Page 12 of Justice

I made myself walk to my car.

I got behind the wheel and did not pull off right away. I sat there in the driveway with my hands at ten and two and let myself want him for exactly the length of one held breath, because that was all I was ever going to allow it.

He was fine. Lord, the man was fine. Tall and rich, and for some women that alone would have been enough. But then he had to go and be gentle with his baby and fierce about his family too. Any other woman, one with a real name, a clean past, and a life that added up, would already be building herself a daydream.

But I wasn’t any other woman.

A man like Justice Banks did not end up with a woman like me. Men like him did not love women like me. They had us investigated. And if he went digging on me, nothing would come up at all, and somehow that was worse.

And there was the other thing, the thing a marriage had taught me in blood. Men with that much money, that much power, that much quiet ease moving through a world that bent itself out the way for them, they were all the same animal underneath the tailoring. Every last one of them a predator. Some of them just hid it prettier than others.

I put the car in drive and left the beautiful house behind me, and I did not let myself look in the rearview at the man standing in the window, watching me go.

6

JUSTICE

Things were going well with the new caregiver, but I had a feeling Serenity would be wanting to move out soon. She’d been doing some consultations for our King brothers up in New York, and I had a feeling they were going to try to poach her from us. Which was cool. I trusted her up there with them, if that’s what it came to.

As for the caregiver, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her sexy ass. Her thickness poured out of her scrubs. They weren’t hiding a damn thing. If anything, they were highlighting everything.

But it was more than that. That’s what had me stuck. How she was with Rita had me wide open. My grandmother enjoyed having her there so much she didn’t even think of the woman as a caregiver anymore, more like a girlfriend who sat with her day to day, talked her mess with her, watched her stories. And here was the strangest part. Since Skye had been coming around, Rita hadn’t had a single episode. Not one. I prayed it stayed that way, because losing the brilliance of my grandmother would alter this family in ways I couldn’t let myself imagine.

I knew people didn’t live forever. I just wished she could. I wished we could keep her past our own old age, selfish as that was. But she was getting up there, and all a man could do was cherish every bit of time he had left with her. So that’s what I did. I cherished her, and I tried not to think too hard about a caregiver who smelled like brown sugar and looked at my grandmother like she was worth protecting.

I had a meeting to get to.

Prime and Quest were already in the conference room on the top floor of the Banks Grand when I walked in, the city laid out gold and small behind the glass.

This was the clean part of the family. The daylight part. Freetown was our baby, our legacy. It was a Black-owned development rising up out of a part of the city everybody else had written off, and once we put Banks money behind it, it became all of ours. Housing folks could actually afford and still be proud of. Retail owned by people who looked like the people shopping in it. A community built by us, for us, on land they used to run us off of. My grandfather would have wept to see it.

“We got the bids in,” Quest said, sliding a folder across the table. “Six of them. Two I already tossed.”

“Why?”

“Because they weren’t really qualified. I don’t want this being some janky project. We got so much riding on this. I want this to be a community that has the highest quality.” Quest tapped the folder. “That narrows it to one that makes real sense. Harlow Construction. Out of Georgia. Family firm, good numbers, better reputation. They’re flying up to pitch it in person.”

“Georgia,” Prime said. “They any good?”

“They built a chunk of Atlanta. They’re good.”

I flipped through the Harlow numbers while my brothers talked, and there was nothing in there to give a man pause. Clean books. Strong crews. The right story too, a family that came up from nothing and built something that lasted. On paper they were exactly what we wanted.

On paper.

“Before they get here.” Quest leaned back, and his voice shifted into the register he used when a thing had been sitting on him. “I heard about you and Bryce. The situation with Bam.”

“What about it.”

“Bryce called Mehar. Upset. Said you threatened him.” Quest watched me careful. “Said you told him he’d be the one in the chair next time.”

“I did tell him that.”

Prime snorted. “’Cause it’s true.”

“That boy has fucked us over more than once,” I said, even and unbothered. “Vouched for a man who was stealing from us for months and didn’t catch it till the money was already gone. Not to mention he robbed us way back when. Look, I know we’ve decided to let that go but come on now. He’s got to grow the fuck up or he’s got to get the fuck out this life. There’s no third thing.” I closed the Harlow folder. “But y’all can tell Mehar to rest easy. I’m not gonna hurt Bryce. He’s family, and I don’t move on family. Long as he never comes for this family, he’ll never have a reason to be scared of me.” I let a beat pass. “The day he does is a different day.”

Quest held my eyes a second, then nodded, satisfied. He knew me. He knew I meant every word of it in both directions.