Chapter 21
The safe house was a nondescript spot that we used for situations exactly like this one. A place where things got handled without the outside world having any involvement in it. Usually it was all Deuce’s problems getting taken care of here. Now, it’s my own problems.
I pulled up and sat in the car for a minute before I went in.
Savage had been in there for days now. Fed, comfortable, not harmed. I had made that clear when I had him picked up. I wasn’t running a torture operation. I just needed him contained until I was ready to have the conversation that needed to be had, and I hadn’t been ready until now.
I got out and went inside.
He was sitting at the table in the main room when I walked in.
Guarded and triple locked from the outside.
He looked up and something moved across his face that wasn’t quite relief and wasn’t quite fear.
Something in between. He looked tired. Not physically, he looked fine physically.
But tired in the way a man looked when he had been alone with his own thoughts for too long and the thoughts hadn’t been kind.
I pulled out the chair across from him and sat down.
Neither one of us said anything for a moment.
Then Savage said, “You gonna kill me? Get the shit over with if so.”
“If I was going to kill you,” I said, “you’d already be dead. Nigga look how you’ve been living these past few days. I could have had your bitch ass tied up and beaten every day. You know, the way that you did me. But you’ve been living luxury in this motherfucker.”
He nodded slow. Looked down at the table then back up. “So what then.”
“We’re gonna talk,” I said. “For real this time. Not around each other. It’s shit that’s been needing to be addressed and we about to handle that. For real.”
He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms but didn’t say anything to stop me so I kept going.
“I know why you did what you did,” I said.
“You felt like Grim needed somebody to go to bat for him and you took on that responsibility. You’ve been covering for that nigga your whole life the same way I was covering for both of y’all before I left.
I understand that. I’m not sitting here pretending I don’t understand it. ”
Savage’s jaw moved but he stayed quiet.
“What I need you to understand,” I continued, “is that I never wanted to hurt you. Either one of you. Leaving wasn’t about abandoning my brothers.
It was about surviving a situation that had gone past the point of no return and I was seventeen years old and I made the only decision I could see clearly enough to make at that moment. ”
“You killed Pops,” Savage said. Not accusatory. Just stating it.
“Yeah,” I said. “I did. It was him or my brother, and I’ll kill the bitch ass nigga again if I could.”
“Yeah.” Was all he said.
I laughed shortly. I was trying to have a real conversation, and he was sitting here being stubborn. I was being too kind if you ask me. But again, this was my baby brother.
“My problem with you was that I didn’t know why you left.
You ain’t told me shit. He unfolded his arms and put his hands flat on the table.
“Griz, I was fifteen years old. I came home and my father was dead and my brother was screaming and my mama was losing her mind and you were just gone. You were just gone and nobody could tell me why or where you went or if you were coming back.” His voice stayed even but I could hear what was underneath it.
“You know what that does to a fifteen year old kid who loved and admired his fuckin brothers? You were the one that held everything together. You were the one that made sure we ate when Pops didn’t give a fuck.
You were the one that stood between us and him when he got in his moods.
And then you were just not there anymore. ”
I sat with that. Let it land the way it deserved to.
“I know,” I said.
“Do you?” He looked at me. “Because from where I was standing it felt like you chose yourself over us.”
“I chose staying alive over a situation where I wasn’t sure I was going to get to do that,” I said.
“I shot our father to keep him from putting a bullet in Grim’s head.
I saved your brother’s life that night Savage.
And the response I got in that room in the first thirty seconds told me that nobody was going to see it that way.
So I ran because I was seventeen and scared and I thought my life was over if I stayed. ”
Savage was quiet for a long moment.
“Grim told me eventually,” he said. “Not right away. Years later. Told me what Pops was doing that night, what happened with the girl, what happened when you came back into the room.” He paused. “I didn’t know all of that when it happened.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“If I had known—” He stopped. Started again. “I don’t know if it would have changed anything in the moment because I was just a kid and I was in shock. But I needed to know. You should have found a way to tell me before you just left me.”
“You’re right,” I said. And I meant it. “I should have.”
That seemed to take him off guard slightly. Like he had been braced for me to defend myself and the agreement landed somewhere he wasn’t prepared for.
“I always looked up to you,” he said after a moment.
His voice dropped a register. “You know that right. I always wanted to be like you. Not like Grim, not like Pops. Like you. Because you were the only one in that house that seemed like you actually gave a damn about somebody other than yourself.” He shook his head.
“When you left it was like—I don’t know.
Like the only solid thing in that house just wasn’t there no more. ”
Something in my chest moved that I didn’t try to identify.
“I never stopped giving a damn about you,” I said. “Either one of you. That didn’t change when I left.”
“Could’ve fooled me. Nigga I had to kidnap and beat your ass to get your attention!”
“Don’t play with me Savage! I’ll bust yo shit for that!
” I leaned forward. “But I’m here now. Sitting across from you right now.
I went into a house full of armed people to bring Grim home.
I could’ve let Cherish have him. Would’ve solved a problem for me honestly.
But I went because he’s my blood and that’s what you do for blood even when blood has made your life harder than it needed to be. ”
Savage looked at me for a long time.
“I wasn’t gonna kill you,” he said finally. “In that warehouse. I need you to know that. I talked a lot of shit and I meant most of it but I wasn’t gonna kill you. I couldn’t.” Savage spoke honestly.
“I know,” I said.
“How the fuck you know?”
“I know you Savage. I know the difference between when you’re acting and when you’re all the way serious.
You were scared for Grim and you needed somebody to be angry at.
” I held his eye. “It was easier to be angry at me than to sit with the fact that your brother had gotten himself into something that even you couldn’t fix. ”
He looked away. That one landed close enough that he needed a second.
“I appreciate you,” he said quietly. “For all those times with Pops. All those times you put yourself between us and him. You didn’t have to do that. You were the only one who didn’t fear him but that didn’t mean you owed us that. You did it anyway.”
“You were my brothers,” I said. “That was always enough of a reason.”
We sat in the quiet for a minute and it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was the kind of quiet that happened after something real had been said and both people needed a moment to let it settle.
“Clean yourself up,” I said, standing. “There’s clothes in the back room. Fresh everything. Shower, get dressed. We got somewhere to be.”
He looked at me. “Where?”
“Don’t ask me no questions. Go wash your ass and come on.”
—
An hour later I was parked at a location I had coordinated through Marco. Neutral ground. Nothing significant about the spot except that it was private and accessible and nobody would bother us.
Grim was already there when we pulled up. I sent a call to him and told him that I would be meeting him to hand over his brother.
He looked better than he had coming out of that house. The swelling on his jaw had gone down mostly, though it was still visible. He could thank me for that one, every time he caught his reflection.
He was standing outside leaning against a wall, arms crossed, watching us pull up with an expression that didn’t give much away.
Savage got out of my car and looked at his brother and something passed between them that didn’t need words. The specific communication that only existed between people who had grown up in the same fire and survived it together.
I stood between them.
“I’m only going to say this once,” I said, looking at both of them. “So I need both of y’all to actually hear me.”
They were looking at me.
“I’ve had this conversation with each of you separately.
I’ve said what needed to be said and I’ve heard what I needed to hear.
What I’m telling you now is where things stand going forward.
” I looked from one to the other. “You are my brothers. That means something to me even after everything. It has always meant something to me. But I have a life built, a position I hold, people who depend on me moving a certain way. I cannot have my own blood being a liability to that. We clear so far?”
Both of them said they understood. I wasn’t going to be interfering with their business and the operations that they ran, and I expected the same.
“The next time I see either one of you, it needs to be on some business. Something productive. Something that benefits everybody at the table. If you come at me sideways again, if you send anybody at my people, if I even get a feeling that something is moving in my direction that has either one of your fingerprints on it—” I stopped and looked at them steady.
“I will not send a team. I will come myself. You niggas know how dangerous I can get. Ain’t shit changed.
And after everything that’s happened in the last week you both know I mean exactly what I’m saying. ”
Savage looked at me and shook his head slowly, something almost like a smile on his face. “You cold blooded man. You really are. How the fuck you gone stand here and tell us you’ll murk us, basically. You know, we all got it in us.”
“I learned it somewhere, but you know, I never gave a fuck. I promise I’ll draw down the quickest.” I said.
Reminding them of who I was. Gremlin was unusually quiet, and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
By looking on his face, I feel like he was disappointed in himself for all the time that he spent hating me.
“You ain’t gonna have to do all that though,” he said. “That’s not what this is gonna be. I give you my word on that. You my lil brother Griz, and I appreciate the shit you’ve done. Even if I never said it, my nigga.”
I looked at Grim.
He held my eye and nodded once. Slow and deliberate. A man’s nod. The kind that didn’t need a speech attached to it.
I stepped forward and grabbed Savage first. He grabbed me back and held it for a real second, the kind of embrace that acknowledged everything that had happened and everything that had been said in that safe house without having to repeat any of it.
Then I stepped to Grim and we did the same. His grip was tight and brief and I felt something in it that I was choosing to believe was genuine.
When I stepped back I looked at both of them one more time.
“Take care of yourselves,” I said.
Then I got in my car and drove away and didn’t look in the rearview.
What I found out later, and what settled something in me that I hadn’t even realized was that Grim had taken care of our father’s body after that night.
All those years ago. He had handled it, protected the situation, kept what happened in that house from ever becoming something that followed me legally.
He had never told me. Never used it as leverage even when he had everything else at his disposal to come at me with.
Underneath all the damage and the anger and the years of hostility, my brother had been covering for me the whole time.
Yeah he blackmailed my ass, but he was never going to snitch on me. His hands were just as dirty as mine.
I drove for a long time after that without thinking about anything specific. I had a sense of peace that I no longer had to look over my back. Not from my brothers anyway.