Zephyr
His fist slammed into my jaw before I even realized he was in the room.
My head snapped sideways and the wheelchair rocked back on two wheels and for a second I thought I was going to tip over completely but the wall caught me.
Pain exploded through the left side of my face.
The taste of copper filled my mouth and my vision went white at the edges.
By the time it cleared my brother was standing over me with his chest heaving and his fist still balled up and a look in his eyes I’d never seen directed at me before.
“You stupid mothafucka” he said. “You workin’ with the Rios cartel. You sicced ’em on Quest. On a pregnant woman. Are you out of your fuckin’ mind?”
“What? How did you know?”
“Nigga, yo’ baby mama came cryin’ to me!”
Bella. That’s how he knew. That bitch walked out of here with Amara and went straight to Mekhi and told him everything.
Every conversation, every phone call, every detail I’d shared with her thinking she was too scared and too loyal to open her mouth.
I was wrong about the loyalty and I was wrong about the fear because apparently she was more afraid of what I’d become than what I could do to her.
“How long you been plannin’ this?” Mekhi’s voice was shaking and I couldn’t tell if it was rage or hurt or both.
“How long you been talking to Rodrigo behind my back? I called a truce with Quest. I shook that man’s hand.
I gave him my word. And you were running around behind me feeding his enemies the blueprint to kill him? ”
“It’s easy for you to let that shit go,” I said, spitting blood onto my own lap. “You can still use yo’ fuckin’ legs.”
“This ain’t about your legs, Zeph!”
“Everything is about my legs! Every single day of my life is about my legs! You get to wake up and walk to the bathroom and drive your car and fuck yo’ bitch and live your life like a normal person.
I get to sit in this chair and have my girl wash my ass and watch my daughter grow up without ever playing with her.
So don’t tell me what this is and isn’t about. ”
Mekhi grabbed me by my shirt and hit me again.
Harder this time. My lip split open, blood running down my chin and onto his knuckles.
I couldn’t do anything about it because what was I going to do, stand up and fight him?
Swing on my brother from a wheelchair? He hit me a third time.
My head bounced off the back of the chair, the room tilted.
I could hear Janelle screaming from somewhere behind him.
“Mekhi, stop! Stop it! You’re going to kill him!” She was pulling at his arm, trying to get between us, and Mekhi shoved her back without looking at her.
“And you,” he said, pointing at Janelle while still gripping my shirt.
“Both of you got these weird fixations on the Banks family that’s going to get everybody killed.
You lost your license because you kidnapped that man’s fiancée and chained her to a ceiling.
And you,” he turned back to me, “you conspired with a cartel to bring down a plane with a pregnant woman on it. What the fuck is wrong with y’all?
When do you take responsibility for your own shit instead of blaming Quest for everything? ”
“He didn’t protect me, Mekhi.”
“I protected you! I handled the niggas that shot you! I killed them in their cells! What else do you want?!”
“That wasn’t enough.”
Mekhi let go of my shirt and stepped back and looked at me the way you look at someone you love but don’t recognize anymore. He wiped my blood off his knuckles with his palm and shook his head slow.
“Quest, Mehar, and their baby survived. All three of them. And if the Banks family finds out you’re the one who gave Rodrigo the info Quest is going to kill you. That ain’t a maybe. That ain’t a threat. That man is going to put you in the ground.”
“That’s why I’m going to Belize.”
Mekhi laughed but there was nothing funny in it. “Belize? The accounts I set up for emergencies? Quest knows about Belize, Zeph. I told him about those accounts years ago when we were still building together. That’s the first place he’d look.”
“Maybe if you didn’t tell that nigga every damn thing about our business, I wouldn’t have this problem. What is he, your boyfriend?”
The punch came so fast I didn’t even see his arm move.
It caught me on the right side of my face and my head whipped sideways and this time the wheelchair did tip.
I went over sideways and hit the floor hard, my shoulder taking the impact, my dead legs twisted underneath me at angles I couldn’t feel but knew were wrong.
I lay there on the floor of my own apartment looking up at my brother’s face and saw something I’d never seen there before.
Exhaustion. Not physical. The kind that comes from loving someone who keeps making it impossible.
Janelle rushed over and knelt beside me, trying to get me upright, and Mekhi just stood there watching us with his chest still heaving and blood on his hand and that tired, broken look on his face.
“Because you’re my brother and I love you, I’m going to keep your secret,” he said.
“I won’t tell Quest. But Belize is burned.
You can’t go there. I’ll figure out somewhere safe to put you where nobody can find you, not Quest, not Rodrigo, nobody.
But you need to understand something.” He squatted down so we were eye level, me on the floor and him crouching over me, and his voice dropped to something quiet and final.
“You fucked up, Zeph. You fucked up bad. And the only reason you’re still breathing right now is because I’m your brother.
Anybody else would’ve let the Banks have you. ”
He stood up and walked out of the apartment without looking back. When the door closed behind him the silence rushed in, washing over me. I was fucked. Quest was going to find out and I didn’t think my brother would be able to hide me.
Janelle was holding my head in her lap, wiping blood off my face with her sleeve while I was lying on the floor of my apartment unable to stand up, unable to run, unable to do a single thing.
”We need to go,” Janelle said quietly. “Tonight.”