6. JUSTICE
JUSTICE
Things were going well with the new caregiver, but I had a feeling Serenity would be wanting to move out soon.
She’d been doing some consultations for our King brothers up in New York, and I had a feeling they were going to try to poach her from us.
Which was cool. I trusted her up there with them, if that’s what it came to.
As for the caregiver, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her sexy ass. Her thickness poured out of her scrubs. They weren’t hiding a damn thing. If anything, they were highlighting everything.
But it was more than that. That’s what had me stuck.
How she was with Rita had me wide open. My grandmother enjoyed having her there so much she didn’t even think of the woman as a caregiver anymore, more like a girlfriend who sat with her day to day, talked her mess with her, watched her stories.
And here was the strangest part. Since Skye had been coming around, Rita hadn’t had a single episode.
Not one. I prayed it stayed that way, because losing the brilliance of my grandmother would alter this family in ways I couldn’t let myself imagine.
I knew people didn’t live forever. I just wished she could.
I wished we could keep her past our own old age, selfish as that was.
But she was getting up there, and all a man could do was cherish every bit of time he had left with her.
So that’s what I did. I cherished her, and I tried not to think too hard about a caregiver who smelled like brown sugar and looked at my grandmother like she was worth protecting.
I had a meeting to get to.
Prime and Quest were already in the conference room on the top floor of the Banks Grand when I walked in, the city laid out gold and small behind the glass.
This was the clean part of the family. The daylight part.
Freetown was our baby, our legacy. It was a Black-owned development rising up out of a part of the city everybody else had written off, and once we put Banks money behind it, it became all of ours.
Housing folks could actually afford and still be proud of.
Retail owned by people who looked like the people shopping in it.
A community built by us, for us, on land they used to run us off of.
My grandfather would have wept to see it.
“We got the bids in,” Quest said, sliding a folder across the table. “Six of them. Two I already tossed.”
“Why?”
“Because they weren’t really qualified. I don’t want this being some janky project.
We got so much riding on this. I want this to be a community that has the highest quality.
” Quest tapped the folder. “That narrows it to one that makes real sense. Harlow Construction. Out of Georgia. Family firm, good numbers, better reputation. They’re flying up to pitch it in person. ”
“Georgia,” Prime said. “They any good?”
“They built a chunk of Atlanta. They’re good.”
I flipped through the Harlow numbers while my brothers talked, and there was nothing in there to give a man pause. Clean books. Strong crews. The right story too, a family that came up from nothing and built something that lasted. On paper they were exactly what we wanted.
On paper.
“Before they get here.” Quest leaned back, and his voice shifted into the register he used when a thing had been sitting on him. “I heard about you and Bryce. The situation with Bam.”
“What about it.”
“Bryce called Mehar. Upset. Said you threatened him.” Quest watched me careful. “Said you told him he’d be the one in the chair next time.”
“I did tell him that.”
Prime snorted. “’Cause it’s true.”
“That boy has fucked us over more than once,” I said, even and unbothered.
“Vouched for a man who was stealing from us for months and didn’t catch it till the money was already gone.
Not to mention he robbed us way back when.
Look, I know we’ve decided to let that go but come on now.
He’s got to grow the fuck up or he’s got to get the fuck out this life.
There’s no third thing.” I closed the Harlow folder.
“But y’all can tell Mehar to rest easy. I’m not gonna hurt Bryce.
He’s family, and I don’t move on family.
Long as he never comes for this family, he’ll never have a reason to be scared of me.
” I let a beat pass. “The day he does is a different day.”
Quest held my eyes a second, then nodded, satisfied. He knew me. He knew I meant every word of it in both directions.
The receptionist buzzed through then. “Fellas, your ten o’clock is here. The Harlows.”
“Send them in,” Quest said.
The door opened and Roman Harlow walked in with his hand already out, a smile on his face. I stood and shook it.
“Roman Harlow.” He shook all three of our hands, unhurried, comfortable in a room full of men like us, which was rarer than people thought, and I clocked it same as I clocked everything. “This is my brother, Julian. Appreciate y’all having us up.”
Julian was the quieter one, younger, softer around the eyes, a man content to let his brother do the talking. He shook our hands and took his seat and mostly listened. It was Roman who ran the room.
And he was good. He talked about Freetown like he already loved it, like it was his own mother’s neighborhood, and laid out a vision that lined up with ours so clean it was almost uncanny.
He knew the history of the land. He knew what it meant to build Black in a country that spent four hundred years building on our backs and calling it their own achievement.
He said all the right things, and the thing was, I believed he meant them.
Prime was nodding. Quest was leaning in.
It was shaping up to be the easiest yes we’d given in a long time.
“We like what we’re hearing,” Quest said when it was done. “We’ve got a couple more conversations to have on our end, but I won’t lie to you, Mr. Harlow. You’re at the top of a short list.”
“That’s all I can ask.” Roman stood, buttoned his jacket, easy and gracious. “Freetown deserves to be built by people who understand what it is. I’d be honored to be those hands.” He smiled that smile again. “Y’all have my number. Take your time. A thing worth doing is worth doing right.”
We saw them out. Prime clapped me on the shoulder, already talking timelines.
Quest looked pleased in that rare way he got when a thing came together right.
And I stood at the glass and watched the two Harlow brothers cross the lobby forty floors down, small as toys, and thought that Freetown might’ve just found its hands.
My phone buzzed on the way to the car. It was Kira.
Meet me at the hotel tonight? Been thinking about you.
I looked at it a long moment. I knew what that text was and I knew what it wasn’t. Kira had been filling a space in my life. It had only been happening the last few months. And even though Monica had been gone for three years, I still felt a lil guilty.
She filled a space but she wanted to be a lot more than she was, and we both kept pretending we didn’t know that about each other. She was always available. Always right there when I needed a body that wasn’t a stranger and a face I didn’t have to explain myself to.
And lately something had shifted. When I thought about the empty side of my bed, Kira’s face wasn’t what came to mind. I saw a dimple in a right cheek. A pair of almond eyes that went to my grandmother first.
I typed back one word.
Aight.
Then I got in my car and drove, and I didn’t let my mind go anywhere near whose name I’d almost typed instead.