Page 44 of Justice

“Yeah,” I said, and I almost believed the girl in the red dress deserved it. “Let’s go.”

23

JUSTICE

I felt her before I saw her. That’s the only way I know how to say it. There was so much going on in the room. The music was blasting, people were laughing and the sounds of money being spent filled the atmosphere. But then the air shifted. The hair on my neck stood at attention, forcing me to take notice. My head turned on its own, and there she was.

Skye.

In red.

She came through those doors with her friend at her side in a red dress that had no business being legal, and every thought in my head went quiet at once. I’d seen this woman every single day for weeks. In scrubs. In sweats. Hair tied up, no makeup, on her knees playing with my daughter. I thought I had a handle on what she did to me. I did not have a handle on a single thing. Because this was something else. Her hair up off that neck. That dress moving on her like it was in love with her too. And even now, even dressed like that, she scanned the room careful, still reading every exit out of pure habit. It took the air clean out of my chest and didn’t give it back.

“Close your mouth, nigga.”

Quest said to me. Standing at my shoulder with a drink he wasn’t really drinking, watching me watch her, that big-brother smirk already all over his face.

“Man, go on somewhere.”

“Nah, this is good. This is the best thing I’ve seen all night.” He took a slow sip. “My too-serious brother. Cold as a meat locker for three years straight. And here you are damn near drooling over a woman.” He laughed low. “Mehar owes me twenty dollars.”

“Ain’t nobody drooling over nothing.” I kept my face still and took a drink of my own. “She works for me. I’m being a good host. That’s all this is.”

“Uh huh.” Quest wasn’t buying one word, and he wasn’t going to press it either, because that’s not how we do. He just let it sit there, grinning, knowing. “I’m not staying long, for the record. Mehar’s home with the baby and I don’t like being gone from them at night. But I’m real glad I stayed long enough to see your face do that.” He clapped my shoulder. “Go be a good host, then. Host.”

I ignored him and started across the floor toward her.

I didn’t make it.

There was a man at the bar I knew by his money and nothing else. High roller, dropped serious cash at my tables, the type of guest you comp and tolerate. He was drunk past the point of sense. He’d spotted Skye the same second half the room had, and he got to her before I could.

I watched him put his hand on her.

His hand went low on her back, then lower, and he grabbed a full handful of her ass like she was his.

I saw Skye go rigid. Saw her step sideways quick and put on that polite hard smile women use to get out of a thing without making it a thing, saying something with her mouth while her body said get off me.

He didn’t let her go. He caught her wrist and pulled her back into him, close, his mouth down at her ear, and whatever he said in it made her flinch like she’d been slapped.

I don’t remember crossing the floor. One second I was thirty feet away. The next I had a fistful of that man’s collar, all two hundred pounds of him coming up off his heels.

“Whoa. What the fuck?” was all he got out.

I snatched him up by his collar and threw him like he was a crumpled up ball of trash. He hit my floor on his back and slid into a barstool hard enough to knock it over. The bar section turned at the sound of it, glasses stopping halfway to mouths.

“You know how much money I drop in here?” He was scrambling, trying to get his feet under him and his dignity back at the same time. “I spent six figures this year at these tables⁠—”

“And?”

I stepped over him and he stopped moving. Whatever he saw looking down at him took every word he had left. He got his hands up in front of his own face, flinching, that ugly instant finally understanding that the money in his pocket can’t help him now.

I didn’t hit him. I raised a hand instead, and my security was on him before I finished the motion, one under each arm, hauling him up off my floor like something spilled.

“Get him out my building,” I said. “Cash him out, ban him, I don’t care. He can’t come back. Ever.”

“Wait— Justice, man, come on, I ain’t know that was your girl!”

They dragged him toward the doors with his shoes skipping across the marble, him apologizing to nobody. The music never even stopped playing.