Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
“Fuck!” he groaned as he assessed the blood leaking out of him.
He tried his best to split his attention between the road and his wound.
If he drove too crazily, he would garner unwanted attention, and he didn’t need any of that.
His mind ran rampant as he considered what his next move should be.
Going to the hospital to seek medical attention was out of the fucking question, but he needed to get his bleeding under control, so he pivoted.
Taking a sharp right turn off the interstate, he sped through Liberty City and right into Little Haiti.
His feet dragged along the cobblestone pathway that led to the porch. Once he reached the door, he issued a series of loud knocks against it, which prompted a few lights in the home and the porch light to come on.
“Who is it?!” Kross heard from the other side of the door.
The familiar voice belonged to his uncle, Buddah, who was kin to him through his father Christian.
After Christian got shot early in Kross’ childhood, he never really got the chance to connect with his side of the family.
Kross was sure that him popping up on his doorstep in the wee hours of the morning was confusing as fuck.
“It’s me, Kross,” he responded through clenched teeth.
There was a moment of silence that lasted briefly before the locks of the door began to chime and it was yanked open.
“The fuck you doing here at four-somethin’ in the morning, Kross?
” Buddah shot his nephew an odd look. It had been years since they crossed paths, and he knew as the adult in the situation, he could have done more to keep a connection with his little brother’s son, but he didn’t.
There was no bad blood between the two, just messy-ass family drama between Raquel and Christian’s families that Kross ended up getting lost within.
Growing up, Kross was always closer to his mother’s side of the family than his father’s.
Christian did his part and made sure Kross knew his side of the family, but when he passed and all the drama between them and Raquel ensued, she made sure to keep Kross far the fuck away from them.
It didn’t help much, and he still turned out to be everything she was running away from and wanted Christian to leave behind.
Despite the lack of a close relationship, Kross always made sure to speak whenever he saw his father’s family in passing.
They got to watch his rise to power in the streets from a distance, and they couldn’t help but see Christian through him.
Instead of uttering anything, Kross lifted the hem of his Hellstar shirt and showcased the bullet wound he suffered to his side.
Buddha’s eyes trailed from the bloody mess and peered right into Kross’ eyes.
This was déjà vu from the last time Kross came stumbling up the steps of his porch.
This wasn’t his first time getting shot or even grazed.
He had a few close calls, but every time, he made sure to pull through just to raise hell in the streets for whoever upped fire on him.
“Get the fuck in here.” Buddha smacked his lips, stepping aside so Kross could step inside.
Blood from the open gunshot wound trickled down Kross’ side and canvassed the oak wood floors of Buddha’s home.
Once the front door shut behind them, the light in the hallway flickered on, and there stood the woman who saved Kross’ life the last time he came to their home on the brink of life and death.
“You just got out and you already in some shit?” she asked with a frown sinking into her face and her arms folded across his chest.
Nadine was Buddha’s longtime girlfriend he had been with since Kross could remember.
The two were a match made in heaven and matched each other’s crazy perfectly.
Nadine was of Haitian descent and came to the States at the age of seven.
She and Buddha went to the same high school, and as much as Nadine’s immigrant parents tried to keep her away from Buddha’s roughneck ass, she found him impossible to shake like a bad habit.
Now in their mid-fifties, Buddha was out of the streets, and Nadine was a registered nurse.
They lived a pretty peaceful life out of the way until shit landed at their doorstep, like now.
“This shit comes with the territory. Can you stop this fucking bleeding, though?” Kross mustered enough strength to grit through clenched teeth.
Nadine exchanged glances with Buddha to see whether they were on the same page and were going to help Kross out.
He gave her a quick head nod, which prompted her to rush to Kross’ side to usher him to their dining room.
Just like last time, Buddha stripped their dining room table of the nice tablecloth they had for decoration and began dressing it with multiple trash bags.
As he did that, Nadine ridded herself of her robe and remained in her night gown before gloving up.
The way they were moving so militantly and in sync with each other had Kross thinking he wasn’t the only motherfucka’ getting patched up at their crib from time to time.
Nadine and Buddha were just always on the same type of timing, and it made him think about what he and Cassie had before she passed.
Nadine aided him out of his shirt and began assessing the wound. The blood was still pooling out, and she could see the anguish that began to settle in on his face.
“It’s just a graze,” she concluded after examining it.
“What the fuck it hurt so fucking bad for?” He let out a disgruntled groan as he laid on the trash bags covering the table.
“It grazed pretty deep. You’re lucky that’s all that happened.”
As he reflected on tonight’s events, he couldn’t help but to agree with her.
He played a dangerous game by making a move on the Zone 7 crew while in the club.
Luckily, all he came out with was a graze and none of his people dropped.
Them Zone 7 niggas had two funerals to prepare for, and Kross made sure of it.
He knew he needed to be prepared and ready for however they chose to spin back on him.
Buddha scavenged the cupboards of the kitchen before coming upon a small bottle of Fireball whisky. He cracked the seal for his nephew before handing it over to him.
“Drink this. It ain’t no fucking anesthesia or morphine, but it might help.”
Without any question, he downed the entire miniature bottle of whisky, desperately hoping it would numb some of the pain Nadine was about to inflict on him.
She managed to stop the bleeding with some gauze, which gave him some relief.
She sat at the kitchen table and cleaned out the graze with a wet rag and antibacterial soap.
With only household products in hand, she couldn’t really do much besides gauze him up and plaster him with bandages.
It was a quick fix and the best she could do.
“This all I can do for you right now,” Nadine sighed as she disposed of the gloves she had on her hands.
Buddha extended a hand to Kross to aid him with sitting up on the table. He gazed down to the bandaged wound on his left side before shifting his attention back to Nadine.
“C’mon. You gotta be able to close it up or something. I can’t walk around with this big-ass gash on my side,” he hissed through the pain.
“Go to a hospital,” she suggested with a shrug of her shoulders.
Kross smacked his lips. “You know I can’t do that.”
“It’s either that, or you wait until I get off work tomorrow so I can grab some supplies from the supply closet.” Her brow raised at him as her hands perched on her hips.
Kross let out a heavy sigh of defeat. He attempted to get off the table but ended up stumbling on the way down.
He was fucked up from the few drinks and blunts he indulged in at the club, plus the small bottle of whisky he downed to manage his pain.
The mixture of his glossy eyes, lack of balance, and excruciating pain in his left side let Buddha know there was no way in hell his nephew could drive home without putting his life or someone else’s life in danger.
“Get your ass on the couch and rest up,” he ordered, making it clear that he wasn’t taking no for an answer.
Kross attempted to protest, but Buddha gave him a lethal look that made him pick his battles wisely. Nadine prepared the couch with a few pillows and blankets before Kross ended up crashing for the night.
The next morning, Kross was stirred out of his slumber by the chickens Nadine and Buddha had in their back yard crowing.
The chickens’ natural instinct served as a perfect alarm clock for Nadine and Buddha, but to Kross, they were only a pain in the ass.
His entire body felt sore, and it didn’t help that he had to squeeze his six-foot-four frame onto his uncle’s small-ass couch.
“Morning,” Nadine’s voice rang through his ears as he sat up. “I get off work today at seven, so you can bring you ass back here so I can close you up.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
After clipping her hair up in the mirror in the front room, she turned around and faced Kross. It had been years since she and Buddha saw him last, but it seemed as though nothing changed. She thought a seven-year prison bid would have calmed him down a bit, but it seemed to only turn him up more.
“You have so much more to live for besides this street shit,” she whispered, causing Kross to snap his head in her direction.
“Yeah, I thought so too, until I heard they shot up my lady car while my son was in it. Cassie’s gone, and these streets not gone rest until I put down whoever pulled that trigger.”
Nadine sighed deeply at the thought of Cassie’s unwarranted murder and the injuries Aniyis endured. It was a tragic situation, and she knew there were still some unresolved emotions festering within Kross.