“Ms. Lily, would you like to come in for hot cider or cocoa?” I asked. “It’s a bit chilly out here.”

  She peeked inside the house then turned her nose up. “Naw. Don’t like the smell of that ethnic food y’all always cooking over here.”

  “Would you like a bowl of chicken pumpkin soup, Ms. Lily? Mama told me that’s your favorite.” I smiled. Ms. Lily was lying. Every time we or Mama cooked something, Mama took her a plate. That old German white woman would eat every bit.

  Ms. Lily’s eyes widened as if I’d just offended her. She balled her lips and turned in a huff to strut back across the street. I watched as she crossed to make sure she got to her home safely; then I closed the door.

  Just as I did so, Monty and Trin came in from the closet under the stairs. She was in tight-fitting jeans, some Polo combat boots, and a BLACK LIVES MATTER sweatshirt. Her locs swung, brushing her shoulders. Monty was dressed like a lumberjack all the way from the big brown boots up to the oversized coat and flannel red and black checkered button-down shirt.

  “You find anything?” I asked Monty.

  He shook his head, his long, silky black hair curtaining his face. “Nothing. She wiped her apartment clean.”

  “There was no trace of nothing, sis. Not even a stray hair.”

  “Damn,” I said. So Melissa was long gone. We wouldn’t get the chance to confront her. I thought that angered me more than anything. “Thank you,” I told them.

  I held my tongue as Jojo and Dani came from the kitchen. He had a big bowl of the soup that I knew was mostly for Dani. He didn’t eat that much. Dani kept her eyes away from me as Jojo led her upstairs.

  “You know Mama wouldn’t allow you to eat in your room, Jojo,” Monty said.

  Jojo stopped, pushed his glasses up on his nose, then looked from me back to Monty. “Kind of hostile down here, though,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Even so, little bro. You know the rules,” Monty said.

  “Fine.” Jojo took Dani’s hand then headed to the dining room.

  My nerves were just about on E. “I’m going to head out. I told Javon I would take care of something for him. Somebody tell Naveen to meet me in the car,” I said.

  I grabbed my coat, purse, and my keys then headed outside. By the time the truck was warmed up, Naveen came jogging out the front door. In a blue bubble coat, he pulled up his baggy jeans while his Tims thumped against the pavement. He hopped in the truck and slammed the door behind him. There was aggression in his movements and tension rode him like a cowboy.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Broke up with my girl. Shit’s stressful,” he said, staring straight ahead.

  “Why, Navy? She was a cool chick, I thought.”

  “She wants time I can’t give her right now. She doesn’t understand that.”

  “She can’t come to you?”

  “I’ve asked her several times and she doesn’t want to, so fuck it.” He shrugged then let his seat back a bit.

  “Navy—”

  “Nah. I ain’t got time, Nelle. I don’t. So, save it. No lectures, sis. She’s safer away from me right now anyway.”

  I looked at my younger brother. Normally I’d say something snide about the brutish way he was behaving, but in a sense he was right. Maybe his girl was safer on the other side of town away from all the madness.

  I put the truck in reverse and pulled out of the driveway. I saw Ms. Lily peeking out her front window. She was starting to creep me out. Something about her wanting Javon and only Javon to come get whatever it was out of her basement was starting to seem strange to me.

  Headlights in my rearview didn’t readily alarm me. A group of Forty Thieves were at my beck and call. They were my shadows.

  “Where we headed, sis?” Navy asked as we headed for 75 North.

  “To Cory and Inez’s old place in midtown,” I answered.

  I felt Navy look at me. I knew what he was thinking. I saw the way they all looked at me when I told them I thought the person in the cloak we were chasing was Cory. They all thought I was losing it, even Javon and Uncle Snap. Javon shook his head. I knew bringing up our dead siblings was a sore spot for him, but I knew what I saw . . . or what I thought I saw.

  Whoever it was had Cory’s eyes. I knew it.

  “Sis, they’re dead. Why you gotta make the pain worse?” Navy asked.

  I glanced at him, my hands gripping the steering wheel. “Make the pain worse?”

  “Yes, Nelle. Worse. We had to bury them with no bodies. Don’t give us false hope that they’re out here somewhere, running around in our back yards. All that blood in that car and the fact the Irish wouldn’t even give us their bodies back.”

  “I know, but we never got their bodies. How do we know they’re dead?”

  “Stop,” he snapped at me, making me narrow my eyes at him. “And even if the Irish did have them alive somewhere, you think after Javon did what he did to the Irish that Cory and Inez are still alive now?”

  I sighed. Navy was right. Even if the Irish did have Cory and Inez stashed somewhere as leverage against Javon, surely after Javon had them all blown up, our siblings were dead now. However, I was still going to their apartment. I just needed to feel their energy once more. With everything going on, it had been hard for me to feel any kind of normalcy.

  Those were my thoughts while I drove until my mind started to kick my ass. Let it go; better yet, let them go, Shanelle. Let them rest in peace, it screamed at me. I felt my eyes burn, but I refused to let the tears fall. I handled the wheel with one hand then grabbed a tissue from the armrest. This mess was stressful.

  Instead of getting off at the exit where Cory and Inez’s apartment used to be, I took exit 248B and headed to Jesse Hill Jr. Drive. The man who had been driving the car when Mama was killed was stilled holed up in Grady, according to our sources there.

  Before going to check for information on Jojo while he was locked up, I’d put word on the street that I was willing to pay for information to anyone who could tell me about a man who had been shot around the time Mama had been gunned down. No matter how secretive people tried to be, the streets always talked when there was money involved.

  Instead of chasing ghosts, I decided to chase something tangible: one of the men who had helped to kill Mama. Once we got to Grady, I paid to park—cash. Navy and I hopped out of my truck and headed inside. We emptied our pockets and headed through the metal detector. The waiting room was beyond full. Squeaky tires from a stretcher rolled down the narrow hallway on the gray and tan marble flooring.

  Someone was hacking up their lungs while sitting in one of the gray cushioned chairs in the waiting room. Another man was holding a bloody shirt up to his head. His eye was swollen and his lips were busted. A kid vomited all over the floor while the mother yelled for “some-motherfucking-body to hurry up” and see her child. Shit, she had been sitting there for three hours, she yelled. The little white boy did look pale, like death was knocking on his door.

  I walked up to the Plexiglas registration window and smiled at the nurse there. She had on blue scrubs with latex gloves on. Her hair was braided and she looked like Rachel Dolezal.

  I slid an envelope through the hole in the window then said, “Is it possible you can tell me which room Diablo is in?” Diablo was the street name that had gotten back to me. My source had told me to go to Grady and look for the white girl who looked black with blond faux locs.

  She took the envelope and slid it her pocket. “Seventh floor. The men who are normally there left to get food. Fifth door on the right,” was all she said as she quickly went back to writing on her chart.

  I nodded. Navy and I made our way to the elevators. Didn’t take us that long to reach the seventh floor. Navy and I smiled at women at the nurse’s station. They paid us little mind as a man in one of the other rooms was yelling and screaming about his dick burning.

  “Oh, my freaking God, Joanne. He’s pissing on the damn floor,” a white nurse yelled.

  “Fucking Grady,” a black nurse, who reminded me of a “Big Mama,” quipped before rushing to the room with other nurses behind her.

  I looked at Navy when we made it to the fifth door on the right. He glanced around to make sure nobody was paying attention to us. I pushed the door open and walked in. Machines beeped. The man was in bed, sleeping. His head was leaning to the left; slobber was slowly leaking from the corner of his mouth. He had been bandaged from his torso to his shoulder. His right hand was heavily bandaged as well.

  I nodded to Navy. He walked to the right side of the bed while I walked to the left. For mere moments, I stared at the man. I’d never seen him before, but he was the man who had to be driving the car when Mama shot at it. He had jet-black wavy, thick hair on his head. His skin was the smoothest of light brown I’d ever seen. Although his face looked a bit swollen, clearly he was a handsome man. I easily cuffed his left hand to the bed without waking him. He couldn’t do shit with the right one since it was obviously injured.

  My brows furrowed. I drew back. My hand seemed to be frozen in midair for a second before slamming down on the man’s right cheek. He awoke with a start. His wide gray eyes shot open and looked at me. Before he could get any words out, Navy punched him in the stomach then threw his weight over the injured man’s torso while taping his mouth shut. We only had a few minutes to do what we needed to do.

  I pulled out a picture of Melissa. “You know this girl?” I asked.

  The man’s eyes widened, but he didn’t respond. Navy grabbed the man’s right hand and beat it as hard as he could. The man’s screams and yells were muted. I knew he was in pain, but I guessed, like the other man who Uncle Snap had tortured, this one wouldn’t talk either.

  “That’s enough,” I told Navy, who stopped immediately.

  Navy had a sinister look in his eyes that told me shit was just as personal for him as it was for me.

  “Tell me where your boss is. I know you know. We took out his mansion over near the warehouses,” I lied. “So tell us where he would go next.”

  The man’s eyes roamed around wildly. I could see fear there, something I didn’t see in the other man. Since he was the driver, he must have been a newbie to the rogue faction that Elias was running. Even so, the man didn’t answer.

  Navy said, “Look, homie, I’m annoyed as fuck. My sister is being nice. I don’t have time. I just broke up with my girl. I want to get back home and send her some fucking passive-aggressive texts to make her feel like shit and then leave snide comments on all her social media posts, you feel me?”

  Navy pulled out this black stick then snapped it so it elongated. He pressed a button and blue electricity shot from the end. “So this is what’s going to happen. There is enough electricity in here to fry your brain, fam. I mean, this shit can burn your skin smooth off. Wanna try it?” Navy asked.

  Before the man could blink, Navy put the end of the stick against the man’s dick and, sure enough, skin peeled away. The smell reminded me of burning rust. The veins in the man’s eyes turned a blood shade of red. His back lifted off the bed and his whole body trembled.

  “You want to talk now or do I have to go for your balls next?” he asked the man.

  The man nodded vigorously. I slowly pulled the tape from one side of his mouth.

  “Stone Mountain,” he stammered out with a thick accent. It sounded more like, “Stunned Muntin.”

  “Where in Stone Mountain?” I asked.

  Before the man could answer, the door swung open. Two men dressed in all black with bags of food in their hands gave me and Naveen murderous glares before dropping the food and rushing us.

  “Hey, hey!” I heard one of the nurses yelling. “Somebody call security!”

  The man who came at me shoved me into the machines. I went tumbling back, hard. He tried to punch me in my stomach, but I was too quick. I picked up a bedpan and knocked him back. I saw Navy wrestling with the other man. Navy threw a punch just as I scrambled to my feet only to have the man I was fighting with grab my ankle and almost send me face first into the marble floor. I caught myself using my hands to break the fall right before I landed on my stomach. I heard the zap of Navy’s black stick and heard the other man cry out as they tussled. Just as the man behind me grabbed my ponytail, Navy rushed over, and zapped him with the stick, making him fall back.

  Blood rushed to my ears. My heart slammed into my ribcage as my breath caught in my throat. Either being pregnant was tiring me out, or I was losing my fight. Either way, Navy grabbed my arm.

  “Come on.” He rushed out as we ran for cover.

  We could hear the men chasing us. We knew we couldn’t make it to the elevators so Navy pulled me toward the stairs. He shoved the door open and we both took flight down those stairs like we had rocket propellers on our shoes. We were almost down the first set of stairs when one of the men grabbed my ponytail. I yelled out as I fell back. When I fell, the stair seemed to slice the middle of my back. It hurt so badly. I quickly got my footing while Navy dodged a kick from the other man, then yanked him down the stairs by his ankles.

  I grabbed the man, who I had by the nuts. He howled out and tried to punch me. I stepped sideways, causing him to punch the wall. If I made him injure his hand, he couldn’t swing at me anymore. I heard to zap-zap-zzzzzz-zap of whatever Navy called that instrument he had made. The man he had been fighting with yelped and hollered. The smell of burning rust lit the small area. I glanced back to see Navy had the electric end of his weapon on the man’s neck. His flesh was peeling away. It reminded me of how we used to let glue dry on our hands and then peel it off.

  The man who I’d been fighting with tried to launch at me. I still had a grip on his nuts. I twisted and turned. Lips snarled and teeth bared, I tried to twist those motherfuckers off. As I did so, I took my left hand and punched him, repeatedly, in the face. My blows were rapid and all landed on his noses. Strikes to the nose disoriented a man the same as it would a dog. My left hand had rings, too, and each time I struck, I made sure to go in an upward motion.

  Soon, he fell to his knees. I picked up the heel of my boot and kicked him dead center in the head. At the same time, I heard Navy breathing hard. I turned around to find he was stomping the man’s hand into the ground. He remembered a lesson from Uncle Snap just like I had. If you took out an opponent’s hands they couldn’t swing on you, or grab a gun to shoot you or a knife to stab you . . . or pick up a phone to call the police. Just like he’d told me about punching a man in the nose in an upward motion.

  It was crazy and probably stupid in hindsight that we went to that hospital, but we raced down the rest of the stairs, which didn’t take that much time at all. Luckily, security wasn’t there waiting for us. We headed straight for the parking deck to the car. I told Navy to drive. I just couldn’t. I was disoriented. Navy got in and we peeled out like hell was after us.

  Chapter 24

  Javon

  It seemed that too much was going on in my days. Back to back to back there was something. No lie, my hands were shaking because I wasn’t sleeping well or enough. Bags hung under my eyes, and I was moving sluggishly.

  After the call with Elias, I had left with Uncle to give orders to the Forty Thieves. I then headed out to our zones to make sure Elias wasn’t sniffing around, which had me in Rize’s zone, sitting at a wobbly oak table.

  When Uncle Snap and I walked into Rize’s restaurant, my head began to spin in stress. My boots crunched on sprinkles of broken glass. Boards acted as barriers over shattered windows, and tables lay on their side in disarray. We glanced around the popular restaurant and made notes of the holes in the painted walls. I could smell bleach, and I could see where they were cleaning and patching up holes.

  Elias had given us a taste of the type of attention he was seeking. I now sat in thought, eyes closed and head throbbing at what his type of war was going to look like. The bastard was ahead of us in his tactics and my mind immediately went to Melissa’s treacherous ass. How could you do it, sis?

  “Nephew, are you able to handle this?” I heard Uncle ask of me.

  A big part of me wanted to go off. If I wasn’t able to handle this, I’d walk away. What type of fuck shit was that? But I kept my thoughts to myself. Those were the whispers of anxiety, exhaustion, and frustration, not logic. The old man was just checking in on my mental state. I didn’t have Cory here to be that voice anymore, so all I could do was rely on Uncle in that.

  Reaching for a glass of ice water, I took a comforting sip then checked my cell phone. “I’m tired is all, but I can handle this.” There was a text from my employee Danny. I quietly read over my work I had sent to the office. I needed some normalcy and I needed to keep an unassuming cover, which was why I sent in a request to be of help from home. It was rare that my bosses would allow something like that, but they understood from my current situation, and responsibilities, as well as from the damn good work I did that I could leave at any moment and take the crew I trained with me. Yes, I had threatened to leave and start my own security technology company, but for now it was just an idea I shared with my coworkers.

  So, there I was, approving codes that I had created, allowing them to rise up, while I sat back being a criminal kingpin. I scrolled through the information, then checked with Danny that my connect with his boss, Sato Ayame, was strong, considering everything. I needed something that I had brought to the table at the Syndicate, thanks to Mama’s notes, to stay steady. If I could keep it steady, with no threat from Elias, then I could pull them in as another power move, as I did with the Commission. Revealing that Sato Ayame’s Japanese ties link to an old family mafia syndicate, the Yakuza, could help bring a sense of stable power back in my hands after everything with Melissa.

  I needed this.

  Holding up a finger to my uncle, I listened to Danny: “The attack didn’t affect us, I assume, because we are so new to the table.”

  “That would make sense. Have you connected with São Africana?”