Page 55 of The Millionaire Mortician
“Yes.” My voice came out steady, but inside, something twisted tight.
He nodded, then cleared his throat. “Do you know a Daija Hill?”
Her name cut through me like a blade. My chest tightened as my breath got caught. I swallowed, then forced myself to answer. “Yeah. Why?”
The younger cop shifted his weight with his eyes softer now. “Sir, there’s been an accident on the FDR Drive. Ms. Hill’s car went airborne into the water.”
My knees went weak before his words were even finished.
The older one went on to explain slowly. “We haven’t found a body yet. Search and rescue is still in progress.”
The floor seemed to tilt under me. My hands braced against the frame, as my knuckles became white from how tight I was gripping it. Images rushed through my head almost instantly —her laugh, her smile, her damn stubbornness. The last time I saw her, she wasn’t the woman I had met some time ago or the woman I had fallen in love with. She was a cold, cheating bitch, but yet, I was feeling some kind of way about the news.
Headlights flashed across the street, then tires screeched as Maverick pulled up. He had barely parked before he was at my side.
“What’s going on?” he demanded, eyes snapping to the cops.
The older officer repeated everything, but slower this time, as if he knew Mav was the steadier one at that moment.
With a sudden rush of adrenaline, I felt my body sway, my weight being too heavy. Mav caught me before I could hit the ground. “I got you, bro,” he muttered, holding me up while the cops stood there. Their voices were just background noise at that point.
For the first time since seeing our parents lying dead in a burning truck, I felt helpless and lost. I was experiencing a mix of emotions. The shit wasn’t even funny. The fucked-up part was that my last words to her would literally be the last words she heard from me.
Maverick barely gave me time to catch my breath before he was dragging me toward his car. Before I knew it, we were speeding through Brooklyn, as the city lights became nothing but a blur through the windshield. Mav drove like a madman with his horn blasting, cutting through lanes. His jaw was locked, his eyes hard, but his hand kept hitting my shoulder every couple of minutes as if he were making sure I was still present.
By the time we hit the FDR, the whole stretch was chaos, although it was going on eleven o’clock at night. Patrol cars were lined up along the side, their lights flashing red and blue against the dark water. There were fire trucks, ambulances, and news vans already setting up. My chest tightened at the entire scene.
Mav parked further down since it was so many emergency vehicles near the accident. We jumped out and made our way toward the commotion. We pushed past the tape, with Mav leading the way. He had that authority in his step that dared anyone to stop him. A sergeant came forward and tried to block us, but I cut him off.
“I’m the next of kin.”
Technically, I was, although we had just broken up the night before. Daija had me as her emergency contact with everything, which was clearly the reason they showed up at my doorstep.
He hesitated for a moment, then stepped aside.
The scene hit me like a gut punch. Daija’s car, or what was left of it, was being pulled out with water pouring out the windows. The glass all around was shattered, and the metal was twisted like a toy. Divers in black wetsuits still moved through the current with their flashlights cutting beams under the surface.
I stood there, gripping the railing so hard my knuckles burned. My heart pounded loudly in my ears, drowning out the noise of engines, radios, and shouts.
Mav leaned in close. “They ain’t found nobody yet. Hold it down, bro,” he encouraged.
I wanted to be hopeful, of course, but after seeing the car and looking at the time the accident happened, the chances were becoming more and more slim of finding her alive as time went by.
My mind kept replaying her face, her laugh, and then the last fight of her begging me to listen, but I was too cold to care.
A paramedic walked by, shaking her head at another officer. “Still no sign,” she whispered, not realizing I could hear.
“You sure you wanna stay here?” Maverick asked.
I nodded. “Yeah,” I simply answered.
So I waited. My stomach twisted with every passing minute, and we didn’t receive any news.
I’d faced death before in different forms. I embalmed, buried, and profited off it. But standing on that highway, staring down into black water that might’ve swallowed the woman I loved, was a different kind of terror.
A Week Later...
I sat alone in my office at the funeral home, staring into space. My mind was so discombobulated, I couldn’t finish a completed thought. Everything just bounced all over the place.
