Four-Leaf Clover's Betrayal

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Diva was frantic as she called her husband for the third time in a row.

She had her keys already in hand and she was prepared to go look for his ass if he didn’t answer.

Her nerves were too bad to sit still so she was up and down, trying to find a way to occupy her time.

When she finally heard his voice on the other line, she relaxed but only a little.

“Yeah, baby, my fault. I was talking to the neighbor and her kids.”

“Really, Hank? You got me stressed the fuck out in here. What did they say?”

“I’m on my way to get you right now. They haven’t seen her since they left school yesterday and she wasn’t there today.”

“Oh no! Why didn’t the fucking school call me? Where the hell could she be? God, please let my baby be okay.”

She knew that Clover sometimes forgot to tell her if she was walking home with her friends and she assumed that was the case again. Now, after what Hank had just said, she knew that wasn’t true. Diva started crying again, breaking her husband’s already fast beating heart.

Dash Hankerson, known as Hank to all who knew him, tried his best to sound unfazed but he was just as concerned as his wife, Dennisha, who they all called Diva.

They were looking for the ten-year-old daughter of their best friends, Corey and Shantel, but that was proving to be a harder task than they assumed.

Hank and his best friend, Corey, were both country boys, born and raised as neighbors in Riverdale, Georgia.

From birth, they were taught how to work with their hands just like all the men in their families before them.

Hank’s father and uncle owned a construction company and both men went to work, even before graduating high school.

Once he started seeing some real money, high school was no longer a priority for Hank.

Against his parents’ wishes, he dropped out in the tenth grade.

Hank’s family always dreamed of him being the first in the family to get a college degree but he hated everything about school.

Just like his father, he was ready to make some real money and start a family at an early age.

His parents were old school, and leaving Georgia for any reason was almost unheard of.

His uncle was always looking for new business, so taking jobs in other places was never a deal breaker for him.

Since Hank wanted to see other parts of the world, he made sure that he was on his uncle’s team whenever they had to travel.

He was ecstatic when his uncle got a big construction contract in New Orleans.

He packed his bags and was ready to roll to The Big Easy, as it was often called.

Corey declined to go and stayed back in Georgia with Shantel.

They had been together since middle school and he couldn’t see himself leaving her behind.

Shantel’s mother had passed when she was younger.

She, along with her two sisters, were being raised by their grandmother, who was also friends with Corey and Hank’s parents.

Corey’s family became hers and the two of them were inseparable.

In their small town, your first girlfriend usually became your wife, but Hank was known for breaking the rules.

Although he had feelings for his girlfriend, Drea, Hank was trying to get to the bag.

The job was scheduled to last for a year or more, but he promised Drea that he’d be back as often as he could or send for her to visit him whenever her school schedule permitted.

Drea was born and raised in Riverdale too, and she hated change.

He used to always beg her to visit the big city to see something new, but she refused.

That all changed when he went to a bar with some of the other employees one night and met Diva.

They were both too young to be in there but the bar belonged to her mother.

By the time the job was done a little over a year later, he and Diva already had an apartment together and a son on the way.

They were babies having a baby and trying to live like adults.

His family was shocked and Drea was heartbroken.

Eventually, he did go back to Georgia but that was only to pack the rest of his belongings to go back to his new home in New Orleans.

His family finally left Georgia for the first time in years to witness the birth of their first grandson, Alphonse, who they nicknamed Fonzo as a joke.

The nickname stuck with him and now that was all that he wanted to be called.

Hank’s father was especially proud because the baby was named after him.

He hated that Hank didn’t do the right thing and marry Diva before the baby was born.

As a result, she refused to give their son his father’s last name.

Two years and two more sons followed soon after their first.

Hank finally did the right thing and married their mother when she was pregnant with their last.

As strange as it seemed, his youngest son was the only one to carry his full name at the time, and he got his junior.

Hank wasn’t feeling that so he wasted no time making sure that his oldest sons’ names were identical to theirs.

Diva’s mother was given the honor of naming their second son, Damont, who they lovingly called Monty.

It was the name of her oldest brother who was killed by the police when they were younger.

Over time, Hank forgot all about the life that he once knew in Georgia.

Once he got with Diva’s family, he started to embrace the city life and all that it entailed.

He started out small, selling a lil weed here and there to make some extra cash in between jobs.

He ended up working for a local construction company but he had way more mouths to feed now.

Before long, Hank became one of the plugs, and Corey had moved to New Orleans and became his right-hand man.

He and Shantel got married and had a daughter of their own.

Hank was always thinking ahead and he wasn’t trying to be in the dope game all his life.

He’d seen the outcome too many times for him not to know better.

He and Corey started their own construction company and business took off in no time.

After a while, Hank fell back from the dope game and focused on his legal income.

He had jobs lined up for months and was seeing more money than he’d ever seen before.

Unfortunately, the city life and fast money had Corey in a chokehold.

He loved the rush that he got from selling dope and he wasn’t trying to give that up.

He had his wife and daughter safely tucked away in a gated community and nobody knew where he laid his head.

Hank used to beg him to fall back from it and focus on their business like he did but he loved the life too much to listen.

As much as he loved Shantel, his newfound financial status had him moving different.

He had a few hoes on the side who didn’t know their place sometimes.

One of them was on some fatal attraction shit and used to show up to Clover’s school to drop off gifts to her.

She never tried to take her but that was enough for Diva and Shantel to roll up on her and beat her ass.

Clover was too young to remember a lot of what her parents had going on and that wasn’t a bad thing.

Unfortunately, Corey lost his life on the same streets that he grew to love so much.

Shantel almost lost her mind when her husband was killed right in front of her.

They had just come from one of their weekly date nights and were heading back to their car.

They were all smiles until a man dressed in all black came from out of nowhere and opened fire, leaving Shantel speechless and covered in her husband’s blood.

Corey was a flashy nigga. He loved jewelry, clothes and cars just as much as he loved his wife and daughter.

They had a lot of haters in the game and one of them had obviously caught him slippin’.

All they had to do was flash a gun and he would have given him whatever they wanted.

According to Shantel, they never even asked.

They put a bullet in his head and robbed him as he laid on the ground dying.

Instead of being grateful that her life was spared, Shantel often wondered why God didn’t take her too.

In her mind, that would have been much easier than living with the pain.

Not to mention, she had to raise their young daughter all by herself.

She had spiraled out of control in no time at all, leaving their daughter, Clover, lost and confused.

It was almost as if she’d lost both her parents the night her father was killed because Shantel was never the same.

Hank and Diva tried to be there for Shantel as much as possible.

She and Diva clicked almost instantly when she and Corey moved to New Orleans and became like sisters.

Shantel was so depressed that she couldn’t even care for Clover like a mother should.

Diva ended up taking on the responsibility of making sure that she ate, had clean clothes and got to and from school every day.

After a while, Shantel seemed to get herself together but she was never the same as before.

She would disappear for days at a time, leaving Clover home alone unless she called one of them to come get her.

Hank used to give her money for the bills, not knowing that she had developed a nasty pill habit and was barely paying them.

Shantel started out taking meds to sleep since she always saw her husband’s dead body every time she closed her eyes.

After a while, a good night’s sleep wasn’t good enough and she turned to something stronger to numb the pain so that she didn’t feel anything at all.

She ended up losing the house since Hank didn’t know who or where to send the mortgage payments to.

He stopped putting money in her hands because it wasn’t being used the right way.

Still, Shantel and Clover were their family, so Hank went out and got an apartment in his name and moved them into it.

That lasted for all of three months before he and Diva went there one night and saw that she had moved in a bunch of dope fiends.

Sadly, that’s what she had become as well.

Shantel could win best dressed easily when she and Corey used to step out but she no longer cared about her appearance.

She had missing teeth, matted hair and she always had a foul odor, no matter how many times Diva cleaned her up.

Through it all, Clover still loved her mother and didn’t want to leave her side.

It was hard because she refused to live with Diva and Hank full time, even though they begged her to.