Something in my chest went still and sharp at the same time.
“Tell me who your sister is,” I said. “And tell me exactly what your baby daddy told her to do.”
She wiped at her face, sniffling hard, looking at me like she already knew this was gonna cost her something no matter what she said next.
“Her name is Mallory,” she said. “He’s making her pretend to be pregnant so he can get the drop on a nigga named Kaseem. He said he don’t just want that man dead. He wants everything that family got first. All of it.”
My mind went back to what my brother said after breakfast about having a baby on the way and all that other shit. This bitch was playing him the whole time trying to set the nigga up. I’m glad Tatti been beating her ass, but now that bitch had to die! I couldn’t wait to tell my brother this shit.
Tomorrow I had my first drop since being home. After that, I was gonna bring Kaseem here and let him see and hear this shit for himself. For tonight, I was gone keep this hoe tied up in this abandoned house. Make her people worry about her whereabouts for a minute, then it was time to strike.
This nigga thought he could outsmart us? He wasn’t built like that. I was gone make him watch me kill his bitch, before I put something hot in his chest.
As much as I ain’t want to, I called Mars. That nigga was about to help my young nigga with shifts on watching this bitch tonight. Tomorrow morning he’d be relieved so that we could do our drop but tonight I needed someone else that I trusted to be here. I made sure to tell that nigga Mars that this was one thing that he couldn’t tell my brother. I needed to be the one to tell him. This wasn’t just about Demon’s baby momma. This was about a bitch playing with Kaseem and trying to take him fast, like he was the right nigga to try and set up.
What a way to welcome a nigga back home. I got dropped off straight into a war zone. But I lived for this shit. And the difference between me and my brothers were, this was my main focus. I wouldn’t sleep, eat, or blink around this bitch until niggas were dead.
Tatti’s father had just left, and I walked over to check on her.
“You good?” I asked, watching her face for any sign that conversation had left her worse off than when it started.
“Yes,” she said, and I could see it in her eyes, something had genuinely shifted for her. “Things went a lot better than I expected them to. I told him I’d try.”she said, and I was really proud of her. No, I didn’t agree with everything that he did, but I knew that he truly loved her.
I kissed her face, soft, right on her cheek.
“I’m taking you out for dinner tonight,” I told her. “We gonna talk about all of it on our date. Find something nice to wear for me.”
She thanked me, smiling for the first time all morning. We hugged and I ain’t want to let her go. I told her that today, I had this first drop since Zaire got home, so I was riding out with him and Namier to oversee it today. I told her I’d be back later. She told me to be safe. I kissed her again on my way out the door and told her that I loved her.
Walking out that house, I sat with how easy it had gotten to say that to her now. A year ago that word wasn’t even in my vocabulary when it came to a woman. She had my mind gone, and I laughed to myself thinking about it on the way to my car.
I picked Zaire up first. He climbed in looking fresh, smelling like money, adjusting back into his old ways faster than I expected. He’d always been a fly nigga, and it did something to my chest seeing him back out here living instead of locked behind bars where the system tried to keep him.
We swung by Namier’s next, but he wasn’t home. I called him, and he picked up telling me he’d stayed at Nyla’s overnight, was getting dressed now, on his way to the spot.
When I hung up, Zaire looked over at me from the passenger seat.
“You niggas heads ain’t even in the game right now, and I feel like y’all are getting soft,” he said. “That’s why I gotta do everything.”
“What the fuck you talking about, nigga?” I said. “You just got home. What you done did already? I been letting you adjust, butclearly you ready to jump back in this shit, head first. Let me see what you got in you.”
Zaire just laughed, shook his head. “You don’t even know the half of it.”
We got to the warehouse an hour later, and Namier pulled up right as we did. Zaire clowned him the second he stepped out his car, telling him he was pussy whipped, and Namier didn’t even try to deny it.
Namier and Zaire walked the floor with the team, clipboards in hand, marking off product while everybody else loaded trucks for the customers. I hung back, watching my brothers move, taking note of how neither one of them played when it came to this business, no matter what personal mess either of them had going on outside these walls.
Mars caught my eye from across the floor, nodded once, then looked away fast. I shrugged it off, ain’t think nothing of it in the moment. Usually we’d chop it up, but I guess he was preoccupied today.
Once everything wrapped up and we were leaving the location to get into our cars, Zaire told Namier to ride with us, said he had something to show us both. Namier agreed to leave his car there for now, telling our brother that whatever he was about to show us, better be good. I kept asking him the whole way what it was, but he wouldn’t give it up, just handed me an address. When I put the address in, I instantly realize that it was our old trap house.
We pulled up, walked inside, and what I saw stopped me cold my tracks.
“Man, who the fuck is this,” I said, “and why the fuck you got her here? You just got home and this what you doing already? You know this ain’t how we move. You must want to go back.”
Namier shook his head slow, standing behind me.
“It ain’t what y’all think,” Zaire said, calm, and he reached down and snatched the tape off her mouth, made her repeat everything to us straight from her own lips.
