I could hear Hollow shuffling. Whatever he was about to do with Love was being put on hold.
“Adore, I’m coming over there. I don’t want to talk on the phone.”
An hour later, Hollow was walking through the door. I locked the door behind him and followed him to the sofa.
“So, you tellin’ me all your dough was left? It wasn’t a robbery. It was a fuckin’ statement. And where the fuck Whodie dread having ass at? He should be here with you.”
“He was, but he thinks I’m hiding shit and protecting Sosa.”
“It’s definitely a nigga that knows your operation. I’m with bruh on that shit. Run me down how this nigga died.”
I ran it down to him. There was no way he could fake that shit.
“Nah, that nigga dead dead.” Hollow laughed.
Death never scared him. He saw the shit too much. After seeing his son dead, he was numb to the shit. Not to mention, he worked with the dead for a living. Illegally and legally.
“Who the fuck could it be then?” I flopped down on the sofa.
“Look, flip your operation around. You should’ve never kept that shit how that pussy nigga had it anyway.”
“Now you sound like Whodie.”
“The nigga knows the streets a little better than you. Yeah, you know the drug game, but the streets are different when you’ve been in that muthafucka your whole life. Step back and listen to what the fuck he gotta say.”
“Aight.” I threw my hands.
“You wanna crash at my spot?”
“Fuck no! I don’t want to hear you and Love, the fuck!”
“Lock this bitch down. I’ll check on you in the morning.” He walked towards the door, rubbed his hand under the table in my foyer, and smiled when he felt the gun. “My muthafuckin’ sister.”
“You taught me well.” I winked.
When Hollow left, I locked the house up and set the alarm. I rolled a blunt and searched every cabinet around the house for some liquor. Whodie poured all of it out. Right now, I needed a shot, but I knew not to leave this house. Not only did Whodie warn me not to leave, but Hollow did as well. I settled for the blunt and took a shower to get the day off me. My phone started ringing as I wrapped the towel around me.
“Why you calling? Didn’t you leave?” I said with an attitude.
“I’m making sure you’re good,” Whodie said.
“Don’t worry about me.”
“Stop with the fuckin’ attitude, please. That’s why I didn’t stay home.”
I stopped being a bitch because I wasn’t really mad at Whodie. It was my anxiety fucking with me.
“Hollow said I needed to hear you out about that. So come home in the morning, and I’ll have breakfast ready.”
“Bet! I love you,” Whodie said.
“I love you too,” I said before we ended the call.
CHAPTER 5: WHODIE
The car I sat in smelled like old smoke and cheap ass cologne. That’s exactly why I liked it. Nobody would ever connect the raggedy Buick back to me. It belonged to one of the smokers who hung around my old crack house all day begging for change and loose cigarettes. I had tossed him a few hundred earlier and told him to disappear for the night. Now I was sitting ducked off inside the car about a half a block down from Adore’s old house in the hood. The same house she grew up in. The house she was keeping for reasons she never really explained.
Most nights, the street was quiet once the kids went inside. Just stray dogs, porch lights flickered, and the occasional car rolling through. Probably a married nigga creeping with one of the hood chicks. I was here for one reason. The fiend said someone was sniffing around Adore’s house. I wanted to see who the fuck it was with my own eyes. I leaned back lower in the seat and cracked the window just enough to let the blunt smoke slip outside. Patience wasn’t something most street niggas had, but I learned that shit young. Sometimes the smartest move was just sitting on a nigga and letting them show their hand.
