CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Big Daddy and Jenay, along with Gemma, were in the kitchen at Big Daddy’s house when they all arrived.

“MaKayla, I’m glad you’re with them,” Gemma said as she stood up and went over to her client. “Let’s go in Big Daddy’s office and talk. We need to begin to plot our trial strategy.”

MaKayla was glad to get a respite from the reality of her circumstance. Gemma would give her a reality check, but without all the drama. But she needed to find out what was going on with Donnie. “I need to talk to Donnie first,” she said.

“Is he still here?” Brent asked his father. “Where’s Donnie?”

“He’s out back on a conference call with his office. Why?”

But Brent didn’t answer that question. He and Sal, along with MaKayla and Gemma, hurried toward the back patio. Reno was heading that way, too, but Charles stopped him. “What’s this about?”

“We met with Darren McGuire.”

“Did he admit his lies?”

“No,” said Reno. “Not even with a gun to his balls.”

Charles glanced at Jenay. He didn’t like her hearing anything about their “methods.” “What does Donald have to do with it?”

“McGuire named him as somebody who knows what’s going on.”

Charles and Jenay frowned. “ Our Donnie ?” asked Jenay. Donnie was her stepson, but he was closest to her than all of the other children. He was closer to her than even Bonita, her biological child with Charles.

“What would Donald know about it?” asked Charles.

“McGuire said he knows,” said Reno. “And he wasn’t taking it back.”

“Where’s McGuire now? At one of Mick’s--”

But before Charles could finish his sentence, Reno was already shaking his head. And he gave Charles a hard look. He didn’t want to say it in front of Jenay. And Charles immediately understood why.

And as Reno headed out back, Charles stopped Jenay from following them. “Wait here,” he said to her, and went out back too.

Donald was out on the back patio pacing the floor as he talked on the phone with one of his corporation’s senior VPs when his brother, sister-in-law, and cousin made their way outside. “I’m not interested if it’s not ahead of schedule and below budget. If they can do that then I’m interested. If not, we stick with Reiner.”

“We need to talk, Donnie,” Brent said. “Hang up the phone.”

But Donnie kept on talking. He had grown unaccustomed to anybody other than their father telling him what to do.

But by the time their father, stepmother, and Reno made it out back, Brent had had it with his kid brother. He snatched the phone from his hand and ended the call himself.

Donnie couldn’t believe it. “What do you think you’re doing, Brent?”

“I told you we need to talk.”’

Donnie snatched his phone back from his oldest sibling. “Talk about what?”

“Darren McGuire says you know something about MaKayla and Alvin Clayton. Is that true?”

When Donnie cut his eyes at MaKayla, as if he didn’t want to spill the beans on her, everybody tensed up.

“Is it true, Donald?” asked Charles.

“Nothing major. I mean I’ve seen them at the club when I was in town, or out to dinner. That’s all.”

“That was nothing,” said MaKayla.

“But you’ve been on dates with the guy?” Reno asked.

“It wasn’t a date. We were just kicking it. He was new in town and I was just giving him some pointers.”

“Pointers?” asked Sal. “What kind of pointers you need to give a major judge like him?”

“Not judicial pointers. But as a black man navigating a nearly all-white town. That’s all we discussed.”

“Look like he’d be used to being the only black in the room all the time,” said Reno. “I don’t see where he would need any pointers from you.”

“You don’t see it, Reno, but she does.” Brent was defensive.

“You need to take that bass out of your voice,” Reno warned.

“You need to take those accusations out of your mouth,” Brent warned.

“Okay, that’s enough!” Charles ordered. Then he looked at his son. “Anything else you know about this, Donald?”

“I just thought the timing didn’t make no sense.”

“What do you mean?” asked MaKayla.

“You and Brent were like separated when you were hanging out with Alvin Clayton.”

“Separated?” asked Brent. “We were never separated.”

“You were spending the night at Ma and Pop’s. That’s what I call separated.”

Brent and MaKayla glanced at each other. They’d had arguments where Brent would stay a night or two with his parents. But nothing more than that.

“Seemed like odd behavior to me,” Donnie added.

Brent frowned. “What’s odd about it, Donnie? She had dinner with a colleague. What’s the big damn deal?”

“It was odd. I’m sorry, but it was.”

“Like your ass don’t do nothing odd.”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Then what exactly is your little sly comments about, Donnie?”

“It’s about MaKayla being found in a hotel room with a man she’s been seen around town with, and that man was murdered in that same hotel room she was found in. It’s about your wife looking guilty as sin. That’s what it’s about!”

But before Donnie could finish what he was saying, Brent grabbed him by the shirt and slammed him against the chair. “Don’t you dare spread those lies about my wife!”

“What lies?”

“The lies you’re telling!”

“What have I lied about, Brent? What have I lied about? Don’t get mad at me because you can’t satisfy her the way she needs to be satisfied!”

As soon as he made that nasty reply, Brent punched Donnie so hard that Donnie fell backwards over the chair, crashing to the floor along with the chair. And then Brent jumped down on his kid brother and the two men started fighting.

Reno, Sal, and a frantic MaKayla all tried to pull them off of each other but they wouldn’t separate until Charles got into the fray and grabbed Brent and threw him off of Donnie, and then grabbed up Donnie and threw him against the wall. “Pass a lick again I dare you!” Charles yelled at his sons. “I dare you!”

And because his sons were eternally respectful and equally afraid of their father, that was the end of the fight. A fight that had gotten so loud and crushing that Jenay had run outside to see what the commotion was about.

“What on earth is going on back here?” she asked.

But nobody was talking. And then Brent walked away from the crowd into the blackness of the huge backyard.

MaKayla started to follow him, but an already exhausted Charles stopped her. “I’ll go,” he said, and followed his son out back.

But Donnie was still upset. “Just because I told the truth, Pop gonna slam me against a wall and Brent gonna punch me? He didn’t have to punch me.”

“You were insinuating he wasn’t getting it up for his wife,” said Reno. “What the fuck you expected him to do? Give you flowers? I would have punched your ass too.”

“Violence,” said Jenay angrily. “Everything always handled with violence. Is this all this family knows?!”

Since it was, nobody answered her.