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That got my attention. Ms. Gia must have seen the surprise on my face because she explained before I could ask.

“She is his aunt, Tahari. Whatever happened between her and me had nothing to do with him. I never told him he couldn’t speak to her, and she never stopped loving him because she was angry with me.”

“How close are they?”

“Closer than I realized for a long time.” A small smile crossed her face. “He doesn’t talk about her much because he knows I don’t want to hear about her, but they speak. Birthdays, holidays. She checks on him. He checks on her. I’ve seen her name come across his phone plenty of times.”

That was something I hadn’t known. And that was exactly why I came here. Every leaf I attempted to turn over when he came to his other friends or associates led me nowhere. I hadn’t thought about Giovanni’s family.

“Where she live?”

I was eager as fuck because this piece of information could be my first lead. Ms. Gia’s expression changed immediately. I already knew what was coming before she said it.

“Tahari, why do you want to find him?”

I looked her deep in the eyes. There’s no way she didn’t know what he had done.

“I think you know why, Ms. Gia.”

“No. I know what happened.” She held my eyes. “I know you’re angry with him. I know he did something terrible, but what I don’t know is what you’re planning to do when you find him.”

I leaned back and exhaled through my nose.

“I need to see him.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

Of course, what I just said wasn’t enough for her. This woman had known me too long. I couldn’t sit in her face and give her some vague bullshit about needing to see Ghost and expect her not to understand what was sitting underneath it.

“You know what he did, Ms. Gia.”

“I do.”

“He tried to kill my girl.”

Her eyes watered like hearing the facts was killing her.

“I know,” she said in a shaky tone.

“If her father ain’t take those bullets for her, she could be dead right now.”

Over the past three weeks, the news had released the names of Mr. Browne and Maliah. With a minor backstory of their version of what had happened. To the public, a man randomly opened fire on a parked vehicle. The only lead they had was that a man was behind the gun. I knew the man, though, and I swear just thinking about what I was going to do when I saw him had my mind all over the place. I needed Ms. Gia to understand exactly what her son had done. Her eyes lowered.

“I know, Tahari.”

“He got shot three times because of him. That man gotta learn how to walk again because Ghost decided Mali was the reason for every fucking problem in his life.”

“I know!”

Her voice rose enough to stop me. When she looked back at me, her eyes were wet.

“You think I don’t know what my son has done? You think I haven’t been sitting in this house thinking about it every day? I know Giovanni is wrong. I know there is nothing I can say that will make what he did okay, and I am not asking you to pretend that it is.”

She wiped beneath one eye.

“But he’s still my baby.”

That took some of the heat out of me, so I looked away.