7. Jeovanni
CHAPTER 7
JEOVANNI
“Stop crying, Celine,” I whispered in her ear as I stroked her walls. It had been too long since I had some pussy, and she was about to blow me with the crying shit. She was still in her feelings about my sons.
I pecked her lips and stroked her harder and faster. Celine wrapped her legs around my waist and moaned loudly. “Oh my God, baby, I’m about to cum,” she whined, and I snaked my tongue into her mouth.
Our kiss deepened as I sexed her through an orgasm that had her moaning into my mouth and clawing at my back. “Fuck,” I panted against her lips as my seeds spilled into her womb. I wasn’t worried about Celine getting pregnant because she didn’t play about her birth control. Celine wasn’t ready for kids, and I respected that. She was living her best life kid free.
When I pulled out of her, Celine wasted no time getting up. The scowl that’d she’d been sporting since she found out about Jordan and Jason was back. In my opinion, I’d been very patient with Celine, but the pouting was getting old. The kids were mine, and I couldn’t change it. I wasn’t sure how long she really needed to process the fact that I had kids, but she was being a little too extra for my liking. I joined her in the shower, and she didn’t attempt to clean me off like she always did. I guess she’d just wanted some dick, but she wasn’t ready to wholeheartedly deal with me again.
We showered and got ready for bed in silence. Well, I got ready for bed. When I noticed that Celine was wearing clothes, I chuckled. She eyed me through the mirror. “What’s funny?”
“You staying at your place tonight?” I inquired ignoring the question.
Celine turned around to face me and leaned up against the dresser. I knew some bullshit was coming, and I promised myself I wouldn’t even get mad.
“Jeovanni, if we aren’t at least engaged in the next thirty days, then I don’t think I want to continue the relationship.”
Just like I knew. Bullshit. I gave a curt nod. “Understood. You want to grab your things now or come back and get them at a later time?” I was cool, calm, and collected. So much so that Celine’s jaw slacked. I wasn’t sure why she was shocked. If she didn’t already know that I didn’t do well with ultimatums, then she was dumb as shit.
“Are you freakin’ serious?” she screeched.
“Yeah, I am. I’m not going to keep telling you that you can’t make me propose to you. You were pouting about that for weeks now you’re pouting about the fact that I have kids. Seems like to me you aren’t happy in this relationship, and you can be free. You don’t have to keep threatening to leave. I’m done with yo’ ass. Bye.” My tone remained calm. I wasn’t about to yell or argue. Celine was being a headache way more often than she was being my peace, and I wasn’t up for the shit. She could find a man to marry her because it would never be me.
She didn’t ask one question about the kids’ party or offer to help me. She hadn’t asked any questions about them period. While I knew it was a lot to process, I also knew Celine. She didn’t want the focus and attention off her. If she stayed around, she’d only be jealous of my sons, and I wasn’t going for it.
“Jeovanni, I need you to really think about what you’re saying to me. I’ve never had to beg a man to do right by me. Once I leave, there is no coming back. So, are you sure you want me to walk out of that door?”
Rather than responding, I gave Celine a blank look. I wasn’t a fan of repeating myself. Yet another thing that she should have known about me. We were the same as far as not begging people. I crushed on Rainah for ten years, and I didn’t beg her to stay in my life. Celine stomped towards the closet and began gathering the clothes, shoes, and purses that she had inside. Her attitude wasn’t just about getting married. It was about Jason and Jordan too. I entertained her obsession with marriage, but I’d never entertain her continuing to behave like my sons were the worst things that ever could have happened to her. She could get the fuck on, and I wouldn’t lose one wink of sleep behind it.
I waited patiently for her to gather her belongings. Before exiting my bedroom, Celine looked over her shoulder at me with her eyes cut into slits. “I guess you and your brother really do things identically. Seeing as how I was pregnant with twins by him that I aborted.”
I had no control over my actions as I jumped up off the bed and made it in front of Celine in no time. I didn’t put my hands on her, but I was so close to her my body was pressing into hers. “Fuck you just say?” I asked.
The smug look had disappeared off her face fast as hell. There were certain things that I didn’t play about. Her saying anything about my brother was enough for me to be pissed, but she was standing in my bedroom insinuating that her and my best friend had done me dirty? Oh nah.
“Nothing, Jeovanni.” Celine attempted to move around me, and I snatched the suitcase handle from her hand so hard that she stumbled. “You want to fucking play with me?” I tossed the suitcase down the stairs. “Anything that I bought you stays here. Get the fuck out my shit dumb bitch.” I had never disrespected Celine or called her out of her name, but she was no longer on thin ice. She’d fallen through that shit. I didn’t even want to hear anything else from her. I’d talk to Jovani about what she’d just said.
She better be glad it was the suitcase that got thrown down the stairs and not her. Celine got away from me faster than I’d ever seen her move before. Pissed was an understatement. I had no clue if Jovani was at home, but I didn’t even bother to call him. I threw on some sweats and a tee before jogging down the stairs and stepping over Celine’s suitcase. After shoving my feet into some Gucci slides, I grabbed the keys to my Range Rover and left the house. Racing through the streets, I drove over the speed limit the entire way to Jovani’s house. Thankfully, he didn’t live far from me. His house was just as large and lavish as mine, but it was on the beach.
The aroma of salt water filled the air as soon as I turned onto his street. My timing was perfect because I saw the brake lights of Jovani’s Charger as I pulled behind it. Him and a female companion emerged from the car. I didn’t even pay attention to who it was. My focus was on the nigga I’d shared the womb with. The moment I laid eyes on Jovani, I could tell he was fucked up. His eyes were low and red, and he was moving in slow motion.
“What up twin? What you doing here unannounced? Everything good?”
It didn’t matter what was said. I could never come at my brother on bullshit. I would ask for his side of the story every time before I took anybody’s word over his. “You fucked Celine before?” I asked in a low tone.
The nigga had the nerve to chuckle. “That bitch finally told you?”
My brows snapped together, and I drew back. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” I barked.
Jovani looked over at his companion. “Go ahead in the house.” He extended the keys toward her, and she sauntered around the car to get them. “I have cameras in my house. Touch some shit that don’t belong to you, and I’m putting foot to ass,” he warned.
Shorty didn’t give a verbal response. She simply pivoted and swayed her hips exceptionally hard as she walked toward the house. I was willing to bet money that she was a stripper. The woman was overly thick. I doubted an ass that big belonged to a doctor or a nurse. Jovani leaned against his car.
“I met Celine two months before you introduced her to me. On some real shit, I had sex with the hoe once. The condom broke, and she hollered she was pregnant. I gave her the money to get an abortion, and I didn’t talk to her again. Once you brought her around and said you’d been dealing with her for five months, I knew that she knew who I was when she was being thirsty as hell in the club. That’s why I never liked that hoe for you.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me that nigga?” my voice rose a few octaves.
“What if I had been dumb enough to marry her? You were just going to take that shit to the grave. That you fucked my wife?”
“Man hell no,” he frowned like he tasted something bitter. “I knew it wasn’t going to get that far. I didn’t have to tell you. I knew you and her wouldn’t last. I knew that bitch wasn’t the one for you. Everything about her is fake as fuck. Shit, as much as I love strippers, you think I don’t run across plenty of shallow females? The fact that I couldn’t stand to be around her spoke volumes. You wasn’t never wifing that.”
“Damn who else in my life is keeping secrets from me?” I chuckled angrily. “It’s a cold ass world. You think you know people, and you don’t know shit.”
“Aye don’t do that bruh,” Jovani pushed off the car. “It’s not even that deep. That hoe was and is irrelevant to me. I just didn’t see the need to bring it up, but that’s the only thing you don’t know about me. Don’t stand there and act like I wouldn’t take a hundred bullets for you. And don’t act like I’d ever back door you ‘bout a female. That thirsty slut came on to me knowing she was fucking with you already. I was the one that had no clue.”
“And once we started spending more time together, damn near moved in together, and she started dropping hints about marriage not even then did you think to tell me?”
“Jeo it was one drunk ass night. I can barely tell you what she looked like naked. I really only remember her gobbling my dick up. That bitch is a eater for real.”
I turned my back on him and got in my car.
“Jeo, that bitch is irrelevant!” He called out as I slammed my car door.
Was I going to fall out with my brother over pussy? Hell no. But I was going to ignore his dumb ass for a few days. Everybody around me it seemed had me fucked up, and I needed a few days to decompress before I lost my shit.
* * *
The next day, I opened the door of Jonah’s for my mother. It was an hour before opening, and we were having a meeting. Melissa Bendetti didn’t come around and introduce herself until Jovani and I were twenty-one. All we knew about our parents was that our father was dead, and his mother, the woman that raised us hated our mother. We knew her name once we were old enough to take possession of our own birth certificates. I’d be lying if I said growing up without parents didn’t affect me and my brother in some way, but I didn’t have mommy issues or some deep-rooted trauma. At least I didn’t think I did.
When our mother finally showed her face, she explained that her father, a racist Italian that was affiliated with the mob hated the fact that she walked away from her family for a black man. They killed him and dumped his body on our grandmother’s doorstep. They killed my father in front of my mother. The act left her traumatized and afraid for my brother and I, so she took us to our grandmother and hauled ass. My grandmother hated the ground my mother walked on. When she came back around Joanna Mitchell started foaming at the mouth damn near. She was pissed when Jovani and I decided to hear her out, and she was even more livid when we decided to start selling coke under her.
Melissa still had her mob tie connections, and she wanted me and Jovani to have what was rightfully ours. A privileged life. She wanted us to have the same money and respect we would have had if we’d been born full blooded Italians. I loved my grandmother with everything in me, but I would never turn down the offer that Melissa presented me with because my grandmother had a vendetta against my mother. Jovani felt the same way. We hid our dealings with her from our grandmother for as long as we could but once Joanna found out what we were up to, she didn’t speak to us for damn near three months. She cursed us out every chance she got and said we chose ‘that meatball eating bitch with the botched Botox’ over her.
Years later, it was because of Melissa Bendetti that Jovani and I were filthy fuckin’ rich. But he still didn’t fuck with her like that. It was our mother that went to Colombia to meet with our connect Augello. She took him the money, and he got the product back to us. Liquid cocaine that was much easier to transport back to the states than powder cocaine. We had a mean wrist flicker that could bring the drugs back to its’ original form without losing much product. Even after she brought it back the dope was still potent as hell, and Jovani and I made a killing off it. We even had a few customers that preferred the drug in liquid form.
Despite all of her efforts and all of the connections she’d linked us with, Jovani still didn’t care for Melissa. I didn’t blame her for giving us up. If her father was evil enough to kill her kids’ father in front of her, she wasn’t wrong to want to protect us. She could have come back around sooner, but I wasn’t going to keep dwelling on that shit. She was cool in my book. Jovani would come around when he was ready and if he never did then that’s just what it was.
Melissa’s eyes darted around the room. “Jovani isn’t here? That’s a surprise.” Her tone held a hit of sarcasm. Easing herself onto one of the stools that was placed at the bar, my mother pushed out a small sigh. “I don’t push when Jovani throws his tantrums. I fall back and let him do him. I’ve been doing it for years despite the fact that he should know how to separate business from personal. I’m the link to Augello. My men move the shipments and traffick the drugs while all he has to do is pick them up after the hard part is done and make money hand over fist. And he can’t talk to me for thirty minutes?”
I assumed Italians aged just as fast as regular white people because my mother looked every bit of forty plus despite the lip fillers and Botox. Her long black hair was slicked back into a bun, and she had a bunch of make-up caked on her face. I could tell back in her day she was bad, but she hadn’t aged too gracefully.
“I can’t speak for that man,” I told her in a flat tone. “Jovani has been Jovani since you came back around. Rather than letting shit slide or just venting to me why not say something to him?”
“You’re right. I let things go on for so long out of guilt. I kept telling myself that he would come around when he was ready. I’ve never seen a more stubborn person in my life.” She chuckled. “I get it. I wasn’t there. I dropped the ball, and I should have come around sooner.”
I didn’t respond because I didn’t have anything to say. Jovani and I were identical in a lot of ways, but we were our own men and had our own thoughts. If he wanted to hold a grudge against our mother, I wouldn’t be her advocate. Just because I accepted her didn’t mean he had to. Things had just gotten to the point of not being awkward between us. I’d never had a mother, and I’d never been close to a white person before. I was learning Melissa, and she was learning me. I respected the way she bossed up. After her father disowned her for having a black boyfriend, she walked away with her head held high. And after my father was murdered, she sat back in the cut waiting and plotting her revenge. Now the black sons that her family wanted her to feel ashamed about were bossed the fuck up and had the coke game in Ausnor Beach on lock.
“Call him and pass me the phone when he answers.”
I shook my head. “I’m not fucking with Jovani right now. Whatever it is you wanted to meet about tell me. If you want to call him from your own phone and try to get through to him, you can always do that. But I’m here now.”
My mother’s head angled to the left, and she studied me for a bit. Something told me that the next words to come out of her mouth wouldn’t be about whatever it was that she wanted to discuss as far as business. “What’s going on with you and Jovani?”
I chuckled. “Nothing some time apart can’t fix. It’s nothing really. I’m just in my feelings a lil’ bit, and I’ll get over it.” I wanted her to get down to the business at hand because I had shit to do.
“Is it over a woman?” her brow hiked causing me to recoil from her words. I wasn’t sure if I was impressed by her intuition or insulted. I wanted to believe that me and my brother would never beef over a woman. The situation was way bigger than Celine. He should have told me but other than that, I couldn’t care less about him fucking her before I let him know that I was dealing with her. Jovanni was a straight pussy hound and loved women. I never wanted to take a woman serious that he stuck dick to which was why I was heated that he never mentioned it. Especially since she’d supposedly gotten pregnant.
“Me and Jovani will never beef over a woman. It’s bigger than her. I just didn’t like the fact that he kept something from me. Seems like everyone is coming out of the woodworks with secrets, and I’m not too fond of it,” a slight scowl formed on my face.
“Like finding out that you have sons?”
My frown deepened. Jovani didn’t fuck with her and neither did my grandmother, so how did she know I had sons? Melissa could obviously see that I was stumped.
“I’ve had men tailing you and Jovani. And they’re so good neither of you noticed. They were watching when you had the birthday party for twin boys that are an exact replica of you and Jovani.”
“Men watching us for what?” I was sick of the guessing games.
“That’s why I wanted Jovani here. I got an alarming picture a few weeks back. It was sent to me via text message from a blocked number. The number is untraceable. It could have been nothing, or it could have been a warning. Either way, I’m preparing. I know you have Deuce, but a little extra protection won’t hurt.”
“Wait a minute,” I paused to process her words. “Yo,” with an angry chuckle and a shake of my head I attempted to keep my composure. “You got an alarming text a few weeks back, and you say nothing? Instead, you just put eyes on us without telling us?” My body temperature had risen a great deal, and I was trying to keep my emotions in check. My blood was starting to boil, however.
“I didn’t want to alarm you in case it was just some fluke.”
“What was the picture of?” I glared at her while grinding my molars.
“A picture of a dead monkey,” she stated in a low tone. She couldn’t even look me in the eyes when she said it.
“Yoooooo,” I drawled with another chuckle. “So your racist ass people strike again, and you didn’t think to tell me?”
“Jovani, I understand your concern, but I-“
“Nah,” I cut her off in a harsh tone. “You don’t understand shit because as you so casually stated, I just found out that I have sons. You know why I just found out? Because their mother walked away from me years ago because she doesn’t approve of my lifestyle. I threatened this woman with court. I assured her my sons would never be in danger while they were with me, and someone is sending you pictures of a dead monkey?” I fumed.
“I’m having a sit down with my father to see if he knows anything about it. I haven’t spoken to him since he killed Jonah. I’m not begging, and I’m not making peace with him. I just want to know who to kill first. I couldn’t save Jonah, but I will burn the mob to the fucking ground behind you and Jovani.”
My nostrils flared with anger. I was pissed. I wasn’t afraid of the mob. The entire time my brother and I had been in business, we didn’t have any real street beef. Things had pretty much been smooth sailing. We put a lot of people on, and the streets were eating good off the coke we flooded the city with. Now that I had someone to think about other than myself, muhfuckas wanted to slither out of the shadows and start playing games. A dead monkey? I was heated.
“You have men on me now?” I asked with furrowed brows.
Melissa nodded. “They’re the best.”
“When you came back around you claimed that me and Jovani were protected because you’re protected.”
“That’s true, but people walk away from the life and go against the grain sometimes. If they aren’t following mob rules or if they aren’t mob affiliated, they don’t care about the specifics.”
All I could do was chuckle angrily. Too smooth. Things had been running too smoothly for too long and at the worst possible time, things were getting bumpy. I had known my sons less than a month, but I loved them as if I’d been around since the day they left the womb. I didn’t want Rainah having a reason to keep them away from me, and I didn’t want to have to go on a killing spree in the event they were touched. Just the thought made my heart pound. I didn’t have to say a word. Melissa either felt the heat coming off me, or she saw the murderous glare in my eyes.
“I’m on it Jeovanni. I didn’t want to alarm you, but I wanted you to know. That’s also what I wanted to tell Jovani.”
Suddenly, the fact that Jovani withheld information from me didn’t matter. The thought of something happening to my brother infuriated me the same way it did when I thought about my sons being harmed. I was going to have to figure out a way to handle the situation, so Rainah would never be able to say she was right for keeping the twins from me.