Chapter 21
Skai
Dammit! How am I late to my own party?I think, rushing around the room like a chicken with its head cut off. The outfit Mercy made is perfection, the beaded sleeveless pantsuit with detachable train. I channeled my inner Aunt Parker and went with all white with a few pops of yellow. My hair and makeup are done. Now all I have to do is get my ass in the car. I grab the rest of my things and stuff it in my purse and rush out of my bedroom. Ugh, I should’ve gone with Jabarri’s suggestion of us going together, but I wanted to surprise him with my outfit. Fuck it, I think if I have forgotten something, oh well. Everyone is either en route to the hotel or already there, including my dad and granddad. I swear to goodness if Jabarri texts me one more time! I scream in my head. Shit, my flats! I grab them and head to the car. I open the Jeep door and throw my stuff in the passenger side. I put my foot on the bar, preparing to get in the car when I hear my phone ringing. I drop my foot back down and listen for the ringing. It’s obviously not in the car, it sounds too far away. I start to pat myself down but stop when I realize there is no place on this outfit to stash my phone. Dammit! I threw it on my bed after Jabarri texted me for the twentieth time. It’s a good thing this makeup is waterproof, it’s hotter than doughnut grease at a fat man convention out here. I grab my key fob, rushing back in the house to grab my phone. I hit the remote start so the air can come on and hopefully cool down those hot-ass leather seats. Suddenly, I am thrown in the air landing hard on my side several feet down the hallway. What! The! Hell! I try to think around the ringing in my ears and pain in my side. I try to get up, but everything hurts. I drag myself to my room, pulling on the bedspread making shit clatter to the ground all around until, finally, my phone falls.
“Baby, you’re late even for you.”
“Jabarri,” I gasp out before everything goes black.
Who is yelling?I think as I struggle to open my eyes. As I become more conscious, I realize no one is yelling. They are just talking but everything is in stereo for me.
“Can y’all please hush,” I whisper out, and seconds later Jabarri is holding my hand.
“Skai, open your eyes, baby,”
“Okay,” I say, but it takes so much effort that I am tired before I figure out how to do it.
“Please, Skai, I need to see your eyes.” I hear him say, and I fight against the sleepiness trying to pull me back under and eventually crack my eyes to see Jabarri looking scared and downright furious.
“Hey, baby,” he says, smiling at me.
“Water?” I ask, but before he can give me any much-needed water for my dry mouth, a nurse and doctor are in the room poking and prodding me. So I’m in the hospital, and it all comes rushing back to me. I was in the garage getting in the car, and went back inside to find my phone. I used the remote start, and then I was shot down the hall.
“What happened? How long have I been here?”
“Your car exploded, and just a few hours,” Jabarri says.
“Jabarri, I was almost in the car. If you hadn’t texted, making me throw my phone, I would have had it on me, and I would have been in the car. I would’ve been dead.”
“You’re okay, baby. They didn’t get to you. By the time I got to you, the house was on fire but luckily, you closed your bedroom door, delaying the fire getting to you. This was too close, baby. We are going after them as soon as the doctor lets you go home.
“I am ready to go home now, I’m fine. Y’all aren’t going without me,”
“I bet we are.”
“No, you are not, Jabarbie!” I say, forgetting about the massive migraine and pain in my side.
“Let me tell your little ass something, You Are Not Going! I refuse to lose you. I will let you have anything else but not this. You will stay home. If you went and got hurt or worse I would be destroyed. I will happily crawl down into the depths of hell and make a deal with the Devil to eradicate every trace of them, all of their family, friends, exes, and anyone else they were associated with and I will dance in the fires of hell happily as long as it means you are safe. You cannot begin to comprehend how much I love you, Skai, so when I say you are not going, I mean that shit. I would rather you be mad at me alive, hell I would even accept you telling me you won’t marry me if I don’t let you go. As long as it means you are alive, safe, and whole. You are my heart not metaphorically either. You are the physical manifestation of my heart. I would simply die without you. So do us both a favor and not fight me on this.”
“Am I interrupting?” Lennox says when she walks in to Skai and I having a stare off.
“No,” she answers, turning to look at Lennox.
“They wanted to keep you for another twenty-four hours, but I have convinced them to send you home. It’s good to know I still have some pull here,” she says about her old hospital. “I am going to go back out there and get the accelerated version of the paperwork,” she throws over her shoulder as she walks out. Personally I think it was to give Jabari and I a chance to finish our conversation.
“I’ll stay home,” I tell him. If I wasn’t so frustrated at being left out of this fight I would’ve cried from his heartfelt words. “Where is my mom?”
“She walked out right before you woke up. She was talking to your dad,”
“Gotcha. I am sure he is trying to push all of her buttons.”
“Get dressed,” Lennox says when she comes back in my room.
“I ruined my outfit,”
“I got you something to wear,” he says holding up a bag. He helps me get dressed, and I notice the bruise covering my whole right side. As soon as I am dressed in the graphic tee and leggings when my mom walks in.
“You’re up. Lennox says you’re able to come home.”
“Where are we going to go?” I ask Jabarri, seeing as part of my house is either blown up or burned to high hell. And the house he was at the resort has been rented out since he was always at my house.
`“We are going to stay at the hotel,”
“But first, we are all going to the house to talk,” my mom orders, and I groan partly because I am in pain, but I am not telling them that, and the other part is I do not want to hear what they have to say. “Then you and Jabarri can go rest, the talk shouldn’t take too long,” she says, and an hour later, we are all sitting in the beach house waiting.
“We are going to head to Texas, early in the morning and we are going to take Art and everyone else that is in there out. Once we do that, we are going to hunt everyone in that organization down and we are going to kill them all,” DJ says.
“Sounds like my kind of party,” Atlas says.
“Mine, too,” True backs him up.
“Oh yeah, big surprise,” Parker says, laughing because we all know those two always want the contact.
“We will go tonight. I am sick of the people closest to me getting hurt. So the sooner we can six-foot this Art person the sooner I can relax again.”
“I’m down,”
“Me, too,”
“Hell, we can leave now,”
“Now who is that?” Aryan asks when the doorbell rings. ON the other side of the door are Doone and my dad.
“What are you doing here, Doone,” Atlas asks him as they both walk in taking a seat.
“I was wrong. I knew I was missing something. There really wasn’t a good angle of the man killed, but I took the video to a master 3-D sketch artist, and they completed the persons face, and it’s Mark Hartman,”
“Why does that name sound so familiar?” Asher asks.
“Because he was in the news during the last election. He is the male version of Olivia Pope.”
“Oh yeah, I remember, them saying he was missing, and they presumed him to be dead but have not been able to find his body,” my mom says, “but how is he tied to Art?”
“Art’s sister is married to the United States Secretary of Homeland Security. That’s how he has been able to expand the business. From what I can glean, Art does the Secretaries dirty work, and the Secretary keeps him safe,”
“So that means what?”
“That means Art is untouchable. John Johnson will have the Gideons wiped out with a flick of the wrist. You can’t kill your way out of this, and they will keep coming for not just Skai but all of you.”
“Well fuck,” I say, cussing in front of my mom.
Jabarri
Just when I thought there was light at the end of the tunnel, the bitch caves in. Not only do we have a psychopathic drug dealer after Skai, but he also has the Secretary of Homeland Security on his side. We might be fucked on this one.
“So, what do you suggest?” Savvy asks, coming over to wrap her arms around Skai. Everyone is here, both of Skai’s brothers, her granddad and his wife, her dad and his wife, my mom and dad, and the regular crew.
“Witness protection,”
“Isn’t ole boy over the witness protection program?”
“He is but I would handle it personally, off of the books. I have given quite a few people a new life. Like the girls you rescued from Victor’s house, Atlas,” Doone reminds Atlas. “But she wouldn’t be able to contact anyone anymore. For intents and purposes Skai Errington would no longer exist,” he says looking around the room.
“Hell no!” one of her brothers says, but I am too shocked to say anything.
“If someone has a better idea, I am all ears. You guys have never dealt with someone in the US as connected as these two. Johnson could say anything. He could fabricate allegations on Skai, have her arrested, and dropped in a black site. And while you are battling that, Art will be sending a steady stream of killers after her. She has to disappear, there is no other way.” The more Doone talks, the more tears flow from both Skai and Savvy’s eyes.
“I will already have all the paperwork I need for her,”
“Good, I’ll need paperwork, too,” I say. “Cause I am going, too.”
“No! There has got to be another way!” Savvy screams. “I can’t lose another child, I won’t!”
“At least she will be alive,” Doone tries to reason. “We need to move asap. Jabarri, I will have your paperwork ready for you by tomorrow.”
“This is your fucking fault! If you weren’t so busy and hell bent on being a bed wench to this white boy, our daughter wouldn’t be in this mess!” William snaps. “Was whoring yourself out to this bitch worth it?”
Everything freezes and then speeds up, as Josh hits him so hard in the face that we all hear the bone snap. He unleashed a flurry of punches at William, who was caught so off guard that he didn’t get a chance to prepare himself for the fight.
“I played with you before, but not this time! I got your bitch, mother fucker!” Josh yells his fists continuing to rain down on William in a savage onslaught. He catches him with an uppercut, forcing him to bite his lip with so much force it splits in two. William finally begins to put up a fight, but Josh kicked him in the chest sending him flying backward. It happened so fast none of us was prepared, by the time it clicked for us, we were in motion to pull Josh back as Skai cried and Savvy tried to comfort her daughter. By the time we got to Josh, William looked like he was been hit by a truck literally. Lennox rushed over to him to assess the damage and she began getting him fixed up.
“You can stay unless you need to go to the hospital, but if you stay, you better watch what the fuck you say. There is a lot of acreage you could get lost on.”
“We’ll be ready in the morning,” I say when I sit back next to Skai. “We’ll be together, and I will figure out a way to contact your mom, baby,”
“But we’ll never see our family again. How do I do that?”
“You won’t have to,” my mom says. “I have something to tell you all.”