23. JUSTICE
JUSTICE
I felt her before I saw her. That’s the only way I know how to say it.
There was so much going on in the room. The music was blasting, people were laughing and the sounds of money being spent filled the atmosphere.
But then the air shifted. The hair on my neck stood at attention, forcing me to take notice.
My head turned on its own, and there she was.
Skye.
In red.
She came through those doors with her friend at her side in a red dress that had no business being legal, and every thought in my head went quiet at once.
I’d seen this woman every single day for weeks.
In scrubs. In sweats. Hair tied up, no makeup, on her knees playing with my daughter.
I thought I had a handle on what she did to me.
I did not have a handle on a single thing.
Because this was something else. Her hair up off that neck.
That dress moving on her like it was in love with her too.
And even now, even dressed like that, she scanned the room careful, still reading every exit out of pure habit.
It took the air clean out of my chest and didn’t give it back.
“Close your mouth, nigga.”
Quest said to me. Standing at my shoulder with a drink he wasn’t really drinking, watching me watch her, that big-brother smirk already all over his face.
“Man, go on somewhere.”
“Nah, this is good. This is the best thing I’ve seen all night.” He took a slow sip. “My too-serious brother. Cold as a meat locker for three years straight. And here you are damn near drooling over a woman.” He laughed low. “Mehar owes me twenty dollars.”
“Ain’t nobody drooling over nothing.” I kept my face still and took a drink of my own. “She works for me. I’m being a good host. That’s all this is.”
“Uh huh.” Quest wasn’t buying one word, and he wasn’t going to press it either, because that’s not how we do.
He just let it sit there, grinning, knowing.
“I’m not staying long, for the record. Mehar’s home with the baby and I don’t like being gone from them at night.
But I’m real glad I stayed long enough to see your face do that.
” He clapped my shoulder. “Go be a good host, then. Host.”
I ignored him and started across the floor toward her.
I didn’t make it.
There was a man at the bar I knew by his money and nothing else. High roller, dropped serious cash at my tables, the type of guest you comp and tolerate. He was drunk past the point of sense. He’d spotted Skye the same second half the room had, and he got to her before I could.
I watched him put his hand on her.
His hand went low on her back, then lower, and he grabbed a full handful of her ass like she was his.
I saw Skye go rigid. Saw her step sideways quick and put on that polite hard smile women use to get out of a thing without making it a thing, saying something with her mouth while her body said get off me.
He didn’t let her go. He caught her wrist and pulled her back into him, close, his mouth down at her ear, and whatever he said in it made her flinch like she’d been slapped.
I don’t remember crossing the floor. One second I was thirty feet away. The next I had a fistful of that man’s collar, all two hundred pounds of him coming up off his heels.
“Whoa. What the fuck?” was all he got out.
I snatched him up by his collar and threw him like he was a crumpled up ball of trash. He hit my floor on his back and slid into a barstool hard enough to knock it over. The bar section turned at the sound of it, glasses stopping halfway to mouths.
“You know how much money I drop in here?” He was scrambling, trying to get his feet under him and his dignity back at the same time. “I spent six figures this year at these tables—”
“And?”
I stepped over him and he stopped moving. Whatever he saw looking down at him took every word he had left. He got his hands up in front of his own face, flinching, that ugly instant finally understanding that the money in his pocket can’t help him now.
I didn’t hit him. I raised a hand instead, and my security was on him before I finished the motion, one under each arm, hauling him up off my floor like something spilled.
“Get him out my building,” I said. “Cash him out, ban him, I don’t care. He can’t come back. Ever.”
“Wait— Justice, man, come on, I ain’t know that was your girl!”
They dragged him toward the doors with his shoes skipping across the marble, him apologizing to nobody. The music never even stopped playing.
“You okay?” I asked her.
“I’m fine.” Her voice was steady. Her eyes weren’t, quite. “You didn’t have to do all that.”
“Yeah I did.”
We looked at each other a second too long.
“Well,” said the woman beside her, fanning herself. “I don’t know what I just watched but I need a drink after it. Hi. I’m Aubrey, her best friend. I’ve heard nothing about you, which we’re gonna fix.”
“Justice. Good to meet you, Aubrey.” I nodded toward the good side of the room. “Y’all come on. I got you a table.”
I walked them up to the VIP section. It had velvet furniture and private service, with a view over the floor. Sat them down like they were the most important people in the building. Because tonight one of them was.
“Order whatever you want,” I told them. “Food, bottles, whatever. It’s handled. And don’t do that thing where you order the cheapest thing on the menu to be polite.” I looked right at Skye when I said it. “Not tonight. Tonight you get what you want.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“Enjoy your night.” I made myself walk away before I sat down at that table and never got up.
I had rounds to make. It was that kind of night, half celebration and half business, and there were hands to shake I couldn’t skip.
I crossed to the far side of the room where the Harlows had set up. Roman stood when he saw me and extended his hand.
“There he is.” He shook my hand and pulled a woman up beside him. She was a pretty mahogany toned woman dressed elegantly, draped in something expensive. “Justice, my wife, Aria. Aria, this is Justice Banks.”
“A pleasure.” She had a warm smile and a firm little handshake.
“Hey Julian,” I greeted his brother who sat in the cut. His brother stood and shook my hand.
“This place is nice. Y’all did your big one with this,” Julian complimented.
“Thanks. It’s only up from here,” I replied.
“Baby.” Roman put his hand on his wife’s back and tipped his head at me, pride in his voice.
“This right here is one of the big brains behind what’s about to be the most affluent Black community this country has ever seen.
Freetown. When it’s done, they’ll be tryin’ to buy their way in for the next fifty years.
And we get to help build it.” He looked at me. “It’s an honor, man. For real.”
“The honor’s mutual.” And I meant it. There was something solid about Roman Harlow, a thing I recognized, a man who’d clearly clawed his way up from somewhere and never planned on going back.
“But tonight ain’t about none of that. Tonight you drink up and eat good, all of it on me.
Try the oysters before they’re gone, my chef flies ’em in fresh.
” I clapped his shoulder. “We got a lot of good years coming. This is just the start.”
Roman lifted his glass to me. “To the start.”
I left them to it and headed back across my room, across the crowded loud beautiful floor, back toward the only table I actually wanted to be at.
I never once looked back at the Harlows.
Had no reason to. I had a woman in a red dress waiting on the other side of the room.
And every step I took toward her carried me further from a truth sitting right there at that table, one I could not have seen coming if I’d stared straight at it.
Aubrey stood up when I got back, grabbing her little purse.
“I’m gonna go be nosy and find a bathroom,” she announced. “Do not let anybody sit in my seat. And you.” She pointed at me. “Be nice to my friend or I’ll fight you.” She sailed off into the crowd. Then it was just the two of us, and the noise of the party dropped away by half.
Skye had a drink in her, I could tell. Not gone, just loosened, the careful edges of her softened, a little more of the real woman showing through the guard she usually kept bolted down.
“You look like you belong here,” I told her, sitting down close, closer than a boss sits. “Out here in the world. Dressed up, laughing. Suits you better than the scrubs.”
“Careful, Mr. Banks.” But she was smiling. “Somebody might think you’re flirting with the help.”
“Somebody might be right.”
That landed. I saw her breath change, saw her decide whether to run from it or sit in it. She sat in it. That was new.
“You’re different tonight,” I said. “Lighter. Like you set something down at the door.” I reached over, slow enough she could have stopped me, and lifted her chin with two fingers, tilting her face up into the light so I could see her eyes.
Those careful, guarded, gorgeous eyes that I still couldn’t find the bottom of.
“There she is. That’s the one I keep catching glimpses of. The one under all that armor.”
She didn’t pull away. She let me hold her there, her chin in my hand. Close enough that one decision would’ve closed the rest of the distance. And for one long second I watched her want it as bad as I did.
“Justice.” My name came out of her low and unsteady.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think this is—”
“Justice.”
Quest. Right at my shoulder, and I could’ve killed him for the timing. I let Skye’s chin go and sat back, and she pulled in a breath like she’d been underwater.
“I’m heading out,” Quest said. His face had gone serious now, the teasing all drained out of it. “But before I go, I need to talk to you. Business. Now, if you got a minute.”
I looked at him. I knew that look. That look was never nothing.
“Yeah.” I stood, buttoning my jacket, and glanced back down at Skye. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
I followed my brother off the floor and into the quiet of my office, leaving her behind.