Casa Rios was done. And Manny Rios was never making it to his senior year.
I pulled over on a side street, engine idling, hands on the steering wheel. Waited for something to catch up to me. Guilt. Remorse. Some kind of reckoning with the fact that I had just killed a twenty-one-year-old kid in his brother’s restaurant and watched it burn from two blocks away while sirens started wailing in the distance.
Nothing came. Just the quiet hum of the engine and the orange glow fading in my rearview and the distant scream of fire trucks racing toward something they couldn’t save.
I picked up my phone and called Prime.
“It’s done,” I said.
“One Rios down, many more to go.”
“I ain’t worried.”
“Me either. Rodrigo is going to come hard after this, though.”
“That’s exactly what I want. I want him to come. I want him to know precisely who did this and precisely why. No ambiguity. No guessing games. The Banks family just killed his little brother in his own restaurant and blew the building off the map.”
“And you? You good?”
“I’m good,” I said.
I had no idea if that was the truth or the most terrifying lie I’d ever told myself. But it was done. The message was sent in a language Rodrigo understood fluently. And somewhere in whatever hole he’d crawled into to hide his family, he was about to learn that the Banks family didn’t just survive what people threw at us.
We hit back.
33
Zephyr
His fist slammed into my jaw before I even realized he was in the room.
My head snapped sideways and the wheelchair rocked back on two wheels and for a second I thought I was going to tip over completely but the wall caught me. Pain exploded through the left side of my face. The taste of copper filled my mouth and my vision went white at the edges. By the time it cleared my brother was standing over me with his chest heaving and his fist still balled up and a look in his eyes I’d never seen directed at me before.
“You stupid mothafucka” he said. “You workin’ with the Rios cartel. You sicced ’em on Quest. On a pregnant woman. Are you out of your fuckin’ mind?”
“What? How did you know?”
“Nigga, yo’ baby mama came cryin’ to me!”
Bella. That’s how he knew. That bitch walked out of here with Amara and went straight to Mekhi and told him everything. Every conversation, every phone call, every detail I’d shared with her thinking she was too scared and too loyal to open her mouth. I was wrong about the loyalty and I was wrong about thefear because apparently she was more afraid of what I’d become than what I could do to her.
“How long you been plannin’ this?” Mekhi’s voice was shaking and I couldn’t tell if it was rage or hurt or both. “How long you been talking to Rodrigo behind my back? I called a truce with Quest. I shook that man’s hand. I gave him my word. And you were running around behind me feeding his enemies the blueprint to kill him?”
“It’s easy for you to let that shit go,” I said, spitting blood onto my own lap. “You can still use yo’ fuckin’ legs.”
“This ain’t about your legs, Zeph!”
“Everything is about my legs! Every single day of my life is about my legs! You get to wake up and walk to the bathroom and drive your car and fuck yo’ bitch and live your life like a normal person. I get to sit in this chair and have my girl wash my ass and watch my daughter grow up without ever playing with her. So don’t tell me what this is and isn’t about.”
Mekhi grabbed me by my shirt and hit me again. Harder this time. My lip split open, blood running down my chin and onto his knuckles. I couldn’t do anything about it because what was I going to do, stand up and fight him? Swing on my brother from a wheelchair? He hit me a third time. My head bounced off the back of the chair, the room tilted. I could hear Janelle screaming from somewhere behind him.
“Mekhi, stop! Stop it! You’re going to kill him!” She was pulling at his arm, trying to get between us, and Mekhi shoved her back without looking at her.
“And you,” he said, pointing at Janelle while still gripping my shirt. “Both of you got these weird fixations on the Banks family that’s going to get everybody killed. You lost your license because you kidnapped that man’s fiancée and chained her to a ceiling. And you,” he turned back to me, “you conspired with a cartel to bring down a plane with a pregnant woman on it. Whatthe fuck is wrong with y’all? When do you take responsibility for your own shit instead of blaming Quest for everything?”
“He didn’t protect me, Mekhi.”
“I protected you! I handled the niggas that shot you! I killed them in their cells! What else do you want?!”
