TRUTH #3
“What was I supposed to do, scream it?” I shrugged, though my hands weren’t as steady as I wanted them to look.
“It happened. Amai was up on the roof of the apartment building across the street. Had a whole—I don’t even know what you call it.
A sniper setup. He saw Kaisen show up uninvited, saw him getting in my face, and he handled it. ”
“He handled it,” Raven said, staring at me. “From a rooftop. Across the street.”
“Yes.”
“That man was watching your house from a rooftop with a gun.”
“Apparently. Yes. Or one of the guards he has watching me told him Kaisen was here.”
Raven sat back like the information needed room to land properly. Saroya’s mouth had gone tight and thin, the way it did when she was doing math in her head that she didn’t like the answer to.
Honor, though—Honor just nodded slowly, like she was confirming something she’d already suspected. “Okay. See, that’s my type of man right there.”
“Honor,” Saroya said.
“I’m serious.” Honor held up both hands like she was defending a thesis.
“A man that’ll shoot his own brother over you?
That’s not a man playing games. That’s a man with priorities.
That’s a man who has decided, in his heart, that you are not to be disrespected, and he will make that known from a rooftop if necessary. ”
“That’s insane,” Saroya said.
“I didn’t say it wasn’t insane. I said it was hot.”
“Honor, oh, my God.”
“What? I’m just saying what I’m seeing!” Honor threw her hands up. “You want a man who’ll fight for a good parking spot but fold like a lawn chair when somebody disrespects you in the street. I want the rooftop. I want the sniper rifle. I want—”
“You want a felony,” Raven cut in.
“I want devotion,” Honor corrected, unbothered.
I let out a short laugh despite myself, because it was funny—it was, in the ridiculous, unhinged way, my whole life had become funny lately—but underneath the laugh, something in my chest stayed tight.
“It shook me up,” I admitted, quieter now, and the table went still.
“Like, really shook me. One minute he’s standing there talking, and the next he’s on the ground.
There’s blood on my doorstep, and I’m just—standing there.
Not even screaming. Just standing there like my body forgot how to work. ”
Saroya reached over and put her hand on my knee. “Truth.”
“I’m fine,” I said quickly. “I’m fine now. It was just—a lot. In the moment.”
“What did Amai say?” Raven asked. “After?”
I hesitated, because this part was going to sound worse out loud than it felt at the time. “He made a joke. Said now I could get Kaisen’s DNA.”
Silence.
“And Amai did,” I added.
Saroya’s hand slid off my knee. “Hold on. Hold on, hold on. He collected the man’s DNA off his own shooting?”
“It wasn’t like I dug a bullet out of him myself,” I said. “It was just—there was a swab. It’s medical. It’s fine.”
“I know Amai did not shoot that boy for a DNA sample,” Saroya said, her voice climbing with disbelief, half a laugh buried in it despite herself. “This some wild shit, Truth.”
“I know that,” I said. “Obviously that’s not why he did it. But it happened, and I wasn’t about to let the opportunity go to waste. I needed the sample regardless. If it was gonna be an option, I was taking it.”
“You are unbelievable,” Saroya said, but she was shaking her head with something close to a smile now, the tension breaking just slightly.
“I’m resourceful,” I corrected.
“You’re pregnant with twins, two men are shooting each other in your front yard, and the one in your bed is out here collecting evidence like this is an episode of Forensic Files or Maury.”
“When you put it that way, it does sound bad.”
“It sounds insane, Truth.” Saroya leaned forward, her humor draining into something more serious, more like the big sister she’d always been, even when she wasn’t trying to.
“I need to ask you something, and I need you to actually answer me. Are you okay? Being with a man like that? Living in his world? Because that’s not normal, what you just described to us.
Rooftops. Guns. Blood on your porch. That’s not a relationship, Truth, that’s a war zone. ”
I sat with the question for a second, because it deserved more than a reflex answer.
“I grew up in the Fifth Ward,” I said finally.
“Y’all know that. I’ve seen things. I know how to handle myself, how to read a room, how to survive when things get ugly.
It’s not like this world is completely foreign to me.
It was just—jolting. That first time. Seeing it happen right in front of me instead of hearing about it secondhand. ”
“And now?” Raven asked.
“Now I know Amai’s taken every precaution he can to keep me and the babies safe.
Cameras. Security. People watching things I don’t even see.
It’s excessive, but it’s not careless. He’s not out here being reckless with our lives.
” I paused. “He’s dangerous. I’m not gonna sit here and pretend he’s not.
But he’s not dangerous to me. There’s a difference. ”
Honor tilted her head. “You sure about that?”
“I’m as sure as I can be right now,” I said, and it was the most honest answer I had.
The room sat with that for a moment, all three of them looking at me like they were trying to see something underneath my skin, something they couldn’t quite get to.
“There’s one more thing,” I said before the silence could stretch too long.
“Lord,” Raven muttered. “There’s more?”
“Amai’s officially divorced.”
The reaction came instantly—Saroya’s mouth dropping open, Raven’s head snapping toward me so fast her earring swung, and Honor letting out a low, delighted “mmmm,” like she’d just been handed the last piece of gossip she needed for the week.
“Divorced,” Saroya repeated. “As in—he was married this whole time, and just now got divorced?”
“It’s finalized. That’s all I know for sure.”
“Truth.” Raven’s voice had gone careful, and I could feel the question coming before she asked it, the way you feel a storm shift the air before the rain hits. “What does that mean? For you. For y’all. I mean, he did just stand there and say he’s trying to wife you.”
I opened my mouth, and nothing came out, because I didn’t actually know how to answer that—not in a way that would make sense to anyone else, not even in a way that made sense to me.
I loved him. I knew exactly what kind of danger he carried into every room he walked in.
And somewhere between those two truths, I still hadn’t figured out where I was supposed to stand.
“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “I really don’t.”
The knock came before I could elaborate on Raven’s question. Three sharp raps against the front door that cut clean through the kitchen chatter and made all four of us go still.
“You expecting somebody?” Saroya asked.
“No.” I was already moving, wiping my hands on a dish towel, my mind still half-tangled in the divorce conversation, still trying to figure out how I felt about any of it. “Probably .”
“ don’t knock like the police,” Honor called after me.
I laughed it off and crossed the living room, glanced through the peephole out of habit more than caution, saw nothing but the empty porch and the street beyond it, and opened the door.
No one was there.
The porch was empty in both directions—no car pulling off, no footsteps receding, nothing but the ordinary hush of a Tuesday afternoon on Mimosa Ct. A brown box sat dead center on the mat, unmarked, no shipping label, no company logo, nothing but packing tape holding it closed.
“Who was it?” Raven’s voice came from behind me.
“Nobody.” I stared down at the box. Something about it felt wrong before I could even articulate why. The wrongness arrived in my body before my mind caught up, instinct standing every hair on my arms straight up. “There’s just a box.”
“A box.” Saroya had come up beside me, peering past my shoulder. “You order something?”
“No.”
Honor pushed between us, always the one with the least patience for hesitation, and reached down toward it.
“Wait.” I grabbed her wrist before she could touch it. I didn’t know why. I just knew I didn’t want her hands on it. “Just—wait a second.”
We all stood there looking at that box like it might do something on its own, might unfold itself and explain what it was. Finally, Saroya crouched down and used the edge of her keys to slit the tape instead of her fingers.
The smell hit before the sight did. Something metallic and wrong. Something that didn’t belong anywhere near a front porch in the middle of the afternoon.
Saroya lifted the flap.
She didn’t scream. None of us did, not at first—the silence stretched too long for screaming, all three of us just staring down into that box like our bodies hadn’t caught up to what our eyes were reporting.
A finger. Not clean, not surgical—torn at the base like it had been worked off rather than cut, the nail still intact, painted and chipped, faded red that didn’t belong to anyone I recognized.
Beside it, an ear, the cartilage curled and discolored, resting on a folded index card like it had been arranged there deliberately.
Written on the card in block letters, no signature, no explanation beyond the six words that would replay in my head for the rest of my life:
ANYTHING CARRYING LANDRY BLOOD BELONGS IN THE WAR.
Saroya dropped the flap closed so fast the box rocked on its base. “Oh, my God.”
“What…” Raven’s voice had gone flat. “What is it? What did you see?”
“Don’t.” Saroya’s hand shot out, blocking her before she could look. “Raven, don’t.”
But Raven had already caught the smell, and something in her face shifted from confusion to comprehension in the space of one breath. She backed off the porch, pulled her phone out, then seemed to think better of it and shoved it away, reaching instead into the waistband at the small of her back.