“Oh, Amir, Amir Quatar, the last nigga standing out of the Quatar family. Must be nice to be the only one left, but don’t make your family go completely extinct fuckin with me.”
Amir flashed a smile, but it wasn’t a happy one. His eyes closed briefly, and he bit his bottom lip as if he were trying to hold something inside of him back.
“Don’t make a threat towards me. Make a promise, little nigga. Because I damn sure will.”
“Just like you made a promise to turn opp on your own family? Yeah, I heard about you. Pussy-ass nigga with no loyalty, telling me how to treat a female. Ain’t that about a”
His last words never made it out because Amir’s fist slammed into his mouth with a crack that made my stomach twist. Spit, blood, and some of his teeth skipped across the concrete. Trey stumbled, but Amir followed that punch, stepping into him with another punch that knocked Trey completely off his feet.
I wanted to move, stop them, yell, or do something, but my feet felt glued to the concrete.
Trey tried to stand up, but Amir drove his fist into Trey’s ribs. The air rushed out of Trey in a broken wheeze before Amir hooked him again across the face. When he finally stopped, Trey wasn’t fighting back anymore, just groaning, curled on his side, and Amir stepped over him, breathing steady, not even winded. He reached into his front waistband and pulled out a gun, and my heart dropped into my stomach.
“Wait, Amir, no wait. You don’t have to do that.”
Amir glanced at me, just a quick look, before settling back on Trey.
“Take back what you said, little nigga, or you dead.”
Trey coughed, one hand clutching his side as he tried to push himself up. Blood smeared across his mouth, and he waswincing in pain, but pride still burned in his eyes, and pride in the hood is the number one reason a lot of men end up dead.
“Fuck you, nigga! When I get up, I’m about to fuck you up.”
Amir tilted his head slightly, studying him like he was deciding something.
“Is that a threat or a promise?”
“It’s whatever you want it to be pussy!”
Amir shook his head.
“Did you not just hear me say that if you don’t take back what you said, you are dying today?”
“Yeah, so what nigga!”
“Well that shit was a promise. Take a safe trip to wherever, nigga.”
Amir pulled the trigger, and the first shot cracked loud enough to make me flinch. The second came right behind it, and Trey’s body jerked, then went still, pressed against the concrete.
Gun smoke drifted between us, and my ears rang, but Amir just lowered the gun slowly, like he’d done this a hundred times before.
“What the fuck! What the fuck!” I screamed, crouching down next to Trey, bleeding out on the ground. Amir stood there for only about ten more seconds before he disappeared to God knows where.
I guess the gunshots and my loud, harrowing screams were loud enough to draw some attention towards me, and before I knew it, I was being surrounded by people filing out of the birthday party to see what happened. I wasn’t even paying attention to the loud chatter around me until I heard my brother's voice, demanding everyone move out of his way. WhenI looked up, Crew was standing over me, with his hand close to his hip, ready to fuck some shit up, I’m sure, but little did he know shit had already gone bad.
He kneeled beside me.
“Jas, what the fuck happened? Who did this shit?”
My words were stuck in my throat, and I was so choked up, I couldn’t say anything.
“Y'all, back the fuck up! Somebody call the ambulance?”
Crew yelled at the people around us.
“Tell me what the fuck just happened, Jas?”
With a lowered breath, I was finally able to respond.
