Chapter 7 #3
Zaire smiled slightly, and it was the smile of a man who'd just remembered what freedom felt like.
If I knew him like I thought I did, he would be leaving the house soon and getting into who knows what.
"Yeah, y'all niggas gotta go. I been gone too long. All I want to do is shower and to pull up on one of my females. I need to remember what normal feels like. I need to feel like myself again and the only way I’m going to do that is by pulling up or a shordie. "
"I feel you, and you ain’t wrong either," Namier said, and we both laughed because we understood completely. When you've been locked up that long, the first thing you want to do is slide in something wet. Although I’m paranoid from what he just went through, and don’t want this nigga out of my site, I have to let him be a man.
"Be safe out there," I told him, my tone shifting back to serious. "And call me if you need anything at all. Don't be late for breakfast either or yo momma going to flip out on all of us."
"I won't," he said. "I know not to play with or test Zuri’s gangsta." Zaire laughed.
Then I paused, because this was the transition moment. This was the moment where we went from family celebration to business. From gratitude to strategy. From welcoming Zaire home to preparing for war.
"After breakfast though," I said, my voice shifting to something colder, something harder, "we got real business to handle. That's priority. That nigga Demon has been doing so much shit, I didn’t even have time to put you up on game. We had to sit back in order to get you out. I knew that we were bringing you home, and didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize your freedom. Swallowing my pride and allowing that nigga to live has been some of the hardest shit. You home now. Enjoy your night, I’m not gonna tell you everything right now and have you pissed off, but tomorrow, its back to business. These snakes heads will be chopped off.”
Zaire's entire demeanor shifted in a way that was almost unnoticeable if you weren't looking for it.
But I knew my brother. The gratitude was still there, the love was still there, but now something else surfaced—that quiet danger that made him the deadliest of all of us.
He didn't say much, which was exactly why he was the most dangerous.
You could never see him coming. He would move through the world like a ghost and handle what needed to be handled before anybody even realized what was happening.
He looked me directly in the eyes with a focus that was almost scary from how intense it was, and said simply, "That's good as handled." He ain’t care about Namier telling him that he was gonna take care of it. Zaire wanted blood no matter how calm he seemed.
And I knew he meant it. Demontae Sullivan and Brick Boyz were already dead as far as Zaire was concerned.
Me and Namier left his house to let Zaire get himself together.
When we walked out into the night air I exhaled a long, deep breath.
Before we could split up and go our separate ways, I grabbed Namier's arm and pulled him to the side, away from Zaire's house, away from anywhere this conversation could be overheard.
I ran down the Mallory situation to him, I told him about the call that I had gotten from my wife while we were at the prison waiting on our brother to be released. He immediately raised his brow.
Namier's eyes went sharp, understanding the situation immediately. "What the fuck she want? Why she even here?"
"Hell, I don’t know yet," I said.
"So what you going to do?" Namier asked, and his question carried weight because he already knew the answer. He was just testing me, making sure I was thinking clearly. "Because if you don't handle her right now, you know Tatti’s ass will. We already seen what she capable of when she feel disrespected. And if she said she’ll smoke the bitch, I’d believe her. "
Before I could answer, Tatti walked up on us from out of nowhere.
Just appeared like she'd been waiting in the shadows the whole time, watching, waiting for her moment to make her presence known. Her ass was too swift and sneaky. I gave her a cold ass glare, because I still wasn’t over what happened earlier.
Her hand was on her hip and her eyes were cold as ice. The kind of cold that said she was holding rage in her chest all this time, waiting for a reason to let it out, waiting for the right moment to strike and Mallory had chose the wrong time to pop up here.
"Take me to this bitch," she said, her voice steady and dangerous, cutting through the night air like a sharp blade. “Kaseem I know you didn’t think that you could get over on me and sneak this bitch off before I saw about it. Come on, let’s go see what she wanted so fuckin bad!” it was clear she had overheard my conversation to my brother, about where I had ol’ girl stashed.
She was standing there like she was ready for war, and the look in her eyes told me she meant every single word.
My wife was a fuckin trip, this woman I'd just discovered had been lying to me about her entire life, she was still calling shots.
Knowing damn well I was seconds away from getting on her ass myself.
One thing that I knew was that she wasn’t going to go home or drop the situation, unless I said and did exactly what she was telling me to do. Namier gave me a look to let me know it was about to be some shit. I was just glad that I had this nigga with me a back up.