On the Case
ORI
“You trust him?”
We’d sent that church up in flames and were now in Midas’ private office in his uptown Warren location.
It was the same place where Xerx and Vanya got married and was the easiest location for all of us to catch a chopper to the private airport.
Dinner last night had felt like a glimpse into my life after I got rid of the government as my overseer and I had to admit, it felt good.
Even more reason for me to get this case done and marriage completed.
I’d missed out on moments like this with my brothers more often than not and I didn’t want it to continue to happen.
“Cou, do I trust anyone outside of this room?” I was eased back in my seat relaxed, despite knowing we still had more work to do. Truthfully, it felt like a boys’ trip when we got together to put in work. Every murder solidified our bond and I was grateful for it.
“Well, you do in fact.”
I turned to the other voice that had spoken up and my narrowed eyes conveyed my confusion at his assertion.
“Xerx, are you well?” I glanced around Midas’ office thinking I would get someone else agreeing with me but their faces showed they were on his side.
Let niggas blow up a church, and they automatically side with you.
He was unbothered by my annoyance; his languid movements a reflection of how unhurried he was to answer my damn question. I started to get keyed up waiting but I knew he wasn’t about to speak until he wanted to.
“I am.”
I leaned back looking around at my brothers who seemed too amused by this back and forth for my liking. “Who do I trust outside of this room?”
“How quickly we forget.”
“Are you about to wax philosophical and turn all poetic or are you going to answer the question?” Xerxes’ brow rose arrogantly as he tried not to smile but my question was answered before he could.
“He’s talking about your fiancée, dumbass.” Yacouba looked like he wanted to pop me in the back of the head but then we would’ve been wrestling around in this muthafucka the same way we did when we were kids.
I swiped at my nose in frustration hating the way they were constantly trying to make me feel things I didn’t have time for. Or didn’t want to admit was actually there. “Yacouba—”
His face was hard and screamed, nigga lie to yourself. “Don’t Yacouba me. You know you trust that fucking girl so stop playing.”
“It’s an arrangement.”
Yacouba’s laugh triggered everyone else’s and now I was ready to swing on the entire room. “You can try that lie with somebody else but that shit won’t work with me. Hell, not with any of us. Why you think your grandfather was looking at you like you were crazy with his mean ass?”
“Pappy ain’t mean—”
“The fuck he isn’t. That’s like saying you’re not mean. Too ornery ass peas in a pod.” I had to laugh at Yacouba because he acted like he was any better. Nobody was gonna call his ass happy-go-lucky unless he was talking to his wife or his son. He had balls calling somebody ornery.
“They have a point.”
Jahmir's tone was calm and normally I took him as the voice of reason but I didn’t want to hear it. “‘Mir, you think everybody has a point.”
“Am I ever wrong?”
He shut me up in that quiet way of his and I glanced around at my brothers, trying to find another way to avoid this damn conversation.
“Shut the fuck up.”
They all burst out laughing because they knew I didn’t have shit else to say and not a damn thing to rebut the facts they’d laid out.
“You can be mad all you want to but the fact remains that you trust that girl. Because if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have agreed to any of this.”
“You should have seen how his eyes lit up when he realized who it was he was set to marry.”
“You carrying tales now, Xerx? About private meetings? Is this what we do? I’m over here putting in work for you and your wife and you're playing with me?” I couldn’t blame them for thinking that we were going to have some type of connection after all this time but I was still fighting it.
“When you’re sitting here making stupid mistakes zat we have to save you from zhen yes, zis is what we do.
We are family. I will step in along wiz our brozers to save you from your own stupidity so zat for once in your fuckin’ life you can be happy!
” Xerxes never raised his voice. It was about as foreign as Mir doing it.
His ass was pissed enough that I could see how his skin was flushed through the neat cornrows Vanya had put in his head.
“You think I’m not?” I was looking around at their faces trying to discern if that was how they truly saw me. What I saw was that they’d had these conversations or at least these thoughts before.
Damn, they must think my life is sad as shit.
“When was the last time yoo smiled, Ori? When you do it, it almost looks painful. Like the muscle yoo need has atrophied away. Or forgotten the motion.” Liam cast his happy-go-lucky two cents into this shit when I was hoping he would just shut up.
Before he got Francesca back he was as mean as I was.
But the last two years he’d been living the dream because they’d gotten married, found out they were having another kid and then reconciled. In that order.
Damn, none of us really had normal weddings or the beginnings to our relationships.
“We got the wedding photos back and he’s blank-faced in almost all of them.” Xerxes was speaking up yet again and as I battled with how I was feeling I wasn’t in the mood to have proof of shit I wasn’t ready to discern thrust in my face.
Jahmir’s face perked up at the teasing way Xerxes was speaking. “Almost?”
“Zhere’s a few where he’s doing what I can only assume is meant to be a smile. And guess who you’re looking at in everyone?” He was grinning like a cat and I wasn’t going to leave this room without having to hear everybody’s shit.
“Again, carrying tales.”
“I figured you would say zhat. I have access to zee proof right here.” I wanted to toss Xerx out his cousin’s window and into the Charlotte traffic below when he whipped out his phone.
When he started scrolling through pictures I wondered if this muthafucka had a folder just filled with pictures of my ass looking at Asha.
And why did I suddenly want to see and possess them?
“Damn, that is a smile, O.” Yacouba was grinning as he looked at the pictures as my brothers crowded around Xerxes like some tweens reading a damn BOP magazine.
“What the fuck are we doing? I thought we were here to talk about family business. Not sit and look at Xerxes’ wedding photos and shit.”
“This is family business. We’re discussing your happiness. Your future. All of which is going to affect us.”
“You’re talking about the woman I’m going to marry.”
“Did I stutter? That’s exactly what I just said.
” Jahmir was looking at me like he wanted to craft a new weapon to torture me with.
I understood his desire because if no one else believed in love this man did.
And he came from a childhood that was even more fucked up than mine.
His parents had used him as a pawn but whereas I was spared the constant feuding eventually since my father died and Faith left, his kept him in the middle of their toxicity, using him as their weapon of choice.
His father tried to turn him into a monster and his mother wanted him as her yes man.
And despite how badly they’d fucked him up, he still recognized love the second it walked into his life and did everything he could to honor it.
Jahmir was probably the bravest person I knew and even if I never said those words to him, I understood how much courage it took for him to let his wife in.
And look how happy he is now.
I was thankfully spared from having to focus too much on my thoughts since Couba jumped back into the fray.
“This is family business. The business of our family remaining tight. Of our generation remaining tight so that we don’t have the same fractures that the generation before ours did.
As much as I hate to say it your parents messed up.
More your dad than your mom but still. Between you, Mir and Jem losing her folks, we’ve had a lot of shit that could’ve changed how this organization moved.
We don’t want that. We want to keep cementing the bond that we’ve forged and that includes the one we have to build with your wife.
Each of us has had blips along the way. Problems we’ve encountered that we came together to conquer the way we were supposed to.
We're trying to ensure that this shit stays solid.”
“Of course God would leave the two hardest tasks for the end.”
I turned and looked at Jahmir almost insulted at his words. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“You and Jemma Marie, nigga. She gotta be re-acclimated into society before we can even start to move power back into her hands.”
“She was there against her will, Yacouba!” I was trying not to laugh but he really seemed to think that Jemma-Marie had been in a padded room for the last decade.
We’d all talked to her since she’d been released but we were trying to give her time before we put too much on her plate.
She seemed fine at the wedding and I knew she and Asha had been conversing since.
I was happy neither of them would feel alone coming into this the way they were.
I felt out of the loop at times but I knew it would be harder for the two of them. And now they had each other.
“Why are we not inviting her to these?” They knew I had other obligations previously that would limit my ability to get away. But Jem didn’t.
“What do yoo mean?” Liam looked annoyed at my question but I wasn’t tossing it out there just to take the heat off myself. At least not entirely.