Tone came back toward the truck and looked at me through the open door. “We good.”
I stepped out as the night air immediately hit me. One of the niggas outside the trap finally noticed us and straightened up off the porch railing. He looked down the block at the trucks, then at us, and I watched the exact second he realized something was wrong. He reached for his waistband, but he was too slow and Zo shot him first. The sound rang through the block, and everything exploded after that with gunshots and people screaming. A lot of niggas was running taking cover as glass shattered. One of the dudes near the side of the house fired back, but Marco hit him before he could get off more than two shots. Dique was already moving toward the porch while shooting. Tone stayedclose beside me and Rell covered the side yard while the younger soldiers lit up anything that moved wrong on any part of the block, trained to be our third eyes.
The whole front of the house looked like chaos in a matter of seconds, and I walked straight through the smoke, the screaming, and the broken glass and shell casings hitting the ground because I wasn’t there for them… I was there for Maine. I kicked the front door open so hard it slammed against the wall and cracked the frame. The inside smelled like weed, pussy, sweat, and I don’t know what else, but it just didn’t smell right.
One nigga came out the hallway with a nine in his hand and I shot him before he could even raise it. Another one tried to run toward the kitchen, but Tone dropped him with one shot to the back of the head. Then I heard movement upstairs that sounded real fast like somebody was panicking.
I looked at Tone and pointed. “Upstairs,” I said.
The stairs creaked under my feet while I went up them real slow because I wanted that pussy ass nigga to hear me coming. The whole upstairs smelled like mildew. Somebody had kicked a hole in one of the walls at some point and never fixed it. There were dirty clothes all over the floor, empty liquor bottles, ashtrays, and one of them cheap little fans blowing hot air around the hallway like it was actually doing something.
I could hear him moving around in the back room with drawers opening and furniture scraping the floors like he was panicking. Tone stayed a step behind me while Dique and Marco cleared the other rooms. I could still hear shots outside every now and then, but they were farther apart now. That meant most of them niggas was already down or running. I reached the last door at the end of the hallway and pushed it open with the barrel of my gun.
Maine was standing near the window with a rifle in his hands and a black duffel bag laying open on the bed with Money allover the mattress and drugs on the dresser. A girl in a sports bra was crouched in the corner crying so hard she could barely breathe. The second he saw me, his whole face changed. He knew exactly who I was and he dropped the rifle and not because he wanted to, it was because he knew it wouldn’t matter. The reality is, he should’ve shot anyway and that’s what I meant by fish playing with sharks. I would’ve Swiss cheesed the door as soon as I knew an Opp was standing on the outside of it coming for me.
“Please,” he said, immediately throwing both hands up. “I ain’t even?—”
I shot him in the shoulder before he could finish. He screamed and stumbled back into the wall, grabbing the wound while blood started gushing between his fingers. The girl in the corner let out a scream too and curled up tighter holding herself.
“Get the fuck out,” Tone barked at her.
She ain’t need to be told twice. She scrambled up and ran out the room so fast she almost slipped in the hallway. Maine was breathing hard now, with wide eyes wide and blood dripping down his arm.
“Please, man,” he begged again. “I ain’t even know she was pregnant.”
I walked farther into the room real slow and the broken glass on the floor crunched under my feet. I could smell his fear now; it was that sour smell people got when they realized they wasn’t gone make it out of something.
“You knew enough,” I said.
Sweat was starting to build on his forehead, and his brown skin was looking real pale now. “Nah, man, listen?—”
I cocked my head to the side and smiled a real devilish evil one. “You knew enough to put money on my wife head.”
He shook his head. “Nah King, it wasn’t even like that.”
I looked at him and then I looked around the room and then back at him. “It look exactly like that.”
He swallowed hard. “I was trying to scare her,” he yelled. “That’s it, I just wanted her to know she can’t be getting involved in certain shit. You know how this shit go man. She was just a causality of war.”
I laughed cause this nigga was really stupid although in a sense he was right, I knew exactly how this shit went in a casualty of war, but he let his pride get in the way of underestimating who he was fucking with. “You put a hit on a pregnant woman in front of a courthouse, and you think I’m supposed to believe you just wanted to scare her? You ain’t sorry nigga, you fucked with the Cartel and you sorry we found out… sloppy.”
“Nah, listen?—”
I shot him in the leg this time and he screamed again and collapsed to the floor, grabbing his thigh while blood soaked through True Religion jeans. I slowly crouched down in front of him and grabbed his jaw hard enough to make him look at me.
“You know what your mistake was?” I asked quietly. This thug ass nigga was crying now… like actually crying. “You thought because she pretty and pregnant and soft-spoken you could fuck with her. You had the shit planned out like we wouldn’t figure it out.” His breathing got faster. “You thought wrong. I’m the last person you wanna come up against, you just thought you could out smart me.” I ran the butt of my gun down the side of his face showing him he was a bitch.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
I squeezed his jaw harder. “You should be.” I winked.
His eyes kept going toward the door like he thought somebody was gone save him. Nobody was. I let him go and stood back up. He tried to push himself backward across the floor with one hand, leaving a streak of blood behind him.
“Please, man,” he said again. “I got kids.”
I looked at him for a second. Then I thought about Carmen laid out on that concrete with Kilo’s blood all over her. I thought about the way she looked when she couldn’t talk. I thought about her crying in that hospital room because she thought Kilo almost died because of her. I thought about my baby, and I ain’t give a fuck about his kids.
“You should’ve thought about them before you played with my family muhfucka.”
