46. JUSTICE
JUSTICE
Marceline’s was packed for the lunch rush when I walked in.
Kira’s family had three of them across the DMV.
The name came from her grandmother in New Orleans.
Creole food, good music, a spot where city council members and pastors ate when they wanted to be seen.
Her family had been running it for decades, and Kira managed the flagship in Silver Spring with her name on the lease.
I popped up on her without a phone call.
I needed her to know I meant business. The hostess opened her mouth to greet me but I was past her before she got a word out.
Customers looked up from their plates. A busboy with a tub of dishes stepped out of my path.
I didn’t slow down for any of them. I knew where her office was.
Her door was open. She was behind her desk going through invoices with her glasses on and a pen in her hand.
She looked up when my shadow filled the doorway, and I watched it happen in real time.
Her eyes got wide. Her hand went up to her hair.
She took the glasses off fast and sat up straighter.
A smile started coming across her face that turned my stomach, because I knew exactly what she was thinking.
She thought I was there to make things right.
“Justice.” She said my name seductively and relieved. “I was hoping you’d come by one day. I’ve been wanting to talk to you. Can you close the door?”
I closed it. But not for the reason she wanted.
I walked to her desk and set the earring down right on top of her invoices. The little gold hoop with the etched design sat there between us under the fluorescent light.
Her face changed. She looked at it and then up at me, confused.
“Oh my God, where’d you find that? I’ve been looking for it everywhere. I thought I lost it at the gym or something.”
“I found it in my stable,” I cut her off cold. “Right next to Midnite. My daughter’s horse. The one that’s dead.”
The smile was gone now.
“What?”
“Dream’s horse is dead, Kira. Do you know how that happened?”
“Justice, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t been near your stable.”
“I caught you behind my house just a few days ago. Now my horse is dead and your jewelry was at the scene. So cut the bullshit and stop playing dumb, because it’s disgusting.”
Her mouth opened and closed. Tears started forming in her eyes.
“I don’t know why you’re accusing me of killing a horse but I didn’t do it. Justice, you know me! You know I’m not capable of that. You know how I feel about you. I’ve fallen in love with you. I would never hurt your or those girls,” she cried.
“Let me be real clear with you, Kira, since you need it spelled out.” My voice dropped low.
“We slept together a few times. That’s all it was.
I never promised you a thing. I never told you I loved you.
I never told you we were building something.
You made all of that up in your head, and now you’re taking it out on my children because reality didn’t match whatever story you told yourself.
I don’t want you. I don’t love you. At this point I don’t even like you. ”
She put her hand over her mouth. The tears were coming for real now.
“I would never hurt those girls,” she said through her fingers. “Justice, they are my goddaughters. I’ve been there for you ever since Monica…”
“Don’t say her name.” I held my hand up. “You lost that right. They were your goddaughters. Past tense. That shit is done done.”
“Justice please…”
“Here’s what happens next.” I stepped back from her desk but I didn’t move toward the door.
“If you come near my family again. If anything else happens to my kids, my property, my grandmother. If I hear your name anywhere near my life. I will shut these restaurants down. Every single one. This one, Georgetown, the one your brother just opened in Alexandria. All of them.”
“You can’t do that.” But her voice cracked saying it, because she knew I could.
“I got people at the health department. The liquor board. The fire marshal’s office.
One call from me and every license your family holds gets reviewed, pulled, buried in red tape until there’s nothing left to reopen.
Your grandmother spent forty years building Marceline’s.
You want to sit here and watch me take it apart? Keep testing me.”
She stared at me. The tears had stopped. Something else had taken over her face now, harder and meaner, a woman who just realized she had nothing left to lose.
“You know what, Justice?” Her voice went flat and cold. “You’re so busy coming after me, maybe you need to look closer to home. That woman you got living in your house. Skye.” She leaned forward. “You don’t know one real thing about her. You think I’m the threat? You need to open your eyes.”
I looked at her for a long second. “You’re pathetic,” I said. “Your earring is in my dead horse’s stall, and your move is to point at somebody else. That tells me everything I need to know about you, Kira.”
I turned and walked out. Through the kitchen, past the staff who suddenly couldn’t make eye contact, out the front door into the parking lot.
I sat in the Maybach for about thirty seconds before I picked up my phone.
First call was Deon Cooke at the Montgomery County health department. Deon owed me from way back. I told him I was calling it in. Marceline’s needed a full inspection at every location. No warning, and I wanted them aggressive. Everything by the book, and then some things that weren’t.
Second call was a connect at the liquor board. Same conversation. Different agency. Same result.
Third call was to my lawyer. He knew people at the fire marshal’s office who could make Kira’s permit situation very complicated very fast. I told him to start today.
By the time I pulled out of that parking lot, the wheels were already turning on taking apart everything Kira’s family had built over four decades. Her grandmother’s legacy. Her brother’s new spot. The whole thing.
And I felt nothing about it. Not one thing. She came for my kids. This was the price.