Zephyr
Bella bathed me in the handicapped shower we had to install because a bullet took my spine.
The water ran warm across my shoulders and down my chest and I could feel every drop above my waist, the heat, the pressure of her hands, the washcloth moving in slow circles across my skin.
Below my waist there was nothing. My legs sat in the shower chair like props, dead weight that belonged to a body I used to live in.
I couldn’t feel the water hitting my thighs.
Couldn’t feel her hands when she washed between my toes.
Couldn’t feel the drain grate under my feet.
I only knew my lower half existed because I could see it, and every time I looked down I was reminded that the man I used to be had died from the waist down on the floor of Quest’s casino.
Bella was careful. She was always careful.
Moving the washcloth gently, adjusting the water temperature, making sure the shower chair was stable before she started.
She’d been doing this for months and she had the routine memorized, which somehow made it worse.
My woman had a routine for washing a grown man’s body because that grown man couldn’t do it himself.
She was twenty-six years old with a college degree and a daughter and she was spending her mornings scrubbing a cripple’s back instead of living her life.
Was this bitch dumb for sticking around?
I caught her eyes and there it was. That look.
The one that replaced everything I used to see when she looked at me.
She used to look at me like I was the strongest man in any room.
Like I was dangerous in the way bad bitches want their man to be dangerous, capable and protective and built for war.
Now she looked at me with something soft and careful and soaked in pity, permanently fixed on her face like the beauty mark under her lip.
I hated that look more than I hated the chair.
“Yo, why the fuck are you looking at me like that?” I asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“You feel sorry for me?”
“What?”
“Do you feel sorry for me, Bella? Because if you do, you can save that shit. I don’t need your sympathy. I need my fuckin’ legs.”
“Why are you doing this? Why are you acting like this? I’m just trying to take care of you.”
“Take care of me?!” The words came out louder than I intended but I didn’t pull them back.
“Bitch, I take care of you! You ain’t worked in years.
Who pays the bills in here? Huh? Who keeps those Loubou’s and Jimmy Choo’s on your feet?
Me! This chair don’t change that. I’m still the one keeping this whole shit running so don’t stand there with that sad face like you’re doing me a favor by washing my ass. ”
I could hear myself. I could hear every word coming out of my mouth and I knew it was wrong and I couldn’t stop any of it.
The rage was bigger than my self-awareness.
It filled every space inside me where love, patience and gratitude used to live.
It left no room for anything softer. Bella cared about me.
Bella showed up every morning and bathed me and dressed me and fed our daughter and held this household together with two hands while I contributed nothing but anger.
And I was repaying her by calling her out of her name in a shower that existed because I was broken.
“You’ve changed,” she said quietly. She set the washcloth on the edge of the shower bench and walked out of the bathroom without looking back.
Her voice didn’t crack. Her face didn’t crumble.
She said it flat and final, like she was confirming something she’d known for months and had just now decided to stop pretending otherwise.
“Ya think?! I can’t walk no more!” I hollered after her. The words echoed off the bathroom tile and bounced back at me and sitting in that echo alone, wet and naked and unable to stand up and follow her, was the most pathetic I’d ever felt in my life.
I heard her pick up Amara in the other room.
Heard her putting on the baby’s shoes, talking softly to her in that voice she used when she didn’t want our daughter to absorb whatever ugliness had just happened between her parents.
The front door opened and closed. The apartment went silent.
I was sitting in a shower chair with water cooling against my skin and nobody to help me out of it.
Fuck her. That’s what I told myself because the alternative was admitting that I was destroying the only person who hadn’t given up on me yet.
· · ·
Ever since Mekhi told me that Quest and Mehar survived, I’d been in an even worse mood than usual. And my usual mood was already toxic enough to clear a room.
Quest wasn’t the direct cause of me being shot.
I was shot protecting his casino, his investment, his legacy.
A bullet meant for his world hit my spine and Mekhi dealt with the shooters because that’s what Mekhi did.
But Quest refused to. He didn’t lift a finger.
Didn’t pull a trigger. Didn’t lose a minute of sleep over the fact that Zephyr Black, the man who’d been by his side for twenty years, was sitting in a wheelchair because of a party Quest threw.
He went right back to building his empire while I learned how to use a catheter.
That’s why I called Rodrigo. That’s why I gave him the gate code, the camera layout, the departure schedule, the hangar location.
I didn’t need money and I didn’t need the cartel’s approval.
I needed Quest to feel what I felt. I needed him to lose something he couldn’t get back.
The way I lost my legs. The way I lost my dignity.
The way I lost the version of myself that my daughter deserved to have as a father.
And it didn’t work. The nigga survived a plane crash, kept his girl alive on a deserted island for three weeks, and was probably sitting in a hospital room right now holding a newborn while I was sitting in a wet shower chair screaming at the woman who wiped my ass every morning.
The buzzer rang at two o’clock. I wheeled myself to the intercom and checked the camera. Rodrigo was standing outside in a black jacket with his hands in his pockets looking calm in that way cartel men looked calm when everything underneath was controlled violence.
I buzzed him up.
He walked in without greeting me. Took a seat on my couch, crossed his ankle over his knee, and looked at me with eyes that held about as much warmth as a freezer.
“You called me because you’re worried,” he said. Not a question.
“I called you because we have a problem. They survived. Your people didn’t finish the job.”
“My people did exactly what they were paid to do. They compromised the fuel system and the GPS. The plane should have gone down over deep water with no chance of recovery. The fact that he made it to an island is not a failure of execution. He’s just that determined to live. That nigga is almost supernatural.”
I cringed at this non-black dude calling Quest a nigga but didn’t care enough to check him. Besides, he held all the power.
“Quest ain’t supernatural but we got a problem on our hands.”
“Yes we do have a huge problem. Quest is a formidable opponent. I’ll give him that.
My brother underestimated him and it cost him his life.
I will not make the same mistake. But I’m curious about something.
” He leaned forward slightly. “You gave me the information. The gate code, the camera blind spots, the hangar, the departure time. You were very thorough. Very precise. And now you’re sitting in front of me looking nervous. What changed?”
“What changed is that he’s alive and eventually he’s going to figure out who did this. Quest isn’t stupid. Justice isn’t stupid. They’re going to investigate. They’re going to start pulling threads. And when they do, how long before somebody connects the dots between you and me?”
“Nobody connects us. We’ve never been seen together. We communicate through burners. There’s no digital trail.”
“You showed up at my apartment in broad daylight.”
Rodrigo’s expression didn’t change. “I’m aware.
Because this is the last time I’ll be doing it.
” He stood up and straightened his jacket.
“If Quest comes for us, and I believe he will, I’m prepared for that war.
The Rios family has resources he hasn’t seen yet.
We’ve been patient because patience was strategic.
If patience no longer serves us, we have other tools. ”
“You should be worried, Rodrigo. You don’t know Quest like I do.
I’ve watched this man operate for twenty years.
He doesn’t come at you loud. He doesn’t threaten.
He doesn’t announce himself. He just shows up one day and you realize you’ve already lost. By the time you see him coming, he’s already behind you. ”
“I’ve dealt with dangerous men before.”
“You dealt with your brother’s enemies. Quest is different. Quest is the kind of man who will sit across from you at dinner and smile and pour your drink and go home and plan your funeral. And you won’t see it coming because you’ll be too busy thinking the dinner went well.”
Rodrigo looked at me for a long moment. Something shifted behind his eyes, not fear exactly, but a recalculation. A slight adjustment in the math he’d been running. Then he turned and walked to the door.
“If you’re that afraid of him,” Rodrigo said over his shoulder, “perhaps you should have considered that before you gave me his gate code.”
The door closed behind him and I sat in my chair and felt the silence of the apartment settle over me like a weight. Bella was gone. Amara was gone. Rodrigo was gone. And what was left was just me and the truth I’d been circling for days.
Quest was going to figure it out. That wasn’t a question. It was a timeline.
I knew Quest. I’d known him for twenty years.
That man didn’t let things go. He didn’t forgive and he didn’t forget and once he decided to find an answer, he found it.
It might take him a week or it might take him a year but he would pull at every thread until the whole thing unraveled.
And when that thread led from Rodrigo back to me, and it would, there would be no conversation.
No truce. No Mekhi stepping in to negotiate peace.
Quest will kill me. He would do it slowly and he would do it personally and he would make sure I felt every second of it because I had tried to kill his woman and his unborn child. There was no version of this story where I survived if I stayed.
I wheeled myself to the bedroom and looked at the closet.
Passport in the lockbox on the top shelf.
Cash in the safe behind the shoes. Mekhi had set up accounts in Belize years ago for emergencies, money that existed nowhere on paper, money that could fund a quiet life in a country with no extradition.
I told myself I was being strategic. That leaving wasn’t running, it was regrouping.
That I’d come back when the heat died down, when Quest’s attention shifted elsewhere, when the trail went cold.
I told myself a lot of things sitting in that bedroom doorway looking at a closet I couldn’t reach without help.
I couldn’t even pack a bag by myself.
The apartment was empty. The shower was still wet.
Bella’s slippers were by the door where she’d kicked them off this morning.
Amara’s toys were scattered across the living room floor.
The whole place looked like a home that belonged to people who loved each other.
And I was sitting in the middle of it, alone, planning to abandon it because the consequences of my hatred were about to arrive and I was too broken to stand and face them.
I pulled out my phone and opened a text thread I hadn’t used in weeks. Typed three words to a number in Belize City.
Then I stared at them. Finger hovering over send.