“I’ll see you out on the floor,” he said with that smile that still made my stomach flip after all this time. He fixed his shirt, straightened his belt, and checked himself in the mirror like he hadn’t just had me screaming against Italian marble. Then he winked and walked out.
I stood there for a second, flushed, satisfied, and very much in need of a touch-up. I turned to the mirror, smoothed my dress down, fixed my hair, and reapplied my lipstick. My reflection looked good. Better than good. I looked like a woman who was loved well and knew it.
I was reaching for a paper towel when the door opened behind me.
Kacey Williams walked in and stopped when she saw me. She was wearing a black cocktail dress and her hair was down. She looked beautiful. But the expression on her face was not beautiful at all. It was sharp, angry, and aimed directly at me.
I held her gaze in the mirror. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t look away. I’d survived things that would’ve broken most people and a stare down in a bathroom wasn’t going to rattle me.
“Justice told me you worked in the steakhouse here,” I said calmly, turning around to face her.
“Yeah.” Her jaw tightened. “I’m sure he did.”
I could feel it coming off of her in waves. Anger. Pain. Something she’d been carrying for a long time and was looking to unload tonight. Her body was tense. Her hands were balled up at her sides. This woman wanted to hurt me.
“Look, Kacey.” I crossed my arms and leaned against the counter. “What do you want? You want to fight me? Cut me? Kill me?” I let the questions land. “It won’t turn out nice for you. That family out there will do anything for me. They took out an entire cartel behind what happened to me. Quest will torture you to death and have your kids shipped to foster care before your body’s cold. Is that what you want?”
Her eyes widened. She wasn’t expecting me to be this direct. Most women would’ve played dumb. Most women would’ve backed up or called for help. But I wasn’t most women. I hadn’t been most women since the day I shot Ahmad five times and walked out of his apartment over his body.
“I just want to know what happened to him,” she said. Her voice cracked. “What happened to Thaddeus.”
I studied her for a second. This wasn’t a killer standing in front of me. It was a grieving woman. A mother who’d been collecting checks from a family she didn’t trust, working in their building, watching me from a distance, and drowning in questions that nobody would answer. She deserved the truth, even if the truth was ugly.
“I killed him, Kacey.”
The words filled the bathroom. Kacey didn’t move or say a word.
“He killed my sister,” I continued. “Then he used me like I was nothing. Took everything from me.” I kept my voice steady. “I held him in a cage for months. Almost a year. Then I beat him to death. And I would do it again.”
Kacey’s lips trembled. A tear slid down her cheek but she didn’t wipe it.
“You need to let that shit go,” I said. “He was cheating on you with me. I didn’t know about you. He lied to me. He lied to you. He had no respect for you and none for me either. He was incapable of love, Kacey. That man was hollow inside.”
“So you didn’t know.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “You didn’t know he had me. Had kids.”
“I didn’t know a damn thing. If I had, I never would’ve been with him. I’m a lot of things but I’m not the woman who takes another woman’s man on purpose. He played both of us.”
Kacey’s face crumpled. She pressed her back against the bathroom door and slid down until she was sitting on the floor in her cocktail dress with tears streaming down her face. The anger that had been holding her together was gone. Underneath it was just grief. Raw, exhausted, years-old grief that she’d been feeding with rage because rage was easier than sadness.
“I’ve been so angry for so long,” she said through her tears. “I don’t even know what to do with myself anymore. I thought if I could just get close to you, find out the truth, confront you, it would make it stop. But it didn’t stop. It just got worse.”
I crouched down in front of her. “You got Justice to get you a job here so you could get closer to me. Were you planning to kill me?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what I was planning. I just wanted answers. I wanted somebody to tell me what happened because nobody would talk to me. They just kept sending money like that was supposed to fix everything.”
“It doesn’t fix anything. I know that better than anybody.” I sat down next to her on the bathroom floor. Two women in designer dresses sitting on cold tile because sometimes that’s where the real conversations happen. “But you gotta hear me when I tell you this. Whatever you think you’re missing in Thad, go ask Prime or Quest or Justice. That family out there takes care of their own. You want a new house? Money? Nannies for the kids? A fresh start somewhere? They got you. Whatever you need.”
“Why would they do that for me?”
“Because they feel responsible. Because Thad was their boy. Because you and your babies didn’t ask for any of this.” I looked at her. “But you gotta heal for real, Kacey. Not through anger or revenge. Actually heal. Get a therapist. Find a man who deserves you. There’s about two hundred rich, fine ballers out at that party right now. Go find one who knows how to love a woman right.”
She let out a laugh through her tears. It was small and broken but it was real.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I was ready to do something stupid tonight.”
“I know you were. But you didn’t. That means something.” I put my arm around her shoulders. She stiffened at first, then leaned into me. We sat there for a minute, two women who’d been damaged by the same man, finding something neither of us expected to find in a casino bathroom. Peace.
“Come on.” I stood up and reached my hand out to her. “Let’s get your face cleaned up and find you somebody worth your time out there.”
