“How you know my wife?” I asked, pointing my gun like punctuation.
“Everybody knows,” he stuttered, hands up.
“You not five years old,” I said. “I don’t wanna see you act like you got nothin’ to lose. If anybody lying, now we do it bullet for bullet.”
“Naw, Seth, it’s not like that,” the kid said.
“Where the fuck is Dre?” My patience snapped.
“I don’t know where he at, but I do know he was fucking with your BM and they left town for a while,” Jax said, trying to keep his voice steady.
My BM? Imani? It hit me like a punch to my chest. She wasn’t dumb enough to plot on my wife, was she? But Imani had always had her crooked ways. Maybe she hated me. Maybe she loved every mean thing a woman could do to a man who gave up on loving them. My mind raced a thousand bad ways.
Nix tried to change the subject. I walked up and snapped his neck so clean he didn’t even get a chance to curse. His body hit the concrete like a used rag.
“Playboy Seth, what’s the play?” Rich asked, stepping in.
He looked at Nix like it was somebody else’s mess. That was my brother; steady and cold, the only one who stayed when the rest bounced.
“You supposed to be watching my family” I barked.
“I got the best eyes on them, you know that. But if you not good, they ain’t good,” is all he said.
He stood next to me and scanned the room taking in the two bodies I had just dropped in less than ten minutes.
“Jax gave me something,” I said. “He said Dre was with Imani. She been scooping him up.”
“Imani as in S3’s mama?” Rich asked as if we knew more than one Imani.
I knew why he made sure to clear up exactly who I was talking about because this wasn’t some random girl playing with the enemy. This was my son’s mother, the woman I had created life with, and even though I hated her existence at times, my son loved and adored his mother.
Jax babbled excuses about extra paper and dumb decisions. My head wanted to explode. My gut said that Imani had always loved how my world could buy her things. But if she had a hand in this, if she gave them a path to my family, it was it for her.
“Where Southside at?” I barked. “Tell him to burn everything down, make sure nobody eats till I get Dre’s exact location.”
I left out of the warehouse just as quick as I came. Mike, my tech, was already on the line before I could hop in the whip.
“Just make sure the call goes over thirty seconds,” he said.
He knew how to get any call traced any location found, and that’s exactly what I needed right now. I dialed Imani like I was summoning a storm.
“Sethie-bear,” she purred when she answered.
My skin crawled. “Don’t call me shit my wife calls me.”
“She wasn’t the first,” she said, laughing like this was a game. “Plus, I heard she might not be able to call you anything anymore since she was shot.”
“Who told you Stormi was shot?” I asked, calm enough to scare.
“You know how the hood talk,” she said.
I could picture her chewing gum and twirling something with her fingers.
“Who told you?” I repeated it louder.
“You know I’m here for you, daddy,” she cooed. The words made bile rise. She was playing while she had her feet in the dirt.
“How long you gone be outta town?”
