“I’m somebody who is going to make sure you’re taken care of,” I said. “Somebody who is going to protect you and love you like my own grandmother for as long as you’re here. That’s who I am.”
She looked at me for a long time after that. Long enough that I almost said something else to fill the silence.
Then she smiled. Small and knowing and real.
“I suppose that’s good enough for me,” she said. “As long as you keep feeding me and bringing me surprises. You know those housecoats are my favorite.”
“I know.”
“The thick ones cause it gets cold in here at night.”
“I know, Grandma Erma.”
She laughed, and I laughed with her, and we finished eating while the television played something neither one of us was watching. She was the mother figure that I needed right now, and I would be the grandson she deserved. While I sat there, I couldn’t stop thinking of Ivy, and watching my phone waiting on the investigator to call me back.
Tonight, I had to handle Cherish, and tomorrow I was gonna handle Ivy’s sneaky ass. I smirked as I thought of my night with her. Her time with her nigga was very limited.
Marco was thorough. That was the only word for it.
I had pulled him to the side last night right after everything settled down from my rescue mission, before anybody dispersed and went their separate ways. Gave him two addresses, both places I kept thinking of in my head as spots Cherish might be holding Grim. One was a stash house she taken me to, that her dad use to move through years back that I only knew about because she had trusted me more than she should have.
The second was the house she grew up in. The place where Grim had killed her entire family. I had gone back and forth on that one because it seemed too obvious, too personal, but then again Cherish wasn’t the type to do anything without intention behind it. Bringing Grim back to that house wasn’t just a holding location. That would be a statement.
I woke up to the confirmation sitting in my phone. I didn’t open the message and go through the contents til now because of that damn Ivy. She had my mind fucked up bout her.
Marco had sent pictures. Clean, clear, taken from a distance that told me he had stayed low and patient the whole night without making a single mistake. The childhood house. Guards posted at the front and the back, at least four that he could count from his angle, probably more inside. And then at six in the morning, Cherish herself walked out the front door, leaving the location.
He had caught her on camera leaving.
I sat there in my car outside the nursing home looking at every photo he sent, going through them slow and deliberate. Zooming in, studying the layout, counting heads, noting the exits I could see and accounting for the ones I couldn’t. Marco had done in one night what some niggas couldn’t pull off in a week. He stayed invisible, got everything I needed, and sent it before I even had to ask for an update.
The nigga really needed to hang up the street life and open a private investigation firm. He was too good at this shit.
I put the car in drive and pulled out of the nursing home parking lot, and as soon as I hit the main road I called Deuce.
He answered fast. “Talk to me.”
“Marco found him,” I said. “Cherish got Grim at her childhood house. The same house where her entire family got killed. She brought him right back there. She wanted to be found.” I expressed. When Deuce rescued me, I ran down to him briefly what was going on and had happened to get me there.
Deuce was quiet for a second. “Hell yeah she did. That’s personal.”
“Everything she does is personal. That’s her problem.” I merged onto the highway and kept my eyes moving out of habit.
“Tonight I need five men. Not just anybody either. The most thorough on the team that we got. Niggas who have been in real situations and didn’t fold, like last night. Make sure they understand the risk going in because I don’t know exactly what we walking into beyond what Marco sent me. Guards are heavy on the outside. Inside is a question mark.”
“I’ll have them ready,” Deuce said. Then, “How you feeling about this?”
“It’s something that has to be done. Cherish crossed me once and I gave her a pass she didn’t earn. Now she doubled back and crossed me again like none of that meant anything, like I wasn’t the reason she was still breathing. So now she has to pay for it. Simple.”
“I hear you,” Deuce said. “But that’s not what I asked you.”
I didn’t say anything for a second.
“I was asking how you feel about saving your brother. Knowing everything between y’all. Knowing that shit with you and your siblings never really been on the up and up. Hell, your baby brother was ready to kill you behind Gremlin getting snatched.” He paused. “And I’m going to assume Cherish really did a number on you if that’s the part you answered first. I wasn’t even talking about her ass when I asked you that, but she was the first thing on your mind.
I almost laughed. Almost. “She did do a number on me. And she’s going to regret it.”
“Alright. But your brother though. You thought about what you want to do with him once you get him out of there? And then,you gotta remember that your other brother is being held and needs to be handled too.”
