He grinned. I grinned back. And for about another hour, we were just brothers. No blood on our hands. No bodies in our wake. Just pool and whiskey and shit-talking and the sound of balls cracking against each other in a basement that smelled like leather and Banks Reserve and home.
38
Mehar
“What color are you thinking about getting?” Zainab asked as we sat in the lounge area at Jade Spa waiting for our appointments. Plush robes, cucumber water, soft music that sounded like rain falling on piano keys. We needed this.
“Pink. But honestly I’m more excited about the body scrub and the massage. My body needs to be stretched out in ways that don’t involve Quest.”
“Girl.” Zainab covered her face and Serenity almost choked on her cucumber water.
“What? I’m just saying. Between school and everything else, my back is destroyed.”
“Mmhmm. Your back. Sure.” Serenity grinned and I threw a pillow at her from the lounge chair because she knew exactly what I meant and she didn’t need to be making that face about it.
It felt good to be here. Just the three of us with no crisis to manage, no phone calls from panicked brothers, no guns in anybody’s waistband. Zainab looked rested for the first time in months. Her skin was glowing and I absolutely loved that for her. She was officially in her soft girl era.
“I finally broke down and accepted Prime’s offer for a nanny,” she said, pulling her robe tighter. “You know I wasn’t feeling it at first. I felt like I was supposed to do everything myself because that’s what good mothers do. But between Yusef and the twins and trying to grow Sweet Zin’s, I was running on fumes.”
“That ain’t nothing to be ashamed of, Zai. You work harder than anybody I know. Get some help. And maybe think about hiring a general manager for the bakery again so you’re not there every single day.”
“You wanna come back and work for me?” she asked with a hopeful look.
“No.” I laughed. “I’ve been working on another idea.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?” Serenity leaned forward.
Before I could answer, the spa attendant came to walk us back for our treatments. We followed her through the hallway past the steam rooms and into a private suite where three tables were set up side by side. They started with the body scrubs and for about twenty minutes nobody talked because the exfoliation was so good it should’ve been illegal. By the time they wrapped us in warm towels and started the body wraps, I was relaxed enough to say what I’d been thinking about for weeks.
“I want to start an organization for battered women,” I said. “A shelter, resources, the whole thing. Somewhere safe where women can go when they’re ready to leave.”
“That’s beautiful, Mehar,” Zainab said from her table.
“But I don’t just want to give them a place to hide. I want to give them the tools to fight back. Good lawyers who actually give a shit. Real therapists, not ones like Janelle who use your trauma against you. Financial resources so they’re not stuck because they can’t afford to leave. I want to set them up so they never have to go back.”
“I love that,” Serenity said. “What else?”
“And maybe…” I stared at the ceiling. “Maybe I handle some of the men myself.”
The room got quiet except for the spa music.
“Handle them how?” Zainab asked slowly.
“Kill some of them. Or maim them. Or at the very least completely ruin their lives so they can never touch another woman again.” I turned my head and looked at both of them. “I’m dead serious. There’s a girl in my class named Shayla. Sweet girl, twenty-three, dreams of starting her own skincare line. She comes to school every week with new bruises on her wrists and concealer covering her eye. I gave her my number and told her to call me when she’s ready. But what happens when she calls? What do I actually do? Send her to a shelter where he finds her in two weeks? Get her a restraining order that’s just a piece of paper he’ll ignore? File a police report that goes nowhere because it’s her word against his?”
“Fuck all that,” Serenity said.
“Exactly. Fuck all that. I want to be the thing these women don’t have. The equalizer. The person who makes sure the man who put bruises on Shayla’s wrists never lifts his hands again. Whether that means breaking them or cutting them off or putting him in the ground, I don’t care. I’m sick of men thinking they can do whatever they want to women and walk away like nothing happened.”
“You’re dead ass serious,” Zainab said.
“Fuck yes I am.”
Serenity sat up on her table and looked at me with an expression I recognized because I’d seen it on her face in a motel room in Berryville. Steel behind the softness. “As soon as I pop this baby out, I’m with it. Count me in.”
“You sure?”
“Mehar, I shot my abuser in the dick and then in the head. I think I’m qualified.”
