19. Miles
Miles
“Wassup, people,” I shouted, stepping into my parents’ house.
When I’d gotten the money for Victor, this had been the first thing I bought. We had needed somewhere safe. We were now on the other side of town, in a quiet, less flashy neighborhood, away from prying eyes.
“Who’s that makin’ all that noise?”
I heard the soft shuffle of shoes and smiled—it was Mama Teagues, Pops’s caretaker during the day when Ma or I were at work.
After everything that happened with Pops, Ma and I both stepped in to keep Whitmore Ventures afloat.
She’d walked away from her career in marketing years ago to raise me, but when the company started slipping, she dusted off that corporate hat without hesitation.
Mama Teagues came around the corner. Her gray hair was pulled back into a neat bun, and she wore her usual Sunday best: a floral-print dress, thick gold chains around her neck, and a pair of sensible shoes.
“Boy, you how I feel about noise. Damn, what happened to your face?”
I went over and picked her up, and she squealed like a girl before hitting my side to be put down. She was the only one willing to take on the case that was Pops after the whole town blacklisted us.
“You should see the other guy. Sorry, Mama Teagues. How you doin’ today? I stopped by Café L’Amour and got you those brownie cookies you like.”
Mama Teagues’s eyes went wide behind her coke-bottle glasses, and she snatched the paper bag from my hand.
“Your father out on the back with lunch. Beware, he’s in a mood today.”
When wasn’t somebody always in a mood?
Victor was still on my mind. Always in the corner, always lurking. He was back—and holding a fucking knife over my throat. Laundering money. The fuck I look like? A white-collar criminal?
I should’ve been focused. I needed to be. But instead, my head was full of her.
Serena.
The way she’d looked at me when I pulled her in—sharp at first, all warning and fight—but she came anyway. Sat between my legs like muscle memory, like her body remembered mine even if her pride refused to admit it.
She gasped when I unhooked her necklace. That sound…low and surprised, a little breathy. I’d felt it in my chest. And when I removed her earrings, her whole body had gone still, like she didn’t trust what was happening but couldn’t stop it either.
Now she was my wife and still a stranger. Still walking around like she was built from glass and sharp edges, like softness would kill her.
And I hated how bad I wanted to be the one she could collapse against again.
God, she felt good in my arms. Familiar. Right. Like she belonged there. It felt how it used to be, before all the world fell apart. Damn. Each day I wished things were like how it used to be.
I was a damn fool for wanting more.
Because wanting her meant risking it all again. Trust. Control. Love.
And love…love got you gutted.
Should I do what Victor wanted? I tossed it around in my head. But what would that mean for us? My family had suffered enough. I was hesitant to tell them, but needed advice.
I went out back, and the sun cast long shadows on the cracked patio. Pops was sitting with his back to me, eating breakfast. He rhythmically tapped his wheelchair, gazing distantly.
“How you doin’, old man?”
He turned, frowning. “Came to check on me, huh? How’s the wife? What happened to your eye? She did that?”
“She’s fine. I just got into a little fight.”
“Little fight?”
Grabbing a piece of toast, its crust giving way with a satisfying crunch, I plopped into the chair opposite him, observing him closely.
Pops looked worn and weary. The sun had kissed his bald brown head with a scattering of freckles, and his once-black beard was now largely white.
Deep lines and shadows marred his face. He looked older than his fifties.
“You been talking to Vincent? Or Yvonne?” I couldn’t look at him when I said it, but I knew he’d catch the weight of it.
Vincent. The man who had been more of a brother to him than a business partner.
“Dante come back with any other back-door tricks he wants us to turn like we hookers on the street?”
Pops shifted in his seat, his jaw clenching.
“Thank fucking God, no ,” Pops muttered, shaking his head, his voice lowering. “Remember, we’re only worried about covering our asses. You not getting sucked too much into the marriage, are you?”
How could I not? I was living with Serena. The only woman outside of my mother I ever loved.
“No.” I shook my head. “I know the game.”
“Your mom said when she went to the store with Drill Sergeant Teagues, it was better.” Pops grunted, reaching for his orange juice.
“Better?”
I remembered when Pops began acting strange.
It was a few weeks after Gramps’s funeral.
He used to be up by 6:30 sharp. After Gramps died, some mornings he didn’t come out of his room till noon—or not at all.
I thought it was just normal stress. Staying at the office late.
Coming in during the early morning. Not eating dinner with us. Phone calls at all hours of the night.
That was business, right?
“They let her into the store?” I asked. Last time she went to the grocery store in town, they “closed early for inventory.”
After the Kings’ soirée six years ago, things went to a fucked-up place.
At first, when Ma or I would call to hang out with our friends, people just said they were “busy.” Then they stopped saying anything at all.
The Whitmore name disappeared from charity committee rosters.
Then we stopped getting cc’d on event invites—no more ladies’ brunches for Ma, no more community real estate mixers for Pops.
“She said they were able to shop, easy as pie.”
“So…we’re back in?” I said.
Pops shook his head. “Nah. Don’t jump the gun. It’s tentative. These fuckers will turn on us again like that—” Pops snapped his fingers. “The moment Queen Yvonne says so.”
“Yvonne’s a lot of things, but she’s not gonna risk her family’s reputation just to spite you or Dante.”
“You don’t know her like I do.”
Pops’s and Yvonne’s fathers were best friends so they’d grown up together like siblings. In the photos he hadn’t cut up or burned, they were kids with big smiles and skinned knees.
I shook my head. “We just need to focus on us.”
“You think rebuilding Whitmore Ventures is gonna fix that? That you can make them respect us again?”
“You’re saying I’ve been wasting my time? That none of it mattered? That I should’ve let it all rot with you?” Sometimes I wanted to do just fucking that.
His jaw clenched. “Don’t start?—”
“No. You started.”
After the accident, he didn’t do shit. Ma and I had to drag him out of bed. I remembered sitting outside his room with a tray of food, knocking until my knuckles were raw. He wouldn’t bathe. Wouldn’t eat. Wouldn’t speak.
“You gave up,” I said. “You let everything Gramps built slip through your fingers.” I felt that familiar anger coming back.
“You didn’t fight for anything. For us. We talk a lot of shit about the Kings, but one thing they don’t play about is their name.
Their legacy. Say what you want about them, but they protect their own—no matter how messy it gets. ”
Again, Miles. Is Whitmore Ventures worth saving? Or do you start something new?
“You were in that courtroom, boy. You watched them pretend we didn’t exist. Watched them rip me apart while they walked away clean. Now you wanna be them? You always wanted to be like that damn Erik.”
I shook my head. “Erik was my brother. I didn’t want to be him, but at least his father poured into him and helped make him a leader. Maybe we’d be a better family if we gave just a fraction of a damn the way they do.”
What I didn’t say—what I was only just starting to admit—was that I didn’t want to be them anymore. Not Erik. Not my father. Not any of the men who wore their legacies like chains.
I wasn’t just trying to fix what my father broke.
I was trying to figure out what belong to Miles.
He didn’t yell. He didn’t deny it. He just looked away. And maybe that hurt worse than anything he could’ve said.
“Look at my boys!” Ma’s voice rang out as she opened the patio doors and stepped outside.
Her silk blouse was pressed to perfection and paired with high-waisted cream trousers, and her locs were pinned into a neat updo, twisted high and tight at the crown of her head.
“Uh-oh.” Ma’s face fell when she realized the tension between us. “Something happened.”
“Your husband happened.” I stood up, ready to go.
“Miles,” Ma said, and she held up a hand. “Sit.”
I hesitated. “Ma?—”
“We’re not doing this today,” she added.
“He won’t listen to you, Audrey. He’s always been hardheaded like that,” Pops said bitterly.
“Like you?” I countered.
“Miles,” Ma warned. “Please. Don’t upset your father.”
“Sometimes you need to know when to throw in the towel. I think we’ve come to that point,” Pops said. “It’s bad enough we forced you into this marriage. It’s not right.”
“Omar, we discussed—” Ma started.
“I know, but maybe we should just leave town. I think it’s best. I won’t have my son tied to that bloodsucking family.”
“Kinda late for that now that I married into it,” I said sarcastically. “Where were you years ago when I didn’t want this shit?”
My mind flashed with Victor’s voice again. Emails. Texts. A few creative ledgers. It’s not hard to make it look like you were deeper in than you were when you took my money.
“I—” I started, jaw locking halfway through. I was going to say it. I wanted to say it. Tell them what was really coming for us. That it wasn’t Serena. It wasn’t the Kings. It was something way dirtier. Older. Mine.
But what would it change?
She turned to Pops. “Omar, he’s trying. And whether or not you agree with how , you owe him the space to try not to just give up what your father built for us.”
Then to me. “And Miles… He’s not the man he used to be. You may never get the father you wanted back. But don’t let his silence convince you that he doesn’t care.”
Pops’s eyes shifted, his hands gripping the arms of the chair, knuckles pale. “I never wanted this for you,” he muttered. “I’m going inside.”
With a push of the joystick, his chair rolled backward with a quiet mechanical hum. He didn’t meet my eyes. The screen door creaked, then clicked shut behind him.
“You were going to say something,” Ma said quietly.
I didn’t answer at first. The words were there—Victor’s voice, those damn emails, numbers that didn’t add up unless you knew what you were looking for.
“It’s nothing. I need to handle something,” I told her, stepping back. “Don’t worry about me.”
I would have to deal with Victor on my own. Like I’d been dealing with everything else.