—
Today was long as hell. I’d spent my entire day in Austin with my worrisome ass brothers. Now, I had just pulled back into Dallas after going with Melo and Mazi to UT Austin college campus. After everything that happened this morning at the gas station, I pretended it never happened when I got around my brothers. Today was about them and I wouldn’t fuck up this vibe for nothing. As the big brother, I needed to see the school my boys was attending in the fall. Hell yeah I was overprotective, but that’s what came with being the man of the house damn near my whole life. Our father was taken from us when I was five and the twins were one. So, I grew up feeling like I had to be their protector since I was old enough to understand.
The whole three hour drive home I didn’t even turn the music up. Just rode in the quiet thinking about the looks on my brothers faces when we pulled onto that campus. They tried to play it cool the way we all played everything cool because that’s just how we was raised — you didn’t let nothing move you too much on the outside no matter what was happening on the inside. But I knew my brothers. I had been knowing them their whole lives and I saw it. Both of them taking everything in, walking around that campus like they already owned that muthafucka. They were already seeing themselves there. That was all I needed to see. That three hour drive back to Dallas by myself was worth every single thing I had done and was still doing to make that moment happen.
Melo and Mazi were eighteen years old and they were about to start college in the fall at a university three hours away from the hood that raised us. I needed a minute alone to sit and really process this shit. They worked hard as hell for those scholarships, and I did everything I had to on the backend tomake sure they were financially straight and set up for success. This accomplishment of theirs meant a lot. Not just to them. To me. To our moms. To the memory of a man named Hood who never got to see his sons become who they were becoming. My father died for us, all he ever wanted was to give us a better life, so I took walking in his shoes very seriously when it came down to what I would do to give his baby boys a good life.
The scholarships covered a good portion of it. The rest was on me and I had been handling it the way I handled everything else in life. I did it without complaining about it, without letting nobody see me sweat, and without letting my brothers know the full extent of what it was actually costing me to keep them straight. They knew I took fights. They knew I moved in the streets a little. What they didn’t know was the depth of it and I planned on keeping it that way until they were so far into their futures that none of this could reach back and touch them.
That was the plan anyway.
I was thirty thousand dollars short of paying off my debts, and the man I owed it to wasn’t built for patience.
I had taken a front from Tavarus months back when I needed to make sure everything was lined up for the twins before fall hit. At the time it made sense. I had money moving, I had fights lined up, and thirty thousand felt like something I could replace fast if I stayed focused. What I didn’t account for was how fast things could shift when you were moving in the kind of circles I was moving in. A deal that fell through. A fight that got cancelled last minute. A couple situations that ate into what I had stacked up and before I knew it I was behind in a way that I couldn’t fast talk my way out of. On the other hand, I’d handled the most important business to me. I made sure my brothers’ futures were secure. And that was the biggest thing.
Tavarus wasn’t a loud nigga. He wasn’t the type to make a scene or come at you sideways with disrespect. He was even tempered and almost what you’d call lame, he ran his operation with the kind of quiet efficiency that made him more dangerous than any loud aggressive nigga I had ever been around. He worked underneath somebody even further up the chain, somebody whose name circulated through the streets more like a warning than an actual person. The man he worked for name was Veteran. He was a legend in the streets, but nobody was able to reach the nigga. Hell, after all the years of working with him and for him, I didn’t even believe that Tavarus had actually seen the nigga.
That structure that came from above Tavarus meant that when he gave you terms you took them seriously because the consequences of not taking them seriously went further up than just him.
I had been taking it seriously. I just hadn’t been moving fast enough, and unexpectedly ran into some delays. Still, I was gonna sit down and come up with a plan to pay the man back. I’d never been an untrustworthy ass muthafucka, nor did I believe in biting the hand that feeds you. This shit was just out of my control right now, but I was gonna do what I had to in order to make it right and get this shit squared away.
I parked on the street in front of my building and cut the engine. I sat there for a second. It was around ten at night, quiet on my block the way it usually was at this time. I was tired from the drive, hungry as hell and already running through my options in my head before I even got out the car. I knew I’d probably warm up something processed out my freezer or order a damn pizza.
I got out and made it halfway to my front door before I felt a cold ass chill run down my spine. Before I could turn around and see what the feeling was…
They came from three different directions at the same time and moved fast. So fast that they’d gotten up on me before I could react or register what this was. Their execution was clean the way people moved when they had done this enough times that it wasn’t nothing to think about. They just acted. By the time my brain registered what was happening they were already on me — one nigga came from behind with both arms locked around mine pinning them to my sides and two in my face before I could create any distance or find an angle to work with.
“Who the—”
The first hit came before I could finish the sentence. A straight right hook from the one in front of me that snapped my head back and made my vision blurry then double. Then a punch to my stomach that folded me forward and the one holding me from behind yanked me back up before I could use the momentum for anything. They walked me off the sidewalk fast and around the side of the building into the alley before anybody on the street could peep what was happening.
I was gathering myself after being caught off guard and in shock. When I finally locked in on what was going on, I turned into the damn hulk. Flexing those niggas hands off of me, shaking them the fuck off. Then, I aimed my focus on the biggest nigga and he was standing directly in front of me. I hit his ass with the meanest uppercut that made his teeth clink together, sounding off hard as hell, I followed up with two more punches to the face, drawing blood and breaking his fucking nose. Then I banged the other two niggas heads together and just as I was about to beat them bloody…
The one in the middle whose nose I broke, he pulled a gun out and pressed it directly to my temple and held it there.
Nobody said nothing for a second.
I didn’t move. Didn’t try nothing else. The barrel was cold against the side of my head and the man holding it wasn’t shaking and wasn’t hyped up either. He wasn’t doing none of the things that people did when they were performing, putting on a front or playing tough. He held a cold gaze from what I’d just done to him, but in my defense, they came fucking with me. He was just standing there bleeding heavily but acted as if it happened everyday. He wiped his nose with his shirt while keeping his gun trained on me with the other hand. He was calm, still and focused. That calmness told me more about who sent them than anything else could have.
“Tavarus wants his money,” he said.
I didn’t respond right away. My jaw was already throbbing from that first punch and I could taste blood starting to pool from where my lip had split against my teeth. The two on the sides of me had grabbed my arms again.
“I’m moving on it,” I said, with a scowl on my face as I spit on the ground beside him.
The one in the middle looked at me for a second and then nodded at the one on my left. I guess that was his cue, so the nigga drove a punch into my ribs so hard that the air left my body all at once and I couldn’t do nothing but take it. He hit me again in the same spot before I could pull a breath back in and my knees wanted to buckle but the one beside me was still holding me up.
“Tavarus know you moving,” the bloody nigga with the gun said, same flat tone, like nothing that just happened was worth changing his voice over. “He need to know when you finishing because your timeline and his ain’t matching up right now.”
I got my breath back and straightened up as much as I could with somebody still gripping both my arms. These niggas knew without that gun, they couldn’t fuck with me and that made me want to try my luck and dive on they asses again. My ribs were already screaming and I wasn’t the nigga that people typically played these games with.
“Seven days,” he continued. “Thirty thousand dollars cash. That’s what he’s giving you. No bitch ass excuses. Just have the bread!” He pressed the gun hard against my temple just for a second then pulled it back. “Day eight, if you short he ain’t sending us back. You understand what I’m telling you?”
“I understand.”
“Say the number back to me.”
I looked him dead in his eyes. “Thirty thousand. Seven days.”
