“I was in a bad place when I met you, but you were so kind and patient with me. I prayed for you, not knowing that God would send you so soon. Every day since I met you has been amazing, minus you trying to kill me, but that’s another story for another day. I can’t imagine my life without you, and I would love nothing more than to be Mrs. Thomas. So, YES! I will marry you!” she cried.
I lifted her off the ground, and without being too rough, I gave her a long, deep, passionate kiss. Everyone congratulated us as I hugged and kissed my woman. From my peripheral, I saw Trell approach Ciara and ask to speak with her. Harmoni broke away from me and made an announcement that it was time for me to open my gifts.
I walked over to the table, and everyone waited to see what I had gotten. Dimeo begged me to open her gift first; I just knew that she had outdone herself. When I grabbed the bag from Dimeo’s hand, it was a black gift bag with another bag inside it. The bag that I pulled out was a green Rolex bag. When I took it out, I gave her a look to let her know that it better not be what I thought it was. She smiled at me as I continued to open my gift. Once I got the box out of the bag and opened it, I almost fainted!She bought me a bust-down Rollie with gold trim. The diamonds were dancing so hard that I regretted not having my shades on. Everyone was in awe of the Rollie. I gave my cousin a big ass hug.
Harmoni wanted me to open her gift next. It was a large Gucci shopping bag. She was always on point when it came to fashion, so I knew that whatever she bought me was going to be fly. When I grabbed the bag from her hands, it was kind of heavy. On top was a Gucci sweater that matched the one I had just bought her a few weeks ago. Under the sweater was some gift paper. Once I lifted the paper, the bag was full of stacks of money. I put the bag on the ground in front of me, then took two of the stacks out and put them up to my ear. I put them back in the bag and flipped through all of them.
“You’re twenty-eight, so it’s only right that I give you twenty-eight racks to put into your business,” she said as she kissed my lips.
Just as I thought my night couldn’t get any better. Trell told me to come outside, so he could give me my gift. Everyone rushed outside to see what Trell had gotten me. When we got out there, we all watched as an all-black Slingshot pulled up to the curb. The slingshot had custom leather seats and was nice as hell.
“I know that’s not mine! Hell nah, bro! I know you ain’t cash out like that!” I exclaimed.
“Hell yeah. You deserve it, but you must don’t see who driving that muthafucka. Go get yo’ keys from yo’ pops,” Trell said.
I bent down, looked into the face of my father, and tears instantly fell. I had not seen this man since I was ten years old when he went to jail on murder and drug charges. My pops was always a good father to me, but when he got jammed up, he cut ties so I wouldn’t have to see him like that. I always wanted my pops in my life, but as I got older, I realized he was right. Therewasn’t shit he could do for me behind bars. Although I wanted that love and relationship, I stopped trying once I knew how he really felt about it.
My dad got out of my new ride, then rushed over and grabbed me in a tight hug. Everyone cheered as we embraced. We couldn’t let go of each other. Harmoni was patting my back as I held onto my father. I didn’t know what the future held, but I knew that this new chapter of my life was about to be filled with nothing but love. It could only go up from here. In year twenty-eight, I was going to be strictly on some Boss Mane shit.
For weeks, I had been sick behind Harmoni going all out for Black on his birthday. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I scrolled on social media and saw that Harmoni had bought that nigga a fuckin’ barbershop. People were calling my phone and sending me videos, and I just wanted to be left the fuck alone. The last thing I wanted to see was my girl happy with another dude.
It was sad that I made one mistake, and now I was the worst nigga in the world. She didn’t give a nigga any grace at all. Never had I been the one to cry over spilled milk, and I slowly realized that I just needed to give it up. She was now pregnant and engaged to someone else. From the looks of things, they were more locked in than we had ever been.
I had stopped at Outback and grabbed Journei some lunch. Now, I was headed to her job to surprise her. Lately, I had been more open to the idea of taking her seriously. Once Moni proved that I wasn’t her baby daddy, I felt the urge to move on. If anyone was going to get a chance, it would be Journei. She hadn’t changed up on me, and I could really fuck with that.
Once I arrived at the hospital, I headed straight to labor and delivery, where she worked. She was leaving a patient’s room when she saw me, and she instantly smiled from ear to ear. She directed me to her break room, where I sat at the table and watched her eat her lunch.
She caught me up on her day and how busy things had been at the hospital. Once her break was over, I kissed her and headed to get my son from his grandmother’s house. I promised Journei that we could link later once she was off of work. As I headed to get JJ, Keith called me. I answered and allowed it to blare through my car speakers.
“Yo!” I answered.
“Something ain’t right, J! Amir was supposed to drop something off last night, and I haven’t seen or heard from him. I need you to pull up. I know that nigga wouldn’t take from us, so something has to be wrong,” Keith panicked.
“Say less. I’m on my way,” I said as I made a U-turn in the middle of the street and headed back toward Keith’s direction.
When I made it to Keith’s crib, he was waiting for me out front. He ran it to me about how Amir was supposed to deliver two bricks to one of our regular customers last night. Amir was said to have never shown up, and now he was missing. My first thought was that maybe the customer had knocked him off and taken the work, but after doing business with him for all these years, nothing like this had ever happened. The customer was also in panic mode and threatened to get a new connect if we couldn’t deliver in a timely manner.
I made several calls to our other workers to see if they had heard or knew anything, and everyone was just as lost as I was. Amir and Jack were cousins, so I reached out to him and asked about Amir, but he didn’t know anything either. As I spoke to Jack, he was being pulled over. I asked him if he had any work on him, and he advised that he did, but it wasn’t much. Not wanting to get caught up in any shit, I told Jack not to say shit if they searched him and found it. I told him that I would handle it on my end. Jack put his phone on speaker and in his console so I could hear what was going on.
Jack was searched and arrested, so I called my lawyer and told him what was going on. I needed Jack out of jail before he could get interrogated. When it came to my freedom, I didn’t trust a soul. No matter how solid a nigga said he was, they would still fold if they were facing time. Now, I had one more thing on my list of shit to be concerned about.
I left Keith’s crib and went to pick my son up. When I arrived, the two detectives were leaving Eva’s house, and I found that strange. Seeing them leaving my son’s grandma’s house was odd because I had not seen or heard from them in months. Matt, since my son’s mama passed away.
When I saw the detectives get into their car and leave, that’s when I got out of my car and headed to Eva’s house.
“I don’t know where she is. Nobody knows. The detectives just came here saying that she escaped the program with some nigga, and they can’t find her! I need you to fuckin’ help me!” Eva said into the phone as I walked into her house.
“What’s going on? And what did those detectives want?” I asked, startling her.
Eva jumped and clutched her chest. Instead of responding immediately, she seemed to be looking for a lie to tell.
“I didn’t know you were here. Why didn’t you knock? I really don’t want you in my daughter’s business, but we had to putTaylor into rehab after what happened to Diamond, and now she has escaped and is missing. That’s why the detectives were just here,” she said, sounding unsure.
“Damn, I just saw her a few weeks ago. When did she get strung out? I guess you can never really tell, but I’m sorry to hear that. Today has been full of crazy shit. I hope y’all find her soon,” I said.
“She’s been taking it really hard, and she finally just broke. I didn’t want anyone to know about it. This is very heartbreaking,” Eva faked.
It was something about her that seemed phony. She was texting very fast on her phone while I got my son and his things together. I didn’t know what she had going on, but I wasn’t about to stay there longer than I had to. I had a lot of shit on my plate and had no room to pack hers on top of it.
