10. Vice Blackwell
VICE BLACKWELL
By the time I made it back to my office, the restaurant had already started filling up for dinner. I spoke to a couple managers on the way through, handled a problem with one of the deliveries, then shut myself inside before anybody found another reason to stop me.
The day with Milan had gone better than I expected.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected in the first place. Probably more arguing. She had given me plenty of that, but somewhere between threatening me with a fork and pretending she didn’t care about Simone, I’d gotten a chance to see the woman she was when fear wasn’t controlling every move she made.
She was funny without trying too hard. Stubborn as hell.
Easy to talk to when she wasn’t looking for a reason to disagree with me.
I’d asked her to eat because I wanted to spend time with her, even if I hadn’t called it a date.
The fact that she’d been the first one to bring up the word told me the thought had crossed her mind too.
I sat behind my desk and pulled out my phone, finding the message she’d sent after I dropped her back at her car.
Milan: I signed the lease. Try not to cry now that your apartment inspection career is over.
A grin crossed my face as I typed back.
Me: I’ll find another building to inspect.
Her reply came almost immediately.
Milan: Find a hobby.
Me: You becoming one.
The dots appeared beneath my message, disappeared, then came back. After almost a full minute, her response finally came through.
Milan: That sounded a little stalkerish.
Me: You knew what I meant.
Milan: Unfortunately, I usually don’t.
I laughed before putting my phone down. Whatever smart shit she sent next could wait. If I kept going, I’d spend the rest of the night texting her instead of handling what needed my attention.
Sam’s phone was still locked inside my desk.
I pulled it out and set it in front of me, but before I unlocked the screen, my mind went back to Mace’s reaction earlier.
You got in it?
At the time, I’d let the question slide. Mace knew I’d been trying to access the phone, and he was just as determined as I was to find out who killed Sam, so asking if I’d finally gotten into it should’ve been normal.
It wasn’t the question itself that bothered me. It was everything around it.
The way his response took longer after I asked why he wanted to know. The fact that he’d asked where I got the unknown number before saying he would trace it. The way he’d been acting since the funeral, barely sleeping and watching every move I made whenever Sam’s belongings came up.
Mace was grieving. I knew that much. What I didn’t know was why his grief felt like it came with something he was trying to hide.
I unlocked Sam’s phone and opened the thread from the unknown number again. There were still only two messages.
One from them saying he needed to leave whatever it was alone and another one from him saying it was too late for that.
Whoever sent the warning had been near Grady the night Sam died. That could’ve meant they were one of the shooters, the person who ordered it, or simply another piece of whatever Sam had gotten himself involved in. Either way, I needed the name behind the number.
Mace hadn’t gotten back to me yet, which wasn’t unusual. Prepaid numbers weren’t always easy to trace. Still, I found myself opening my messages and rereading our exchange.
Mace: You got in it?
I stared at those four words longer than I should have.
He hadn’t asked what I found…
He hadn’t asked whether there were more threats…
He’d wanted to know if I had access to the phone itself…
…there was a difference.
I returned to Sam’s phone and opened his recent messages.
Mace’s name sat near the top, right where I expected it to be.
They’d spoken damn near every day, sometimes several times a day, but I’d never had a reason to care what they discussed.
They both worked with me, and Sam had a habit of calling people whenever a thought entered his head.
I tapped the thread.
The recent messages looked like what I expected.
Mace: Vice wants everybody at the restaurant by six.
Sam: That nigga don’t know how to ask.
Mace: You going either way.
Sam: Unfortunately.
I kept scrolling. Most of it was work, plans, jokes and the same kind of shit Sam texted all of us.
There were messages about my aunt, Sunday dinners and places they planned to go.
Nothing that explained Mace’s strange reaction or gave me a reason to think he knew more about Sam’s death than he’d admitted.
I was about to close the thread when a message from Sam caught my attention.
Sam: You still mad?
Mace had responded almost an hour later.
Mace: I’m straight. We’ll talk when you get here.
I frowned but kept scrolling. The exchange could’ve been about anything. They worked together and argued like brothers whenever one of them got irritated. If I hadn’t already been suspicious, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.
Several days earlier, Sam had sent another message.
Sam: I hate when you do that shit.
Mace: Do what?
Sam: Act like nothing matters when it does.
Mace: Not doing this over the phone.
Sam: You never wanna do it in person either.
I sat back in my chair.
That didn’t sound like work.
It sounded personal, but close friends had personal disagreements all the time. Mace had been in my life for years. Sam was my cousin. They spent more time around each other than most people realized, especially when I was handling business or moving between restaurants.
Maybe they’d fallen out over something neither one thought I needed to know.
I scrolled further.
Sam: You coming tonight?
Mace: Can’t. Vice got me handling something.
Sam: He always got you handling something.
Mace: That’s my job.
Sam: And what am I?
I narrowed my eyes in confusion.
I read the exchange again, trying to make it fit into a box that made sense. Sam could’ve been asking as a friend. Maybe they had plans and Mace canceled. It could’ve been anything.
The next message came the following morning.
Mace: You know what you are.
Sam: Do I?
I stopped scrolling.
A feeling I couldn’t name settled in my chest. It wasn’t anger yet because I still didn’t know what the fuck I was looking at. All I knew was that the conversation sounded like something I wasn’t supposed to see.
I continued anyway.
Weeks earlier, the tone changed again.
Sam: I miss you.
Mace’s reply came a few minutes later.
Mace: Saw you yesterday.
Sam: That ain’t what I mean.
Mace: I know.
My grip tightened around the phone.
There were plenty of ways to interpret missing somebody. Hell, Sam told my aunt he missed her every time he wanted her to cook. He could’ve meant they hadn’t spent time together outside of work. I just wanted to give them both the benefit of the doubt.
Then I reached the next message.
Sam: I hate acting like you ain’t mine when everybody around.
I stared at the screen until the words blurred together. No matter how many times I read them, they didn’t change.
Mace had responded with one sentence.
Mace: We agreed this was how it had to be.
I put the phone down and leaned back, trying to process what was sitting in front of me.
Mace and Sam?
My first reaction was disbelief. I’d known both of them for years, spent more hours with them than most people spent with their own families, and never saw a damn thing. No looks. No touches. Nothing that would’ve made me wonder whether they were anything more than close friends.
That was probably the point.
They’d hidden it from everybody, including me.
I picked the phone back up and kept reading, even though part of me felt like I’d already seen enough.
The messages went back more than a year.
Most were still normal, but now that I understood what was underneath them, the conversations sounded different.
Mace checking whether Sam had eaten. Sam asking when he was coming over.
Arguments that made no sense when I thought they were only friends.
Apologies. Plans. Private jokes I’d probably heard in person without knowing where they came from.
Then there were the messages that left no room for doubt.
Sam: I love you. Even when you get on my fucking nerves.
Mace had waited almost ten minutes before responding.
Mace: Love you too.
I lowered the phone to the desk.
Everything about Mace since Sam died suddenly made sense. The bloodshot eyes. The way he stood beside Sam’s grave after everybody else left. The way he’d fought to hold himself together during the funeral. The question about the phone.
He hadn’t been worried I would find proof that he helped kill Sam. He’d been worried I would find this.
I wasn’t disgusted.
That wasn’t what had me sitting here feeling like the floor had shifted beneath me. They were grown men, and who they loved wasn’t my business. What bothered me was that they’d believed they had to hide it from me.
Sam had been my cousin. Mace was the one person outside my family I trusted with everything. They’d been together for more than a year, maybe longer, and neither one of them had said a damn word.
I reached for my phone and called Mace.
He answered after the third ring. “What’s up?”
“Where you at?”
“Handling that number you sent me.”
“Come to the restaurant.”
There was a pause before he asked, “You need something?”
“I wouldn’t have called if I didn’t.”
“I’m about twenty minutes out.”
“Make it ten…”
I ended the call before he could answer.
The next ten minutes gave me too much time to think.
I opened Sam’s thread again, trying to understand how I’d missed an entire relationship happening right in front of me.
There had been late nights when Mace said he was going home, and Sam disappeared not long after.
Trips they’d both skipped. Sundays when one of them showed up at my aunt’s house looking tired while the other arrived smiling for no apparent reason.
The signs had probably always been there.
I simply hadn’t been looking.