“I don’t know who else it would be.”
He nodded slow and looked out at the street the same way I just had. “We need to move smart tonight but you know, after this, I’m on they ass.”
“I know. But you already know what time I’m on.”
“You gotta pay this nigga. Let him know what he did was some shit you can’t fuck with and now that he has his money, you done doing business with em. And we need to find them three niggas immediately after.
“Already been on my mind since the alley.” I picked my phone up and dialed the number that had just texted me.
“Let Tavarus know I’ll be bringing his bread first thing in the morning, bright and early. Don’t call or text my muthafuckin phone again either. Flunky ass muthafuckas.” I barked and hung up the phone without waiting for a response.
I was still smiling when I pulled up to my apartment.
Simone had let me kiss her tonight and that alone was enough to have me in a good mood for the rest of the week. That woman had been playing hard to get since Street first brought me around her and Bri when we were teenagers. I had been patient with it because I knew what I was working with. Simone wasn’t like the other women I dealt with. She had standards and she held them. As much as that worked my nerves sometimes I respected it. Tonight she had finally cracked and I wasn’t about to let that go to waste. Women like Simone don’t go for street niggas like me. It’s too dangerous, and not to mention their image that they want to uphold. But I’d vowed at fourteen that I would make her ass mine one day. Nine years later and I’m just now getting a damn kiss. That shit was crazy.
I grabbed the food bags from the passenger seat and got out. I took the stairs up to my floor and unlocked my front door, then stepped inside.
The apartment was quiet the way I liked it.
I set the bags on the kitchen counter and stood there for a second replaying the entire the night in my head. Street had knocked Champ out in five rounds and got his money. This shit felt like a dream to me. People would be talking about him and this fight for years. They counted my boy out and he showed they bitch asses. From the day that I’d set up the fight and it was announced, people were betting on Champ to win. I didn’t tell Street that, but that nigga had ears just like I did. I made sure he trained hard and was ready to come hard from any angle. See, I knew that with people hyping Champ up to win, that nigga wasn’t going to do his research on Street. He thought that he was about to win off the strength.
But nah. Thats where he fucked up at. We studied that nigga moves and his fights. Street learned his strengths and weakness before the fight ever came. See, that’s the thing with niggas. They get too comfortable, thinking that they can’t be beat. But in reality, you have to know that there’s always someone hungrier than you, tougher than you, and more willing to put in the work. I bet Champ knows that shit now. Damn, I couldn’t stop smiling.
Now Street was on his way to handling his debt first thing in the morning. That was the part Street knew about. What Street didn’t know was that I had already been moving on a whole different level while he was in that cage fighting for his life and the situation was already handled in a way that went beyond anything he was expecting.
I grabbed the food and walked down the hallway to the back bedroom and unlocked the padlock I had just placed on it. I pushed the door open.
She was on the bed where I had left her. Right wrist secured to the headboard, ankles zip tied together with enough slack toshift and adjust but not enough to do anything useful with. The strip of medical tape across her mouth was still in place. The TV was on low the way I left it and she was staring at the ceiling when I came in and her eyes cut to me immediately.
Sandra.
I had been looking at this woman and for three days I had been reminding myself what this was and what it wasn’t. She was somewhere around thirty three, thirty four, at least ten years older than me. She kept herself together in a way that told you she took it seriously. Pretty in a grown woman kind of way that had nothing to do with her trying too hard. I could tell it came naturally and she was just in a routine of getting her shit together tight.
Even zip tied to a headboard in a room that wasn’t hers, she had a composure about her that most people didn’t maintain under pressure.
I pulled the chair up, sat down and reached over and peeled the tape back slow.
She pulled in a long breath through her mouth, worked her jaw trying to get the feeling back and looked at me.
“I brought food. You finna have to eat today.” I said. Trying to be as nice as I could for real.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You said that yesterday.”
“I mean it again tonight.”
I set the container on the nightstand right beside her anyway and sat down. She looked at it and then back at me. I could see her deciding something in her mind. Since she’s been here,she always speaks with her eyes instead of her mouth. Like, she says one thing but really means something else. She was always calculating. Always studying me. Trying to figure out what kind of man she was actually dealing with.
I thought about how I got here.
How I had this lady kidnapped and tied up to my bed.
—
A few days before the fight I had been sitting outside the gated community on the north side of Dallas where Tavarus kept his family tucked away. At the time, I didn’t have a plan, all I knew was that he needed to pay for sending those niggas at my cousin like that. I was in a black 2026 Tahoe with tinted windows that nobody was going to look at twice in that neighborhood. I had been watching the comings and goings all day, and the day before that — learning the patterns, clocking the schedule, figuring out when and how everyone in the home moved.
Sandra had finally left the house without her bitch ass husband and she brought an older woman with her — her mother or aunt, I never figured out which one it was. I really didn’t give a damn either. All I knew was that she’d left home without Tavarus up her ass. After seeing them leave the house alone, my instincts immediately kicked in to follow them.
