Page 71 of Justice

Storie’s door stayed shut.

I passed it twice. No light under it, no sound. She’d been up there since Prime brought her home. Nobody had gone up. She hadn’t come down. Upstairs had that held-breath feeling of a house with something locked in a room at the end of it.

I did not knock. I want that on the record. Whatever that child was, whatever she’d done, some worn-out part of me still wanted to knock, still wanted to sit on the edge of a bed with a fifteen-year-old who’d had a terrible day and ask if she was okay. That instinct never fully dies in a woman, no matter what gets done to her.

But I knew better. So I left her door shut and took myself downstairs.

“Where is he?” There was a slight panic in my voice.

Prime sighed before responding, his blue eyes twinkling under the light.

“He was arrested for whooping that guy’s ass. The nigga isn’t pressing charges but because there are witnesses he’s being held. He’ll see a judge tomorrow and we’ll be able to bail him out.”

“Jesus…” I murmured. I was so concerned for him. I knew that Justice could hold his own but I didn’t want him in jail. I wanted him home, with me.

What?! No not with me. With his girls. I cannot be falling for him.

But it was sweet what Prime was doing. Standing in his brother’s kitchen, a soft wall between Dream and the truth. Feeding her ice cream. Letting her believe tonight was just a fun night. An Uncle-Prime-came-over, ice-cream-for-dinner night. Not the night her daddy sat in a cell.

I loved him a little for it, right then. These Banks men were hard as concrete with the world. Then you caught them like this, holding a child up out of deep water.

I’d heard so many stories about them from Rita. In the moments when she was lucid and when she wasn’t. She divulged many secrets about the brothers that I’m sure I wasn’t supposed to know. But let’s just say, I knew how dangerous they were.

Which meant that guy that Justice beat up in the mall better run away, because Justice wasn’t done with him.

“How’s Rita?” I asked.

“Down already. Ate good, took her medicine, went easy tonight, thank God. Quest dropped her off about an hour after I was already here with Storie. She thinks Justice is out of town on business. That’s what we told her. She don’t need to be up all night worried, and honestly, by morning she might not remember we said anything at all.” His face changed when he said it. He moved right past it, because that’s a grief nobody in this family had figured out how to hold yet.

“She talks about you a lot. Always saying you’re her baby. You look just like her oldest son. And how much she misses you.”

“Man, I gotta do better about seeing her. I feel like shit. I just… I got twins, a lil boy. Then the business. Then this damn family is always dragging me into some shit,” he laughed.

“From what Rita says, y’all live for it.”

He let out a chuckle and shook his head.

“Thank you,” he said, out of nowhere. “For being here. For all of it. My brother don’t say it, but he don’t trust easy, and he trusts you with everything he’s got in this world.” He looked at me steady. “That means something. In case nobody told you.”

My chest went tight, and I had to look down at my hands.

Because I was a liar sitting in a good man’s living room, and I could not tell a single one of these people one true thing about who I was.

“Get some rest, Prime,” is what I said instead. “I got the house. You go on and lay down in the guest room, or go home to your family. We’ll be alright till morning.”

“Yeah,” he said, getting up with a groan. “Aight. I’m right down the hall if anything moves.”

Later, in the dark of my own room, I couldn’t sleep.

The house was quiet. Prime’s door was shut down the hall. Storie’s was shut at the other end. I lay there in the middle of all that Banks money and all that Banks trouble, and my mind went somewhere I don’t let it go in the daylight. It went to the darkest of times.

Not to the courtroom this time. Past it. To the part that came after. The part almost nobody knew. The part that still cut deeper than losing my entire career in a single afternoon.

They walked me out of the firm that same week. A couple of days after the court hearing. They replaced me as defense with another one of my colleagues.

It was so unceremonious. Two senior partners who couldn’t even look me in the face, a folder slid across a table, words like liability and reputation and the best interests of the firm. It was all so hazy. I heard their words in spurts. I thought that I would be able to debate my way out of getting fired but that sex tape playing… it was too damaging.

No other law firm would ever hire me again. I knew that the moment it played.