Everybody was spread out through the penthouse eating and talking and doing what Black families do when the food is good and nobody’s in crisis, which is argue about everything. Prime and Justice were going back and forth about whether LeBron or Jordan was the real GOAT and neither one of them was backing down even though this debate has been settled a thousand times and will never actually be settled because it’s not about basketball, it’s about ego. Zainab was on the couch with the twins on her lap trying to feed Kheris while Idris kept grabbing food off her plate. Yusef was in a corner showing Dream something on his phone and they were both laughing about it. And Storie was in the other corner on her new phone ignoring everybody, which for a kid her age was basically the same as being well-behaved so nobody bothered her about it.
Bryce came straight from work still in his casino security uniform and I swear I could’ve sobbed right there looking at him. My baby brother who was running with Vipers and burning down warehouses less than a year ago was clocking in every day and had just been promoted to floor supervisor. He had Skaiwith him because Samaya had left him a while ago and he was doing the single dad thing now.
Serenity was seven months pregnant and glowing, which was annoying because some women just look ethereal when they’re carrying and the rest of us look swollen and tired. Guess which category I fell into.
Shayla came and honestly that was the highlight of my entire night. She walked in looking like somebody I’d never met before. Clear eyes, healthy skin, smiling with her whole face for the first time since I’d known her. A few months ago she was pulling her sleeves over her wrists in class trying to hide bruises from a man who thought love meant leaving marks. I gave her my number, told her to call when she was ready, and when she finally did I was at her apartment within the hour with a plan and a ride to transitional housing.
Her boyfriend died two weeks after she left him. Heart failure at twenty-nine, no prior cardiac history, which the doctors chalked up to one of those tragic undiagnosed conditions that takes young men before anybody sees it coming. The autopsy was clean. The toxicology was clean. Because what I’d given Shayla to put in his protein shake was sourced through a contact Quest didn’t know I had and it doesn’t show up on any panel, standard or otherwise. I did my research. Thoroughly. I was proud of Shayla for finally taking control of her destiny.
She hugged me at the party and said “thank you for saving my life” and I told her I’d do it again in a heartbeat. It was my mission to help women in these situations. But first things first, birth this baby.
The news had covered Vivica’s death about a month before the party. Former DC mayor found dead in her home, medical examiner ruled it a suicide, the whole narrative wrote itself. Depressed, isolated, unable to recover from the public scandal, couldn’t handle losing everything she’d built. The press ran withit because it was neat and tragic and confirmed what everybody already believed about powerful women who fall from grace. City council members who wouldn’t return her calls when she was alive suddenly had touching statements about her legacy and her decades of public service. Isn’t that always how it goes. You can’t get a text back while you’re breathing but the second you’re gone everybody’s got flowers and a speech.
I knew what happened. Quest and I never talked about it and we never would because some things between two people who love each other don’t need to be spoken out loud to be understood. His mother was gone and the family was safer and I didn’t feel anything about it except the quiet relief of knowing that woman could never reach into our lives again. She’d spent decades doing damage from every angle, from the mayor’s office, from a prison cell, from her home. She was done now. And I slept better knowing it.
Quest found me on the balcony after people started heading out. The sun was dropping over the river and the whole city had that golden hour glow where everything looks like it costs more than it does. I was leaning on the railing rubbing my belly because this baby had been doing gymnastics all day and I was pretty sure I was carrying either an Olympic athlete or someone with a serious attitude problem. Probably both, considering who the parents were.
“I got something for you,” Quest said, sliding his arms around me from behind and kissing my neck.
“You’ve given me so much. What could you possibly have now,” I smiled.
“You’re not done being spoiled because I’m not done spoiling you.” He pulled up a booking confirmation on his phone. Private island in the Caribbean, long weekend, three weeks from now. “Babymoon. Just us. No brothers, no security, no drama. I’m flying us out myself.”
“Quest, I’m six months pregnant. I’m going to spend the whole trip eating and napping.”
“Good. You eat, you nap, I rub your feet and stare at you. That’s literally the whole agenda.”
I laughed and leaned into him and looked out at the city we’d fought to survive in and thought about all the doors I’d walked through to get here. Every single one of those doors tried to close behind me permanently and I kicked through every one of them. And now I was standing on a balcony in a penthouse overlooking the Potomac with a ring on my finger and a baby in my belly and a man who loved me.
After the baby came I was opening my medspa near Zainab’s bakery, but we both would be moving our businesses to Freetown when that came into fruition.
I had real plans. Plans that kept me up at night because I was excited, not afraid. And standing on that balcony with this man’s arms around me and our baby doing backflips in my belly and our family still laughing inside behind us, I felt something I had spent my entire adult life believing I would never have.
I was happy. Like genuinely, ridiculously, embarrassingly happy. This level of happiness used to make me suspicious because every good thing I’d ever had came with a trap door. But not this time. This time I wasn’t holding my breath. I wasn’t checking over my shoulder. I wasn’t bracing for whatever bullshit the universe had waiting around the corner.
For the first time in my life, I was just living in it.
52
Kacey
I never believed them. I smiled and took the funeral money and thanked Quest for covering everything and shook his hand at that engagement party and told him Thad could rest now because the man who killed him was dead. But I never believed a single word of it. Because a mother knows when she’s being lied to, even when the liar is rich and powerful and paying for your groceries.
The Mega story didn’t make sense. Why would some random soldier from a defunct crew kidnap Thad and torture him for months? Thad was def involved with his cousins. But why would Mega single him out and not the other brothers? It almost made sense but there was this gnawing feeling in the back of my mind that couldn’t let it go.
But I remembered all of Thad’s contacts out on the West Coast from when we lived in LA. I thought about everyone who used to work for him and who was still around that was loyal to him. We moved out of Cali to start a new life but his family ended his life and I needed to know why.
So I flew to California on a credit card I couldn’t afford and rented a car and drove to the federal facility where Dwight Whitewas serving a fifteen-year sentence for a murder he confessed to. The confession that got Zainab Ali out of prison. I told the front desk I was his cousin and they let me in because nobody fact-checks family visits at a facility that overcrowded.
Dubz looked rough. Prison had taken whatever youth he had left and traded it for gray hair and paranoid eyes. He didn’t want to talk to me. Kept looking at the guards, kept looking at the door, kept bouncing his leg under the table like a man who was afraid of something way bigger than the woman sitting across from him.
“I just want to know what happened to Thad,” I said. “That’s all I’m here for.”
“I don’t know nothing about that.”
“You knew Thad. Y’all ran together. He trusted you enough to have you handle his business when he couldn’t do it himself. So don’t sit here and tell me you don’t know nothing.”
He was quiet for a while, chewing on the inside of his cheek and staring at the table. Then he looked up at me and something moved behind his eyes that looked a lot like guilt wrapped in fear.
