Chapter 42 Mega
MEGA
“Yo, what the fuck were y’all thinkin’?!
” I barked at these young niggas sitting in my living room looking like kids who got caught stealing out the corner store.
That’s exactly what they were too. Kids.
Stupid, emotional, reckless-ass kids who I’d hired to do my dirty work because I was at that age where I ain’t tryna be in the streets.
I’m running this shit from a distance. Moving pieces on the board.
Operating like a boss is supposed to operate.
Except my pieces just went rogue and shot up a casino on opening night in front of the press and the acting mayor and about four hundred witnesses, and now two of them were laid up in the hospital with bullet wounds and viper tattoos visible for anybody with eyes to connect dots.
Bryce was on the couch with his head in his hands.
Elijah was by the door, looking like he wanted to leave.
Stephen was in the kitchen pretending to get water, but really just trying to be invisible.
The only two who weren’t here were the two who caused the problem.
Keyvon, who took one in the leg and was currently handcuffed to a hospital bed, and Jerome, who took two to the chest and was in the ICU fighting for his life.
“I tried to talk them out of it,” Bryce said, lifting his head. “I told them Mega said chill. Keyvon wasn’t hearing me. He’s been on one ever since Dimonte got killed, and I couldn’t…”
“You couldn’t what? Control your boys? That’s your fuckin’ job, Bryce.
I put you in charge of them because you were supposed to be the level-headed one.
The one with sense. And now I got two soldiers in the hospital, the cops sniffing around, and the Banks family on high alert because your boys wanted to play Rambo at a fuckin’ grand opening. ”
I paced the living room. The McMansion was quiet except for my voice bouncing off the vaulted ceilings.
Five bedrooms, three-car garage, hot tub out back, and it all felt hollow without Serenity in it.
Not that I missed her exactly. I missed what she provided.
The warmth. The meals. The way she’d sit on the couch and scroll her phone while I worked and I could reach over and touch her whenever I wanted to. The access.
Mostly the access.
I stopped pacing long enough to cut a line on the glass coffee table.
The coke was good tonight; clean, white, no cut.
I’d been going through about a gram a day since Serenity disappeared and the supply was my one expense I never skimped on.
I leaned down, snorted the line through a rolled hundred, and felt that familiar burn followed by the rush that made everything sharper and nothing matter.
“Y’all have any idea how much heat this brings?
” I said, wiping my nose with the back of my hand while these young boys watched me do a line in the middle of disciplining them.
I didn’t give a fuck. I was the boss. Bosses did what they wanted.
“The cops are gonna be crawling all over this shit. Keyvon’s got a viper tat on his neck that connects him to the crew.
Jerome too. If either one of them talks… ”
“They ain’t gonna talk,” Bryce said.
“You said they weren’t gonna shoot up the casino either, and here we are.
” I pointed at him. “Everybody lays low. Starting now. No bikes, no crew meetups, no nothing. Y’all are invisible until I say otherwise.
And if anybody—anybody—goes rogue again, I’m handling it myself. And y’all know how I handle shit.”
Jah and Steph nodded fast. Bryce just looked at me.
“I need to talk to you about something else,” Bryce said.
“What.”
“My payment. For the warehouse. You said the rest was coming two weeks ago and I still ain’t seen it. That was a fifty-thousand-dollar job and I only got twenty. I got a baby on the way, man. I need that money.”
I looked at him and kept my face flat because the truth was I didn’t have it.
The fifty thousand Vivica had wired me for the warehouse job was supposed to go to Bryce minus my cut.
But my cut had turned into the whole pie because the BCC was struggling in ways I wasn’t about to admit to a nineteen-year-old.
Since Rashid died, the plugs didn’t trust us.
Our supply chain was fractured. Revenue was down to a trickle, and the overhead—the house, the cars, the coke, Serenity’s shopping habits before she vanished, had eaten through reserves I didn’t have in the first place.
I’d spent Bryce’s money. Most of it went up my nose, and the rest went to keeping up appearances because in this game the moment people think you’re broke is the moment they stop respecting you.
“I got it,” I said. “It’s coming this week. I had to move some things around, but you’ll have it by Friday.”
“You said that last Friday.”
“And I’m saying it again. Friday. You got my word.”
Bryce didn’t look convinced, but he also didn’t push it, because pushing the man who signs your checks is a good way to stop getting checks. He stood up, dapped me, and headed for the door with Elijah and Stephen behind him.
“Lay low,” I called after them. “I mean it.”
The door closed, and I was alone in the house that used to have Serenity in it and now just had coke residue on the coffee table and the faint smell of her perfume on the couch pillows that was fading more every day.
I cut another line and thought about how I’d gotten here.
Vivica Banks had reached out to me eight months ago through a mutual contact on the inside.
She’d heard the BCC was struggling after Rashid went down and she had a proposition.
She needed someone on the outside to run operations against her own family.
Targeted hits designed to destabilize Banks Reserve and weaken her sons’ grip on the company.
In exchange, she’d fund the BCC’s resurrection with product connects, cash infusions, and a path back to relevance.
All I had to do was follow her directives. The warehouse fire was her idea. Hiring the Vipers to do the torch job was her idea. And getting close to Serenity was her idea, too.
“Get in her bed and get in her phone,” Vivica had told me during one of our calls. “Serenity knows everything about that family. She’s the weak link. Use her.”
So I did. Got Serenity high, got her comfortable, got her trusting me.
And when she’d pass out after a night of coke and champagne, I’d go through her phone like a filing cabinet.
Calendar entries, text threads, family group chats, financial documents she had access to as the family’s former bookkeeper.
Everything I found went straight to Vivica, who used it to plan her next move from a prison cell with the precision of a general running a war from exile.
Rita’s birthday party. The guest list. The timing. The casino opening date. All of it came from Serenity’s phone. All of it passed through me. And Vivica turned every piece of information into a weapon.
My phone rang. Speak of the devil.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“What happened at the casino?” Vivica’s voice was flat and cold and didn’t sound like a question even though it was shaped like one.
“Two of the Viper boys went rogue. Shot up the grand opening. I didn’t sanction it. They were acting on their own, trying to get revenge for Dimonte.”
“And now two of them are in the hospital, where police will be asking questions.”
“They won’t talk.”
“You better hope they don’t. Because if this blows back on you, it blows back on me. And you cannot afford for it to blow back on you, Mega. Not with how thin your operation is right now.”
She knew. Of course she knew. Vivica knew everything, even from behind bars, because knowing things was her oxygen and she’d suffocate without it.
“Where is Serenity?” she asked.
“She’s been missing for about two weeks now. Won’t answer my calls. Her apartment is empty.”
“Sounds like her brothers got to her.” Vivica said it matter-of-factly, like it was a chess move she’d anticipated but couldn’t prevent. “Which means your access to the family’s information is gone.”
“I know.”
“Fix it.”
“How? I don’t know where the fuck she is.”
“I don’t care how. Fix it. She’s your only asset inside that family and without her you’re useless to me. And useless people don’t get funded.” The line went quiet for a second. “Is this going to blow back on me?”
“No. I hired those boys through three layers of separation. They don’t know your name. They don’t know who I report to. All they know is I’m BCC and I pay them for jobs.”
“Keep it that way.” She hung up without saying goodbye because Vivica didn’t do pleasantries. She did directives.
I sat on the couch and stared at the ceiling and snorted the second line and felt the chemicals light up my brain while the rest of me sat in the wreckage of an operation that was falling apart faster than I could hold it together.
Two soldiers in the hospital. A boss in prison pulling strings I could barely keep track of.
A girlfriend in hiding who had all the intel I needed locked in a phone I couldn’t access anymore.
And a nineteen-year-old with a baby on the way who I owed thirty thousand dollars I didn’t have.
I picked up my phone and scrolled to Serenity’s contact.
Her picture was still my lock screen. It was a photo from Miami where she was laughing on the balcony in a white dress with the ocean behind her.
Before the bruises. Before the coke got bad.
Before her brothers decided they knew what was best for her and took her away from me like I was something she needed to be rescued from.
I wasn’t done with Serenity. Not because I loved her, although I told myself that sometimes when the coke was wearing off and the house was too quiet. I needed her because without her I was flying blind on the Banks family and Vivica was going to cut me loose the second I stopped being useful.
I’d find her. Wherever those brothers had stashed her, I’d find her. And when I did, I wasn’t letting her go again.
I dialed her number one more time. Voicemail. Her voice, sweet and recorded and gone.
I hung up and cut another line.