Chapter 27 #2
“Aye, you’re Remedy’s little brother, right?”
At the question, Melo went into defense mode and screwed his face up at Kross. “Why you asking for?”
A deep chuckle rolled out of Kross as he mentally coached himself to keep his patience with Melo. He was the same way when he was a teen, so he extended the grace he wished he would’ve gotten.
“I’m not on nothing, jit. I just been looking for her. You heard from her at all?” Kross still had her phone and wallet, but he was hoping she would’ve managed to reach out to her brother or mother somehow, someway.
Melo could hear the worry in Kross’ tone, so he cuffed the basketball between his arm and side and began walking over to the car.
“Nah, I ain’t heard from her. She was supposed to be back to move the rest of my and our mama’s shit, but she never came back.
” He shrugged his shoulders. “My sister good, right? Ain’t nothing happen to her? ”
“I’m trying to make sure she straight. I’m Kross.” He extended his hand through the window to dap Melo up.
Melo eyed Kross’ hand skeptically for a moment before opting to shake his hand. He had heard Kross’ name here and there around the duplex whenever Andres or Raquel stopped by with Aniyis. Melo minded his business and stayed out the way, so he never tried to figure out who Kross was.
“You was dating my sister or something?” Melo eyed him up and down.
Kross wasn’t the slightest bit intimidated by him, but he respected Melo’s approach. He was becoming a man, and he believed in protecting his sister.
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“Well, if you can’t find her, I think that’s how she wanna keep it. Niggas get ghosted every day. This won’t be the first time or the last,” he slyly let out with a shrug of his shoulders.
Another deep chuckle sounded from Kross as he shook his head. He was starting to see that a slick mouth was hereditary amongst Remedy and her little brother.
“I ain’t fucking get ghosted,” Kross clarified, only for Melo to scoff as if it were hard for him to believe otherwise.
“Look, fam, I don’t know if nobody ever told you, but if you can’t find a female or don’t get an answer when you hit her up on her phone, then you gotta just take a hint.”
Kross smacked his lips as he reached into the back seat of his car and grabbed Remedy’s Louis Vuitton tote bag and brought it up to the front seat for Melo to see.
“Ain’t none of that shit going on, jit. Me and you sister was kicking it. Then I had to slide to take care of something. Her ex-nigga came and snatched her up while I was gone. She left her phone, her purse, wallet, everything. This shit is serious.”
He didn’t really want to delve into all the details with Melo because he didn’t know how open Remedy was with him, but the little nigga was playing in his face, and he didn’t have time for it.
“Tone? He back from Chicago?”
“That’s that nigga’s name?”
“Wait... you ain’t know him?” Melo bumped his thick brows together.
“I ran into him in the streets, but I ain’t know that was the nigga she was fucking with prior to me,” he admitted.
Kross could see the anger that flashed in Melo’s eyes. It was clear to him that he was privy at some degree of what was going on between Remedy and Tone.
“Man, if that nigga did anything to my sister, I put it on my daddy that I’m gone kill his ass,” he gritted with his fists balled up.
“Listen, you not ‘bout to do nothing. I just need you to give me the address to her crib so I can see if she there.”
“If I ain’t going, then you ain’t going either. I can’t trust none of you niggas ‘round my sister at this point.” Melo shook his head.
Kross pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration.
Melo reminded him a lot of himself. He was strong-willed, stubborn, and thought he could take on the world.
He respected how Melo was coming, especially now that Deno had passed, and he felt like he was the only man left who had Remedy’s best interest at heart.
He debated for a little while whether he wanted to take Melo with him on the ride before finally opting to just let him come along.
“Get in, bruh,” he caved while hitting the locks.
Melo was shocked that Kross was actually letting him go with him, but he was also glad that he was. He wanted to see about his sister as soon as possible.
“Hold up. I gotta check on my mama. I’ll be back.”
Kross recalled Remedy telling him about her mother’s mental state, so he understood that Melo wanted to tap in with her before he just left.
Melo didn’t take long. Thankfully, Ava was occupied in the garden with one of the tenants who lived on the other side of the duplex.
Melo returned to the car and hopped in, and Kross pulled off.
He typed in the address on the screen on the dashboard of the vehicle, and Kross followed the GPS.
“Ain’t you supposed to be in school?” Kross broke the silence between them.
Snapping out of his thoughts that were consumed with uneasiness regarding his sister, he shrugged his shoulders. “I gotta look out for my mama while Remedy works. She was supposed to be setting me up for online school, but I guess she got busy. When you and Remedy meet?”
“A few months back. She’s cool people once you look past that damn attitude she got.”
Melo laughed, agreeing with Kross. “Yeah, her attitude is fucked up, but that’s only because she’s dealing with a lot.”
“She is.” Kross nodded. “I ain’t trying to add to that. She confided in me ‘bout what she got going on in her life, and I just wanna look out for her. You feel me?”
It was hard for Melo to trust any man Remedy had in her life after he witnessed Tone abuse her so much. His sister just didn’t know how to pick men in his opinion. There wasn’t anything Kross could say that would get him to believe he was different. He was going to have to prove himself.
“We’ll see.” Melo shrugged before shifting his gaze out the window, bringing an end to the conversation.
Kross managed to arrive at the address Melo provided him. It was a house instead of the high-rise apartment building he pulled up to when he picked Remedy up on their first date. There weren’t any cars parked in the driveway, not even Remedy’s Lexus that was towed from the parking lot of The Setai.
Melo ain’t waste no time hopping out of the car to look for his sister.
Kross barely got the chance to shift the gear into Park.
Once he did and killed the engine, he followed right behind Melo, clutching his strap.
He watched as Melo lifted the welcome mat in search of the spare key to the front door but came up empty.
He then resorted to banging against the door, hoping Remedy was inside and could hear him.
“Rem! You in there?! It’s me, Melo!” he called out loud enough to be heard from inside the home if she was there.
Kross could tell that panic was beginning to set into Melo once Remedy didn’t come to the door. A heavy sigh dispelled out of Kross as he grabbed Melo’s shoulder.
“Watch out, bruh,” he told him while slightly pushing him to the side so he could have access to the door.
Kross crashed the front door with a series of heavy kicks, causing the threshold to dismantle and fall in.
There wasn’t anything that was going to keep him from getting inside to Remedy.
From the footage he saw at the shop, it looked like she was on the fence between life and death after what Tone put her through.
Remedy was strong as hell and had a lethal mouth to match, but at the end of the day, she was still a woman, and no woman deserved the abuse Tone was inflicting on her.
After the door fell in, Melo and Kross rushed inside. Their eyes beared sight of the home that was left in disarray. Furniture and décor were tossed about carelessly all over the place. Remnants of blood and glass littered the floor, prompting Kross and Melo to think the worst.
“Remedy! You in here?!” Kross called out as he began searching within the home for any sign of her.
The further he and Melo ventured into the home, the more of a disaster they saw.
All the photos were knocked off the walls.
There were light streaks of blood swiped against the walls in the hall, almost as if Remedy used them as support to navigate through the home.
Kross could only imagine what shawty endured these past few hours.
After the way his life had been going for the past few months, he had no choice but to have morbid thoughts.
From the way the home looked, Kross wouldn’t have been surprised if Tone had taken Remedy’s life, leaving her lifeless body behind for him and Melo to find.
He was praying that wasn’t the case, but he still had to prepare himself just in case it was.
Before Melo got the chance to turn the doorknob to the first door in the hall, Kross stopped him.
He didn’t want Melo to see anything he shouldn’t.
He pushed Melo behind him and opened the door himself.
Luckily, the bathroom was empty. They went to the next door, which happened to be Melo’s old room.
Aside from the rest of his belongings left behind in the closet, it was empty as well.
Together, the men proceeded to check the room opposite of Melo’s room, which was Ava’s old room, and there was no sign of Remedy in there either.
The final room in the home was the one shared by Remedy and Tone. Kross pushed open the door, and although he wasn’t gaining any type of closure, he was relieved that the room was empty as well. He wasn’t sure how the fuck he would’ve dealt with Melo seeing his sister’s dead body.
Melo navigated to the walk-in closet in the master bedroom while Kross checked the adjoining bathroom.
“What the fuck?!” Melo called out.
Kross felt his heart plunge to the pit of his stomach as he bolted out of the bathroom and made his way to the closet. There, his eyes scoped around, noticing how empty and bare the closet was.
“M-my sister had a lot of shit.” Melo shook his head in disbelief. “All her shit is gone.”
There was absolutely no trace of Remedy left in the closet.
It was almost like she never even lived there.
This shit was getting more and more twisted as time went on.
Now Melo was dragged into it, and Kross knew he would have no understanding when it came to his sister, so settling things without involving the Feds was officially out of the question.
Just as Kross expected, Melo pulled out his phone and dialed 9-1-1 immediately.
Kross felt like his entire world was turned upside down all over again.
Remedy was the best thing life had granted him since he’d gotten out of prison, and now, all this shit was transpiring.
Life wasn’t giving him a break at all. As he ran his hands down his face in distress, he could hear Melo speak to the operator over the phone.
“My sister, Remedy Harris, she’s missing, and I think her ex-boyfriend Antonio Williams did something to her.”