"Yeah, what's up?" I said, trying to sound normal.
"Aye, nigga," the voice on the other end said, cold and calculated in a way that made my blood run cold instantly. "Y'all niggas thought y'all were real slick with that shit y'all pulled yesterday, huh? I ain't never been the type to do tit for tat bullshit. That ain't how I move. I like to X niggas completely off the board. Wipe them out like they never existed."
My stomach dropped before he even finished his next sentence, but I couldn't stop him from saying the words that were about to destroy my entire world.
"Get your black suit ready," the voice continued, slow and deliberate. "Tell your mama to get that black dress out her closet. Get it pressed. Get it ready. Because we just took your big brother Zaire off the map, homie. You took out some of mine yesterday at that warehouse. I took out your bloodline. You fuck niggas played with the wrong one. Checkmate, fuck niggas."
The line went dead.
The phone slipped from my hand and fell to the floor.
I couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't do anything except sit there on this couch with Nyla staring at me, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened in the thirty seconds it took for my entire life to fall apart.
Zaire.
My big brother. My blood. My nigga.
Dead.
Hell nah. They wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t let them do that. He was too thorough to be caught slippin.
Brick Boyz had killed him. While I was here getting my dick sucked, my family was under attack. While I’m bullshittin with a bitch, my brother was getting taken out.
"Namier?" Nyla was asking, her hand on my chest. "What’s wrong? What happened? Talk to me."
I couldn't talk to her. I couldn't do anything. I was grabbing my pants, throwing them on, moving toward the door like my body was operating on automatic. My mind was somewhere else entirely. It was in the street. It was in the blood. It was thinking about retaliation and war and everything that was about to come next.
"Namier, wait," she was saying, but her voice sounded so far away. Like it was coming from underwater.
I grabbed my keys and my phone. I was moving fast, my whole body shaking with a rage I'd never felt before. Not the rage of anger. The rage of loss. The rage of knowing that my big brother was possibly gone and somebody was going to pay for that in blood.
I didn't answer Nyla. I didn't look back. I just walked out of that house and got in my car, and as I was pulling out of her driveway, everything in my body was telling me to drive fast. Drive hard. Get back to the compound and tell my brother what had just happened.
Because everything had changed in one phone call.
Everything.
The movie was playing but neither one of us was really watching it. After everything had come out and was laid on the table today, I could no longer read Tatti. She was quiet and staring off into space for the rest of the day. She wasn’t talking shit or being her normal self at all. Occasionally she’d randomly shake her head in disbelief at the thought of what she learned today. Still, she hadn’t told me what happened at her aunts house. Whatever it was had to have been so bad, that it made her wanna rush and talk to her father. Sam told me something had went down at that house, and I was gone for sho ask her later.Right now, I knew that her whole world and everything she believed in had gotten crushed today, so all I could do was show her that I’m here.
I had Tatti laying against my chest, my arm wrapped around her lower back. The popcorn bowl was sitting beside us on the bed while we attempted a movie night. I’d even rented some shit off the Amazon Video app. Everything should have felt right. We were getting married tomorrow. We'd just had a good ass night last night. Today should have been nothing other than a celebration.
But shit was fucked up now.
I could feel it in the way she was holding her body. Tense. Like she was here physically but her mind was somewhere completely different. She wasn't eating the popcorn. Wasn't laughing at the jokes in the movie. Wasn't engaged in none of it. Her ass wasn’t even listening to my heartbeat like she usually did.
I watched her for a minute, trying to figure out what was going on in that head of hers. Her eyes were moving but they weren't really seeing the screen. They were somewhere far away. Somewhere dark.
I reached over and grabbed the popcorn bowl. Set it on the nightstand without saying anything. Then I grabbed her chin gently and lifted her face so she had to look at me.
"What's on your mind?" I asked.
She took a deep breath like she'd been holding it in for a long time. Like whatever she was about to say had been sitting on her chest, getting heavier by the minute.
"My father is a killer. He killed one of his closest friends. The man I called an uncle my whole life,” she said, and her voice was so small it barely sounded like her. "And on top of that, he sold me off. The man I loved and admired, the man who was my savior and protector, he’s just another lying, triflin ass nigga. Mylife has been a lie and I no longer know what's real or fake. He has a fucking daughter outside of me. A baby, at that."
I didn't interrupt. Just listened.
"I'm scared this may not even be real," she continued, her eyes searching mine like she was looking for lies. "And when you get what you want, I'll be left looking like a damn fool. I just want peace and for shit to be simple."
