There wasn’t any anger on her face. Instead, she looked hurt, terrified, and confused, like even after everything I had done to her, she still hadn’t believed I was capable of that. I stared back at her with my foot still pressing the brake and the engine growling while the weight of the car held her there.
Then the first bullet came through and the pain in my arm dragged me back to the present so sharply that I swerved again. I cursed and pulled my hand away from the wound as blood covered my palm. “Fuck!”
My fingers were beginning to tingle, and every movement sent heat through my shoulder and down into my elbow. I needed a hospital, but walking into one with a bullet wound meant questions, and there wasn’t a lie big enough to explain the damage to the car. Suddenly, a blue light flashed across the rearview mirror and I looked up quickly. A patrol car sat two vehicles behind me, with the lights spinning. For a few seconds I told myself it wasn’t for me. There were other cars around with other people doing stupid shit. Then the siren chirped, and the officer pulled around the vehicle between us until he was directly behind the Impala.
“Driver, pull over to the right.” They yelled over the speakers.
His voice came through the speaker clear enough to cut through the noise inside the car, but my foot stayed on the gas as the road stretched ahead of me, and I measured it without meaning to. The Impala was already struggling. The hood shook, the windshield was shot out, and the steering kept pulling toward the curb. I had one good arm and no idea how much blood I had lost. Even if I ran, I wasn’t going far. Then another cruiser appeared ahead, turning onto the road before slowing across my lane. The officer behind me repeated the command, louder this time. I eased my foot away from the gas and guided the car toward the shoulder as gravel popped beneath the tires as I came to a stop. Before I had the gear fully in park, doors slammed behind me.
“Turn the engine off!”
I twisted the key and the motor coughed twice before going silent. Without it, the inside of the car felt too still. I could hear the cooling engine ticking beneath the hood and blood dripping from my wrist onto my jeans.
“Put both hands out the window!”
I lifted them slowly. The movement pulled at the bullet wound, and pain ripped through me hard enough to make my vision blur.
“Open the door from the outside and step out!”
I reached through the broken window for the handle. The door squeaked when I pushed it open. As soon as I put one foot onto the pavement, the officers rushed me from both sides. A hand grabbed the back of my shirt and forced me against the car. My cheek hit the warm roof with glass grinding beneath it.
“Don’t move!”
“I’m shot,” I said, but my voice sounded far away.
“We see it! Keep your hands where we can see them.”
One officer held my injured arm carefully while another pulled the other behind my back. The handcuff closed aroundmy wrist with a click that sounded like my final destination. They searched my pockets, checked my waistband, then walked me away from the car while another officer shined his flashlight across the crushed hood and shattered windshield.
“This matches the description,” he said. “Gray Impala, severe front-end damage and multiple bullet holes.”
The officer holding me began reading my rights, but I only caught pieces. The words rolled right through my ears while I looked at the front of the car. Navy’s blood was smeared across the buckled hood near the passenger side and my knees felt weak. For the first time since I hit her, there wasn’t enough anger left to hide behind. I couldn’t blame Lev for pulling the trigger. I couldn’t blame Marv for being at her apartment. I couldn’t blame Navy for filing papers after everything I had done to her. I had cheated, lied, stolen, and put my hands on the woman who had spent years trying to hold our family together. Then, when she finally chose herself, I had watched her long enough to convince myself that her freedom was a betrayal.
An ambulance screamed past us in the opposite direction, with its lights flashing over the officers and the damaged car before disappearing toward the complex. I watched it until I couldn’t see it anymore. That was when I understood I hadn’t only lost my wife. I might’ve taken her away from everybody who loved her, all because I couldn’t stand that she had finally stopped choosing me.
The officer opened the back door of the patrol car and guided my head beneath the frame. As I lowered myself onto the seat, the cuffs pressed into my wrists and my wounded arm throbbed against my side. There wouldn’t be a conversation to fix this this shit and no amount of apologies or lies smooth enough to change what the witnesses had seen or what the blood on my hood proved. Everything that happened after this belonged to me and for once, I knew it.
CHAPTER 25
E’Levyn ‘Lev’ Laurent
Day Eleven ‘Late Night’
The room was too quiet for the number of people packed inside it. Machines filled the silence where conversation should’ve been with each one making its own sound around Navy’s bed. The heart monitor gave a steady beep every few seconds. Something near the wall hummed low while. Clear fluid moved slowly through the IV tubing taped to the back of her hand, and every time the blood pressure cuff tightened around her arm, I watched the numbers appear on the screen like I knew what the fuck any of them meant.
All I understood was that she was alive. The doctor had said the surgery went as well as it could’ve gone. He’d said they stopped the internal bleeding, repaired the damage around her pelvis, and stabilized the fractures that could be fixed. He’d said a lot of other shit too, using words that sounded rehearsed fromyears of standing in front of families and telling them how one terrible second had changed somebody’s life.
None of it stuck with me the way the last part did though. They couldn’t save her left leg. The damage below her knee had been too severe and the blood supply had been compromised too long, and leaving it attached would’ve put her life at greater risk. I’d stood there listening to him explain it while all I could think was how the fuck we were supposed to tell her. Navy was going to wake up believing she’d survived Rome trying to kill her. Then somebody had to look her in the face and explain that she hadn’t come out of it whole.
My hand rested beneath her forearm, careful not to disturb the wires or the tape holding everything in place. Her skin felt cooler than usual. They’d cleaned the blood from her face, but the bruising had already begun to spread along her cheek and near her mouth. A cut on her bottom lip had been stitched, and another thin bandage sat above her eyebrow. Her hair had been pulled away from her face and tucked beneath a disposable cap that made her look smaller against all those white sheets.
I kept replaying that shit in my mind and every time the memory reached the sound of her body hitting the metal, rage moved through me so hard my trigger finger itched. That nigga was still alive and that was the part I couldn’t make peace with. Rome had tried to murder her in front of a parking lot full of people, and he was somewhere breathing. Maybe at a hospital getting the bullet removed from his arm. Maybe sitting handcuffed to a bed while some officer stood outside his room. Wherever he was, his chest was still rising and falling while Navy lay unconscious, missing a part of herself because he couldn’t accept that she was done with him.
I wanted him dead, not locked up, and not waiting on trial. I wanted to stand close enough to watch it happen and make sure the last thing he understood was who had come for him.But every time my mind went too far in that direction, I looked down at Navy and forced myself back into the room. Whatever happened to Rome could wait but she couldn’t. Right now, she needed somebody beside her who wasn’t thinking about revenge more than he was thinking about whether she opened her eyes.
I hated that me and her grandma had to mee under these circumstances, but Lulu sat on the other side of the bed with both hands wrapped around Navy’s. She had been praying on and off since we were allowed into the room. Sometimes the words came clearly enough for everybody to hear. Other times her lips moved without sound while tears gathered beneath her glasses.
Her best friend Tasha sat near the window wrapped in a hospital blanket somebody had brought her from the emergency department. She should’ve been home resting after whatever procedure she’d gone through that morning, but nobody had been able to convince her to leave. Her face looked pale, and every few minutes she shifted carefully in the chair like her body hurt more than she wanted anybody to know.
