My stomach churned as I pulled into my driveway. A murder was something that I never wanted to or even thought I would witness. Maybe my father thought he was making me happy oravenging my rape by doing what he did in front of me, but I didn’t appreciate it. I never needed to know how he chose to handle Lonzo. I knew I’d be getting home late, so I left the light on in my living room. I got word from Marlo when I first moved in my house that my father had spoken to all the hustlers within a twenty-mile radius of my home and let them know that me and my daughter were off limits.
Of course, he didn’t directly give them my address, but he made it known that shorty with the red hair was good in any hood, protected, and better not ever be touched. Obviously, someone had gone against the grain. My heart dropped when I stepped over the threshold of my home and saw my living room in disarray. The 62’ inch television that had been mounted on my wall was gone. My eyes darted around the space. The door wasn’t damaged, and the windows in the living room weren’t broken. I wasn’t quite sure how the burglar or burglars got in my house, but I wasn’t going to investigate. I had no clue if they were still inside. With trembling fingers, I unlocked my cell phone and dialed 9-1-1.
My father was as gangsta as they came, but I was raised in the suburbs. Witnessing crimes and walking in on burglaries wasn’t my thing. I stepped back onto the porch while I talked with the dispatcher. I was so glad that Kiwi wasn’t with me. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that she would have been terrified. The things that had been taken didn’t matter because they could all be replaced. Just knowing that someone had broken into my home and violated me and my daughter’s things was terrifying and infuriating. I hated bum ass niggas that refused to work for what they wanted.
It took the police less than ten minutes to come, but it felt like a lifetime. One of the officers was a dark-skinned black man, and the other was a red-haired white guy. The moment the black officer laid eyes on me, recognition set in on his face.
“You’re Devin’s daughter, right?”
Even the police knew my father and unfortunately, I had no way of knowing if this was a cop on my father’s payroll or one that had a hardon for taking him down.
“Yes,” I mumbled not in the mood to answer irrelevant questions. My father and who he was had nothing to do with the break-in.
The officers searched my house and discovered that whoever broke in gained entry by kicking in the back door. I knew that I couldn’t sleep in my own bed that night, and that made tears sting my eyes. I didn’t care about the television that was missing out of my bedroom, the Louis Vuitton purse, or my MacBook. I was pissed about my child’s things that had been taken. Jewelry, her camera, several pairs of shoes, her television, and her iMac. A person had to be a real low life to steal from a child. It was obvious by the décor in Kiwi’s room that she was a child.
The officers stayed with me while I packed an overnight bag. Inside my car, I had to do the one thing that I hated to have to do and that was call my father.
CHAPTER 2
UNO
Resistingthe urge to shake my head while I listened to Devin talk to his daughter on the phone was hard. Hard as hell. He was really acting his ass off pretending to be upset about her house being broken into. I knew it was an act because he requested that me and my best friend, Shiloh break into the house. He didn’t trust anyone else to do it. As crazy as it sounded, even though we’d been instructed to steal things, he was hesitant to just send anybody up in his daughter’s crib. Shiloh and I didn’t do too much, we just did what we were told to do. Going to such lengths might have been a little extreme because it wasn’t like Apricot lived smack in the middle of a war zone. It didn’t matter though. Where she did live, Devin didn’t consider it to be good enough, and he wanted her out. By any means necessary.
I didn’t have a thing to do with whatever Devin and Apricot had going on. I had been working for him for the past ten years, so I’d seen Apricot plenty. Shorty was kind of standoffish, so we never exchanged more than five words in passing. She didn’t give stuck up vibes though. Unlike most kids with rich fathers, she didn’t drive a foreign car, nor did she dress in expensive labels. Apricot seemed very down to earth. She also seemed tohave disdain for her father and the kind of life that he lived. I couldn’t be mad at her for that either.
There was a lot that came with this life. My own mother disowned me because of it. That was until she was about to lose her house, and she decided she’d rather take $4,000 in dope money than to have her home foreclosed on. I was thirty, and my brother Robert was thirty-two. When he went to college my mother was so proud. I graduated from high school a year after he did and when I decided that school wasn’t for me, my mother wanted to know what I was gon’ do. I couldn’t tell her I was going to be a pharmacist like Robert. We sold two different kinds of drugs though. By the time she figured out what I was doing, I had enough money saved to move out of her house.
That didn’t stop her from calling me every day asking me why I couldn’t be more like Robert. My mom said all kinds of shit. Including my father was probably rolling over in his grave. I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to say because college nor working a nine to five were for me. When she saw me driving a Lexus, she stopped speaking to me. My mother and I didn’t talk for over a year but when she was about to lose her house, she reached out to me. I didn’t hesitate to help her. After taking the money, she eased up on me, but she still gave me the side eye. Ten years in the game, and I wasn’t sure when I was going to slow down. Being that I had a ten-year-old son, I didn’t want to end up dead or in prison, but when a person was as deep in the game as I was, you couldn’t just walk away. It didn’t work like that.
Finally, Devin ended the phone call with a satisfied sigh. “Good job, son,” he winked at me. “My daughter and grandbaby are coming to stay with me for a while. Thank you.”
I simply bobbed my head. I was a grown man, and I didn’t fear anyone, but I didn’t see the need of him thanking me when I didn’t do it to do a favor for him. I did it because it was a payingjob. I had never told Devin no but then again, he’d never asked me to do anything that I was against.
“Now let’s get down to business,” Devin sat back in his brown leather chair. “I started watching you when you were around nineteen. I’ve always been thoroughly impressed by you. You’re not with the dumb shit. Even as a teen and young adult, you didn’t do the most, bust your gun for dumb shit, or act overly cocky. In a room full of people, you’re never the loudest. You sit, observe, keep your head down. I like that. About how much do you profit a month serving the hustlers out in South Carolina?”
That wasn’t a question that required pondering. “I make around $500,000.”
Devin nodded and rubbed his chin. “What if you made double that?”
I couldn’t stop my brows from hiking. Serving the hustlers in South Carolina had me living the life of my dreams. Shit, I was living a life beyond my dreams. Hearing Devin tell me I could be making $1,000,000 a month had me speechless. Counting the next man’s pockets had never been my thing, but I often wondered just how much money Devin Jennings possessed. The fleet of luxury cars, access to private jets, a yacht, and an 8,000 square foot home didn’t even tip the iceberg of his success. If he was telling me I could make $1,000,000 in one month, he had to be making ten times that. Got damn.
“I’d say got damn that’s a lot of money.”
Devin chortled. “Fuck yeah it is. I need someone to handle the Diamond Cove clientele. Sticks is retiring and truth be told it’s time for me to step back. Taking a step back isn’t even the correct term. I’ll be retiring in the next six months. I need to get my affairs in order and get this last bit of money. Once I’m out, you can do what you want but if you wish to remain in the game, I can introduce you to my plug.”
“Wow.” I was stunned.
I had seen Devin insult and embarrass stone cold gangsters, so I always fed him with a long-handled spoon because I knew trying him was the equivalent of signing my own death certificate. Regardless, I wasn’t in the habit of letting people play in my face. I was a grown man and would be treated as such no matter how much money or power a person possessed. Fortunately, Devin had only ever treated me with the utmost respect. His offer still shocked me, however.
“I can’t even lie. If I have the option to make $6,000,000 in six months, once you step down, I’ll have no issue leaving the game.” I already had money saved. There was no way I’d have more than six million in my possession and still be risking my freedom. The added responsibility that Devin was giving me was my way out. I could leave the game wealthy and comfortable. Start a business to wash my money, buy a house, pay off my cars, and live a quiet life. That shit didn’t sound too bad.
“You don’t have to make a decision now. See how the next six months go. I’ll have a meeting tomorrow and you can come meet everyone that you’ll be serving. I know in South Carolina, you conduct business on the fifteenth and the last day of the month. In Diamond Cove their re-up days are the sixteenth and the twenty-eighth.”
“Got it.”
Devin nodded, and I knew our business was done. I stood up and returned the gesture before leaving the office. His office had a private entrance, so I didn’t have to walk through his home to leave. It took me six years of working for Devin to be allowed into his home. He was very strict about who he let know where he laid his head. He still had a security guard in a booth at the gate of his estate and cameras everywhere. I knew extreme precaution was important when a person was as involved in the streets as Devin was, but I wouldn’t even want to live like that.I’d be happy in a large home on mad acres out in the country away from people and the hustle and bustle of the city.
When I got inside my red BMW, I looked at the watch that adorned my wrist and decided against going to the gym. I’d wake up early and do some weight lifting before teaching my first boxing class. My uncle Tone had me boxing at the age of four. I loved the sport, and I was nice with it, but boxing wasn’t anything I ever attempted to pursue. It may have sounded odd to some, but I loved the sport so much that I wanted to keep it for myself. I didn’t want it to turn it into something that I had to seek approval for. Worrying about being chosen, being deemed good enough, and trying to eat off the sport, would have sucked all of the fun out of it. I had fun with boxing and perfected my skills enough to teach classes so it wasn’t making me rich, but it was making me money.
