Unlucky You

Prologue

PROLOGUE

Grand Sinclair.

“Who are you texting?”

“Your mother.” I smirked and kissed Aleah’s shoulder. I loved the way she loved our son but she needed this break and I wanted my girl to enjoy every second of our time tonight. Her priority was being a mother to our son but she deserved to enjoy one night of being selfish.

“Baby, stop worrying. He’s straight. You know my mother doesn’t play about her grandbaby.”

“I know but that doesn’t mean I can’t check on him.” She ignored me and continued staring at her phone, waiting for a response from my mother. A picture of Raiden illuminated the screen seconds after she sent the text—out cold, curled up in my mother’s lap.

“See, I told you he was cool.”

Aleah smiled, brushing her finger over the screen before she loved the picture and locked her phone. “I’m not worried. I miss him.”

“I know. Let him be spoiled by someone else for a change. You keep that boy up under you like you don’t have to share him with the rest of us.”

“I don’t. He’s mine,” she teased. I chuckled and kissed her shoulder again.

“Your clingy ass believes that if you spend enough time with him, it will change the fact that he looks and acts just like me.”

Our son was my twin inside and out. At only eight months, he already had my personality. He was mean as fuck and didn’t deal with too many people. I loved that about him because I didn’t have to worry about the wrong people getting too close.

Not that it would ever be an issue with the way my girl and my mother kept him under them all the time. I didn’t complain, at least not now. But the older he got, I was going to have to pull him away from his mother and teach him about life.

He was loved and spoiled by all of us, hell even me. Raiden had my ass soft when it came to him but I also needed him to learn that life wasn’t fair, and as a young Black man, his journey would be different. No matter who or what I was, and most days I wasn’t shit, I would raise our son to be a better man than I ever imagined possible. That was the promise I made the day Aleah showed me the pregnancy test.

She thought I would be upset. Back then, I was running the streets heavy. Still did a little now but I slowed down a lot. I didn’t want either of them to have to figure shit out without me, so I was cautious about how I moved. Got a job working for an old head who had his own construction company. It was decent money and on the job training.

He mostly used me for framing and drywall but I was cool with that because I could work on my own and it was a consistent check. The money came slowly so I toed the line between the world I was trying to leave and the one I was trying to build for my family. I had never been the type to get my hands dirty in the streets, but being my father’s son, I learned a different type of hustle. Greiland Sinclair boxed when he was younger, and although he was never formally trained, my father’s hands were lethal.

No one outside of the community that raised him knew his name but on the South Side of Diamond Falls, my father was a legend. With a solid left hook and uppercut that ended the ambitions of a lot of hopefuls, my father became a hood legend.

I followed in his footsteps but my legendary status was solidified in the basements of abandoned buildings as opposed to community gyms. My hands were just as lethal but unlike his gloved hands, my bare knuckles made me a lot of money.

“It’s not about him looking like you…” She angled her head back and I narrowed my eyes, which had her pretty ass smiling again before she clarified. “Okay maybe it is about that, a little, but can you blame me? I did all the work and you receive all the glory.”

“I don’t blame you. My genes are strong as fuck. Not much you could have done about changing the inevitable. Our son looking like a miniature replica of me was destined.” I gripped her chin and landed a kiss—soft, slow, and teasing. I allowed my tongue to explore her mouth and my dick came alive. This woman right here had me enraptured, wholly and completely. She knew it too.

“We’ll try again when he’s older and if he or she doesn’t look like me, then…”

“Then we’ll keep trying and you’ll keep getting your feelings crushed while you’re loving me and our kids because no other option is acceptable. We’re locked in, Lay. That’s the only way this goes.”

“What makes you think I’m down for a life with you and more kids?”

“I don’t think, I know . That’s how real our love is.” I winked and turned my attention to Moses, who stood in the doorway trying to get my attention. I wasn’t feeling whatever he was about to hit me with but I knew I didn’t have the luxury of ignoring him. He was my connection to the extra money I needed to set my family up right. Because of the risk involved, the fights that cleared the most were invitation only. The organizers were very selective about who they communicated with.

“Stop overestimating your worth in my life.” She smiled in a way that contradicted her words. I was everything in her life, same as she was in mine.

“What the fuck ever.” After Moses motioned for me to head his way, I turned my focus to Aleah. “Let me go holler at him for a minute and then we can dip out so I can show you just how much you’re underestimating my worth in your life.”

I kissed her one last time, and before I could step away, she fisted my shirt and pulled me into her.

“You said no more fights, Grand. You’re working with Walt now. You don’t need it.”

“I’m not fighting.”

“We lying to each other now?”

She slipped her hand in mine and brushed her thumb over my knuckles. “Then explain this.”

“My last one.” I brought her hand to my mouth and kissed her knuckles.

“Promise me.”

“I promise. I’m about to go let him know I’m done.”

“You said that before?”

“I mean it this time. I’m done, baby. I’ll be right back, aight?”

She held my hand tighter and I gripped her chin and kissed her softly. “I’ll be right back, I promise.”

Her eyes searched my face but she smiled and let me go. Aleah didn’t fuck with Moses and hated that I did. As lethal as my hands were, that didn’t prevent me from coming home after fights with busted and bloodied knuckles and bruised ribs. She had every right to have those ill feelings because what I was doing was reckless and dangerous. Moses didn’t care about anything other than the money he made off me from those fights. I kept as much distance from him as possible, but for now, he was a means to an end.

“Stay right here until I get back.” My eyes met hers and she smiled.

“Where else am I going to go?” She paused. “Well, I might get one more drink.”

I looked at the makeshift bar with the shorty behind it. She had been mixing drinks all night so I was cool with that. “Bet, stay by the bar until I get back.”

“Yes, father .”

“Nah, not your father, Lay, but you’ll be calling me daddy later.” I winked and slapped her ass before walking away.

If I had known then what I knew now, things would be so different.

Six months later…

“Mr. Sinclair, after you realized what was happening, that Mr. Daugherty had allegedly enlisted the bartender to drug your girlfriend, who suffered a fatal allergic reaction to the roofie slipped into her drink, what did you do?”

My eyes left my lawyer and slowly moved over to Aleah’s parents. They sat with stiff posture, fueled by their hatred for me. I didn’t blame them. My slip in judgment cost us all but what they didn’t understand was that they’d lost their daughter but there was a much greater loss they refused to acknowledge.

My son was going to be without his mother. He would never get to see her smile again, feel her love, or know how much she cherished him. I could suffer; this was on me, I didn’t deserve to acknowledge my own loss. But my son, that shit cut deep. Aleah’s parents had denied him from the day he was conceived. Even after he was born and Aleah tried to mend the relationship with her parents, they refused.

Bastard child.

That was what they called him. It enraged me. It destroyed her. Literally broke her heart that her parents couldn’t and wouldn’t love our son.

“Mr. Sinclair…” Lincoln Desmond, my attorney, called my name, bringing my attention back to him.

“I lost it.”

“Lost it how, Mr. Sinclair?”

I glanced at Moses’ mother before I focused on my lawyer again, trying desperately to contain the anger I felt crawling through my veins. “He looked at me and laughed like the shit was funny. Told me he was trying to help me out by getting her right. He was so damn nonchalant. She died and you know what he told me…” I paused and my body coiled so damn tightly my muscles ached. “ Shit happens , like her life didn’t fucking matter. I hit him.”

“Your Honor, at this time I would like to submit defense Exhibit Three into evidence, the medical examiner’s report. All parties have stipulated its veracity. The cause of death was not the single blow by my client but the actual breaking of the deceased’s neck when his head unforeseeably landed on the kitchen island.”

“Admitted,” the judge said as he accepted the paperwork.

“Thank you, Mr. Sinclair.”

“Cross,” the judge rattled off robotically. I lifted my eyes to Colton Ryan, the prosecutor who stood and adjusted his suit jacket, then addressed me.

“Mr. Sinclair, was it your intention to kill Mr. Daugherty?”

I glanced at my lawyer who offered a tight nod for me to answer. “No.”

It was the truth. When I hit him, it was only out of anger and fear. Fear that I might lose Aleah and he was the reason, but at that moment, I hadn’t thought about taking his life. The need to do so came later when reality settled in that I’d lost Aleah. My son no longer had his mother and I no longer had the woman I would have given my life for. By then, it was too late. The damage was done. Moses was gone but so was Aleah.

“That’s all, Your Honor,” he stated, looking me right in my eyes. I already knew the prosecutor didn’t want me to go to prison. He said that to both me and my lawyer. He understood the situation, and as terrible as it was, he didn’t see me as a man who intended to take a life. Unfortunately, he had to do his job but had already agreed to do as much as possible to ensure I wouldn’t serve time. He kept his promise by not painting me as the bad guy through cross examination.

I left the stand and they wrapped things up but not before Aleah’s parents had their say. I knew it was coming and that they wouldn’t be kind. They were grieving and blamed me, even before that night. I was in her life so they had been blaming me for losing her for years now. When she got pregnant by a common thug , someone they didn’t approve of, they severed ties completely. No matter how much she loved me, I wasn’t, and would never be, good enough.

They found out she was carrying our son, put her out, and turned their backs. Funny how now they were here as caring, loving parents. That was what they wanted everyone to believe but the truth was, they were here to make sure I suffered. Not because I was responsible for her death but because I was responsible for disrupting the perfect image of what their family should look like or was supposed to be. Her mother spoke first.

“Your Honor, I need you to know that this man deserves to rot in hell. He stole our daughter from us. He forced his way into her life and made her believe he was the only thing worth living for. He preyed on our daughter’s innocence and brainwashed her. She had his bastard child because he needed a way to keep our Aleah under his thumb. She died because of him and he needs to pay. If I could take his life, I would. Him and that bastard child. Because of them, my Aleah is no longer here. I can’t bring her back but I can make sure his family feels the same loss that we feel.”

She didn’t cry or show remorse. Didn’t shed not one damn tear. Nor did she show any contrition for saying such hateful things about my son. He shared their blood. My nails dug into my palms and my jaw was clenched so tightly that it was only by a miracle my teeth didn’t shatter. I knew better than to react or say what I felt. I had to think about Raiden. I needed to get home to him. He’d lost his mother and he couldn’t lose me too.

“That parasite, disgrace, and disappointment to society never deserved my daughter. He doesn’t deserve to live and if you don’t lock him away with all the other animals that prey on the sweet and innocent women like my daughter then I can’t be responsible for what might happen.”

“That’s enough! Are you really going to let them threaten my son's life…”

“Your son is the reason they lost their child. Like it or not, your son is still here. They should be allowed to express how they feel. Please sit down and let them finish. Your son was given the opportunity to address the court, ma’am. So are the Johnsons.” The Judge had chosen his side. I felt it. My mother opened her mouth to respond but I quickly shook my head. She slumped her shoulders and looked away. We both understood what was happening. Alec Johnson had money and influence. We did not.

“Mr. Johnson. Please continue.”

“He is a murderer. He is the reason my sweet girl is no longer here and that bastard of a son is going to end up just like him. I’m almost grateful my daughter won’t be here to experience the heartbreak and disappointment that will come from raising that boy. His son. Your Honor, I pray you see fit to doing our Aleah justice.”

The judge decided he wanted another day to consider his judgment, and regardless of what the prosecutor was saying, I had a bad feeling in my gut. Two days later when we returned to hear the judge’s decision, it was confirmed.

Five years.

Five fucking years.

Third degree. Involuntary manslaughter.

Before the judge spoke, I knew. Her father had the final say. He was a very important man who worked behind the scenes. When he stood in the back of the courtroom, hands in his pockets, staring at me, I knew my fate. The minute his eyes locked with the judge’s; my fate was sealed.

Five fucking years.

I lost the only person who truly saw me. I lost my son, my freedom, and there wasn’t a damn thing that I could do to change the course of things. Not that I cared. Prison, I could do. I deserved to suffer.

I might not have been the one to take her life but I surely played a role in what happened. She was at that party because of me. I didn’t cause what happened but I set things in motion. So yeah, I should suffer. Five years wasn’t shit because even after my time was done, I’d be serving a life sentence of regret and that was something I could never recover from.