I laughed when my dad removed his glasses and peered into the camera lens with squinted eyes.
“Why take off the glasses if you can’t already see?” I questioned before laughing.
“Shakur! Boy, if you don’t take this dang thing off my door!”
“You better not touch it, young man. I’m not playing with you,” I playfully warned.
My dad’s mouth opened and closed a few times, showing me he was stuck for words, before he finally spoke.
“You’re not playing with me?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. It took me all day to put that up,” I let them know. “So, leave it. I got it for your protection.”
Daddy sighed heavily.
“You ain’t gotta look after us, Shakur. I’m the father.”
“And you’ve done enough. Let me take it from here,” I said.
Just then, I heard the bell indicating that someone had entered the store.
“Anyway, I’m at work with Oblique. I’ll be back a little later on.”
We exchanged a few more words, and then I went to go see who came inside. Oblique was in the warehouse dealing with some shit to do with Orlando.
I grabbed a cloth to clean off my hands as I went to greet the customer.
“Can I help you?” I asked to the nigga’s back. He turned to face me, and I was surprised to see that it was Havoc.
The nigga looked me up and down before slowly approaching.
“Yeah, I’m here to meet with Oblique. Said it was urgent.”
I nodded and pointed to the back with my thumb.
“He in the warehouse.”
Havoc bounced his head at me and walked past. I noticed the way he stared at me but chose to leave it alone. As long as he didn’t say shit to me, I wouldn’t say shit to him either. As he went out back with Oblique, I finished off what I was doing before I called it a day.
Oblique was still in the warehouse once I was finished and ready to go, so I went out there to let him know that I was leaving.
As soon as he opened the door, Havoc was stepping out to leave too. Again, he stared me in the eyes before subtly nodding and leaving. I turned to watch him do that.
“You know him?” Oblique questioned, stepping up beside me. I shook my head.
“Nah, and I want to keep it like that,” I said, meaning every word.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MAKARI “HAVOC” SANCHEZ
Istepped out of Oblique’s shop, wondering why it was I was seeing Shakur once again. The nigga clearly wasn’t hiding. He was hard to read; I would give him that.
Everyone else, I could see right through them, but not Shakur. He was hard as hell, and he’d built a wall around himself for some reason. I wasn’t sure if he’d always been like that because I wasn’t going to lie, I didn’t really pay him much attention over the years before he left.
We hardly crossed paths back then, and he wasn’t really on my radar like that for me to pay attention to him. So, I had no idea if this wall had always been there or if that was something new.
As I walked over to my car, my phone rang, and I froze seeing it was my dad. He never, ever called me, and I only had his number because of Kelechi.
