Royal
“You the type of nigga that need to feel something.”
Amaris soft sexy voice haunted me all last night until this morning.
Multiple punch lines of hers circulated in my mind, fully throwing me off balance.
I woke up already thinking about her ass and that irritated me.
It took close to a month to dead my feelings for Serenity.
A month of me holding everything in with no one to really express myself to in the intimate way that I did with Serenity.
I acted off emotions and killed Deontray instead of touching basis with Luca to see if he paid off his debt.
Luca was pissed about me killing the man because that same day of me killing him at Serenity’s house, he paid off his debt with interest that morning.
Although Luca got over my fuck up, I still beat myself up about it.
“But what it really is… is sacrifice,” he grated.
I remember swallowing hard because, even at sixteen, I knew this was a lesson that he expected for me to follow closely.
“A Capo ain’t a king. He a shield. He stands in front so everybody behind him gets to breathe another day. Your son. Your woman. Your people. Everybody eats because you don’t sleep. Everybody survives because you carry what would break lesser men.” He pointed at my chest.
“You fuck up, they pay.”
That hit me harder than anything. Dontrell stood up and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window in his office. His eyes roamed below over the front of his estate.
“You think being a boss means nobody tell you no? No. It means you gotta tell yourself no every damn day. No to pride. No to certain revenges when it costs too much. No to weakness disguised as love…which is why my wife is more so business then pleasure.” He turned around eyes hard.
“I never lied to Lucille. I was a man and told her up front what and who I was and how her becoming my partner would change her entire life for the better. I told her I’d love her but never be in love with her.
That there will be other women, so if she couldn’t get with that then don’t accept my hand in marriage.
It’s important to always be honest, even if it has the ability to hurt you or the one you love.
I told myself no to a lot of shit, even making the right decision when my feelings were hurt.
Always acknowledge your feelings to yourself and not others because it exposes a side of you no one is supposed to see when you’re Capo.
” He nodded his head then turned back to the window.
He interlocked his hands behind his back then sighed lowly.
“A fuck up is a man who chooses his ego over his empire…doesn’t matter how small the fuck up is. A man who lets lust make decisions. A man who confuses being feared with being respected. A man who lets his son inherit enemies instead of wisdom first.”
I sat there stiff, trying to look older than I was, but inside I felt like a little boy being handed a loaded gun and told not to shake.
I never understood why I wanted Dontrell’s approval and acceptance more than my own father.
My father never acknowledged me. I did bad shit half the time just so he could pay attention to me by beating me until my mom came in to save me.
What I loved and cherished the most with Dontrell was that he always made one-on-one time for me, Luca, and Kentrell separately, spending hours with each of us, teaching us different things. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, he put his hand on my shoulder.
“One day, you’ll have a son and a wife. And when you look at your son, you gon’ understand every ugly decision I ever had to make. Because love ain’t soft, kid. Love is brutal. Love is sometimes choosing to be hated if it means they live long enough to forgive you, wife included.”
That shit broke something in me. Because I always thought love was protection that looked gentle.
My mom was always gentle with me probably because she already knew the rejection that I severely struggled with from my father.
Dontrell taught me sometimes love looked like distance, but it was still there and should be felt through the distance.
“So hear me now, so you’ll never have to feel like me. Don’t be a fuck up. Don’t be the man your son has to recover from. Be the one he studies, the one he hates at twenty, understands at thirty, and thanks at forty.” Dontrell gave his infectious smirk…
I swallowed down the painful lump. That day, when I was sixteen, I ran away from home out of anger.
My father beat me so badly, I could have sworn my ribs were broken.
When I made it to the Bonetti estate, I conjured up the best lie.
I told Dontrell that I got jumped by some kids at school just to save my father’s shitty life.
Luca hated lying to Dontrell about what really was going on at home.
I begged him never to reveal it because I knew Dontrell would kill him.
That would break my mom, and I loved her too much for that. So little did Dontrell know, I had already been making sacrifices and keeping them close to heart. Luca didn’t exactly express his disappointment in my bad call of killing Deontray, but I saw the flicker of it cross his eyes.
Never have I made those type of mistakes until I started catching feelings for a woman who didn’t give two fucks about my ass.
Dontrell’s words replayed in my mind over and over, so I retrained and refocused on what was important.
For the past couple of weeks, I woke up thinking about numbers.
Routes. Problems. Security rotations. Shipments.
And who owed what, who lied last night, and who was about to lie today.
I wanted women to be the very least thing on my mind. Not bar managers with gold and copper-threaded looking locs and honey-colored eyes that watched a room like a fucking lioness. Amaris Reed was sitting in my head like she paid rent there, and I didn’t like that shit.
I laid still for a second longer than I should’ve, staring at the ceiling of my bedroom while the morning light pushed through my tall narrow windows lining the far wall.
My house stayed quiet at all times of the day…
A little too quiet unless my twin nephews came over for the weekend breaking shit and being loud.
Amaris’s soft confident voice replayed in my head.
She was heavy in all the right places. I didn’t discriminate against big girls; never been with one but I knew without a doubt I would and could fold her fluffy ass into a pretzel with no problem.
I was a nigga that automatically came with consequences.
I was never meant for a good girl because I wasn’t the kind of nigga that women could introduce to her parents.
I’d never fake the funk about who I was and how the fuck I gave it up.
I was that nigga, despite what haunted me. I was the same nigga that had women staring at their phone at two am, fighting with themselves over whether loving me was worth losing peace.
My confidence that Amaris took as cockiness didn’t come from money, chains, nor how people acknowledged my name out in the streets.
It came from me surviving shit that should’ve buried me.
Being rejected then finding my own acceptance.
I learned early on that love could look like abandonment and loyalty could still come with betrayal.
I walked like a man who already made some sort of peace with losing the ones I loved the most, although on the inside it still ripped me into shreds.
Through the pain and all the things that kept me up at night, when I walked out that door, my confidence was some shit that couldn’t be taught… It was carved into me.
The consequence of me came with a lot of negative things that most women like Amaris wouldn’t be able to handle. Her pretty pouty lips talked a good game, but I could see the fear behind her honey brown eyes.
“Stop,” I told myself, getting mad for laying here thinking about a woman I’d probably have to kill when next week came.
My jaw tightened then my mind betrayed me again. Her height was another sexy thing to me. She stood at least five foot eleven with all them damn curves.
I exhaled hard and dragged my hand down my face because none of this shit even mattered.
I needed to go get me some pussy before the week was up.
Amaris’s dad owed Bonetti money. My appearance at his lounge was simply a clear reminder of how close he was to the deadline.
I couldn’t afford to look at his daughter the way I was looking at her last night if I ended up being the cause of her heartbreak and possible death.
I sure in the fuck wouldn’t be her cure to her heartbreak either.
I pushed her pretty ass out of my head the only way I knew how.
Moving. I swung my legs over the side of the bed slowly, joints stiff from another night that barely counted as sleep.
My shoulder cracked when I rolled it once, which was another reminder to start my work-out routine again.
I stood and walked straight into the bathroom, scrolling through my phone with my other hand holding my heavy ball sack.
I had missed calls; two from Brutal, one from a number I didn’t recognize, and one from Luca.
That one mattered. I already knew a text message followed from his hot and cold ass, so I quickly went to our text thread.
Hot & Cold aka Luke- Meeting with Table. ASAP.
I stared at the screen a second longer than necessary.
Luca didn’t send messages like that unless something already shifted overnight.
Since he was calling a meeting, he’d already assumed this was an added opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
I clicked out of our message thread and quickly shot a text over to Brutal to check his boss, Monster’s, availability.
Today would be a good day to introduce them both to the table since only me and Luca knew of them.