“That wasn’t enough.”
Mekhi let go of my shirt and stepped back and looked at me the way you look at someone you love but don’t recognize anymore. He wiped my blood off his knuckles with his palm and shook his head slow.
“Quest, Mehar, and their baby survived. All three of them. And if the Banks family finds out you’re the one who gave Rodrigo the info Quest is going to kill you. That ain’t a maybe. That ain’t a threat. That man is going to put you in the ground.”
“That’s why I’m going to Belize.”
Mekhi laughed but there was nothing funny in it. “Belize? The accounts I set up for emergencies? Quest knows about Belize, Zeph. I told him about those accounts years ago when we were still building together. That’s the first place he’d look.”
“Maybe if you didn’t tell that nigga every damn thing about our business, I wouldn’t have this problem. What is he, your boyfriend?”
The punch came so fast I didn’t even see his arm move. It caught me on the right side of my face and my head whipped sideways and this time the wheelchair did tip. I went over sideways and hit the floor hard, my shoulder taking the impact, my dead legs twisted underneath me at angles I couldn’t feel but knew were wrong. I lay there on the floor of my own apartment looking up at my brother’s face and saw something I’d never seen there before. Exhaustion. Not physical. The kind that comes from loving someone who keeps making it impossible.
Janelle rushed over and knelt beside me, trying to get me upright, and Mekhi just stood there watching us with his cheststill heaving and blood on his hand and that tired, broken look on his face.
“Because you’re my brother and I love you, I’m going to keep your secret,” he said. “I won’t tell Quest. But Belize is burned. You can’t go there. I’ll figure out somewhere safe to put you where nobody can find you, not Quest, not Rodrigo, nobody. But you need to understand something.” He squatted down so we were eye level, me on the floor and him crouching over me, and his voice dropped to something quiet and final. “You fucked up, Zeph. You fucked up bad. And the only reason you’re still breathing right now is because I’m your brother. Anybody else would’ve let the Banks have you.”
He stood up and walked out of the apartment without looking back. When the door closed behind him the silence rushed in, washing over me. I was fucked. Quest was going to find out and I didn’t think my brother would be able to hide me.
Janelle was holding my head in her lap, wiping blood off my face with her sleeve while I was lying on the floor of my apartment unable to stand up, unable to run, unable to do a single thing.
”We need to go,” Janelle said quietly. “Tonight.”
34
Quest
Justice called while I was watching Mehar sleep. She was knocked out from the pain meds, her braids fanned across the pillow, the monitors doing their steady beep beside her. She looked peaceful for the first time since Grenada and I wasn’t about to wake her so I stepped into the hallway.
“Shipment’s done. Forty million in coke, gone. Prime handled it clean,” Justice said. “And I took care of Manny.”
“Took care of how?”
“Tied him up in that restaurant Rodrigo runs off Columbia Road. Casa Rios. Turned on the gas and walked out. The building went up and Manny went with it.”
I couldn’t lie I was proud of little brother. He was calling the shots on this war, when that was usually me or Prime’s thing. No doubt he was loyal and everything he was doing for me, I would do for him.
“Good. I appreciate you and Prime handling all of this while I’m here with my family. I’ll be on the front lines soon.”
“Take your time. We got it covered.”
“I know y’all do. That’s why I trust y’all with it.”
We hung up and I stood in that hallway for a minute in my hospital socks smelling like Purell and bad coffee while my brothers were out there putting in real work. That shit didn’t sit right with me but it was what it was. Mehar and the baby needed me here more than the streets needed me out there. At least for now.
A nurse came around the corner with that polite-but-firm look they’d been giving me all week.
“Mr. Banks, visiting hours ended at nine. Ms. Ali needs her rest.”
“I’ve been sleeping in the chair. She needs me here.”
“She needs rest. And so do you. Go get a room and get some sleep. We’ll call you if anything changes.”
I wanted to argue but I was too exhausted to fight about a chair so I went back in and stood over Mehar for a minute. Her face was relaxed and soft and she looked like the woman I fell in love with before the plane crash turned our lives upside down. I leaned down and kissed her forehead and she murmured something I couldn’t catch before drifting back under.
“I love you, Peach. I’ll be back first thing.”
She didn’t hear me. That was fine. I’d tell her again tomorrow.
