Chapter 40 Mehar
MEHAR
Quest had been different since Rita’s birthday.
He still went to work, still handled business, still showed up wherever he needed to show up.
But the warmth behind his eyes had gone cold.
He talked less. Laughed never. He moved through his days like a machine running a program that didn’t include feelings.
He answered calls about the casino because the grand opening was tomorrow and business didn’t stop for personal crises.
But he’d been ignoring Rita’s calls for days.
Ignored Prime. Ignored Mekhi. Everybody who wasn’t directly connected to money or the opening got silence.
Everybody except me. I was the only person he let close.
I’d been spending nights at the hotel since the overlook. He hadn’t asked me to. I just showed up. Brought food. Sat beside him when the silence was what he needed.
“What are you gonna do about Thad?” he asked while he was knotting his tie. Just like that. Casual. Like he was asking about dinner plans.
“I’m going to kill him.”
“When?”
“Soon. This week maybe. I just need help with the body.”
“I got you.” He didn’t look at me when he said it. Just kept working the tie. “Let me know when and I’ll handle the rest.”
I was getting dressed in a fitted emerald dress that he’d bought for me at the mall, gold accessories, heels when he came up behind me and put his hands on my waist and pressed his mouth against my neck.
“We don’t have time,” I said, already feeling my body betray my words.
“I just need five minutes.”
“You have never spent five minutes between my thighs.”
He kissed my neck again and his hands started moving south and I grabbed his wrists and held them.
“Quest. The press will be there. The acting mayor will be there. Every important person in DC will be there. And if I show up flushed and wobbly-legged because you couldn’t keep your mouth to yourself, your grandmother is going to know exactly why.”
He stepped back with that half-smile and finished getting ready. We took separate cars to the casino because I had class in the morning.
The casino was transformed. The building that had been dark and empty during Rita’s birthday was now lit up and alive and buzzing with energy.
Red carpet at the entrance. Photographers lining both sides.
Valet parking backed up down the block. Women in gowns and men in tuxedos and the bass from whatever DJ they’d hired thumping through the walls before you even got inside.
I found Zainab near the bar. She was in a deep red dress that made her dark skin glow and she was holding a champagne flute and looking around the room with wide eyes.
“This is insane,” she said when I hugged her. “Do you see this place? They did a great job.”
“Where are the twins?”
“With a sitter and Yusef. I’ve already checked the Nest camera four times.” She took a sip of champagne. “You look gorgeous. That color on you is everything.”
“Thank you. Where’s Prime?”
“Somewhere doing security checks. You know how he gets.” She looked at me sideways. “How’s Quest doing? Prime said he’s been ghosting since the party.”
“He’s handling it. Tonight is important for him. He needs this to go well.”
“It will. They’ve planned really well. If something goes wrong tonight it would have to be an act of God.”
We clinked glasses, and I took a sip and let myself enjoy the moment for a second.
The music, the lights, the energy of a room full of people who were there to celebrate something the Banks family built.
I could see Quest across the room, shaking hands with the acting mayor, laughing at something a city council member said, performing the version of himself that the world expected.
Nobody looking at him would know that three days ago his identity had been detonated by a letter from his own mother.
“I need to use the bathroom,” I said. “Come with me?”
“Always.”
The bathroom was down a corridor off the main floor. It was as upscale as the rest of the casino, complete with marble countertops, full-length mirrors, soft lighting, fresh flowers on the vanity. We walked in, and I was checking my lipstick when the door swung open behind us.
It was Lyric.
She was in a tight silver dress with her hair slicked back and her eyes locked on me with an expression that told me this wasn’t a coincidence. She’d been waiting. She’d seen me go to the bathroom and she’d followed.
“So you’re the new bitch,” she said.
Zainab set her champagne down on the counter. I put my lipstick back in my clutch. Slowly.
“Lyric, walk away,” I said.
“Or what?” She stepped closer. “I gave that man two years of my life. And he threw me away for YOU?”
“Please walk away before you embarrass yourself.”
“Fuck you,” she barked and then swung.
It was so sloppy. She threw a looping slap aimed at my face that told me everything I needed to know about Lyric’s fighting experience, which was zero.
I caught her wrist mid-swing, yanked her forward off balance, and hit her in the mouth with my free hand.
Clean and hard, a punch that Denise at the range would’ve been proud of.
Lyric stumbled back into the paper towel dispenser and grabbed her face. “You crazy bitch!”
“I warned you.”
She came at me again, this time grabbing my hair with both hands. I let her because having both her hands in my hair meant they weren’t protecting her body. I hit her twice in the ribs and she doubled over and I grabbed the back of her head and brought her face down to meet my knee coming up.
She hit the marble floor and Zainab was already there.
Not to break it up. My sister stepped over Lyric’s body and stood beside me with her champagne flute still in her hand and looked down at this woman on the bathroom floor with the same calm energy she’d used to run a bakery while her man was at war.
“Stay down,” Zainab said. “You don’t want what comes next.”
Lyric stayed down. Bleeding from her lip, mascara running, silver dress twisted sideways. She looked up at me from the floor with tears and rage in her eyes.
“He’s going to leave you too,” she said. “He leaves everyone.”
“Maybe. But he won’t be leaving me for you.”
I turned to wash my hands because my knuckles were stinging and I had blood on my ring. And that’s when we heard it.
BANG. BANG. BANG BANG BANG.
There were gunshots coming from the main floor. Multiple weapons, rapid succession, and then the screaming started. It was a wave of collective terror that sounded like nothing else on earth, hundreds of voices all reaching the same pitch of panic at the same time.
My gun was in my clutch. I had it out in two seconds, safety off, barrel up. Zainab’s eyes went wide, but she didn’t freeze because Zainab had survived worse than a shooting and her body knew what to do.
Zainab’s phone buzzed. She looked at it and her face changed.
“Prime says get out. Back exit. Now.”
I grabbed Zainab’s hand and we moved away from the main floor where the shots were still ringing out, away from the stampede of people crashing toward the front exits.
We went toward the back of the casino, down the same corridor Quest had taken me through on Rita’s birthday, past the High Rollers Lounge where he’d laid me on a blackjack table, toward a service exit I’d clocked earlier because I always clocked exits.
Lyric was still on the bathroom floor. I didn’t look back at her.
We hit the service door and burst into the night air. The parking lot behind the casino was empty except for delivery trucks and staff vehicles. More shots from inside, muffled now by walls and distance. Sirens already wailing somewhere close.
“Where’s your car?” I asked Zainab.
“East side of the lot. Silver Acura.”
“Give me the keys. I’m driving.”
She handed them over without argument. We ran to the car, I started the engine, and I pulled out of the lot and onto the street and drove away from the casino with my gun in my lap and my sister in the passenger seat and the sound of gunfire fading behind us.