Chapter 1 Dominic Royal #2
The room finally got quiet enough for me to hear myself think, but that wasn’t a good thing because thinking meant feeling, and feeling meant I had to sit with the fact that if Kilo had flinched one second later, if my reaction had been one second slower, I could’ve lost everything on those courthouse steps.
Carmen was still weak, still pale, and still coming out of that shock faze.
The fluids were helping her, the monitors were steady, and the doctor had already said the baby looked strong, but none of that was enough to calm me down because the image of her lying on that concrete was burned too deep in my head now and in my fucking chest.
I stepped out the room for a minute because the hallway outside had turned into its own kind of battlefield.
It wasn’t loud like the courthouse, but the shit was full.
Police were at both ends of the floor and hospital security was moving back and forth trying not to look scared, while my shadows had already spread out enough to make sure nobody I didn’t approve of got close to this wing.
The news was all over the bottom level of the hospital too, and every time the elevator doors opened I could hear their voices bouncing up from downstairs.
They kept saying her name, kept saying mine, and kept running the same footage over and over like the city didn’t already have enough other shit to worry about.
I knew what they were scared of… they were scared of the Royal effect.
They didn’t know if they would wake up and the entire city would be painted red.
Dique was pacing when I came out back and forth when I came out.
I didn’t even know he was here because he had just flown back in from out of town.
He wasn’t saying much, which told me more than words could’ve.
That nigga always talked his shit, cracked jokes, laughed at everything, and always looking to have a good time, but right now he was his ass was wearing that glare on his face like a fresh fit.
His chain swung every time he turned back down the hall, and he was clenching his jaws so hard, I knew he was gon’ feel that shit later.
He looked over when he saw me and asked the only question that mattered right now.
“She okay? I got here as soon as they hit me and told me.”
I nodded. “Yeah, the doctors say she took the hit from the shock. Her pressure dropped too fast, but they got her stable and the baby good.”
He looked down at the floor and let out one slow exhaled breath through his nose, then he rubbed his hand over his mouth like he was trying to wipe anger off his face. “Man,” he muttered. “You mean to tell me none of the shadows saw fake press nigga too close to her?”
“They ain’t know enough to stop it,” I replied, not because I blamed them, but because I wasn’t in the mood to lie for comfort. That’s just some shit I didn’t do and truthfully it was too many reporters out there with cameras, that nigga blended in just like the rest.
He looked up at me quick, processing what I said, but he knew what I meant. We all knew what I meant. In our world, after it happened was too late.
“I know,” he said. “That’s why I’m standin’ here wantin’ to peel skin off a muhfucka.”
One of the shadows came up then and handed me a phone. “Boss, Tone downstairs, he just got here.”
Tone wasn’t supposed to be nowhere near this hospital tonight.
He was supposed to be home with Shona and the baby.
Shona had just pushed that little girl into the world and Tone was supposed to be sitting somewhere in his draws with a bottle warmer in one hand and his daughter in the other.
That was the whole reason I had stepped back from leaning on him too hard the last couple of days, he earned that time.
But then again, Tone been my brother longer than he’s been anything else and brothers like him don’t know how to hear this kind of shit tied to your name and stay home.
I took the elevator down myself without sending for him or making him come up to me.
Soon as those doors opened on the lower level, the rush hit me all over again.
Reporters were posted outside the glass doors trying to catch a glimpse of anybody tied to the case.
When they saw me, they acted like I was a dick they wanted to suck the meat off of.
The hospital had metal detectors and extra officers at every entrance now, but that didn’t stop microphones from being shoved in faces every time a doctor or nurse walked too close to the public side.
Through all that noise, Tone stood off to the side near the vending machines, with a hoodie on, Miami hat sitting low on his head, and two of our men near him like they’d been waiting on me to get downstairs before anybody said or did the wrong shit.
He looked tired, worn out like being a new daddy was whooping his ass.
Yeah, his tired was the kind of tired that comes from having a newborn at home with no real sleep, and then on top of that getting hit with breaking news that somebody tried to kill your people while you were heating up formula and changing shitty diapers.
His eyes met mine and there wasn’t no greeting, no hand slap, half hugs, or none of that shit.
“How sis holding up?” he asked.
I gave him the same answer I gave Dique. “Stable, and the baby good, she’s still just weak though.”
He looked up toward the elevators and nodded. “Good.” He said, and good could mean a thousand things depending on how he said it.
“You supposed to be home,” I told him.
He gave me a look that made it clear he thought I had lost my damn mind even saying that shit out loud. “I was home. Then they cut into regular TV with ‘breaking news’ and showed yo’ wife on the ground in blood. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Rock my baby and hum lullabies?”
The way he said it almost made me laugh, but nothing in me was laughing tonight. “Shona let you leave?”
“Shona told me if I didn’t get my ass up here and figure out what happened, she was gon’ look at me different,” he said.
“And I ain’t dealin’ with that on top of all this.
Nigga, I ain’t never been no pussy, I’m just glad she was on the same page, or she would’ve been one mad female tonight ‘cause no matter what, I was comin’ to this hospital. ”
That sounded exactly like Shona, and for one second it took some of the weight off me because it reminded me people were still living ordinary love lives in the middle of all this madness.
Some shit I was soon to be doing when my baby got here, I just didn’t know how the fuck the King of Miami was supposed to live a regular life without a crab in the bucket ass nigga trying to take my spot.
Life just didn’t work like that, especially in the underworld.
Dique came off the elevator a second later and joined us and he still had that look in his eyes. “So where we at?”
I looked between both of them and kept my voice low. “We got footage, come on.” I ordered.
One of my people had gotten us access to a quiet family consultation room down the hall from the elevators, away from the cameras and away from civilian ears.
The room smelled like hospital coffee and Lysol and there was a TV mounted on the wall we weren’t using because we already had better equipment than that.
Tone set the laptop down and pulled up the clips our shadows had been gathering since the ambulance left the courthouse.
The first angle was dirty and shaky, just enough to catch the shooter blending in with the press.
The second was a lil cleaner. It came from a traffic camera across the street, and when Tone slowed the footage down, all of us leaned in a little harder and closer.
The fake reporter moved through the crowd like he belonged there with the camera on his neck.
He was dark skinned with a Polo shirt tucked in.
Everything about him looked cheap and manufactured.
It was definitely the kind of disguise a street nigga thought passed for polished because he doesn’t know what real polished looks like.
Tone froze the frame just as the dude adjusted his sleeve. “Right there.”
Dique leaned down. “That’s Riverside.”
He was right, you could see the ink from his tattoo just enough when the sleeve lifted up with a snake curled around a gun barrel.
South Riverside was Kilo’s Opps. That wasn’t cartel nor nothing from overseas.
Definitely wasn’t no big, organized move meant for us.
It was just regular hood beef with enough hate behind it to turn reckless.
I sat back in the chair and stared at the still image, letting all the pieces line themselves up in my head.
Kilo had beat a serious body on the strength of Carmen’s defense.
The city was already talking about it. Every street nigga who hated him would’ve been talking about it too.
If they couldn’t touch him inside the courtroom, then they’d try to hit what helped him walk free.
“They came for her,” I said feeling the itch in my trigger finger thinking about the many ways I wanted to break every bone in somebody’s face.
Under no circumstances was a Royal to get touched, especially what belonged to me.
See, niggas knew better, but they thought that disguise would help them get away with it.
Tone didn’t say nothing at first, Dique did. “You sure it wasn’t for Kilo?”
I looked back at the clip and saw the shooter didn’t track Kilo, and he didn’t track the center of the group either.
He tracked Carmen when she stepped forward and started talking.
He was waiting for a clean shot while she stood there exposed in front of the cameras, doing what she always did when pressure hit… handling it.