“This the first time I’ve seen her eyes,” Quest said.
Just a crack. A sliver. Like she was checking to see if the voice matched the touch. Her face scrunched against the NICU lights and then her eyes opened a little wider and I saw them and the floor dropped out from under me.
Quest was behind the wheelchair. He’d been quiet this whole time, letting me have this moment. But I heard him step closer and I heard the sound he made. A small, sharp inhale. The kind of breath you take when something doesn’t add up.
“Her eyes are blue-green,” he said.
I stared at my daughter. She stared back at me with eyes that looked like Rita’s, Prime’s and Cannon’s. And it made no sense because we had just found out Quest was not directly related to Rita.
He squeezed my shoulder tightly. What was he thinking?
32
Justice
The medevac landed at Johns Hopkins at 4:12 PM. I watched the confirmation come through on my phone from the back seat of a rental car parked on 37th Street in Georgetown, half a block from the apartment complex where Manny Rios had been living off his brother’s drug money for the last three semesters.
Quest, Mehar, and the baby were stateside now. The NICU team at Hopkins was already briefed and the best neonatal specialists in the region were standing by for a three-pound baby who’d survived more in her first week of life than most people survived in a lifetime. Mehar was stable but recovering. Quest was with them. That was all I needed to know.
My family was safe. Now I could focus on making sure the people who hurt them weren’t.
Manny Rios was twenty-one and living like he had the world on a string.
From what Creed was able to gather he was a junior at Georgetown with a 2.6 GPA that nobody was checking because his grades weren’t the point of being there. The point was the two-bedroom apartment on the top floor of a building that charged seven thousand a month, the closet full of designershit a college kid had no business owning, and the lifestyle that screamed cartel money to anyone with eyes and sense. Rodrigo paid for all of it because that’s what big brothers in that world did. They bankrolled the one family member who was supposed to go clean, get the degree, press the suits, be the legitimate face when the cameras showed up.
Manny was supposed to be the polished Rios. The one with the diploma and the firm handshake. The one with a clean name that they could start more legit businesses in his name. I’m guessing they would also groom Mateo’s son for the role as well. That’s if we let him live again. But Rodrigo was investing in his little brother’s future like it was a long-term portfolio.
I was about to liquidate that portfolio.
I’d been watching him for two days. Learning his rhythms. Tuesday and Thursday classes wrapped by three. Gym at five where he did more talking than lifting. Out with his little crew by nine, usually hitting the bars on M Street where they drank overpriced vodka and talked loud about nothing. Back home by one or two, always drunk, always sloppy, always alone on weeknights because Manny saved the female company for weekends.
His security was nonexistent. He moved through Georgetown like a regular kid because in his mind that’s exactly what he was, just a regular kid who happened to have a generous older brother. Nobody had ever sat him down and explained that his last name made him a target whether he signed up for it or not.
That was Rodrigo’s mistake. And tonight it was going to cost him.
My phone rang at 11:47. Prime.
“It’s done,” he said.
“Good. Let that man marinate in it. How’s the family?”
“Zainab and the twins are locked down at the safe house. Riot’s got two of his guys sitting on the property around the clock. Z is pissed at me for uprooting her life but she gets it. Kheris screamed the entire drive up because she has a personal vendetta against her car seat. Idris slept through every single minute of it like the unbothered king he is.”
“You good?”
“Forty million in coke, two soldiers, and a message even a blind man could read. That’s a productive evening.” His voice shifted into something more serious. “What about you? You handling the Georgetown situation tonight?”
“Yep.”
“You need me down there?”
“No. This one’s mine.”
“Aight,” he said. “Hit me when it’s done.”
“Gotchu.”
I hung up and looked at the apartment building. Top floor lights were still off. Manny was out there somewhere on M Street right now, probably several drinks deep, trying to pull bitches with Papi’s cash, tipping too heavy with money that came from the same pipeline that funded the hit on my brother’s plane. He’d stumble home in a few hours thinking the worst consequence of his night was a headache in the morning.
