I sucked my teeth, shaking my head. “Hell naw. What the fuck y’all niggas want?”
I scanned my mind, trying to remember who I saw standing out there when I looked through the peephole. Was Zeke with them?Shit. I needed to look again, but I was cemented with fear. The Christ boys on my doorstep at three in the morning, afterMeech had gone out on a lick didn’t sit well with me. AndExoduswas with them. Standing front line, with a deep furrow in his brows, like he was pissed about something. What the hell had Meech gotten himself into? I went from being cemented with fear, to pacing back and forth in front of the door.
“We can’t talk with a door between us, baby girl,” one of them said.
I chewed on my bottom lip. “Where Zeke?”
“Right here,” he said before I heard him move closer to the door. “It’s cool, Rei. Open the door real quick.”
I wasn’t supposed to open the door.
If it weren’t for Meech, I was to keep the door locked. Especially at this time of night. I didn’t know what the hell the Christ brothers could have wanted. What if they were here to snatch me up because of something Meech did? What if I opened the door and one of them blew my head off?
I chewed on my bottom lip again, looked at the door and sighed. “Where my brother at, Zeke?”
Silence.
No one said anything and that raised a red flag for me. What the fuck was Zeke doing here without Meech? He was who Meech was with. Whenever my brother went out on a run, it was with Ezekiel fucking Christ. Why was it that he was here but Meech wasn’t?
I swallowed, stopped pacing, and stared at the door with wide eyes. “Zeke.”
His voice softened. “Sereia… open up for me, sis.”
I stepped back away from the door, shaking my head. “Uh uh. Nope. I’m not?—”
“Look,” said another one of them. “We need you to open the door.”
“For what, nigga?” I shouted, as tears sat at the rim of my eyes. “Just… just tell me where the fuck my brother at, Zeke!”
Silence. Once again.
Something was wrong.
Something was horribly wrong.
Again, I swallowed. This time, with a trembling bottom lip. Neither of them said anything but then again… did they really have to? Something happened.
I hurried away from the door, back down the hallway to my room to grab my phone. I snatched it off the bed and quickly hit the phone icon to call my brother. With a heavy heart, I pressed the phone against my ear, listening to it ring.
At the sound of his ringtone sounding nearby, my eyebrows snapped together. Slowly, I followed the sound of the ringing phone until it landed me right back in front of the door. After a couple of seconds, the ringing stopped and someone answered his phone.
“Hello?” I questioned with furrowed brows as I stood on my tiptoes, peering out of the peephole, looking for Meech.
Except, when I looked out, it wasn’t Meech with his phone to his ear. It was Exodus and like before, he was staring at the peephole. This time with a softened expression. This time with less of a furrow in his brow.
My mouth turned down and I stepped away from the door.
“Why do you have my brother’s phone? Where—where is my?—”
“Could you please open the door so I can talk to you?”
I hung up on him and wrapped my trembling hand around my phone. They had Meech’s phone. The wheels in my mind started to turn.
Meech left with Zeke.
Zeke was here. With his brothers at three in the morning. Without Meech. With his phone. This wasn’t about something Meech did. This visit was about something else. My brother… he was gone. Either he was locked up or he was dead. Somethinghappened. Something earthshattering. Something that would force Exodus to come to The Woods. This… it was huge. And instead of opening the door to get answers, I was planted, with tears running down my face, trying to figure out what they wanted.
All I had to do was open the door.
