“Our lawyers are already on site. Been here since 9 AM waiting for this exact moment.” I poured myself another glass because there was nothing to do but wait and I wasn’t about to wait sober. “Let them search. Let them open every drawer, every safe, every cabinet. They won’t find shit because there’s nothing to find. We moved everything that needed moving three weeks ago.”
Justice pulled up the security cameras on his phone and we sat there watching the feds work through our building like it was reality television. They went through the back offices, the counting room, the storage areas, the employee lockers. One of them spent about fifteen minutes in the liquor storage examining bottles of Banks Reserve like he was expecting to find cocaine inside a bottle of premium bourbon. Sir, that bourbon costs two hundred dollars a bottle. We are not hiding narcotics in it. Have some respect.
“This is actually entertaining,” Prime said, tilting his head at Justice’s phone screen. “Look at dude in the vest. He’s so confused right now. He keeps opening the same filing cabinet.”
“Because there’s nothing in it except files,” Justice said. “Legitimate, boring, properly organized files. I reorganized that entire office last month. Everything is color coded and alphabetized. He’s probably never seen a filing system that clean and it’s breaking his brain.”
Two hours later they were done. The lead agent came upstairs to the lounge, which was bold of him because nobody invited him up here, and told us they were finished with the search and would be in touch if they had follow-up questions. I shook his hand because I’m a businessman and businessmen shake hands even when they want to laugh in somebody’s face.
“Y’all find everything you were looking for?” I asked with my most professional smile.
“We’ll be in touch, Mr. Banks.”
“I look forward to it. Can I offer you a glass of Banks Reserve on the way out? It’s award-winning bourbon.”
He declined politely. But I could see it on his face. That mix of frustration and embarrassment that comes from spending two hours searching a building and walking out empty-handed while the owner offered you a drink. Whoever tipped them off had given them a whole lot of confidence and zero evidence to back it up.
That whoever was my mother. And she had just played her last card without knowing we’d already swept the table clean.
After they left, Prime poured another round and we raised our glasses one more time.
“To Farah,” I said. “For the heads up.”
“To Farah,” they repeated.
“But I need to make sure she don’t try no shit with me. I told her ass not to come back,” Prime added.
“Just be on the lookout. We know how to handle anyone who fucks with us.”
We drank. And somewhere across the city, Vivica was probably sitting by her phone waiting to hear that her sons’ empire had been seized by the federal government. That call wasn’t coming. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Because her boys were smarter than she gave us credit for and we had better friends than she thought we did.
Check and mate. She just didn’t know it yet.
50
Vivica
The raid turned up nothing. I found that out from Gerald, who found that out from his contact at the Bureau, who confirmed that federal agents spent hours combing through my son’s casino and offices, but walked out with empty hands and full embarrassment. They searched the offices, the storage rooms, the counting area. Every single drawer and cabinet and safe. Nothing. Not a single document, not a dollar, not a grain of anything that shouldn’t have been there.
Which was impossible. I knew what moved through those buildings. I knew what rode in those trucks. I’d approved the permits myself when I was mayor and looked the other direction when the product didn’t match the manifests. There was no version of reality where Banks Reserve and that casino were clean. None. Unless someone tipped them off before the warrants were served.
That thought sat with me for three days and it burned worse than the prison food ever did. The only person who knew about it was Farah, but she hated them, so she would never help them.
I poured myself a glass of Pinot Noir and sat in my living room surrounded by a house that felt bigger and emptier everynight. The brownstone used to be full of noise. Meetings in the dining room, phone calls in the study, staff coming in and out prepping for events and press conferences. Now it was just me and the dust and the grandfather clock in the hallway ticking like it was counting down to something I couldn’t see.
The PR campaign was going nowhere. My publicist, a woman I’d hired the day after my release, had spent three weeks pitching my comeback story to every outlet in the city and the response was consistently the same. Not interested. The Washington Post didn’t want an interview. WUSA9 passed on a sit-down. Even the smaller outlets, the blogs and the podcasts that would’ve tripped over themselves to book me two years ago, weren’t biting. I was radioactive. The affair with India, the text messages, the murder charge even though it was dismissed. The stain wouldn’t wash out no matter how much bleach my publicist poured on it.
And the silence from my family was deafening. Dante hadn’t returned my calls since the trial. Serenity was done with me, that much she’d made clear to my face. And my sons, the ones who’d hugged me on the courthouse steps and told me they missed me, hadn’t reached out once since that day. Not a call, not a text, not even a courtesy check-in to see if their mother was adjusting to life outside. That performance at the courthouse was starting to feel less like a reunion and more like a goodbye I hadn’t recognized in the moment.
But I was free. That was the bottom line. Whatever else was falling apart, I was sleeping in my own bed, drinking my own wine, and planning my next move without a guard watching me do it. The city might not want me back today but cities have short memories and long problems and eventually they’d remember that nobody solved their problems better than I did.
I finished the wine around eleven and went upstairs to wash my face and get ready for bed. The house was dark except for thelamp in my bedroom and the nightlight in the hallway bathroom because even grown women who’ve run entire cities don’t love walking through a pitch-black house alone at night. I changed into my silk pajamas, the ones I’d missed most in prison because you don’t realize how much you value good fabric against your skin until you’ve spent months in cotton that felt like sandpaper. I pulled my bonnet on, turned off the bathroom light, and walked back toward my bedroom.
He was sitting in the chair by the window.
I knew it was Quest before my eyes fully adjusted because a mother knows her children’s scent. I could smell him from across the room and because the shape of him in that chair, legs crossed, posture relaxed, was unmistakable even in the dark. My heart slammed into my ribs and my hand reached for the light switch but his voice stopped me.
“Leave it off.”
