She used me. Knew I had a soft spot for her, and that’s the only reason she was still breathing. She made me believe she loved me, got me to drop my guard, then vanished like smoke. Left me looking stupid in a world where being stupid gets you killed.
And now? Because of her, I was tied up by my own blood.
She’d fucked me over again.
What I thought was love had rotted into something venomous. And now, sitting in this chair, that hate was solidifying into something permanent. Something deadly. The longer that I had time to sit here thinking about it, the angrier I got.
She was already dead. She just didn’t know it yet.
When I got loose, I was gonna kill her myself. Not for Grim. Not for family. For me. For the game she played. For making me feel something I had no business feeling in the first place.
I was born in Corsicana, Texas. The grimiest parts. The blocks where dope fiends nodded off on porches and gunshots rang out like clockwork. Drugs, money, bodies, and power—my parents were neck-deep in all of it.
My father, Mayhem, was one of the most feared men in the city. And even more feared in his own home.
He didn’t need to be loud or flashy. He just was dangerous in the quietest way. When he spoke, people listened. When he went silent, people died. He controlled every major pipeline running through Corsicana.
Nobody moved weight without his say-so.
My mother, Sandi, worked for him.
That’s how it started.
She wasn’t weak. Wasn’t nobody’s rug to walk over. She was sharp, ruthless, ambitious. One thing she wanted more than anything was power, so she went above to prove herself to my father and the crew. She handled money, people, and problems without flinching. Stood in rooms full of killers and never blinked. She was quicker to pull her gun than any of the men. A real short tempered, hot head. That’s what made Mayhem want her.
She wasn’t just another worker. Nah, she was a woman who could switch from counting cash to catching bodies without breaking a sweat. She rocked designer heels and kept a burner in her purse. A devil in red bottoms or whatever the fuck they wore back then.
That’s what made him cross the line and ultimately fuck up his life.
Because back then, Mayhem was married. He was married to his high school sweetheart that he truly loved, but had a fucked up way of showing.
His wife couldn’t have kids. Doctors told her early on, and it broke something in her. Mayhem stood by her at first, but that news changed him. He started looking at her different. Like she was less of a woman because she couldn’t give him a family.
He never said it out loud, but his actions spoke volumes. The distance grew. The coldness set in. And even though she loved him—protected him, lied for him, would have taken bullets for him—he stopped caring for her like he used to. Instead of comforting and reassuring his wife, his eyes started wandering.
She thought my mama was just his right hand. A loyal soldier. A friend.
So she let Sandi into her home. Told her everything. She confided in our mom about the fertility issues. About how Mayhem had been changing. About the cancer that was quietly eating her alive that not even her own husband knew. She promised my mom to keep her secret because she had faith that she could beat it. Deep down inside, my mom was hoping that she wouldn’t.
She opened up, trusted her, gave her the blueprint to her marriage without realizing she was handing over the keys to her own destruction.
And my mama? She used every bit of that information to her own sick ass advantage.
Less than a year later, while Mayhem’s wife was sneaking and going to chemo behind his back, dying slow and praying for more time, my mother was pregnant with his first son.
Gremlin.
They allowed a mistake to turn into something way bigger. What was supposed to been a one time thing turned into a full blown, side relationship Mayhem hid.
Grim was the product of betrayal. A living, breathing reminder of Mayhem’s sins. And because of that, Mayhem hated him. Treated him like a curse. Every time he looked at Gremlin, he saw his own failure staring back. Mayhem wanted a family.. but not like this. And once the betrayal that he’d placed on his wife set in, the nigga was angry with everyone other than himself.
Grim became his karma. And Mayhem made sure he suffered for it.
—
Years later, when we grew old enough to understand, my mama told us the story like it was nothing. No shame. No regret. She really thought she won, but if the prize was this fucked up life that we’d been born into, we were all losers.
“I knew the moment I was carrying him,” she said, cigarette dangling from her lips, smoke curling around her face. “That boy wasn’t gonna be normal. He was trouble from the jump.” She pointed her cigarette in Grim’s direction, and his young eyes grew wide. He had to have been around ten, and she was talking to us like we were her grown ass friends or something. But at this age, we’d seen and done more than people twice our age, sadly.
