“The late-night chills are the worst,” Cory said. “But what we took, it helps.”

  “Yeah, besides, Ms. Lily is a hell cat. The woman is crazy, like a warden. She helped us a lot. Had doctors coming in and out to patch us up, but Uncle Snap told her we had a drug problem,” Inez said.

  “From there, she was on us like stank on shit,” Cory added.

  “They been doing pretty good. No pills or none of that other crap they were taking,” Uncle said.

  “So you knew they were alive this whole time?” I asked him.

  “Not the whole time. The old battle-ax cornered me one morning and demanded I come to her basement. Didn’t even know she and Mama had a relationship beyond Mama feeding her and checking in on her from time to time. But, yeah, since that day I’ve known.”

  “Anybody seen Melissa?” Monty asked.

  We all turned to Javon, waiting.

  “She’s dead,” he said.

  “Did she really do it?” Jojo asked. “She really got Mama killed? Had something to do with it?”

  Javon nodded. We all sat statue still. I was hoping I’d have gotten the chance to kill her, but it was all just the same. She was dead. Gone, just like Mama.

  I took a sip of the sweet tea in my glass then looked forward. “She see you do it?” I asked.

  “He didn’t do it. I did. Caught her in the club trying to kill Elias herself,” Cory said.

  I frowned. “She had some fucking nerves,” I snapped.

  “Guilt was more than likely riding her, niece,” Uncle Snap said.

  “Fuck her guilt,” I said back. “I don’t give a fuck about her guilt. I wished she would have told us why she did such a cowardly fucking thing.”

  “We’ll never know now. I put bullets in her,” Cory said then shrugged. “I love her, loved who we thought she was, but fuck her.”

  Javon took my hand and squeezed it a bit. He changed the subject. Told us that Elias was dead and that he would be busy for a long while now. Asked us all to handle things on the home front while he did this behind the scenes with the Syndicate. He had to get his product to the table and out on the street.

  This was our life now. We had our family back, minus two. That would hurt and haunt us for a long time, but we would make it work. For now, though, we had lost two and gained two back. We’d miss Melissa, but we would get over it. We would never get over losing Mama. That video of her death would always replay for me. As I looked at my brothers and the only sister I had left, I let my tears fall.

  Chapter 34

  Uncle Snap

  The woman on the video sniffed and wiped snot from her nose. The red she had dyed her hair made her look more like Amber Rose than ever.

  “I’m sorry,” she croaked out. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this,” she said. “I fucked up. I fucked up and it got Mama killed. I could . . . I could tell y’all why I did it, but it’s so stupid in hindsight. So fucking stupid. Elias, I thought . . . he said he wouldn’t kill her. He used me. I had an idea and then he took over. It was supposed to be just like a robbery, to hurt her, put her in the hospital so I could get put over her accounts. I needed money.”

  Melissa cried hard for a few minutes. Sounded like somebody was killing her. Anger riled up inside of me. Out of the many years Mama had taken in kids, adopted them, cared for them, I’d never wanted to harm them the way I wished I could have done to Melissa. The moment it was confirmed she’d had a hand in my woman’s demise, all those feelings of protector and caregiver flew out the window.

  “I’m so sorry,” she wailed. “He tricked me. I fell for it. He used me. I had no idea who he was—”

  Melissa’s face froze in a distorted figure and she tumbled off the table. Shanelle screamed as she stomped the portable DVD player that was showing Melissa’s taped confession. I didn’t think any of us got how much Mama’s death had hurt Shanelle. An hour after our talk at the dinner table, Jai had shown up with this video and paperwork from Melissa.

  “Stupid cunt. Stupid, stupid, stupid, Melissa. So gotdamn stupid!” she screamed.

  I didn’t know if it was the damn hormones from her being pregnant or what, but niece had been emotional a hell of a lot.

  “Baby,” Javon called out.

  “No. No. Mama was wrong. Mama assumed it would be the Syndicate or someone in the streets to take her out, y’all. And it was one of us. One. Of. Us. One of the kids she took in. One of the kids who she loved and cared for. That shit hurts.”

  She looked around the room with red, wild eyes like she was about to panic.

  “She took her. She took my mama. She did it and for what? I hate her so much. It wasn’t her time. I still had . . . was supposed to have time to love Mama some more. She called me that day. I rushed her off the phone because I was busy at work. She told me she loved me but I didn’t get a chance to say it back. My phone, it hung up and I didn’t get a chance to call back.”

  Shanelle kept shaking her head and talking with her hands. She kept looking around the room like she was expecting Mama to pop up from thin air. Like she wanted one last chance, a chance wasn’t none of us about to get. She was sobbing, sobbing worse than Melissa was on that video.

  I’d never seen her broken like the way she was in that moment. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room, but to see Shanelle break down like that was something else altogether. Jojo dropped his head. Navy looked everywhere but at Shanelle. Monty had turned to face the wall. Cory had his eyes closed and Inez sat unmoving, but not looking at Shanelle. Not even Jai could look at her. Jai sat at the table, head down, one hand covering her face. After a while, I couldn’t look either.

  Javon stood and went to his fiancée. She was barely standing. Bent over holding her stomach, Shanelle let out a wail that shook all of us to the core. Guessed it was time. Guessed it was fucking time for her to mourn. None of us really had time. Everything came all at once.

  “Why? Why?” she cried while Javon lifted her into his arms and took her from the room. We could still hear her crying long after Javon had closed them in their room.

  God had always been cruel to me. Any woman who ever loved me, He took away. My grandmother, my aunt, and now Mama. I didn’t know what I’d done to the old Man Upstairs to make Him be so cruel to me. He had even made it so I brought my woman’s killer to her. I was cursed. Had felt that way since I was that fifteen-year-old who King had taken off the streets and gave work to. The only light that came into my world was that night, long ago, when I was twenty-five and Mama had been waiting on me in my tiny apartment. Five years after King died, my world came alive.

  * * *

  Later that night, where no one could see me, I sat alone in the room I’d been occupying. Couldn’t bring myself to sleep in Mama’s room again. Naked on the floor with the moonlight shining down on me through a crack in the curtain at the window, grief crept into my room. He took a seat beside me.

  “Claudette, for so long you were the reason I fought to live. My saving grace. I fought to stay alive each day ’cause of you. Today, I thought about dying. Thought about letting a hail of bullets bring me to you. But the kids . . . I know you don’t want me to leave the kids. I’m tired, baby. All my life, this is all I’ve been and I ain’t got no problems with that. But gotdamn I swear this shit too hard for me right now. To know I, me, I brought your killer in this house . . .”

  A gust of wind breezed through the window. It was cold outside, but the wind settled around me like a warm embrace. Felt like the way Mama used to hold me. She liked to hold me from behind, lay her head on my back, and we would sway to some unheard music. I got ready to say more, but couldn’t.

  Moonshine in hand, in the mason jar I’d never let go, I let my tears flow freely. I let go. I mourned. Finally, I mourned.

  Chapter 35

  Javon

  Sometimes, time can be healing or harmful. Throughout everything that had happened to my family, we all learned that lesson well and experienced it like an iron fist. I stood in the family room where Mama’s picture sat staring out of the huge bay window. My mind ticked away with the rise of the morning sun while looking out at the neighborhood in its small enclave of support while holding a cup of coffee to my lips. In my thoughts, I mentally went on rewind over all the lessons, the stumbles, the problems, the fights, the near-death experiences.

  This family had lost so damn much, but we were back together, still broken, but together. There was a lot that we had to work on, shit that I was pretty sure would take many years to heal and grow through, but in honor of our mother, I planned to do my part in keeping us glued together. Besides, we had Uncle Snap to watch over now, and the two youngest in our family, Jojo and Navy. We had to get our family together in order to keep everything else in our lives in check, and I wasn’t just speaking about the Syndicate.

  Relishing the taste of my coffee, I heard light footsteps. “You stay trying to sneak up on me, bunso, but it’s only worked one time and you had to die for that to work.”

  Light, deep laughter came by my right side as Cory slide into my peripheral vision. “True enough, kuya,” Cory said, reaching and taking my coffee from me to drink it. “Hmm, good today. Not crappy and bland like usual. You’ve changed. And you look like shit.” We spoke in our typical language when it was just us: Spanish-Filipino Tagalog.

  I took in my reflection, noting the bandages on my bare upper half while crossing my arms over my chest. “At least I’m not looking like the Elephant Man wiped his ass on the right side of my face.”

  “Kiss my ass! My Afro-Filipino sexy still shines through,” Cory said in light laughter.

  There was an undertone of sadness in his words and I knew why. Though neither Inez nor Cory had said it, the accident took a lot out of them. The act of their choices would forever be etched on their flesh even after the surgeries they were going to get to correct it some. It would always be there as a reminder. It hurt to see it and I knew it hurt for them to live with it. Which was why Cory and I hit each other with our dry humor. It was the only thing we knew to do when dealing with personal pains.

  “Yeah, it does, and I hate it. Now you got that mystic and shit,” I said, chuckling. I grew silent after that, going back to my thoughts of the family, of Mama, of everything.

  “What are you planning?” Cory asked, knowing me better than I knew myself.

  “First thing, I want you back at my side; but, for now, until you can get clean and work to stay clean, Lucky will be in your seat holding it for you.” I slightly turned to see Cory quietly drink my coffee while looking out the window.

  “So, I’m on punishment? Timeout?” he said, not in a sour, jealous tone like he’d usually do, but in a quiet, understanding, jolted tone.

  “For now. I missed you and I need you at the table. But I can’t have you falling back where you were and I can’t have what we do lead you back there.”

  Cory turned to look at me, then gave me slight nod and a shrug. “It’s what I’d do if I were you. Even though it pisses me off. I’m very mad at how you did me and Inez, know that. I get it, but it hurt. So, breaking from y’all, I’ll do that. Just to show you my ass to kiss when I come back full throttle.”

  My brother gave a silent pause as if thinking then locked eyes with me with intense seriousness. “I mean, if Uncle’s method of detoxing can help us, then I’ll do what I can. I do this for Mama’s memory because I can never be like Melissa.”

  I knew what he was saying. That he’d never betray me in that way, though we may hurt each other through our own bullshit in life. That was enough for me. He had to get my trust back, but on some real? It really wasn’t gone. My brother was a real deal addict and with that life came challenges. It was just up to him and Inez to see how they can manage it.

  “Don’t be like Ike Turner, either, a’ight? Mama would—”

  “Mama would shoot me in my pinky toe for that type of betrayal, I know.” Cory laughed, sighed, and then ran a hand through his silky hair. “I know. It’s all part of the rehab Uncle and Jai are planning for me.”

  “Ah, yeah? Didn’t know she was in on that. She stopped the van from coming in and blowing shit up. I appreciate her for that. Crazy that she was in on you and Inez as well.”

  Cory blew out steam and glanced back at the window. “All of that was the old lady Ms. Lily. Called her to get whatever information and money we needed to stay on the low. If she hadn’t I would have blown our cover long ago. Both women are resourceful.”

  Nodding my head in agreement, it brought me back to Cory’s question. “So, what am I planning then? Like I said, you and Inez heal up. I need to talk to Shanelle about this next part but, if she’s down, I want you to move in our apartment while we move in here.”

  “Yeah? Why move?” Cory asked.

  “With Mama gone, only one staying is what? Uncle Snap, Jojo, and Navy? Monty every now and then? They are the youngest. Especially Jojo. Uncle Snap can’t carry this all on his shoulders and he shouldn’t. The house belongs to him in name and I’m next on it; then it goes down from there. This is our home. So we need to keep it like that. Besides”—rubbing my neck, I sighed—“we need to change the bunker around and split the entrance just in case we get raided again, and we all need to keep an eye on that Dani chick.”

  My brother quirked an eyebrow and frowned. “Yeah. Speaking of, what are you going to do about that?”

  “Kick her ass out this crib, and set her up next door,” I said nonchalantly. “Not setting her up or nothing, just setting Jojo up and keeping an eye on her. He’ll pay for it out of his paycheck that I give him for his work through the Syndicate.”

  Cory let out a boisterous laugh. “A’ight. Next?”

  “Next. We handle Melissa’s body.”

  I watched him make a face and as he made the face, I smelled moonshine, and I knew Uncle was coming in the room. He stood by my left and stayed silent.

  “How much you hear, old man?” I asked without looking.

  “All of it and some of it. Fuck Melissa,” he said with ease.

  Part of me wanted to wipe her from my heart, but that just wasn’t going to happen. “True, but I’m dealing with her body. We’ll cremate her, put her in replacement of Inez and Cory, then—”

  “Then what, nephew? Give her a eulogy? Pump her up yonder?” he sarcastically spat out in anger. “She killed my Claudette.”

  “And she loved her in the end,” Cory added. “Mama’s name was the last she said.” Backing up with his hand up, Cory gave Uncle a passionate look. “Just hear Von out. Remember I killed the ho, but I remember the little sister who held us down no matter what.”

  Uncle growled low and wearily looked my way. I reached out and laid a hand against the crook of his neck. Gently squeezing the nape of his neck, I spoke up. “We’ll cremate her. I’ll go, and no one else has to. After, I’m going to Brazil to deliver her and Elias’s heads.”

  “How soon is this?” Uncle asked.

  “In a couple of days.”

  “Not alone,” he added.

  Shaking my head, I gave a smile. “Not alone. I’m planning this for us all. Just for a week, then we’ll come back. With our security around us, and keeping the neighborhood safe. Besides, I have to make sure the pipeline is still good now that everything is distributing correctly.”

  Uncle understood what I was speaking about with regard to Ink. “A’ight, nephew. Handle things then. Don’t do nothing special for Melissa. Burn her and that’s it. Punt the fucking head over a fence and handle business.”

  I watched him take a swig from his mason glass. Then Cory held up the coffee mug in a cheers. I shook my head with sadness in my heart over Melissa’s traitorous ass.

  “Before you go, nephew, I will say this.” Uncle reached out to clap a hand on Cory’s shoulder and he looked my way. “This old man is very glad the family is back. We now can heal up and take care of business. Family business.”

  “Indeed,” I said as Cory nodded his head.

  Moving on, I took my time and walked barefoot with my drawstring pants sitting low upstairs to Shanelle. They were down for the plan, I just needed to check on my fiancée. Once in what was once Mama’s room, and now our room, I quietly listened at the door. Light sniffles could be heard. I knew then that Shanelle wasn’t sleeping at all. Her grief was in charge here and it was my duty to hold her down. After all the risks she took for me in our new life, that was the least that I could do for her.

  Quietly, I strolled into the room, and closed and locked the door behind me. Shanelle lay with half the blanket and sheets off her body. I stood there taking in the beauty that was my woman.

  Shanelle usually, no, always became easily hot at night. So thanks to that, while standing there, I was blessed with a glimpse of her thick, naked thighs, and sepia brown skin. My gaze traveled to her bunched-up tank, and hip-cut white briefs with the Pink emblem upon them. Her hair was wrapped in an intricately folded silk scarf. It sat tucked on top of her head as if it were a crown. Eager to feel her in my arms, I immediately walked up to the bed to slide in behind her and pull her against me, folding her in my embrace.

  Damn, she smelled like peace. As I held her, I knew that she wasn’t asleep anymore, just from the way her breathing changed. “We should talk about what we’re doing next. What I also have to do next,” I gently said against her earlobe.

  “I’m listening,” was all she managed to say while I shared with her my ideas on us moving in.

  “What do you think about us moving in?” I asked, holding off on the Melissa and Brazil stuff.

  “The family needs us. I don’t want to lose this house, and we need to take care of it. As long as we can keep our own place for privacy, coming home wouldn’t be a bad thing.” Shanelle turned in my arms and glanced up at me. “Besides, it has more room here for our baby as well.”