As I paced back and forth in front of the doors, I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard my mother’s soothing voice. “Calm down, honey.”
“I’m all right, Ma,” I replied, although we both knew that wasn’t true.
The elevator chimed and the doors opened. I raced in and hit the button for the fourth floor, pacing inside as we rode up. When the elevator arrived on the fourth floor, I darted out in front of the others, looking around until I spotted Orlando staring out a window overlooking the parking lot. He looked as bad as I felt.
I called out to him, and when he turned to me, I gasped at the sight of his shirt covered in blood. I’d seen plenty of blood in my life, but knowing that it was my father’s blood that stained my brother’s shirt was almost more than I could process.
“He’s in surgery, Ma, but it doesn’t look good,” Orlando said to us as we approached. He was obviously trying to hold back tears.
Despite everything, my mother was still stronger than all of us. I watched as she embraced Orlando. London lingered close by, touching his back, not quite sure what to do.
“Vegas, can I talk to you for a second?” Harris tugged on my arm and then led me a short way down the corridor. This did not sit well with me. I already didn’t like the guy, and now he was pulling me away from family at the worst possible moment.
“What?” I asked bluntly, looking back to where Ma and Orlando were still embracing.
“So what are you going to do?”
I looked back at Harris to see him standing there with his arms folded like he was scolding one of his kids. If I didn’t already have bigger things to worry about, I would have laid his ass out for this arrogant disrespect.
“In reference to what?” I asked, swallowing the urge to punch him in the throat.
“Everything,” he huffed. “LC’s on his death bed, the girls barely escaped three Muslim hit men at the Marriott, and I just heard Kennedy’s dead. You’re the Duncan messiah. With LC dead, how the hell do you plan on stopping them from killing the rest of us?”
I flexed my fists, still contemplating how good it would feel to break his jaw. “First of all, you arrogant son of a bitch, my old man’s not dead yet. This isn’t the first time he’s been shot,” I growled under my breath, glancing back at my mother, who was engrossed in conversation with Orlando and unaware of me and Harris. London, however, was trying to ear hustle. At least she was smart enough to keep her distance. “And second of all, I’m nobody’s messiah, but if you don’t get the fuck out my face with this bullshit, I’m gonna nail your yellow ass to a cross like Jesus Christ himself and use you as bait to catch whoever did this to my father. So I suggest you step the fuck off.”
I was reminded of why the little part of me that did like Harris could tolerate him. He was so damn good at following Duncan orders. He backed right the fuck up.
I walked back over to Orlando, who was now by himself, staring up at a television. My mother had released him, and she was now consoling Paris, who’d just arrived with Sasha.
“You see this shit?” Orlando said.
I looked up at the screen to see a breaking news story about the shooting at the Marriott. Thank God it was being reported as a gang-related event.
“O, what happened?” I asked, pulling him over to a row of chairs where we could talk alone.
“I . . . don’t know.” He dropped his head in his hands, rubbing his eyes as if it could erase the images of all that he had seen. “We had just finished our meeting with Popeye and Tony. Pop went outside to smoke a cigar, and I went to my office to see if I could reach Junior. Ten minutes later . . . Bam!” He looked up at me, his eyes wet with tears. “He was just lying there, Vegas. I didn’t even know if he was still alive.”
“You think it was X and his people?”
A look of fury passed over his face. “Who else? Vegas, I’m gonna kill that son of—”