Page 24 of Beacon Grove Chronicles 1: Hassan & Sylvia

“If you trust her enough to love her and want something with her then you trust her enough with the truth.”

I was silent momentarily trying to find the right words to voice my hesitation. “It ain’t just my truth though.”

“All of our partners know about us, Hassan. You’re the only one who can say if she’s worthy of that knowledge.”

I smirked when I realized what was really going on. “Already had her checked out didn’t you?”

“Of course I did. This shit ain’t a job for me it’s a bloodline. We didn’t last this long by being messy or careless. So she’s got the clear for whatever step you want to take.”

That cleared up a lot of confusion within my brain on how I could move with Sylvia. The Consortium was something whispered about but never confirmed. At least not by people who lived long enough to get anyone in trouble.

“Atlanta ain’t that far away.”

“A few hours and you’re here. That ain’t much of a commute every once in a while. We have people all over and you’ve made plenty of money. When the time is right you can tell her what’s up and what you’ll need to do. But that ain’t important right now.”

“And why not?”

“’Cause you ain’t even won her over, Hassan. Get her to agree to a date first, muthafucka, and then we can talk about letting her know the state secrets and shit.” He was cracking up at my expense but I let him since he was right.

“Damn, I’m jumping the gun.”

“That’s how I know it’s real with her. You’re far too methodical and calculating to be forgetting steps. But this girl has you gone. It’s good to see your infallible ass have a weakness.”

I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of being right so I refused to agree with him. “Whatever, Priest. I’ll check in with the good news soon.”

“That confident?”

I stood up from the desk in my room to start putting together a plan to win Sylvia over. “You wouldn’t have hired my ass if I wasn’t.”

“You’re right. Guess we’ll have yet another mafia wedding to attend in Beacon Grove.”

CHAPTER THREE

Irreplacable

SYLVIA

“FINISH GETTING THOSE dishes cleaned before it’s time for bed, y’all!”

I’d moved my mouth away from the phone so I wasn’t screaming directly into my cousin’s ear at my kids. I was the only girl in a family of boys, directly in the middle at that, so we were more like sisters than cousins. Nadia, or Bug as we called her, was my best friend so of course she knew all about my issues with Dave and the night I’d had with Hassan.

“Got my babies slaving away for their supper.”

I turned away from the kitchen laughing at her comment. “Shut up. They need to be doing chores the way they run my damn pockets. Do you know this boy of mine is already talking about going to the prom in the spring? Like who told him he could do that and why would he want to?”

“Because his lame ass daddy peaked in high school and sadly he is probably more worried about his son impressing people now than growing up and outshining him.”

I couldn’t front like that wasn’t a real possibility. Dave was always jealous of anyone doing better than him. It was hard for me to see that when we were younger because he had been so popular in school. But once the dreams he had didn’t pan out and other people he thought were lame started to have far more than him, his bitterness showed. It started when he didn’t make it into a D-1 school and had to settle, his words not mine, for an HBCU. I’d done the supportive girlfriend thing and traveled to his games but I wasn’t hanging around every weekend fawning over him. We’d broken up temporarily because he wanted to explore and I wasn’t about to let him play in my face. I stupidly got back together with him after he lost his scholarship and had to come back to the Grove with his tail tucked between his legs. He’d only gotten into teaching because it was the easiest degree program in his mind and he would always have a job. And then I got pregnant.

“You’re probably right. I don’t know what it was I saw in him.” I went back to folding the laundry to try to put my nervous energy to good use.

“You had a teenaged dream and I get it. Few people thought that the chick who was beating people up would end up with the jock. Y’all would’ve been high school goals if it would’ve worked out.”

She cracked me up talking about me beating people up. I did amateur boxing and wrestled in high school but I never went around fighting for no reason. My family loved to call me the muscle because I would handle situations that my brothers couldn’t.

“It did for a while I guess.”

“Sylvie, you think that nigga hadn’t been moving foul the entire time y’all were together? I know you don’t want to hear that but it’s true. Dave’s ass has been jealous of you because you were the one who provided the lifestyle that y’all lived. Nothing is more dangerous than a man that’s emasculated. Even if he’s the one allowing it to happen. And a broke man is a mean man. I’m sure he was doing all kinds of shit that you didn’t tell us about.”