18. Priest
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON
“He’s got everything that you asked for.”
“Cool. Set that shit up, and we can roll.”
“You trust meeting him on a dime like that?”
“I don’t trust shit. Give him three options where we can meet and have men on them before he approves the location.”
“What if he won’t agree?”
“He ain’t got no muthafuckin options. If he wants his daughter, he’ll do what the fuck we want. We call the shots in this bitch, not Morgan.”
“A’ight,” Sunny replied.
He pushed off my desk and headed out of my office. I sat back and contemplated the last few days. September had been quiet since Saturday evening, but so had I. She had hopped up after a while and went to shower in her room, and I remained in mine and did the same.
When I went back to check on her later, she was already asleep in her bed. Yesterday, she was reading most of the day, and I had been on calls and had held a meeting with the council at my cabin yesterday.
I had ordered takeout, and she had eaten, but I had been caught up with my men. Our attention was consumed with our plan to take Morgan out. He hadn’t begun to suffer yet. When I took September, I thought that would be the beginning of his suffering, but based on the reports of my men who had followed him, he didn’t appear to feel the pain of September’s absence. I didn’t think he honestly gave a fuck about her. He had offered her up to me too easily.
The last few days, she and I had moved around one another in silence. She had even cooked our last few meals. I was hesitant about the food at first because I worried that she had poisoned it, but she assured me she had done no such thing. She told me that she didn’t blame me for taking her. After all, her father had encouraged it. She shared that he was the one to blame for everything. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I was so deep in my head about my shit that I didn’t bother to dig further.
All the shit that I shared with September, I now regretted. I had never opened up and shared my life with a soul other than Sunny. But I had shared things with her that he didn’t even know. He didn’t know that I was chained to the heating register or that my mama had run up on that man’s job and begged for money.
The pain of reliving my sister’s death was more than I could handle, and the only thing I could think of was finding an escape. I wanted to find it between September’s thighs, but I knew that she couldn’t always be my escape. Besides, she had her own shit to deal with. Seeing her mother killed in front of her had to fuck with her head, the same way seeing Katrina killed fucked with mine. The difference was that she suspected her father called for a hit on her mother. I had no idea who my father was.
I didn’t bring her with me to the club today, but I did offer. She said she’d rather stay at the cabin. I knew that she didn’t want to be here after what happened Friday night when she’d relived her past, not to mention after she told me the story about what happened six years ago.
A knock sounded at my door.
“Come in,” I called.
The door swung open, and Cheekz stepped inside.
“Hey,” she greeted with a false smile.
“Hey, girl. Wassup?”
She sat down on a chair opposite me. “I’ve done some research, Priest.”
“About?”
“School.”
I nodded. “And what did you decide?”
“I want to return.”
“Doing what?”
“Social work. I want to help young girls who have options but don’t believe they do. I don’t know what led me down the road that I took. Some people have the excuse of being abused, but that ain’t my story, Priest.”
“I know.”
“I came from a good home and a good family, but I was always attracted to sexual things. I became addicted to using my body to earn money and to control men. Manipulating people doesn’t feel good, and I want to disassociate myself from all this and turn over a new leaf.”
I leaned forward with my hands clasped on my desk. “You know we got you covered with school. Tell me what else I can do to help.”
“That’s all I need, Priest. Everything else, I can work out on my own.”
“All right. Download the paperwork from the website, fill it out, and get it to Double R,” I replied, referencing my treasurer, Road Rage, by his other nickname.
“Okay, thanks.”
She hesitated and stared at me for several seconds.
“You got something you wanna say? Spit it out.”
She smirked and replied, “I’ll miss that about you. Your bluntness. I just wanted to say that you’ve never really let anyone in. You keep everyone at a distance with that wall you built. It’s time to start taking it down, Priest. Let someone in and let them love you. If it’s her, then I hope she makes you happy because you deserve that. Let go of your past and let someone in.”
She shrugged. And when I didn’t say anything, she stood and walked to the door.
“Cheekz.”
She stopped and turned to look at me over her shoulder. For the first time, I noticed something about her. The look in her eyes whenever she looked at me was different than how she looked at everyone else. It was the same look that September now carried whenever she looked at me.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry ’bout how everything shook out.”
She waved a hand. “It’s okay. It was meant to be. If you hadn’t forced my hand, then I wouldn’t know what I was capable of. I’d have settled for this life. I hope she makes you happy.”
I watched as she walked out of the door. I pulled my computer screen up and tapped a couple of keys. The living room and kitchen were both empty. I expected her to be in either of those enjoying her freedom while I was away. I panned to my bedroom, and it was empty. Then I panned to her bedroom, and it was empty.
I frowned and scrolled to the other bedrooms in the house and saw they were empty, also. I went back to her bedroom to see if she would come out of the bathroom, but then I noticed that the bathroom door was open, and it was dark inside.
Although I had cameras in all the rooms, I never used them. There wasn’t a need to until now because I was worried about her. I quickly scanned the other rooms in the house to check out their bathrooms and noticed all the doors were open, and they were empty because it was dark.
I sat up in my chair, and then I switched camera settings and went to the outdoor cameras. After I panned the area for three minutes and saw nothing, my stomach dropped. I tapped into my notifications and realized that I had missed several of them. One alert showed that someone left the house, another alert showed that my gate had opened and closed, and the final alert showed that someone passed a certain point on my private road between the woods and my land. I had missed them all, and that had been over an hour ago during a meeting with Sunny, Jagged, and Road Rage.
Pissed the fuck off because I couldn’t believe her little ass had pulled this shit, I jumped up, grabbed my keys and phone, and headed out of my office.
“Yo, Priest,” Sunny called as I jogged by his office.
“Hit me up on the phone. I got somewhere I need to be,” I shouted back.
“Yeah, like Morgan’s house in one hour.”
“I can’t. Get your ass over there and rep for me, nigga,” I yelled.
“He was very specific about it being you, Priest,” Sunny shouted.
I hopped on my bike and looked Sunny in his eyes. “I can’t. I gotta find the princess. If I don’t, ain’t gon’ be no muthafuckin exchange,” I snarled.
“Fuck!” Sunny shouted as he punched the air. “What about his guards? We can’t go in the front the way we did before.”
“He’s expecting you. You alone can roll up in there in my place. Have the rest of the men stand down so he doesn’t suspect shit.”
“Ain’t no way we gonna hide fifteen bikes, nigga.”
“You ain’t gotta hide ’em.”
“Security will alert them that we coming.”
“Nah, tell them niggas you there for me. Tell the rest of the crew to stand the fuck down.”
He looked like he wasn’t certain I knew what I was talking about, but he also knew better than to disobey a direct order. I had never led my crew astray, and I always had their backs.
I started my bike and pulled out of the lot. I pushed that bitch to one-hundred-twenty-five. My straight pipes ripped through the atmosphere, and the fury that I felt burned a hole in my chest. September had proved exactly why bitches couldn’t be trusted. Just when I let my muthafuckin guard down, she went and pulled some shit like this.
My jaw clenched, and every muscle in my body tightened. I hated the way this shit made me feel. I’d never trusted a bitch in my life, and the first time that I did, she betrayed me the minute I turned my back. I pushed my bike to the max as I zipped through intersections and traffic lights. I weaved in and out of traffic, but it still seemed that I couldn’t make it to the cabin fast enough.
How far could she have gone in an hour? She was on foot, and she had no other means of transportation, nor did she have a phone to call anyone. I knew she would have to be in the vicinity of my property. She couldn’t have made it too far on foot within an hour.
I was three-quarters of the way to my cabin when I felt my phone buzz on my hip and heard it ring in my ear.
Siri: Call from Sunny. Answer it?
“Answer.” I waited for the call to connect before I commented, “Yo, boy. Wassup?”
“Aye, you need to get over here to Morgan’s now.”
“I told you to handle that shit, nigga.”
“Your girl ain’t at the cabin. She over here, Priest,” Sunny replied.
I damn near spun out when I spun around to head in the opposite direction.
“Aye, she good?”
“I don’t think so. There’s shouting going on between her and her daddy. I told the team to stand down. The guards looked like they expected my ass. But when I got up here to the house and walked up to the front door, that’s when I heard the arguing. I can’t hear what’s being said, but that shit is loud from where I’m standing.”
“Don’t go rushing in. That shit might make everything go sideways. Hold your position until I get there unless you have to make sure she’s good, then tell Jagged, Knuckles, and Lyon to come through. Have everyone else go around the back. But only if needed. I’m less than ten minutes out.”
“A’ight. Be safe, nigga.”
I didn’t bother to respond; I just ended the call. I couldn’t figure out what the fuck she went to her father’s house for. And what the hell were they arguing about?