“I’m only going to say this once,” I said, looking at both of them. “So I need both of y’all to actually hear me.”
They were looking at me.
“I’ve had this conversation with each of you separately. I’ve said what needed to be said and I’ve heard what I needed to hear. What I’m telling you now is where things stand going forward.” I looked from one to the other. “You are my brothers. That means something to me even after everything. It has always meant something to me. But I have a life built, a position I hold, people who depend on me moving a certain way. I cannot have my own blood being a liability to that. We clear so far?”
Both of them said they understood. I wasn’t going to be interfering with their business and the operations that they ran, and I expected the same.
“The next time I see either one of you, it needs to be on some business. Something productive. Something that benefits everybody at the table. If you come at me sideways again, if you send anybody at my people, if I even get a feeling that something is moving in my direction that has either one of your fingerprints on it—” I stopped and looked at them steady. “I will not send a team. I will come myself. You niggas know how dangerous I can get. Ain’t shit changed. And after everything that’s happened in the last week you both know I mean exactly what I’m saying.”
Savage looked at me and shook his head slowly, something almost like a smile on his face. “You cold blooded man. You really are. How the fuck you gone stand here and tell us you’ll murk us, basically. You know, we all got it in us.”
“I learned it somewhere, but you know, I never gave a fuck. I promise I’ll draw down the quickest.” I said. Reminding them of who I was. Gremlin was unusually quiet, and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. By looking on his face, I feel like he was disappointed in himself for all the time that he spent hating me.
“You ain’t gonna have to do all that though,” he said. “That’s not what this is gonna be. I give you my word on that. You my lil brother Griz, and I appreciate the shit you’ve done. Even if I never said it, my nigga.”
I looked at Grim.
He held my eye and nodded once. Slow and deliberate. A man’s nod. The kind that didn’t need a speech attached to it.
I stepped forward and grabbed Savage first. He grabbed me back and held it for a real second, the kind of embrace that acknowledged everything that had happened and everything that had been said in that safe house without having to repeat any of it.
Then I stepped to Grim and we did the same. His grip was tight and brief and I felt something in it that I was choosing to believe was genuine.
When I stepped back I looked at both of them one more time.
“Take care of yourselves,” I said.
Then I got in my car and drove away and didn’t look in the rearview.
What I found out later, and what settled something in me that I hadn’t even realized was that Grim had taken care of our father’s body after that night. All those years ago. He had handled it, protected the situation, kept what happened in that house from ever becoming something that followed me legally. He had never told me. Never used it as leverage even when he had everything else at his disposal to come at me with. Underneath all the damage and the anger and the years of hostility, my brother had been covering for me the whole time. Yeah he blackmailed my ass, but he was never going to snitch on me. His hands were just as dirty as mine.
I drove for a long time after that without thinking about anything specific. I had a sense of peace that I no longer had to look over my back. Not from my brothers anyway.
The Ivy situation needed to breathe.
I had come to that conclusion the morning after I showed up at her job. I had seen Brendon walk through that door with food in his hand and a smile on his face completely unaware that his woman had just been on her desk with my head between her legs a few minutes before he arrived. And something about seeing him in person, seeing the full picture of what I was walking into, had sparked something in me that I needed to sit with.
I knew about him. The fiancé. The businessman. The man she was building a life with. But seeing him in the flesh was different. He was just a regular nigga. Not soft exactly, but regular. The kind of man who brought his woman lunch because he was in the area and wanted to see her. He had no idea what was happening right under his damn nose.
I didn’t feel guilty about Ivy. I wasn’t going to pretend I did. But I needed to move with a level of intention that matched whatI actually wanted, and what I actually wanted was her, not just access to her. I wanted her all the way, not in parking lots and locked offices and hotel rooms while she had somewhere to be afterward. And to get there I needed her to stop talking herself out of what she already knew was true.
Ghosting her was the most effective tool I had available.
She had been calling. I knew because I could see the missed calls stacking up and I let every single one of them go because I needed her to feel the specific discomfort of reaching for something and coming up empty. She had been doing that to herself emotionally since the night we reconnected, talking herself into distance, building walls, making promises to herself that she couldn’t keep. I needed her to understand that I could do the same thing and that the version of this where I just kept showing up no matter how many times she told me to stop was not the only version available.
It worked because she called anyway. Kept calling even though she knew I wasn’t going to answer.
This told me everything. I had her ass right where I wanted her.
—
I drove to Houston on a Thursday. I wanted to bring Deuce’s mom to be with baby Tre. All she talked about was being too far away from her new grandbaby. Raja and baby Deuce needed a change of scenery too.
I wanted to surprise my boy, because one thing I knew for sure was that he missed his momma. Deuce was a street nigga, but he had grown up in a loving family, in a great household. I never understood it fully how we both ended up on the same path and had two different upbringings. Had I grown up in the household like him, I’ll probably be a white collar nigga, a streamer or some shit. I damn sure wouldn’t be in this life.
Raja was scared to fly. She would never say it directly, never had, but she used every excuse available to her to avoid getting on anything that left the ground. Dank had tried for years and she wouldn’t do it. So when Deuce mentioned that she wanted to come up with baby Deuce for a visit but was trying to figure out logistics, I made the decision without announcing it and just drove down.
She opened the door when I knocked and her face was full of surprise. I had already told Marcellus that I was coming to pick up his wife, his daughter-in-law, and his grandson. Dank was his nephew, but he looked at him as a son, so who the fuck was I to tell him baby Deuce wasn’t his grandson when he’d already claimed the baby as such.
