“I need a job. And I know I got no right asking you for shit after everything I did. The warehouse, the trucks, running with the Vipers. I own all of that. But I got a daughter now and I can’t keep living off what my sister drops off every two weeks. That ain’t the man I’m trying to be.”
“You burned my warehouse down, lil nigga.”
“I know.”
“Robbed my trucks.”
“I know.”
“Ran with the niggas who shot up this very building on opening night and put a man I love in a wheelchair for life.”
“I didn’t pull the trigger on that. I told Key and Jerome not to go. They didn’t listen. But yeah, I was affiliated and I own that too.”
I looked at him for a long time. Mehar loved this kid and that was the only reason this conversation was happening instead of something else.
“Security. Casino floor. Twelve-hour shifts, bottom of the ladder. You show up on time, keep your head down, don’t bring none of your old shit through these doors. If it goes well, you can work your way up. If it don’t, you’re out and we never having this conversation again.”
His whole face changed. “That’s all I need. I won’t let you down.”
“Don’t make promises to me, lil bro. Make them to that baby. She’s the one who needs you to figure it out.”
He shook my hand with the grip of a man who just got thrown a rope he wasn’t expecting and walked back to the floor of the casino. In some ways he reminded me of myself. He was young and hungry. I could respect that. But let’s see how hungry he really was. Was he willing to put in the work?
I was refilling my glass when I felt a hand on my shoulder. Turned around and there was Unc Calvin. I hadn’t seen him since Rita’s birthday dinner and he looked… different. Clean. Not clean-clean, not like he’d been to rehab or found Jesus or anything miraculous. But his clothes fit, his eyes were clear-ish, and he’d shaved for the first time in what looked like months. He was trying. That was more than I’d seen from him in years.
“Congrats, nephew,” he said. “She’s a beautiful woman. You deserve some happiness after all the shit y’all been through.”
“Appreciate you coming, Unc.”
“Of course. I wanted to thank you too.” His voice dropped lower and his hand squeezed my shoulder. “For handling the nigga who killed my boy. And for the funeral. And for takingcare of Kacey and the kids. You didn’t have to do none of that but you did. My son can rest now because the man who did that to him is in the ground.” His eyes were glassy and full of something so genuine it made my stomach fold in half. “That means everything to me, nephew. Everything.”
I nodded because speaking wasn’t an option right now. This man was standing at my engagement party thanking me for avenging his son’s murder. His son whose actual killer was twenty feet away in a white dress laughing with her girlfriends.
“Thad was family, Unc. We take care of our own.”
He squeezed my shoulder one more time and walked off toward Rita on the dance floor and I stood there holding my glass and feeling something heavy settle in my chest that the Banks Reserve couldn’t wash down. I’d done a lot of shit in my life that tested how much weight a man can carry and keep walking. Lying to a grieving father at my own engagement party about how his son really died was a new personal record.
“Baby.” Mehar materialized at my side and looped her arm through mine. “Come meet my girls from school. They’re dying to meet you and Shayla actually came out tonight which is a big deal because she never leaves the house.”
She pulled me away from the bar and toward her classmates and I let her because that’s what tonight was. Switching faces. Going from a conversation that made me feel like shit to a circle of women who were smiling and taking pictures and asking to see the ring. I shook hands, made small talk, told them I was a lucky man, and meant it. Shayla was quiet but she was there and she was smiling and Mehar squeezed her hand when she thought I wasn’t looking.
That was my girl. Saving people in the middle of a party. Building something even when she was supposed to be celebrating.
I pulled Mehar close and kissed her temple and looked out across the casino at our family scattered throughout the room. Rita dancing, Prime holding a baby, Justice chasing Dream, Serenity chatting and looking peaceful, Bryce standing a little taller. All of them alive. All of them here. All of them mine to protect.
The surface was champagne and music and a woman in white with a diamond on her finger. Underneath it was blood and lies and a dead man’s father who just thanked me for something I didn’t do.
But tonight the surface was winning. And I was gonna let it.
45
Mehar
Moving is humbling because it forces you to look at everything you’ve accumulated and decide what’s worth carrying into your next life. I’d been packing for three days, sorting through closets and drawers and cabinets at the estate, filling boxes with things we were taking to the penthouse and trash bags with things we weren’t. Quest was at the casino handling business, so I had the house to myself and the music loud and a system that involved labeling every box in pink marker because I was nothing if not organized about chaos.
I was clearing out the nightstand on his side of the bed when I found it. A leather journal wedged behind a stack of old receipts and a charger cable that didn’t belong to anything we currently owned. It was small, worn, with no name on the cover. I almost tossed it in the trash bag without opening it because it looked like something from years ago that he’d forgotten about. But something made me flip it open. Curiosity or instinct or whatever you want to call the thing that makes you read something you’re not supposed to read.
Janelle’s handwriting. I recognized it from the intake forms she’d had me fill out at our first therapy session. Neat, precise,slightly slanted to the right. This was her journal. Her private thoughts. And Quest had it, which meant he’d taken it from somewhere or someone had given it to him and he’d shoved it in a drawer and hadn’t finished reading it because the receipts on top of it were from months ago.
