Page 63 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

Then I answered.

“Talk to me.”

“You out your fuckin’ mind.” His voice came through low and fast, none of the cool he usually wrapped himself in. “You touch my mama, Amai? You touch her?”

I sat down slowly in the chair behind the desk, leaned back, let the silence stretch just long enough to make him say something else.

“Answer me!”

“Nobody’s touched her,” I said. “Yet. You bragging to me about killing my brothers, knowing your mama out there is insane. Nigga, you couldn’t have been that arrogant to think I wasn’t going to find her ass.”

“You a sick muthafucka, you know that? A psychopath.” The words came out ragged, spit through his teeth. “Going after an old woman who ain’t never did shit to you is low. That’s who you are. That’s what six weeks of bodies got you—dragging a seventy-year-old woman out her sister’s house because you can’t find me.”

“Bring your bitch ass out of hiding, so I can drag you too, nigga. Fuck you talking about? Your family go just like mine do. Ain’t no rules in war.”

“You a bitch, man. A straight-up bitch. Real niggas handle they business face to face. You out here kidnapping mamas like some kind of coward.”

I let that sit on me for a second, felt the heat of it, and didn’t do anything with it yet. Rahsaan had always spoken with his chest. That was one of the first things I learned about him back when we still moved product on the same side of the city, before any of this turned into what it was now. He talked loud when he was scared, quiet when he wasn’t. This was loud.

“You wanna talk about coward?” I said, keeping my voice level. “Let’s talk about how you and Victor put my brothers in the ground and let me spend years thinking it was somebody else. Let’s talk about how you sat in that warehouse and told me to my face what you did, like it was something to be proud of. That’s not a man being brave, Rahsaan. That’s a man who thought he’d never have to answer for it. You must’ve thought I was pussy! You had to know I’d get dead on your ass.”

“That was business.”

“Elias and Silas wasn’t business. They were kids. That’s not business. That’s a debt you been avoiding paying for over a minute. You mad I took your shit, and instead of getting it back, you went after my blood. But I got your blood here now, and I’ma show her the same mercy you showed my brothers.”

“And you think this evens it? Taking my mama?”

“I think you had the balls to help kill my brothers and thought your own mama was off-limits from what came back to you.” I said it slow, made sure every word landed the way I needed it to. “Pussy-ass nigga. Come get her if you feel that strongly about it.”

He didn’t answer right away. I could hear him breathing hard on the other end, something shifting—a door, maybe, or him pacing wherever he had his punk ass hiding. I let him sit in it.

“You don’t know what you doing,” he finally said, quieter now, and that quiet told me more than the yelling had. “You don’t know what you starting.”

“I know exactly what I’m starting. I been starting it for months. Ask anybody in this city what’s been happening to everybody who ever moved a dollar for you, hid a gun for you, or gave you a couch to sleep on. Ask them how that’s been going.”

“You killed people who ain’t have shit to do with your brothers.”

“I killed people who chose to stand next to you. That was their choice. Same way it’s your choice right now, whether you keep hiding while I sit with your mama or whether you come handle what you started.”

“She’s sick, man.” His voice cracked on that, just slightly. I heard something underneath the anger that sounded almost like begging. “She got high blood pressure. She don’t need to be sitting nowhere scared. This ain’t between her and you.”

“Man, fuck her blood pressure. You better hope she stroke out before I do what I’ma do to her. That’s how this works. You made it work like that the day you decided my family’s blood was cheap enough to spend.” I paused, letting him hear me breathing on the other end, too, steady, unhurried. “You want it to stop being about her? Then make it about you. Come here. Face me. That’s the only door I’m opening.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I guess we’ll see how long she lasts waiting on a son who’d rather stay hidden than come get his own mama.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me and find out. I already know what I’m capable of, Rahsaan. Question is whether you know what you’re willing to let happen while you sit somewhere being a bitch!”

The line went quiet again, longer this time, long enough that I almost thought he’d hung up. But I could still hear him there, that faint static of a phone held too tight against somebody’s ear, somebody trying to figure out if the man on the other end was bluffing.

I wasn’t.

“I need to think,” he said finally.

“Think fast. I’m not a patient man these days.” I let a beat pass. “And, Rahsaan, while you’re thinking, remember she’s sitting here listening to every bit of this conversation, best she can. So, when you make your decision, make it knowing she already heard you hesitate.”