6. Scotty #2
“Yes, ma’am. How are you?” My attention turned to her husband. “Mr. Collins, sir. It’s nice to meet you two, and I would love to extend this conversation, but I need to see what’s going on with my woman.”
Mr. Collins quickly bowed his head in understanding. We all moved to the front door of the building. Blakeney owned the entire two-story building. Her business occupied the entire bottom floor while she leased offices on the top floor.
The second we got into the suite, we heard loud voices. What the fuck? Urgency led the way as her parents and I moved toward the voices.
Nadia came out of Blakeney’s office. “Oh, thank God. She won’t listen. I think she’s really going to kill her.” The fear in her voice was real.
I walked past her to enter the office. What I saw was crazy as fuck. Blake sat in the armchair that was across from her couch with her gun comfortably resting on her lap. My eyes blinked a few times to kick my thought out of how sexy she looked in the moment. I love that gangsta shit in her.
Across from her were these two white people, a man and woman, whom I’d never seen before.
What threw me off was the fact that both were crying and hugging each other.
My head tilted to look at the dude sideways.
If that was his wife, baby mama, or whoever she was, she should be ashamed to be in the presence of a man that cried harder than her in the face of danger.
The white lady looked toward me. “Please help us. She’s crazy.”
Blake finally realized other people were in the office.
When she gazed at me, her expression softened.
“Hey, baby. What are you doing here?” Her body leaned a little as she looked around me.
“Mama, Daddy, what are y’all doing here?
Dang, Mrs. Joanne, you called everybody,” she said with a titter like the shit she had going on was cool.
“You damn right I called everybody. Girl, we just got these white carpets cleaned. You know how hard it is to keep them clean. If you get blood in them, we might as well rip ’em up.” The conviction in Mrs. Joanne’s voice was strong.
“Joanne, girl, what?” Mrs. Collins asked with a chuckle. “What is going on in here?”
I was still stuck that this lady cared more about the cleanliness of the carpet than the folks on the couch in fear. I was in a room of crazy fuckas. The sad part was that I felt unusually comfortable in it. My nose turned up. “Who the hell pissed?”
Blake cut her eyes over to me. “Baby, this bitch over here.” She picked her gun up and waved it at the man on the couch.
He scrunched his body like he wanted to climb behind the woman.
“He is such a bitch. Sophia, while you were over there talking shit, you should have made sure you had a man about shit first. Now look at y’all asses. ”
“Blake, baby girl, what happened? Why the hell you got these people held up in here like this?” her father asked. “Baby girl, this is your business.”
Her head snapped in her father’s direction.
While her attention was on him, I slowly moved closer to her.
“Daddy, fuck this business. That bitch said that I would be a terrible mother. Today! Of all days, she said that to me to-fucking-day!” The pitch of her voice reverberated off the walls.
I wasn’t sure what today was, but it clearly affected her in a way that triggered her. What the fuck is today!
Shit! I must have blinked longer than normal because I didn’t see Mrs. Collins walk over to the woman on the couch. She slapped the hell out of her. “Bitch, what the hell did you say to my daughter? Don’t hold your face, bitch, talk.”
“Exactly, Mama. She was bold earlier, but now she doesn’t have anything to say. I told her ass when she repeated herself, then she could leave. I mean, it would be in a body bag, but that was still leaving.”
This shit needed to be deescalated. I guessed I could be the sensible person in the room amidst all these crazy fuckas. First, I needed to know what I was deescalating.
“Baby.” I waited until her attention came to me. “Can you tell me what today is?”
Mrs. Collins’s head snapped in my direction. “She hasn’t told you?” After she realized that I didn’t plan to answer her, she glanced at Blake. Her eyes stayed on her while she spoke to me. “Today is the day that her son Travis Marlin Collins died. His father attacked my baby and killed their son.”
My chest rose and fell slowly. My eyes closed as the words replayed in my head. “And where is that nigga now?”
“It was handled, son,” Mr. Collins confirmed.
Although this was our first time officially meeting, I’d heard the tales of Blake Travis Collins. Wait, Travis. Some things clicked into place when it came to her care and affinity for that little boy Travis. Damn.
From what I heard, Mr. Collins was no one to play with. When they called a nigga Grimm, then you knew what was up. That wasn’t a man that you tested if you didn’t have the answer key.
I walked over to my baby, then kneeled next to her chair. It took her a moment, but she turned her head in my direction. The tear fell. “Blakeney, how about we go home? I’ll run you a bath, and we can eat some of your strawberry crunch ice cream.”
She leaned toward me. In a whisper, she spoke.
“She said I would be a terrible mother. She called me a childless bitch.” She glared over at the woman on the couch.
“Just because my baby boy is dead doesn’t mean I’m childless.
I would have been a great fucking mother.
You probably would have been too. Unfortunately, dead bitches can’t have babies. ”
My baby is tripping. “Yeah, she’s dead wrong for that shit. Baby, let’s think about the smoke this is going to cause. Do you really want our baby boy’s day to be linked to smoke, love? Is that really what you want to do? Let’s find another way to honor our baby boy.”
She stared at me for a beat before tears finally fell. Her eyes closed for a second before they focused back on me. “Ours?”
With a softened smile, I replied. “Anything or anyone that is a part of you is a part of me. Yes, let’s find another way to honor our son.”
She allowed me to take the gun from her.
I reached it out behind me. Mr. Collins took it from me.
After I stood, I pulled her up from her seat and wrapped my arms tightly around her.
Like a dam broke, she cried into my chest. She continuously mumbled about the bitch on the couch calling her a terrible mother.
I caught Mrs. Collins and Mrs. Joanne’s attention. They came over and took her from my arms. “Come on, baby. Let’s go. Fuck them folks,” her mother said.
They escorted her out of the office with Nadia on her heels.
Once the women were gone, the softness that I had a few seconds ago left with them.
I rarely addressed women about their behavior, but when it affected my woman, it had to be addressed.
“So you’re the determining factor as to who is or isn’t a good mother, bitch? ”
The woman looked at me. Her tears still streamed down her face the same as her dude. Her head shook. “No, I’m sorry. I was just mad. Um, my husband, Lucas, said that I can be a spoiled brat sometimes. I’m so sorry.”
Lucas piped up just a little. “Please let us go. We won’t tell anyone.”
Mr. Collins chuckled. “Oh, trust us, that’s the last thing that we are concerned with.
See, your wife did an intake form, so we have all your information.
Within the next hour, I will have all the information for your entire lineage.
If I even think you or your bitch said anything about this sad set of circumstances that you caused, I will start with the oldest muthafucka on the family tree and lay them out while my son-in-law starts with the youngest. Don’t sentence your whole lineage to death because you can’t go on about your day and enjoy it. ”
Well, fuck! I felt like I needed to remember that shit and put it in my script book for how to scare a nigga.
“Damn, it sounds like it would be the best thing for you guys to leave, go home, shower, and think about how this could have been avoided. You may want to also think about how to watch your fuckin’ mouth, miss lady,” I suggested.
“We won’t say anything. We promise,” Lucas said.
I wondered if their relationship would survive this. This was the wrong kind of situation to find out that your man was half a pussy and a whole bitch. I stepped back before I told them to calmly get the fuck out. “Don’t run out of here and bring attention to our shit either.”
They followed instructions. Now it was just the two of us. “Well, son, it’s nice to officially meet you. We need to get drinks one day so I can get to know the man that has my daughter’s heart.”
Yep, these fuckas were crazy. There was literally just a hostage situation, and he wanted to have drinks. Welp, it was what it was. “Yeah, we can do that.”