shut, and his lips were moving in a mumble that sounded like praying but was probably just begging.
Quest pulled his gun and pointed it at Mega’s head and his finger was on the trigger and I could see in his eyes that this was happening right now.
“STOP!”
