Four Brothers -2005- [ Cross-Platform Quick ]

Victor himself? He woke up in the Mercer garage, tied to a chair, surrounded by four men who looked at him the way wolves look at a wounded deer.

—the smooth one, the planner—sat on a toolbox, cleaning a revolver that wasn’t his. He hadn’t cried at the funeral. He’d just stared at the back of the head of a man named Victor Sweet, a local club owner who’d been expanding into Evelyn’s block. “She knew something,” Angel said. “And Victor knew she knew.”

Then —the wild one, the baby, the one with nothing left to lose—kicked over a five-gallon bucket of bolts. The crash echoed like a gunshot. “A feeling? Ma didn’t get caught in no crossfire. She got executed. I saw the body, Jer. Two in the chest, one in the head. That’s not a robbery. That’s a message.” Four Brothers -2005-

Jack leaned forward. “No. This is Mercy Street. And Mercy Street doesn’t forget.”

Jack shook his head, eyes wet. “She’d say we took too long.” Victor himself

—the oldest, sharp suit, sharper tongue—stood by the oil-stained window. He’d made money in places he wouldn’t name, but he’d come home the second he heard her voice on his voicemail, two weeks before she died. “Bobby, something’s wrong. The kids on the corner aren’t selling candy anymore.”

Victor chuckled. “That’s cute. But this is my city now.” He hadn’t cried at the funeral

Silence. The snow kept falling.

Jack spoke first. “You had her killed because she was going to tell the city about your trafficking ring. We found the witness, Victor. The kid from the store. He talked.”

Jeremiah stepped forward, jaw tight. “Our mother gave you a chance to leave her neighborhood alone. You chose wrong.”