Disrespectfully, Relic

Chapter 1

A blade.

A dollar bill.

A single baggie of coke.

Relic had lined those three items in front of him on the glass table in his bedroom corner where he’d sat for the last hour. Darkness surrounded him outside of the glow from his bedside clock. His body sulked further into his saddle leather chair as he rolled his jaw—his mouth watering and dry eyes unblinking as though he could make those three objects vanish if he focused hard enough. When his sluggish lids won the battle, shutting and reopening, the taunting items were still present.

The simple mantra to never get high off his supply became a struggle each time he stuffed another skeleton into his cramped internal closet. His yearning for that mind numbing vice had catapulted after playing an unintentional hand in his baby mother’s murder through a home invasion he’d orchestrated. After Jessica’s death, guilt crawled around his insides and took permanent residence in his gut, coaxing him to retrieve a blade, a dollar bill, and a baggie of nose candy she’d left in his prior home. He’d pulled out those three items more times than he cared to admit it, but for once, he didn’t have the balls to execute a plan.

Relic scratched his chin stubble with a slow blink, debating which option made him weakest—not following through with the act, or repeating the torment because he believed the poison that he’d built a lucrative lifestyle with could cure him of an inutile emotion. Regret . He could count his life’s regrets on four fingers, and bereaving his son of a mother held the number two spot on that list.

A thump, accompanied by muffled shouting, broke the suffocating silence of his bedroom and sent his gaze wandering toward his shut door. Relic scrubbed his sluggish eyes and stood, swiping up those three triggering items to stash in his bedside table so that he could torture himself with them later. After twisting the tiny key hanging from the drawer lock, he removed it to drop into the pocket of his night pants while studying the red three A.M. glowing on his alarm clock. His son should’ve been sleep hours ago.

His head shook as he padded barefoot out of his room and down the hall to its opposite end, stopping short of the second master suite. The light trickling beneath the door told on Jahleel before Relic pushed it open.

“What the hell are you still doing up?”

Jahleel’s fingers paused mid-press of his game controller while his eyes rounded like he’d seen a ghost at hearing his dad’s groggy voice. The second Relic stalked inside, Jahleel leapt from his gaming chair, letting the controller slip from trembling hands that he raised to shield his face. A tick started in Relic’s jaw after noticing the familiar panic.

“When I ask a question, answer,” he asserted, bending to pick up the controller. Relic didn’t miss his son cowering in anticipation of a hit that wasn’t and would never come. “Put your damn hands down and grab your other controller. I got first player.”

“Huh?”

Jahleel heard him but was too baffled to move. If he were at his grandmother’s house, she’d already have her favorite leather belt to his ass. His mother preferred using her fists when she was alive.

Confusion scrunched his features but then he perked up, doing as told before plopping down into his gaming chair with a relieved grin. Relic copped a seat on the edge of the bed. His eyes went to the seventy-inch screen on his son’s wall while his brain conjured up visuals of Shabu cowering in the same manner whenever their father used to strike him for the simplest shit. Those memories resurfaced no matter how deep Relic stored them in his mental closet.

“What’re we playing?” He initiated a conversation, hoping quality time with his son would clear his head.

“Street Fighter six, but we can play something else if you want.”

“I’m gon’ bust yo ass in whatever you put on, so this is straight. How long have you been up on this damn game I told you to turn off hours ago?”

“I did turn it off! I fell asleep watching a movie, but woke up when our girlfriend texted me back.”

Jahleel grinned, glancing at Relic who smirked but kept his eyes on the screen, scrolling through the character lineup for a fighter. He didn’t have to ask who his son was referring to.

Kennedy .

A brief run in with her at the mall had left his son infatuated with the scarred beauty, but Relic’s fascination had begun the moment he saw her at his brother’s gala. Kennedy had checked him that night as if he wasn’t that nigga, and she was the real big dog at the table. His interest had piqued further after she conned him and his folks into her apartment just to pull out a gun on Pierre for whooping her nephew’s ass. Her tune didn’t change at the bribery of materialistic shit either, unlike every other woman he’d persuaded under those pretenses.

Relic fed the bitches he entertained mere scraps off his plate, but he’d offered a chick whose pussy he hadn’t even sniffed a new salon on his dime. Kennedy rejecting his peace offering without so much as a blink warned him; she wasn’t built like most women. He’d been trying to pinpoint where the differences stemmed from since then.

“Savvy shouldn’t have given your friendly ass that girl’s number. What was she talking ‘bout?” he quizzed, keeping his tone casual to conceal his interest.

“Nothing for real. She asked me why I was up so late, and then I asked her on a date for you. She said yea.”

Relic snorted a laugh. “Oh, did she?”

“Yep, and she said you better take her somewhere nice, but she sent laughing emojis when I said the movies. Don’t take her there.”

“Where do you want me to take her then, since you’re planning dates I didn’t fucking agree to?”

His eyes flicked toward his son, who gazed at the ceiling with furrowed brows for all of five seconds before shrugging.

“I don’t know! I did the hard part, so you gotta figure out the rest.”

“What the hell was hard about you shooting her a text to ask her out, Jah? I could’ve done that myself.”

“Why you ain’t do it then?” Jahleel peered at his dad with his mouth twisted to one side. When silence met his question, he spat, “Exactly!”

Relic just chuckled because he couldn’t admit to Jahleel, it was safer to keep their distance from Kennedy. She was a liability he should’ve snuffed out the minute he got wind she was alive from Pierre, but his brother and sister-in-law vouching on her behalf had spared her life. Relic hadn’t stopped stewing on that decision since he’d made it.

“Exactly this ass whooping you’re ‘bout to get,” he quipped instead, hunching forward to prop his forearms on his thighs. Both were in full-on concentration when he pried, “So, you get a lot of beatings at your grandma’s house?”

Jahleel stalled but then went back to jabbing his thumbs against his controller buttons with inward-tucked lips. He hunched his shoulder after a while because his mother had taught him not to tell what went on in his grandmother’s house, and Relic had drilled it in his head to stop volunteering more information than necessary.

“What’d I tell you about not answering me when I ask a question?” Relic paused the game, making Jahleel push out a frustrated breath. “Open your damn mouth.”

“Spare the rod, spoil the child. The Bible says kids are supposed to get beatings, so yea.”

His son’s grandmother using scriptures to excuse her harsh tactics made Relic snort a derisive chuckle. He resumed the game but made a mental note to holler at her about it soon.

“I don’t go to church, but I know beating yo ass ain’t the only way to discipline you. Have I ever hit you?”

Jahleel shook his head, but then vocalized, “No, sir.”

“And I don’t plan to, but you still do what I tell you, for the most part. What kind of shit you get beat for over there?”

“When I don’t come in the house on time, when I get bad grades... when I sneak on the game when I’m ‘pose to be sleep. Stuff like that. I don’t get as much beatings as my sister, though.”

Relic started to chastise his son for divulging someone else’s business, but he refrained. “You think your sister deserves her beatings?” he pressed.

“Not all the time. She just be doing stuff kids her age do, like playing loud or running around. That’s why I gotta be there to remind her to sit down. Jas is hyper.”

Jahleel refusing to stay more than a few days at a time, and then declining the offer to live with him, suddenly made sense to Relic. Jahleel didn’t want to leave his sister alone with his grandmother.

“That’s not your job to look after your sister, Jah,” he stated, cursing under his breath right after because he was losing. “You don’t have any kids. You’re a kid your damn self, so focus on being that.”

“Didn’t you look after your brothers? Uncle Shabu told me, you took care of him ‘cause y’all ain’t have no daddy. Jas ain’t got no daddy or momma.”

That reminder sent a fist straight to Relic’s torso, but he shook off the blow since he believed taking away Jasmine’s mother would benefit her in the end. Jessica was a church girl turned jezebel who’d sold her soul to him for shopping sprees and a title she couldn’t handle. She would’ve corrupted the little girl, so a grandmother who whooped Jasmine’s ass because the Bible told her so was the lesser of two evils. The absent father that Jessica had fucked to create Jasmine wasn’t his concern.

His eyes tracked his player across the glaring screen while mulling over whether to address his brother feeding Jahleel lies about Joseph not being present in their lives. He neglected to address it. If it were up to Relic, the only monster Jahleel would know and love was him.

“Yea, I looked after my siblings, but shit like that can backfire,” he explained, nudging Jahleel’s arm with his knee to ensure that his son was listening.

“How?”

“Because I was so busy looking after my brothers, I forgot to look after myself. Why don’t you want to live here?”

He tossed out that question to drive home his point. Jahleel started to answer but jumped up when his life span drained from a single hit from Relic’s player.

“You’re cheating!”

“No, I’m just a fucking winner at everything I do, even playing weak ass video games. Now, tell me why you’d rather live with your grandma than me?”

“Because I don’t want to leave my sister,” Jahleel admitted without pause. A slow grin spread on his face before he added, “Plus, my granny said, she’ll never let me live in the devil’s house.”

“So, that’s what she thinks about me? That I’m the devil.”

“Yep. A blue-eyed devil. She said that you’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but I can’t see it ‘cause you’re blinding me with all this stuff.”

He waved a hand around his master bedroom that held expensive electronics, storage cabinets loaded with sneakers, and a closet of designer clothes that most boys his age with both parents didn’t possess. Anytime he told his grandmother about a new item he received from Relic; she swore that his dad was buying his affection. If he was, Jahleel didn’t mind it.

Relic sat upright, rubbing a hand across his tense neck while tossing around that offensive descriptor in his head. Blue eyed devil . Jahleel’s grandmother wasn’t the first and damn sure not the last to refer to him as such.

“You know who she sounds like? Your grann, Judith,” Relic compared, making Jahleel cracked up with a toss of his head.

“No, she don’t! Grann Judy doesn’t say stuff like that. When I ask her to tell me about when you were a kid, she says that she don’t remember or to ask Uncle Shabu. She gave me a picture of you, though!”

Jahleel tossed his controller on the bed and took off toward his dresser—yanking his top drawer open to shuffle through its contents. Relic watched, befuddled.

He grappled with digesting his son’s words since Judith sending Jahleel to Shabu for answers was a courtesy he hadn’t expected. Relic assumed she’d muddy his name the moment an opportunity presented itself. Judith had made it her mission to warp her version of their past into one that made her the saint and him the villain in every aspect, the same way she’d done Joseph. Their mother, son relationship was nonexistent unless it pertained to the restaurant.

“Look!” Jahleel raced up, shoving an old polaroid picture in his face. Relic forced a smile at the image of Judith’s petite frame beside his matching pre-teen height with an arm draped across his bare shoulder. “We look just alike right here!”

“We do. I tell you all the time, you look like me, Jah.”

“I know, but I really look like you as a kid. Grann Judy said, if I had your eyes, we’d be twins.”

Relic spit out a laugh although nothing was amusing. “Oh, yea? I bet, she didn’t tell you that she doesn’t like my eyes. Your grann used to tell me all the time, I was her pitit madichon.”

“Her...” Jahleel paused, giving a subtle shake of his head while trying to figure out the dialect he’d been learning. “Her something child?”

“Her cursed child.”

His eyes ballooned and head reared back as he quizzed, “Cursed by what?”

“That’s the million-dollar question, Jah. When you find out, let me know.”

Relic murmured that while setting down the game controller before he laid back, stretching across his son’s queen-sized bed. A brewing headache from conversing about Judith, among other shit he’d rather not rehash, made his eyes shut.

“Wait, why are you laying down? We not done playing!” Jahleel griped, evoking a faint chuckle from him.

“You got it, Jah. I need to rest because, unlike you, I got business to tend to in the morning. You better not still be in front of that game when I wake up, either.”

“You’re staying in here with me?”

“Yea,” he answered, peeking open an eye to see his son cheesing as he reclaimed his seat.

“Okay, bet!”