16. AMAI #2
“Niggas in the street scared of you, but I ain’t,” he continued, his voice steady and controlled. “Nothing that came out of my nutsack puts fear in my heart, Amai. You need to remember that.”
I felt the rage building, hot and consuming. But beneath it was something else. Something I didn’t want to acknowledge.
Fear.
Not of Winston himself, but of what he represented. The cage I’d spent my entire life trying to escape. The legacy I’d been born into and couldn’t shed no matter how far I ran.
Winston walked past me into the sitting room, his movements unhurried. He poured himself a glass of bourbon from the crystal decanter on the side table, then turned to face me.
“I have him,” he said simply.
The confirmation hit me like a physical blow. I’d known—of course I’d known—but hearing him say it out loud made it real. Made it undeniable.
“Why?” I asked.
Winston took a sip of his bourbon, savoring it. “Because you’ve lost your goddamn mind over some bitch who’s carrying a baby that might not even be yours.”
The word bitch landed like a slap. My hands curled into fists at my sides.
“Don’t call her that.”
“I’ll call her whatever the fuck I want,” Winston said, his voice still calm, still controlled.
“You’re being stupid, Amai. Reckless. You stabbed your own brother in front of witnesses.
You’ve been disappearing for days at a time.
Your operation is falling apart because you’re too busy playing house with a surrogate. ”
“She’s not—”
“She’s nothing,” Winston interrupted, his voice hardening. “She’s a means to an end. A womb. That’s all she was ever supposed to be. But you’ve turned her into something else. Something that’s making you weak.”
I took a step toward him. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I?” Winston set his glass on the table with a soft clink. “You think I don’t see what’s happening? You think I don’t know that you’re in love with her?”
The word hung in the air between us.
Love.
I didn’t deny it. I couldn’t.
“You don’t get to choose who you love, Amai,” Winston continued, his voice dropping to something colder, more dangerous. “You belong to this family. You belong to the organization. You don’t get to throw that away for some woman who doesn’t even know whose baby she’s carrying.”
“That’s not her fault.”
“I don’t give a fuck whose fault it is.” Winston’s voice rose slightly, the first crack in his composure. “What I care about is that you’re compromising everything we’ve built. Everything I’ve built. And I’m not going to let that happen.”
“So, you took Priest.” My voice was flat. “You took the one person I trust. The one person who keeps everything running.”
“I took leverage,” Winston corrected. “Because you’ve proven that you can’t be trusted to make rational decisions anymore. You need to be reminded of what’s at stake.”
“And what’s that?”
Winston’s eyes locked onto mine. “Priest’s life.
His safety. His future. All of it depends on you getting your shit together and remembering who you are.
What you are. You will be a husband to Yahmaria whether you want to or not.
You will honor that marriage. And if I find out anything is out of sorts with that arrangement—if I find out you’ve been disrespecting her, neglecting her, or making her look like a fool—Priest will lose a body part. Do you understand me?”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. The rage was building, consuming, threatening to explode.
“And if you refuse to comply,” Winston continued, his voice dropping to something almost conversational, “you’ll receive pieces of Priest’s body as a reminder.
A finger first, maybe. Then a hand. Then an arm.
I’ll send them to you one at a time until you remember that your loyalty belongs to this family.
Not to some woman who doesn’t even know whose baby she’s carrying. ”
The rage that had been simmering beneath the surface exploded. I lunged at him, my hands reaching for his throat, every ounce of control I’d maintained shattering in an instant.
I didn’t make it two steps.
The gunshot was deafening in the enclosed space.
Pain exploded in my left thigh, white-hot and immediate. My leg buckled beneath me, and I went down hard, my knee slamming onto the marble floor. I gasped, my hand instinctively going to the wound. Blood seeped through my fingers, warm and slick.
I looked up at Winston. He stood there, the gun still in his hand, his expression unchanged. Calm. Clinical. Like he’d just swatted a fly.
“That,” he said quietly, “was a warning.”
I tried to stand, but my leg wouldn’t support my weight. The pain was sharp and insistent, radiating up my thigh and down to my knee. I pressed my hand harder against the wound, trying to stem the bleeding.
“You shot me,” I said, my voice hoarse with disbelief.
“I grazed you,” Winston corrected, setting the gun on the table beside his bourbon. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. This is just a reminder that I’m still in control. Not you. Me.”
He walked closer, and I saw the scars on his face in the light—the ones he’d earned over decades of violence, of doing what needed to be done. The jagged line that ran from his eye to his jaw. The puckered scar on his forearm. The faint marks on his knuckles.
He looked down at me with something that might have been pity.
“These scars,” he said, running a finger along the line on his jaw, “are proof that I get the job done. That I don’t mind shedding blood to do it. That I’ve survived things that would’ve broken lesser men. You need to remember that, Amai. You need to remember who the fuck you’re dealing with.”
In that moment, I felt completely helpless. Completely powerless. I had no moves. No leverage. Nothing.
Winston had Priest.
Winston had the gun.
And Winston had just proven that he was willing to use violence—even against his own son—to maintain control.
Footsteps thundered down the stairs. A moment later, my mother appeared in the doorway, her eyes wide with shock and fury.
“What the hell did you do?” Mama’s voice was shrill, panicked. She rushed toward me, dropping to her knees beside me. Her hands hovered over the wound, trembling. “Winston, what the fuck did you do?”
“He’s fine,” Winston said dismissively. “It’s a graze. Blood loss won’t kill him.”
“Blood loss—” Her voice broke. She turned to glare at him, her face twisted with rage. “You shot our son!”
“He attacked me,” Winston said, his tone matter of fact. “I defended myself. I didn’t kill him. A lil blood loss ain’t gon kill his ass.”
There was something almost absurd about the way he said it—so casual, so matter of fact—that for a moment, the situation felt surreal. Like I was watching it happen to someone else.
But the pain in my leg was real. The blood on my hands was real. And the cold, clinical expression on my father’s face was real.
“Defended yourself?” Mama’s voice rose to a scream. “He’s your son! You don’t shoot your own child!”
“He’s not a child,” Winston said coldly. “He’s a grown man who forgot his place. And I reminded him.”
Mama stood, her entire body shaking with fury. “You’re a monster. You know that? A goddamn monster.”
Winston picked up his bourbon and took another sip. “I’m a realist. And right now, Amai needs to understand that his actions have consequences. Not just for him, but for everyone around him.”
“Consequences?” Her voice was venomous. “You want to talk about consequences? You’ve destroyed this family. You’ve turned your sons against each other. You’ve made them into weapons instead of men. And now you’re shooting them when they don’t obey you?”
“Odette—”
“Don’t you Odette me.” She pointed a shaking finger at him. “You’ve gone too far this time. Too fucking far.”
She turned back to me, her hands gentle as she examined the wound. “We need to get you to a hospital.”
“No hospital,” I said through gritted teeth. The pain was manageable now, a dull throb that I could compartmentalize. “Call Dr. Arceneaux.”
Mama nodded, pulling her phone from her pocket. Her hands were still shaking as she dialed. “Jean-Paul? It’s Odette Landry. I need you at the house. Now. Amai’s been shot.”
There was a pause.
“Yes, shot. His father—” Her voice broke. “Just get here. Please.”
She ended the call and looked back at me, her eyes filled with tears. “He’ll be here in twenty minutes.”
I nodded, my jaw clenched against the pain. My mother’s hands pressed a decorative pillow against the wound, applying pressure. The white fabric turned red almost immediately.
Winston watched us from across the room, his expression unchanged. He looked like a man observing an experiment, detached and clinical.
“You’re going to comply, Amai,” he said quietly. “You’re going to stop this reckless behavior. You’re going to fix your operation. And you’re going to remember that Priest’s life is in my hands.”
I looked up at him, my vision blurring slightly from the pain and the adrenaline crash. “What do you want?”
“I want you to be smart,” Winston said. “I want you to stop letting your dick make decisions for you. I want you to remember that you’re a Landry, and Landrys don’t fall apart over women.”
“She’s not just—”
“I don’t care what she is to you,” Winston interrupted. “What I care about is that you’re compromising everything. And if you don’t get your shit together, Priest will pay the price. Do you understand me?”
I understood.
I understood that my father had just shot me to prove a point. I understood that he had Priest locked away somewhere, using him as leverage to control me. I understood that Winston would do whatever it took to maintain his power, even if it meant destroying his own son.
And I understood that I was trapped.
Because as much as I wanted to tell him to go to hell, as much as I wanted to walk away and never look back, I couldn’t. Not while he had Priest. Not while Priest’s life hung in the balance.
“I understand,” I said finally, my voice hollow.
Winston nodded, satisfied. “Good. Then we’re done here.”