Page 44 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

Neither of them argued. Kaisen just nodded, stood, straightened his jacket with a small, unhurried motion, and headed for the door without waiting to be dismissed the way he used to wait, back when waiting was a thing that mattered to him.

Amai followed a beat behind, slower, throwing one last look back at me over his shoulder—not quite a question, not quite a warning, but something in between, like he’d noticed the same thing I had and wasn’t fucking with it either.

The door closed behind them.

I sat there in my study for a long while after, cedar and cold cigar smoke, and the particular silence of a house that just had two of its most dangerous men walk out of it quieter than they walked in. I told myself the same thing I always told myself when something in this family stopped moving the way I expected it to move.

I built this. I could rebuild it.

I just wasn’t sure, sitting there, exactly what shape it would come back in.

Getting up out of that chair took longer than I wanted it to.

I sat there a minute after the door closed, listening to Amai’s boots, and then Kaisen’s lighter step faded off down the hall. I told myself I’d get up when I felt like it and not one second before. That’s a lie old men tell themselves. Truth was, I didn’t trust my own body to do what I told it, not with that bullet wound still knitting itself back together like a seam some fool sewed crooked the first time.

I put both hands flat on the desk and pushed. My hip screamed at me—not politely, either. Screamed like a banshee. I sat right back down.

“Alright,” I said aloud to nobody, because there was nobody left in that room to hear me talk sense to myself. “Alright now.”

Second try, I did it slower. Braced my good leg, took the weight through my hands and my shoulder instead of the hip, and came up in stages like a man unfolding a lawn chair that had rusted shut. By the time I was standing, sweat had popped along my hairline, and my breath was coming in short pulls. I stood there for a second just to let the room stop tilting.

Victor Baptiste did this to me. Shot me in a warehouse like some low-rent stickup, and I had to give the man his due—even a snake who gets his head cut off still manages to leave a mark on the way down. Amai handled him properly for it, from what I understood, though I never did get the full particulars and wasn’t in a hurry to ask. A man my age learns not to go looking too close at certain kinds of justice. You just want to know it happened.

I took my cane off the hook by the door, a good one, cherry wood, silver head shaped like a lion. Because if I was going to hobble around my own house looking like Moses, I might as well hobble around looking expensive. I made my way down the hall toward the sitting room, each step landing with that particular ache that tells you the healings happening, but it ain’t happy about the pace.

I could hear the television before I got there. That fast, clapping game-show music, and a man’s voice hollering something about a survey said.

Odette was on the couch when I came in, feet tucked under her, remote in one hand and a glass of sweet tea sweating a ring onto the coffee table beside her. She had on that pink robe she’d had since before Kaisen was born, the one I kept telling her looked like something you’d find on clearance at a nursing home. Every time I said it, she would tell me I can buy her a new one if it bothered me so much. I never did because a man didn’t fix what ain’t actually broken just to prove a point.

“Well,” she said, not turning her head from the screen. “Look who decided to hobble their handicapped ass in here.”

“I’m fine. It’s my hip that’s got opinions. Can’t throw this muthafucka like I used to.”

“Mm-hmm.” She patted the cushion next to her without looking. “Sit down before you fall down and make me call an ambulance in front of the neighbors.”

I lowered myself onto that couch the same careful way I’d stood up out the chair, which was slow, undignified, and accompanied by a grunt I didn’t ask for. Odette didn’t laugh at me, which I appreciated, though I suspected that had more to do with the show than with mercy.

On the screen, some family from Ohio was losing their whole minds over a question about things you find in a junk drawer.

“Rubber bands!” the contestant hollered, jumping up and down like he’d found gold.

“That’s on the board,” Odette said to the television, like the man could hear her. “That’s a hundred right there, fool. Sit back down.”

“You watch this mess like it’s church,” I said.

“It is church. Steve Harvey’s my pastor.” She glanced at me sideways. “How’d it go with the boys?”

“About how you’d figure.”

“Which is what?”

“Kaisen sitting there flat as a plate about that baby. Amai looking like he’s watching a science experiment he don’t fully trust the results of, and me stuck in the middle, trying to run a family business with two men who’d rather feel their feelings than answer a damn question.”

Odette turned the volume down a notch, which for her was the equivalent of another woman standing up and clearing her throat for attention.

“You tell Kaisen to suck it up?”

“I told him the truth. Boy’s gone. Girl’s Amai’s. That’s not cruelty. That’s biology.”