Chapter 1 #2
We finished the blunt, and I drove to my grandmother’s house.
My grandmother was originally from Golden Waters.
She moved to Charlotte with her grandmother when she was fourteen and two days after her fifteenth birthday, she found out she was pregnant with my father.
When my father was eighteen, my grandmother decided she wanted to move back to Golden Waters, and my father stayed in Charlotte. Until he was damn near beaten to death.
I had enough family in Golden Waters that if I decided to make the move, I’d know plenty of people to put me on to some customers even if it meant selling weed on a smaller scale than I did in Charlotte.
My grandmother had been married for ten years, and her husband was from Trinidad.
They could both throw down in the kitchen, and I got so full that I could barely move.
We got a Spades game going, and the vibe was real chill.
Yeah, I could fuck with Golden Waters on a regular basis for sure.
My pops had enough room for me to stay with him whenever I came to town, but I didn’t like to intrude on whatever it was that he might have going on.
I was going to get a hotel room despite him insisting that I could stay at his house.
At the last minute, I decided to forego the hotel room, but I needed to run by the gas station.
I dropped him off and headed in that direction.
I didn’t know enough about Golden Waters to know what went on, on any particular side of town, but I knew my father lived in a nice area.
I also knew that the kind of cigars I wanted and certain snacks that I liked would more than likely be in stores closer to the hood.
I was driving a Genesis and had a nice lil’ watch that cost a few racks wrapped around my wrist along with a chain that ran me around ten stacks.
And I pulled up at a corner store in the hood without a second thought.
I didn’t blink when I saw two guys in hoodies standing outside of the store.
If they minded their business, I would damn sure mind mine.
I had my heat tucked. Getting out of the car, I glanced at them briefly just to get a good look at them.
I wasn’t avoiding eye contact, and I wasn’t intimidated by their mean mugs.
Each of them only stood around 5’9, and one of them had a long scar going across his left cheek.
Making my way inside the store, I pulled up my slightly sagging jeans and as I reached for the door, two more guys came out.
Once they exited, I entered. My high was fading, and I knew I’d smoke again and despite being currently stuffed, the munchies would kick back in soon enough.
I collected the snacks and cigars that I came to get and left the store.
I didn’t see any of the guys outside and assumed they’d left.
Maybe because my ass wasn’t in Charlotte and felt like nobody knew me, I let my guard down a lil’ too much, and that was the dumbest thing I could have done.
As I reached for the door handle, a blow to the back of the head knocked me into my car.
Pain exploded behind my eyes that was unlike anything I’d ever felt before and immediately, my hand flew underneath my shirt in an effort to grab my gun.
Another blow made it feel as if something inside my head exploded, and I crumbled to my knees.
Strong arms wrapped around my neck, and one of them held me in a headlock as another one removed my chain, and someone else pulled money from my pockets.
I had around $1,200 on me. The pain in my head combined with my airway being restricted was the worst combination of pain and discomfort that I’d ever felt in my life.
I wasn’t sure I could last through the pain, but that didn’t stop me from grabbing my weapon.
One of them attempted to grab my gun, but pointing the gun to the side of me, I shot blindly.
“Fuck!” Ole boy released my neck as his partner hit the ground.
Gasping for air and scrambling to get on my feet, I shot again as they took off running leaving their friend behind.
My chest heaved up and down and stars danced before my eyes as I glared down at Scarface.
The crotch of his denim jeans was saturated with blood, and he looked up at me with wide eyes full of fear.
There was a fifty/fifty chance that there were cameras outside the store, but no fucks were given as I raised my arm and squeezed the trigger sending a bullet slamming into his stomach.
I didn’t care if he lived or died. As I got back in my car, I vowed to find every last one of those fuck niggas and ruin their lives.
Two days later, I sat with my left leg bouncing anxiously as my best friend, Rod stared at me with flexed jaw muscles.
“Oh, so those niggas in Golden Waters want beef? Say the fuck less. Misha!” he yelled out for his girlfriend of five years.
Her nosey ass probably wasn’t too far away.
If I knew Misha, she was ear hustling. She didn’t trust Rod and thought everything was about another female.
If we hung out, we had to be chasing women.
After I was robbed, I tried my best not to go to the hospital, but with the way my head was hurting, I couldn’t be for certain that I didn’t have bleeding on the brain.
At the urging of my father, I went to the ER and had to get six stitches in the back of my head, but an MRI confirmed there was no internal bleeding.
I had a pretty high pain tolerance, but I wasn’t sure if I could make it through the pain in my head.
Since my father was with me and was going to drive me home, they gave me morphine and I went back to his house and slept for damn near twelve hours.
When I woke up, the pain had gone from a ten to a four, and I drove my ass back to Charlotte.
I had given my cousins in the area all the information that I could on Scarface, and it took less than two hours for me to get the name of him and the niggas he ran with.
The head nigga was a cat by the name of Ivan.
He was supposed to be a heavy hitter in the game, but he’d recently taken a major loss and allegedly owed the plug which would explain why he had to rob my ass.
It didn’t matter, however. He did all that to get right with the plug, and I was gon’ torture the fuck out of his ass.
There wouldn’t be any going to Golden Waters and straight murdering him.
I was going to make him feel me. Become a thorn in his side, so if I did end up killing him, it would be because he came after me first.
Ivan and his crew didn’t know who I was.
They saw me iced out driving a nice car and thought I’d be an easy lick.
Little did they know, I had a crew of friends and family that would go to war behind me.
Rod along with at least five other niggas were ready to pack up and ride with me to Golden Waters.
Ivan and his minions weren’t going to know what hit them.
I wanted to take everything from him and make him suffer.
Aside from selling weed, I stayed out the way.
Stacking my bread and living life was all I cared about.
I went out of the country at least four times a year.
I didn’t engage in a lot of senseless beef.
In Charlotte, I was well-known and well-respected.
I walked around freely every day and was good in any hood.
No one had ever attempted to rob me. Maybe that was one of the reasons I got caught lackin’ in Golden Waters, but niggas were going to hate the day they ever came for me.
I was going to make sure of it. It wasn’t about the chain or the money they took. It was about the principle.
“What? Why you yelling?” Misha stood in the doorway with a frown.
“Take yo’ shit out of my Louis luggage that’s been in there for the past two weeks.”
Misha folded her arms underneath her breasts and snaked her neck. “And where are you going?”
“I’m going to Golden Waters with Onyx to handle some business. And I don’t want to hear shit because didn’t you and your hoe ass homegirls just come back from Aruba?”
Misha’s gaze flitted toward my busted lip before quickly looking away. It had to come from me falling against my car because none of those niggas hit me in the face. “I was gone for four days. How long are you going to be gone?”
“Stop asking me dumb ass questions,” he snapped. “You already know what it is. I’ll be back when I get back.”
Misha’s eyes narrowed, and I knew she wanted to curse Rod out, but she had more than likely become an expert at the art of picking and choosing her battles.
I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Rod loved her.
But that was my homie and no amount of complaining that she did would have stopped him from coming to Golden Waters with me.
“I just got some raw ass dope in too,” Rod stated when Misha stomped off. “I’m gon’ take that shit to Golden Waters and hustle all in that nigga’s territory. They don’t know what kind of war they started.”
Rod was down for whatever, and his little brother, Lamar was a crash out on another level.
He literally had to take medication to keep his mood under control and often, he’d go months at a time without taking it no matter how much people told him he needed it.
Lamar getting mad and crashing out was as normal as Sunday coming once a week.
It got to the point where if a person wasn’t a direct source of his wrath, they just learned to ignore him.
I had a team full of shooters ready to ride for me and terrorize the streets of Golden Waters just because they liked the idea of pissing niggas off.
“Poochie told me that Ivan has a baby mama that does nails, and shit named, Tatum. I don’t know what their history is, but I’m on her ass first. As long as she doesn’t look like a fiend or some shit, I’m gon’ record myself fucking her and make sure that nigga sees it right before I beat his ass black and blue,” I stated.
I never went looking for trouble, but Ivan and his crew had me on my best bullshit. I had just been contemplating moving to Golden Waters because it seemed so peaceful and serene. I was about to turn the city up.