Quest
She was standing in the doorway in silk pajamas and a bonnet looking at me like she was trying to figure out if this was a dream or a threat. It was neither. It was an ending. She just didn’t know it yet.
“How did you get in my house?” Her voice came out steady because this woman could be standing in the middle of a hurricane and still sound like she was chairing a city council meeting. I respected that about her even now. Even tonight.
“Your security system is the same one you had before you went in. You should’ve updated it.”
“I’ll make a note.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “So what is this? You came to threaten me? Scare me into behaving?Because I’ve been scared by better men than you, baby, and it didn’t take.”
“I came to talk. No courtrooms, no glass, no cameras. Just me and you in the dark.”
“Fine. Talk.”
“You sent the feds to my businesses.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You had Gerald file warrants to raid Banks Reserve.”
Her chin lifted slightly. “I was wrongfully imprisoned, Quest. By my own sons. You framed me for a murder that didn’t happen and destroyed everything I built. My career, my reputation, my freedom. And now you want me to sit in this house and be grateful? For what? For molding you into who you are! You would be nothing if it weren’t for my strict upbringing.”
I laughed because the shit was funny. She really believed the bullshit that came out of her mouth. I was tired of hearing it. I was tired of her hurting the family. I was tired of fighting it. Prime tried to punish her by sitting her in prison but it had to end.
I never even full confronted her about the Rashid shit. What kind of shit was that? She should’ve told me years ago.
“You were a terrible mother.” I wasn’t angry when I said it. I was tired. Tired of wanting something from this woman that she was never going to give me. “You were smart and strategic and you built things most people couldn’t dream of. But you were a terrible mother. And the worst part is you spent your whole life convincing yourself you were a great one.”
The clock in the hallway filled the silence between us. The home creaked and settled around us.
”Maybe I was,” she said. And for about half a second something honest moved across her face. Something that might’ve been regret if she was capable of it. “But I made you who you are. Every hard lesson, every cold shoulder, every timeI pushed you out of the nest before you were ready. You run that company because of me. You’re the most powerful man in this city because I built you that way.”
“You’re right. You did build me.” I stood up from the chair. “You built me into somebody who could do what I’m about to do.”
I watched it register on her face. Even in the dark I could see the shift, the arms uncrossing, the step backward, the mouth opening to say something that would save her because that’s what she’d done her entire life. Talked her way out of consequences. Manipulated her way around every wall that anyone ever tried to put in front of her. She was about to do it again. Find the right words, hit the right nerve, make me hesitate long enough to reconsider.
I crossed the room and put my hands on both sides of her face. For half a second it probably looked like something gentle. A son holding his mother’s face to tell her he loved her one last time. She looked up at me and I could see her eyes searching mine for the version of Quest who still wanted his mama’s approval, the little boy she’d raised and molded and controlled for thirty-eight years.
He wasn’t there anymore.
I twisted. The sound was small and final. She dropped to the floor in her silk pajamas and her bonnet with her eyes still open and whatever last words she had planned still sitting on her tongue.
I crouched down and closed her eyes because I couldn’t stand looking in them. They had always been so empty. Then I stood there for a minute looking at the woman who gave me life and lied about it and controlled everything around her until the control became indistinguishable from cruelty. I waited to feel something. Anything. Grief or guilt or satisfaction or rage or asadness deep enough to make me sit down on the floor and not get up for a while.
What came instead was quiet. Just a stillness that filled up my chest where the anger used to live. Like the storm had finally passed and what was left wasn’t sunshine or wreckage. It was just air. Clean, empty, still.
I spent the next hour making it look like what the city would need it to look like. A note in her study, the front door unlocked from inside, the security footage handled. When I was done, there was nothing left in that house that said anyone besides Vivica had been there tonight.
I left through the back, got in my car two blocks over, and drove home to my pregnant fiancée without looking back.
51
Mehar
Let me tell you something about walking across a stage six months pregnant in four-inch heels with a whole human being rearranging your organs in real time: it is not for the weak. But I did it. I walked up there, took my certificate from Mrs. Pak, and held it together when she hugged me and whispered “I’m proud of you” even though this woman had terrorized half our class over microdermabrasion practicals and showed zero mercy to anyone who couldn’t blend a chemical peel properly. She was crying. Mrs. Pak. Crying over me. And I almost went right along with her because that kind of recognition from a woman who doesn’t hand out praise easily hits different when you know what you survived to earn it.
I was officially a licensed esthetician and I know that sounds regular compared to everything else on my résumé but I didn’t care. I earned this by showing up to class when my life was actively falling apart, studying for exams between crisis phone calls, and sitting through lectures about skin pH levels while processing the fact that I’d recently killed someone with my bare hands. Mrs. Pak had no idea about any of that. She just knew I aced every practical and never missed a day. If she ever foundout what her star student did on her days off, she’d probably need to go pray for more than patience.
The celebration was at the penthouse because we’d finally moved in and Quest decided this was the housewarming. He went all out. Catering, music, the works. I even had my sister’s delicious cinnamon rolls. Rita showed up early and immediately took over the kitchen like she had a lease agreement nobody else had seen. She spent the entire party telling people she taught me how to cook, taking credit for my oxtails, and informing anyone within earshot that her granddaughter-in-law could burn in the kitchen, which coming from Rita was basically a standing ovation. The woman couldn’t see the stove but she could smell everything in the pot from across the room and had opinions about all of it.
