Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
Two and a half years later…
Iso
I never believed niggas when they said life was good because life had never been good, or so I thought until I died.
Almost three years ago I was dead according to Briar South medical records, and at that time, I was at my lowest. I had lost everything but the life they tried to take from me, so I resented the constant there every time.
I resented the God everybody praised because how dare He not protect a nigga from the very motherfuckers I trusted my everything with?
While my survival was seen as vengeance, I believed it to be coming back for everything I’d lost until I met her.
I encountered a woman who by all standards was meant for me.
Liora was meant to be mine forever and I’d spend forever and the afterlife proving it.
Something told me I wouldn’t have to given she was lowkey as obsessed with me as I was with her.
We were doing more than building a family at this point.
Now we were setting into a life neither of us saw possible for ourselves.
She had yet to leave the agency, though these days her role was smaller.
Mostly because my baby was on maternity leave, about to have our daughter.
She’d also been playing with the idea of filing her walking papers.
Honestly, I never cared what choice she made because from the moment I met Liora, I accepted her for who she was. So no part of me would ever try to change her.
She would be leaving on her own considering she now ran the gun range and still helped her father on weekends at the pawn shop.
She said her head was no longer in the job, that it had changed from when she was alone doing it versus now.
Either way, I supported whatever decision she made. I’d make it work regardless.
My phone ringing interrupted my thoughts, making me immediately look at the console. Of course it was Killa calling, I was supposed to be on my way to the range with her ice cream but I had a pitstop that wouldn’t take too long.
I answered. “Yo, you good?”
“No, I am not. You said you’d be here fifteen minutes ago, Iso.”
“And I’m coming right now. Gimme a minute, beautiful.”
“Fine.” I heard the pout in her tone.
“I love you too. I already dropped Junior off at my mama’s, so I’ll be there.”
“Okay, fine.”
“Now tell me you love me so we can hang up and I can be on my way.”
“Why would you have to hang up to be on your way, Iso? What are you doing?” Now I just knew her eyes were narrowed.
“Killa.”
“Fine. I love you, now hurry up.”
Impatient ass.
Once we hung up, I got out of the car and looked at the structure in front of me. After studying it long enough, I climbed the steps by two before walking to the open doors.
I spotted him at the same time he spotted me. He immediately approached.
“Long time no see,” he greeted, studying me like he was looking for something.
I nodded. “I came to return this.” I extended my hand with the rosary beads he had given me that night.
“As I’ve told you before, they are yours to keep.”
“But I don’t want them. They are a reminder of a moment I don’t want to be reminded of.”
“You’re looking at it the wrong way. Sometimes we need small reminders of the places we made it out of.”
He was right but it didn’t mean I wanted to keep them. So I just looked at them in my hands.
“You are lighter than you were two years ago, carrying less and very much alive. I’m glad to see that.”
I looked up and he was walking away. “Take care of yourself, son,” he tossed over his shoulder, leaving me standing there.
Like a phoenix I rose from my own ashes.
I was once a dead man coming back for everything I was cheated of. A dead man who returned to take the soul of everyone who took part in my death.
Now?
I was a dead man living for something other than myself.
I wasn’t the same man. I was alive.
The End…