“Yeah, I did.” Averi sat up and rested her back against the headboard. “I think I’m going to go home next week.”
“If that’s what you want to do. I’m not rushing you. I wish I knew what was going on, but if you don’t want to tell me, I have to respect that.”
Averi pushed out a sigh. “The guy that I was seeing is street affiliated. Like affiliated with crime families and organizations.”
Belinda’s brows hiked, but she didn’t speak.
“He’s supposed to be marrying the daughter of some kingpin turned businessman but is still in the streets. He started saying that he didn’t want to marry her, and he was thinking about backing out. He thinks the father is the person that shot me.”
Belinda’s heart slammed into her ribcage. She grew up in the 80’s, and she was no stranger to dope boys. When she was sixteen and seventeen, Belinda had the best summers of her life in New York with her aunt. Her aunt and two of her cousins all rocked with big time drug dealers. Belinda knew the glamorous parts of the game, and she knew the ugly parts. Like whenher aunt was murdered execution style during a robbery at her boyfriend’s home.
Thinking about someone purposely harming her daughter over something that she didn’t have anything to do with infuriated Belinda. However, she was smart enough to know that you didn’t go to the police for matters like this.
“Do you not feel safe? If you think he’s still gunning for you, please don’t go back home.”
“Honestly, I don’t think he would do anything else. He did what he wanted to do and that was send a message. As long as Justin and I are done with one another, I hope he’ll leave me alone. The reason I haven’t been home is because I don’t want to see Justin. I just want him to marry ole girl as agreed and leave me out of it.”
Of course, she was pissed off about being shot. Who wouldn’t be? She could have died. But she didn’t. She was still alive, and that was how she wanted to keep it. As bad as it hurt, she had to distance herself from Blak. It was obvious that his fiancée’s father wasn’t playing any games, and she wanted no parts of that shit show. Averi wanted Blak to let her go peacefully. She would miss him, but he certainly wasn’t worth dying for.
Belinda didn’t know what to say, so she simply stared at her daughter. Belinda and Averi were best friends. She only had two children, and her other daughter died when she was sixteen, and Averi was thirteen. She had been hit by a drunk driver on her way home from school. It took years for Belinda to crawl out of the dark hole her child’s death placed her in. She also became very overprotective of Averi. Not hearing from her daughter all throughout the day would send her into full blown panic attacks. After realizing the way she was living wasn’t healthy, it took medication and a year of therapy for her to calm down.
Worrying came naturally to any mother, but past trauma had given Belinda PTSD. The thought of something happeningto Averi had her blinking back tears. Averi knew her mother’s triggers, and that was why she hadn’t wanted to tell her. Pushing the covers back, she got out of bed and walked over to her mother. Averi placed her arms around her mother’s neck. “I’m fine, mommy. In fact, you know I can work from anywhere. I might get an Airbnb in Miami or Hawaii or somewhere and just chill out for a few weeks and relax.”
“I think that’s a great idea.”
Averi could practically feel the relief oozing off her mother, and that was the deciding factor. The last thing she wanted to do was stress her mother out and make her worry. Averi went to the bathroom. Bracing herself, she pulled her panties down. When she didn’t see blood, she sighed. She didn’t want to miscarry, but she felt it was inevitable. She’d been shot and lost a lot of blood early in her pregnancy. Before she left the hospital, the doctor checked, and he heard a heartbeat, but even he warned her that a miscarriage could very much happen due to all the stress her body had been through.
Averi didn’t want to get her hopes up. The longer she remained pregnant, that’s exactly what would happen. She’d start thinking there might actually be a chance that the child survived. She wasn’t ready to go through such a traumatic experience, but Averi didn’t feel she could truly move past the situation with Blak and close it out until the fetus left her body. Then, she could move on completely.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Blak stoodat the alter with clenched jaw muscles. The ceremony had already been pushed back thirty minutes because James wasn’t there. Blak had no idea where he was, but if he wasn’t going to show up, he could let them all leave and stop wasting their time. He didn’t want to marry Naomi’s ass anyway. Life had been a shit show since Averi got shot. The more he thought about it, the angrier Blak became. If James felt like he was violating, he should have shot him and left Averi out of it. He made a pussy ass move, and Blak would never respect it. He would never forget it either. In his opinion, James was a fool to keep Blak so close to him.
Most of his days were spent plotting on how to get the man back and wondering how Averi was doing. Blak missed her. Alcohol and weed were the ways he coped with his anger and misery. He hadn’t spoken ten words to Naomi, and she was at the point that she didn’t want to marry him either. After the fifth time she asked him what went down, he told her, and she felt some kind of way. She really couldn’t even put her feelings into words. The relationship wasn’t real. Being jealous that Blak was in love with another woman was absurd. However, she wasn’teven sure why he agreed to marry her if someone else had his heart.
Knowing that he was basically being forced to marry her pissed Naomi off because she wasn’t a charity case. Men tried to get at her every day. Why should she be subjected to Blak ogling her like she was shit on the bottom of his shoe when she could have a man that cherished the ground she walked on? And she could have for damn sure gotten a man that was already rich and not just on his way to being rich.
Blak and Block made eye contact. Block could tell that his cousin was agitated. The wedding was being held outside in the back of a luxurious hotel. The building sat on two acres of land. There were a lot of trees and a small lake behind the hotel. A violinist was playing music for the two hundred plus guests that were beginning to grow antsy. Everyone was in place except Naomi and her father. Blak was beginning to wonder if Naomi had changed her mind, and he prayed to God that she had.
That prayer went out the window fast when he saw Naomi with her arm looped through her father’s. She was a beautiful woman, but all Blak saw when he looked at her was the source for his misery. His gaze shifted over to James, and the sight before him almost made Blak smile. He had no clue what had gone on, but James looked like shit. His eyes were red and had bags underneath them. If there was a picture in the dictionary beside the word weary, he would have been it. He looked out of place at the lavish wedding. Bridesmaids stood in skintight nude dresses. The groomsmen were lined up in their nude tuxes, and the train of Naomi’s $6,000 gown trailed behind her for what seemed like miles.
Blak knew when all eyes weren’t on Naomi, they were on him, so he had to be mindful to keep the glower off his face. His hatred for James ran deep, but none of the guests needed to know that. Movement from his peripheral vision caught Blak’seye. When he spotted three men all dressed in white server uniforms aiming semi-automatic weapons, he turned toward his cousins. “It’s a fucking hit.”
None of them were strapped, so all they could do was hit the ground. Blak noticed the flower girl walking towards the front of the alter, and he scrambled over to her and yanked her down on the ground. She screamed as bullets began to fly, and Blak covered her body with his. His heart pounded irately in his chest as a rapid succession of gunfire created a melody of gangsta music. The shots seemed endless. Finally, they stopped. Blak still wouldn’t move. Not until he heard movement around him. He lifted up and surveyed the scene. There were at least ten bodies sprawled out not moving.
Block was racing down the aisle looking for his mother, and his brothers were right behind him. Most of the guests that didn’t get hit had already taken off running. Blak’s eyes roamed over the bodies, and seeing James crying over Naomi made his heart lurch forward. She’d been hit. Her white dress was saturated with her blood as James cried and rocked back and forth. Blak recognized one of the other bodies on the ground as James’ wife. Damn. He lost his daughter and wife in the same day. Blak wanted to not give a fuck, but he felt sorry for Naomi and her mother. Whoever had done the shooting should have taken James’ ass out. That would have made his day.
Though he didn’t have anything on him, Blak knew the police were on their way, and he refused to be a sitting duck. Making sure none of the bodies on the ground belonged to his people, Blak made his way through each row of chairs before getting the hell out of dodge. He had no clue what had gone on back at that hotel. The gunmen that he saw had their faces uncovered, and they appeared to be of Cuban descent. He damn sure didn’t have beef with any Cubans. The only other reason they would have shot up the wedding would be if they had beef with James.
Blak felt he was in over his head dealing with James. He simply wanted to come up not be hit with numerous trials and tribulations. Blak went straight to his house and removed the tux he was wearing. Images of Naomi’s body infiltrated his mind as he poured a shot of cognac. There was nothing he wanted more than to scrub the image from his brain. Blak’s phone rang, and he saw the number of the prison his uncle was housed in on the screen.
Blak accepted the call and waited for Tech to speak. “I’m about to lose my damn mind. Why isn’t Block answering the phone?”
Blak wasn’t even surprised that his uncle knew what was up. Niggas in prison and the county jail knew things that happened on the street before some people that were free found out. “Block, Brazil, and Lethal are all good. I saw them before I left the venue. How do you know what happened?”
“I knew before it happened. We were on lock down, and I couldn’t use the phone. I heard through the grapevine, that there was a sting operation that went down about two this morning. It was an operation set up to catch adults that were planning to meet up with underage kids and have sex with them. James was one of the people arrested. He was under the impression for three months that was texting a fifteen-year-old girl. He sent her nudes, asked her if she ever had sex before, all kinds of crazy shit. When the police ran down on him, they had thirteen pages of evidence printed out.”
Blak felt like he was about to throw up the alcohol that he’d just swallowed. That nigga was sick as fuck, and he was speechless. “That’s why he showed up almost an hour late and looked like shit when he did finally get there.”
