Page 8 of Own It

“Bitch ass nigga!” Ayan bellowed, swinging back.

I could tell Ayan thought this would be an easy feat, due to his current career of choice, but what he’d forgotten was that I’d done it first and was still better. I’d been doing it longer and had a deeper passion for the shit, unlike him who was just in the sport to appease our pops and to take over the area I once reigned over but could never again. Add to that, I was irate, feeling like a bull being let loose into the ring.

Sadly, there wasn’t enough training or technique in the world to help Ayan defeat me, and by the time he was able to realize it, I had his ass laid out, wailing on him.

“Ah! Oh my gosh! Stop!” LaMia came running in.

I ignored her because, in my mind, this was about betrayal between brothers. Ayan and I had shared a womb, shared trauma coming up in the same household, and despite his obvious envy, I’d given his hating ass whatever he asked for. By saying that, I couldn’t care less about LaMia or what she felt at this point, because a ho was gon’ be a ho. It was up to Ayan to put our bond before a bitch.

“Aye!” A voice that I recognized as belonging to our father yelled out just before the muthafucka tackled me onto the couch to stop me from killing Ayan.

“Doing this ain’t gon’ make her come back to you, nigga!” Ayan roared, enraged at the fact that he’d gotten his ass beat. It happening in front of LaMia probably only heightened his anger.

Frowning because I was offended, I barked, “I don’t want her ass back, bitch. I came here to teach yo’ soft ass about loyalty, nigga! Next thing of mine you touch, you dead,” I promised.

“Aye, listen to me, boy.” My father got in my face to steal the deadly eye contact I was shooting at Ayan. “You fucked yo’ life up over a ho, and now you dealing with the fucking consequences. But what I will not allow is for my sons to fall out over a woman.”

I was listening but processed none of it. It didn’t matter, because I was done with both Ayan and LaMia. Now that I’d broken my foot off in Ayan’s ass for his betrayal, . . . shit, I was good. I wouldn’t take it any further, because yesterday was the last day a nigga would spend in prison over LaMia.

Not to mention, I understood the arrangement better than the participants themselves, and that was because I knew them better than they knew one another.

LaMia was with Ayan because he was the closest replica of me that she could get. He was in the same profession, due to make the same amount of money I once made, and most obvious, he was my twin. No one would be closer to a copy of a nigga than Ayan, looks aside. As for this nigga Ayan, he had an obsession with obtaining anything I had, and LaMia was just one of those many things.

If the two of them wanted to blow up their lives over a surface level connection, who the fuck was I to stop them?

“Best wishes,” I said and started for the door, smirking at Ayan jumping very slightly thinking a nigga was going in for round two as I bypassed him.

From now on, if money over everything was a person, it would be Rakim Godfrey.

TWO

daylin conrad

FIVE YEARS LATER . . . PRESENT TIMING . . .BEFORE THE KIDNAPPING…

“Ooh, this is cute.” My assistant Morgin held up a gaudy tablecloth that made me turn my lip up while she sucked her teeth. “You don’t like shit that’s actually cute, Day.”

“I do too.” I laughed. “You just pick up shit that is ugly, and even worse, you don’t realize it.” I smirked to the sound of Morgin talking shit and going in about how exquisite her taste actually was, as we meandered about in Home Goods.

I wanted to throw a small appreciation dinner for the staff of my phone case company, Delicacies, for all the hard work they’d been putting in.

When I started the business two years ago, I never thought it would boom this quickly. Just five months into Delicacies launching, I’d been able to quit my nine to five and focus on the company full time. I had the same staff since its inception and wanted to give back to them in the form of a celebratory dinner with one of the top LA chefs.

“You know what, we need to go to the rich folk store like West Elm or something.” Morgin leaned on the shelving as she stood before me.

“For a one-night dinner?”

“Bitch, you are rich! All that money you make and you can’t spend a few hundred on a beautiful tablecloth for us?” She palmed her chest in shock.

I pondered for a moment before relenting and rolling my eyes at the way Morgin shrieked before tugging my ass out of the home store and into the parking lot.

We filed into my Mercedes and headed toward Manhattan Beach where the more affluent shops were. Thankfully, it was down the street from where we were because I wasn’t about to hop on anybody’s freeway in this Los Angeles traffic. I was already dog tired as it was from shopping all day in my poor shoe choice.

Half an hour later and I’d found what I needed. Spending two hundred dollars on a tablecloth that I would only use once wasn’t what I’d set out to do today, but Morgin was right—I made great money from Delicacies, and two hundred bucks surely wouldn’t send me to the poor house.

“Look, look!” Morgin backhanded my bicep as I accepted the bag from the grinning associate inside of West Elm.

“What?” I frowned, peering out of the store and into the mall, hoping to locate what the hell had Morgin so excited.