“Y’all done?” Jelani asked.
I felt warm blood trickling from a cut from my lip, and Hana spit out a glob of blood. Both of us were breathing heavily.
Jack straightened his cuffs. “If the introductions are finished…perhaps we can sit?”
Slim muttered something under his breath about this being somereal soap opera shit.
I stood and bushed my pants off, shaking out my arms. My knuckles burned and my chest was tight.
Hana straightened her jacket.
“I didn’t come here to fight,” she said. There was a slight British lilt to her accent.
“Yeah, well you should’ve thought about that before you bulldozed your way into my life.”
She snorted and smoothed her hair.
I just started following him to the old sitting room. It wasn’t fancy—mismatched chairs, a beat up coffee table, and walls with peeling white paint.
I took one of the foldout chairs and Hana settled in a worn armchair. Jack stood by her side, eyeing us warily.
I crossed my legs. “What’s this all been about?”
Hana’s eyes never left mine. She sat with her hands resting on her thighs, fingers flexing like she was determining how much she wanted to let out.
“I’ve known about you since I was sixteen, but Sterling forbade me from ever reaching out to you. He said it would complicate things, things I wouldn’t understand until I was much older,” she said. “He made sure I was taken care of, of course. Gave my mother enough money to ship me off to boarding school. Had the best training money could buy.”
“So how’d you get wrapped up with the Yakuza?” I asked.
“My mother’s family has been in the Yakuza for generations,” she explained. “She became a diplomat, so they’d have someone with government connections. They weren't too keen on her biracial child, but my mother can be very persuasive, and they came around eventually.”
“But you,” she extended her hands out to me. “You were Sterling’s pride and joy. Did you know that?”
I reared back. I couldn’t recall a time that man had ever said he was proud of me. “That’s not true.”
“The man was always going on about how brilliant you were. You were his prodigy. Mind you, I hacked into a restricted intelligence server at seventeen. But yes, tell me how great Nairobi was.”
“You did all this because the man put me on a pedestal? All of this is news to me by the way—Sterling never said none of this shit to me.”
“I was curious,” she shrugged. “Sterling spent the last years of his life being a gambling degenerate. It was pathetic honestly, but I felt like it was the penance he needed to pay for being such a shit father.”
I rubbed my temples, feeling the annoyance claw up my throat. She did all this to test me? To see how I’d perform under pressure?
“Let me get this straight—you drained his accounts, shot at my man’s car, shot up my friend’s baby shower, all as a test?”
Hana scowled and looked at Jack. “What’s this about a baby shower?”
“Y’all shot up my wife’s baby shower and it sent her into early labor,” Cash interjected angrily.
“No, that wasn’t us I’m afraid,” Jack said calmly.
“What do you mean it wasn’t you?” Cash stood. “Who the fuck else would have a reason to attack my family unprompted?”
Hana turned her attention to Cash. “I don’t know what you think this is,” she said flatly. “But unlike some of my colleagues, I do have some scruples. I wouldn’t targetyourbaby shower to get her attention, Mr. Banks. You’re really of no value to us.”
“This shit don’t make no sense,” Jelani muttered.
“And the accounts?” I asked.
