I guess that bitch finally wised up.
That’s what I told myself because the alternative was admitting that I’d lost the only woman who ever loved me through the worst version of myself. The woman who bathed me every morning. Who dressed me. Who lifted me in and out of the shower chair without complaining until I gave her reasons to complain every single day. Now she was gone and I was headed to a house in North Carolina where nobody was going to help me do any of those things.
But I wasn’t going to think about that right now.
“Mekhi, it feels like you’re choosing them over your own flesh and blood,” Janelle said from the back seat. She’d been quiet for most of the drive, staring out the window, but I could feel her simmering behind me. Janelle didn’t simmer quietly for long.
Mekhi’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. “If that were true, I’d snitch on both of you myself and let Quest handle it. The fact that I’m driving six hours to hide you in a house that I’m paying for should tell you exactly whose side I’m on.” His voicewas flat and tired. “But I’m not stupid, Nelle. We don’t have the resources to fight a war with the Banks family. They have the Kings behind them. They have money. They have intel. And they have a motivation that goes beyond business because y’all tried to kill a pregnant woman and an unborn child. There is no version of this where we win. The only play is to get you both out of the blast radius and pray it blows over.”
“It won’t blow over,” I said. “You know Quest. He doesn’t let things go.”
“Then you better hope that safe house has thick walls.”
His phone rang through the car’s Bluetooth. The name on the dashboard screen made all three of us go still.
Quest.
Mekhi glanced at me. I looked at Janelle in the rearview. She looked back at me. Three people in a car holding their breath because the man whose family we tried to destroy was calling and we were about to sit here and listen to Mekhi pretend everything was normal.
He answered.
“Yo, what’s good?” Mekhi said. His voice shifted so fast it almost gave me whiplash. Casual, warm, the voice of a man talking to his lifelong friend. Not the voice of a man who was currently smuggling that friend’s would-be killers across state lines.
“Aye, just wanted to catch you up,” Quest said through the speakers. “Things are paused on Freetown until Mehar and the baby are out of the hospital but don’t worry, we’re still moving forward on everything.”
“No doubt. How you holding up?”
“Getting better every day. We found out who did this shit. Rios cartel. We gon’ rain down on them in a couple days.”
My chest locked up. Rain down on them. In a couple days. Rodrigo was about to get hit and when he did, what was the firstthing a desperate cartel boss would do to save himself? Trade information. Give up his sources. Point the finger at the man who handed him the gate code and the camera layout and the departure schedule.
Me.
“I’m surprised you ain’t ask me,” Mekhi said. “You know I always got your back.”
I wanted to throw up. My brother was pledging loyalty to the man I’d tried to kill while I sat three feet from the phone unable to say a word. The performance was flawless. Mekhi’s voice didn’t waver, didn’t tighten, didn’t betray a single syllable of the truth. Twenty years of friendship made the lie effortless.
“I know but the Kings came through and I know you got your own shit going on,” Quest replied.
“How’s the baby?”
“Much better. Getting stronger every day.”
“Good. That’s real good. Aight, I ain’t gon’ hold you.”
“Aight, peace.”
The call ended. Quest’s name disappeared from the dashboard screen and the silence that replaced it was suffocating. Mekhi’s hands tightened on the wheel. Janelle exhaled slowly in the back seat. And I sat there processing what I’d just heard.
A couple of days. That’s how long Rodrigo had before the Banks came for him. And when they did, my name was sitting in Rodrigo’s head like a loaded gun he could fire at any time to save himself.
“The way you are with him sickens me,” I said. I knew I should’ve kept my mouth shut. I knew it the second the words left my lips. But I couldn’t help it. Watching my brother perform devotion to Quest while I sat here broken and exiled made something toxic rise up in me that I couldn’t swallow back down.
Mekhi’s right hand came off the steering wheel so fast I didn’t have time to flinch. His fist caught me square on the jaw and my head snapped sideways into the window. The car swerved hard into the next lane. A horn blared behind us as Janelle screamed from the back seat, but Mekhi corrected the wheel with his left hand like it was nothing.
He didn’t look at me. Just put his right hand back on the wheel and kept driving south like nothing happened while blood pooled in my mouth for the second time this week courtesy of the same fist.
Janelle was gripping the back of my headrest, breathing hard. I could feel her nails digging into the leather. Nobody spoke for the next forty miles.
