Justice
I was pulling into the Ritz parking garage to check on Mehar before heading to Hopkins for the night when I spotted him.
He was on the third level, pacing between cars like a crackhead who lost his stash.
Hoodie up, hand twitching near his waistband, moving with that jerky, amped-up energy of somebody who was running on blow instead of sense.
He kept muttering to himself, head on a swivel, scanning the garage, checking the elevator entrance, then circling right back to the same spot near the stairwell door.
I knew who he was before I even put the car in park. Creed’s intel had photos of all the Rios brothers and Fosso was the one everybody flagged as the loose cannon. The cokehead wildcard that Rodrigo couldn’t keep in check.
Quest and Riot were twelve hours deep in Colombia handling LaLa and Paco. Prime was coordinating the compound assault with Creed. Meanwhile this tweaked-out nigga had somehow made his way to the Ritz where Mehar was upstairs by herself with a gun she hopefully wouldn’t need.
Security would’ve caught his ass at the lobby.
Looking how he looked, he wasn’t getting past the front desk, let alone up to the suite.
But I wasn’t about to let a Rios walk away from a building where my family was sleeping.
Security was there to keep people out. I was there to make sure they stayed gone.
I parked two rows behind him, killed the engine, and stepped out quiet.
He had his back to me, still pacing, still talking to himself.
I could hear him muttering Manny’s name, something about his mother, something in Spanish I couldn’t catch.
Dude was grieving and high at the same time, which made him about as predictable as a lit match near gasoline.
I closed the distance in about ten steps. He must’ve heard my shoes on the concrete because he spun around quick, quicker than I expected for how wired he was. He didn’t know my face but he knew I wasn’t supposed to be walking toward him in an empty parking garage with that kind of energy.
“Fuck you want?” he barked, hand going to his waistband.
I rushed him before the gun cleared his belt.
Grabbed his wrist with my left hand and cracked him in the jaw with my right.
His head rocked but the nigga didn’t go down.
The coke had him too numb to feel it and he came back swinging with his free hand, catching me clean on the cheekbone.
That shit rocked me. My vision flashed white for a second and pain spread across my face like a shockwave. Little dude could hit.
He yanked his gun hand free and was pulling the weapon when I grabbed the back of his head and bounced his face off the hood of the nearest car.
The sound echoed through the whole garage, metal crunching against bone.
He staggered backward with blood running from his nose and the gun skidded out of his hand under the car.
He came at me again because the coke wouldn’t let him quit. Swung wild and caught nothing. I sidestepped it and tagged him twice in the ribs, felt something crack under the second one. He folded forward and I got behind him, wrapped my arm around his throat, and squeezed.
He clawed at my forearm hard enough to rip through my sleeve and dig into my skin. His legs kicked against the concrete and his whole body thrashed with a desperate strength. He knew it was over but his body wouldn’t accept it yet.
I held on and tightened, counting in my head the way Prime told me to years ago. At fifteen seconds he started slowing down. By twenty his hands dropped off my arm. At twenty-five he went heavy against me and I felt all the fight leave his body at once.
I held on ten more seconds because I needed to be sure.
Then I let him go and he dropped to the garage floor with his eyes and mouth wide open, not breathing.
I stood over him and touched my cheek where he’d tagged me.
It was swelling up already, my forearm was leaking blood from his scratches, and my ribs were sore from bracing against him.
Fosso went out fighting though. I’d give him that much.
More than I expected from a nigga who was half dead from cocaine before I even touched him.
I popped the trunk of the rental, dragged him across the concrete, and lifted him in.
He was lighter than he should’ve been, probably hadn’t eaten right in days.
I folded his legs, closed the trunk, and listened for a second to make sure nobody was coming.
The garage was quiet, nothing but the sound of fluorescent lights buzzing and the traffic outside.
I pulled out my phone and snapped a pic of the body before I shut the trunk all the way. Sent it to Quest without a word because none was needed.
His response came back thirty seconds later.
Four Rios brothers down. Rodrigo and Gabriel were all that was left.
I wiped Fosso’s blood off my arm with a rag from the glove box, checked my face in the rearview, and decided the swelling wasn’t bad enough to explain.
I’d tell Mehar I walked into something. She wouldn’t buy it but she wouldn’t press me on it either because at this point we were all past pretending I spent my nights doing anything safe.
I moved the car to a different level of the garage and would get rid of the body after I finished my rounds. I then parked on the first level near the exit, wiped my hands one more time, and headed inside to check on her.