Zephyr
Janelle was in my kitchen making smothered pork chops and rice and chatting lightly about murder without a care in the world.
“I wish you would’ve told me that you were going to kill them,” she said, shaking the pan with one hand and adjusting the heat with the other.
We hadn’t hung out in a few weeks but she’d slid through today to whip up dinner, catch me up on her job search, and do what we always did when it was just the two of us, talk shit about the people who ruined our lives.
She’d been applying to counseling centers, community programs, anywhere that might overlook a three-year suspension from the Board of Psychology.
Nobody was biting. Turns out when your license gets pulled for ethics violations, the job market gets real small real fast. Mehar did that.
Filed the complaint that gutted Janelle’s career and left her scrambling for positions she was overqualified for at salaries that were insulting.
My big sister was down bad. And it was because of that damn family.
It was okay though. I took care of both of them for her. For us.
“Why?” I said from my wheelchair at the kitchen table. “The Rios cartel came to me. There wasn’t shit you could do to help.”
“I don’t know. I just want to be in the loop about these things.” She turned from the stove and looked at me. “But you have my word. I will never tell Mekhi. He is so stuck on stupid when it comes to Quest. Do you know he came to me all heartbroken when he found out about the crash?”
I almost smiled. Mekhi. My big brother, the man who paid correctional officers to murder two men in a federal facility for what they did to me, couldn’t bring himself to celebrate when the man who caused all of it went missing over the ocean.
Twenty years of friendship and business had turned Mekhi into a loyal dog for a family that had never once put us first. The truce was a leash and Mekhi wore it like it was a chain of gold instead of what it really was.
“How’d he find out again?” I asked.
“He kept emailing Quest different documents about Freetown. Contracts, permits, zoning stuff. And eventually he was like what the fuck. I know the man is on vacation but this is business. So he hit Justice up. And Justice told him the plane crashed. He’s been missing.”
“He’ll get over it. We’re his family, not the Banks.”
Janelle turned back to the stove and stirred the rice.
The kitchen smelled good, rich and savory, onions and gravy thickening on the stove, and from the outside looking in we probably looked like a normal brother and sister spending an evening together.
A home-cooked meal, casual conversation, two siblings who loved each other.
Nobody would’ve guessed that the woman at the stove had kidnapped a pregnant woman and chained her to a ceiling, or that the man at the table had given a cartel the blueprint to bring down an aircraft with that same woman inside it.
We were a matching set. Broken by the same family, bonded by the same hatred.
We were willing to go further than Mekhi would ever approve of because my naive brother still believed in truces and handshakes.
He still had faith that Quest gave a damn about any of us.
Janelle brought two plates to the table and sat across from me.
The smothered pork chops were perfect. She’d learned the recipe from our mother before she died and it was one of those dishes that tasted like home even when home didn’t exist anymore.
I ate with my left hand because my right grip still wasn’t reliable since the shooting.
Another gift from the Banks universe. Zephyr Black, formerly the man who could outrun, outfight, and outlast anyone in the room, now struggling to hold a fork without dropping it.
“Any leads on work?” I asked.
“There’s a community mental health center in Laurel that might bring me on as a case manager.
Not a therapist. A case manager.” She said it with the specific bitterness of a woman with a doctorate being offered an entry-level position.
“Forty-two thousand a year. I used to make that in three months.”
“You’ll bounce back.”
“I won’t bounce back, Zeph. My license is gone for three years and even after that, the complaint is on my record permanently.
Every board review, every credential check, every time I apply anywhere, it’s going to come up.
Mehar Banks made sure of that.” She stabbed a piece of pork chop with her fork.
“She took the one thing I was good at and burned it to the ground. And everybody acts like I’m supposed to be grateful she didn’t press criminal charges.
Like I should thank her for only destroying my career instead of putting me in prison. ”
“She didn’t press charges because she didn’t want the attention. Quest kept it quiet to protect his image. It had nothing to do with mercy.”
“I know that. But try telling Mekhi that. He thinks they did us a favor.” She shook her head. “My son is dead. My career is dead. And our brother is out here mourning that nigga like he lost a limb.”
The front door opened before I could respond. Mekhi’s voice came down the hallway, that familiar deep register that filled whatever room he walked into.
“Yo, Zeph, you here? Nelle?”
“Kitchen!” Janelle called back, her voice shifting instantly from venom to warmth. The transformation was seamless. She went from bitter and sharp to welcoming in under a second, the same skill that had made her a brilliant therapist and an even more dangerous liar.
Mekhi appeared in the doorway looking like a man who’d just received the best news of his life. His face was open and bright. There was an energy coming off him that I hadn’t seen since before the casino shooting. Something had happened and whatever it was had made my brother genuinely happy.
“They found them,” he said. “Justice just called me. They found Quest and Mehar. They’re alive. They’re in Grenada at a hospital. She’s having the baby.”
The kitchen went still. I could feel Janelle’s eyes on the side of my face but I didn’t look at her because looking at her right now would tell Mekhi everything he never needed to know. Instead I did what I’d been doing for months. I performed.
“Word?” I said. “That’s incredible, bro. Thank God.”
“Right? I couldn’t believe it when Justice told me. They were stranded on some island in the Grenadines this whole time. The plane went down and Quest got her to shore and they survived out there for weeks. Weeks, Zeph. That’s crazy.”
“That is crazy,” Janelle said from across the table.
Her voice was steady, soft, concerned. She sounded exactly like a woman who was relieved to hear that her brother’s friend had been found alive.
She sounded like the version of herself she showed the world.
“I’m so glad they’re okay. Is the baby alright? ”
“I don’t know the details yet. Justice said Mehar was in labor when they found her. They’re at a hospital in St. George’s. I’mma call him later tonight to check in.”
“We should send flowers,” Janelle said. “Or food. Whatever they need.”
Mekhi smiled at her. A real smile, full of love and relief, the smile of a man who believed his family was whole and good and on the same page.
He had no idea that his sister and his brother were sitting at this table marinating in rage underneath their performances.
He had no idea that the plane crash wasn’t an accident or bad luck or cartel revenge gone right.
He had no idea that the blueprint came from this house, from this wheelchair, from the man smiling back at him right now saying “thank God” while his stomach burned with the reality that my enemy was still breathing.
“I’mma go call Justice,” Mekhi said. “I’ll be in the living room.” He turned and walked down the hallway and his footsteps faded and Janelle and I were alone again.
I looked at her. She looked at me. Neither of us said a word. We didn’t need to. The look lasted about three seconds and it said everything that our mouths couldn’t say with Mekhi in the next room.
This isn’t over.
Janelle picked up her fork and went back to eating like nothing had changed.
Because for her, nothing had. The plan had failed and the targets were alive and that just meant the plan needed to change.
She chewed slowly, deliberately, staring at her plate with the calm focus of a woman who was already thinking about what came next.
I rolled my wheelchair back from the table and looked at the hallway where Mekhi had disappeared.
My brother. The man who loved me enough to kill for me, but not enough to let me kill for myself.
He was in the next room calling Justice Banks with joy in his voice, rebuilding a bridge to the family that had taken everything from us, and he didn’t know that the two people closest to him in the world were sitting twenty feet away planning to burn that bridge to ash.
The pork chops were getting cold. I didn’t care. I’d lost my appetite the second Mekhi said the word alive.