Chapter 24 #2
Having Hell beside me every day was the reason why I woke up, so how did I move on without him? Nobody else gave me a sense of belonging like my brother did. I felt like I was thrown into an abyss, and I had no way of escaping.
“Havoc.”
I slowly turned around when I heard my father’s voice call out from behind me.
“What you doing here?” I asked.
Just like my mama, Orlando had been calling me nonstop, but I didn’t have shit to say to him.
He looked disheveled as he approached me. This was the first time I ever saw him looking like that.
“I’ve been looking for you for days,” he said.
“I’ve been busy, but you’ve seen me now, so you can leave,” I let him know. For whatever reason, he was looking for me, and now he’d seen me. End of story.
I turned to walk to the elevator, and he stopped me by pulling on my arm.
“I just want to talk to you,” he said, and I snatched away from him.
“When do we ever talk, Orlando?! We ain’t got shit to say to each other! You left me alone to deal with everything!”
When I say that Orlando completely shut down, it wasn’t an exaggeration.
My whole brother’s funeral was planned by me alone, right down to picking out his casket.
Orlando didn’t do shit, neither did he even try to find the nigga who did it, but now he wanted to talk.
The nigga didn’t do shit but order a fucking autopsy as if that was going to motherfucking help!
“I’m hurting without my son!” Orlando yelled at me. I rushed in his face and pulled him toward me.
“What about me?! I’m nothing without my brother beside me! I told you not to bring attention to him, but you wouldn’t fucking listen to me!!”
“I know, and I’m sorry!” he wailed. I shoved him away from me.
“I don’t wanna hear that shit. Leave me the fuck alone.”
I left him standing there and went up to my condo.
THE NEXT NIGHT
The hours were starting to feel like a lifetime.
Twenty-four hours felt like a year had gone by.
I was still waiting for some sort of relief to come, but it hadn’t, and I knew that it never would.
Although the person who killed my brother was gone, what he did left a lasting impression on me, and I didn’t know if I would ever be the same again.
“What am I going to do without you, Kelechi?” I asked, wishing my brother could hear me and answer me, because I just didn’t know what to do. Orlando was still calling me, telling me that we needed to stick together now because Hell was gone, but I didn’t want that.
I didn’t want to be alone either. I wanted the only person in the world who truly loved me.
I knew my mama loved me, but I knew she loved me because of Orlando.
Her mind and heart were on him and only him, so she loved me because I came from him.
It wasn’t the type of love Kelechi showed and had for me.
He fucked with me because I was me. He saw me, really saw me.
Like Kairi.
I felt my heart beat funny when I thought about her. She was the only other person, outside of my brother, that fucked with me because I was me. Not because of whose son I was or because I was mixed up in The Society. Neither of them could give a fuck about those things. They just saw Makari.
I looked over at the clock on my wall. It was almost midnight, and I knew that she’d be at work now.
I hadn’t seen her since the night Kelechi died.
I had walked away and left her that night, and we hadn’t spoken to each other since.
I knew that it was selfish of me to go to her now, but I just needed to see her.
I needed to feel something other than lost, confused, and in pain.
Feel something that only she could give me.
I knew it the night at the club when I saw her again after a month.
The way my body reacted to her. I needed that feeling, if only for a moment.
Before I could stop myself, I was in my car heading to The Cove. All I needed to do was look at her from a distance. I needed her to calm the storm I felt inside of me. Like always, the club was packed.
The security took one look at me and allowed me inside without asking any questions. I put my hood over my head and kept it down hoping nobody would notice or approach me. I was there for one person only.
I finally found her working at the bar. I stood back and just watched her. That feeling of calm instantly rushed through my body.
I made a step forward, already breaking my promise to keep away, but stopped when I saw Sony approach with his crew.
From the night of Kelechi’s party, I noticed that nigga went out of his way to fuck with her, and here he was doing it again tonight.
My phone rang, and I pulled it out of my pocket expecting it to be Orlando again, but it wasn’t. It was Sincere.
I pushed my phone back in my pocket because I had something more important to deal with.
Sony ordered a drink. Kairi tried to get the other girl to do it, but I watched as Sony declined, forcing her to do it.
What the fuck is that about?
Instantly, I wondered if Kairi lied to me and had something going on with this nigga. I asked if she’d ever fucked with another nigga in The Society, and she told me no. But clearly that was a fucking lie. The way Sony was behaving, I knew there was something going on between them.
Kairi quickly made up his drink and handed it over.
I watched as Sony stood there just looking at her for a few seconds before he finally reached out to take the drink. Instead of him doing that, he grabbed Kairi by the wrist, making her drop the drink all over the bar. Then he laughed with his friends.
Kairi backed up and just stood there staring at him. The look of fear on her face started to fuck with me. The other bartender came over to clean up the mess while Kairi ran into the back.
Sony and his crew laughed again before they walked away.
After watching him go back up to the VIP section, I went in search of Kairi.
I noticed the storage door was open and knew that was where she had gone.
“Argh!” she suddenly screamed when I approached.
“Hey, it’s me,” I said, and she calmed down. Her big eyes were wide and bouncing around us before she looked at me again.
“My bad, I didn’t mean to scare you,” I said.
“Uh, that’s fine. I just didn’t hear you,” she said. Something about her tone and behavior told me that I’d really scared her.
“You good?” I asked. She looked at me, sighed, and then smiled.
“I’m fine,” she answered. “Let me get back to work.”
She walked around me, and I turned to watch her leave. She might have said she was fine, but I could feel that she wasn’t and just didn’t want to tell me, and whatever it was, had something to do with that nigga Sony. But I had something for that nigga!
I walked back over to the bar, where Kairi was, and sat my ass right in front. I slowly turned around and looked up at Sony. I made sure I was sitting right where that mothafucker could see me. Since he liked to stare at people, he could stare at my black ass.
He frowned at me, but I kept my fucking face still and eyes locked on him. From how I was positioned, I could see him clearly on the second floor. I leaned my ass against the bar, folded my arms across my chest, and watched that nigga.
Fuck him!
He wanted something to look at, then he could look at me. I could feel Kairi behind me, but she didn’t say anything. Not that it would stop me.
Sony clearly didn’t like what I was doing because he suddenly seemed to be in a rush to leave all of a sudden.
When I saw him come down the stairs, I stood to my feet.
“I’ll be back,” I said to Kairi and hurried out the door when he suddenly left.
I hung back a little, watching as he made his way to his car.
From the way he was stomping his feet, I knew the nigga was mad, and that only made me want to know why.
I noticed one of his pussy ass friends came out of the club.
He must have gone to the restroom and got left behind.
I turned on my feet and acted like I was going back in the club. Just as the nigga went to walk past me, I grabbed him and pushed him up against the side of the club. He opened his mouth to probably yell but fell silent when I put my gun up against his head.
“What you doing, Havoc?” He panicked. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Sony or his bitch ass friends, but I usually left them alone, so I knew he wasn’t expecting to see my gun.
“You know who I am and how I’m coming, Tyson. If you don’t want your shit splattered against this club, you better tell me what the fuck is going on between Sony and Kairi.”
When his eyes widened, I knew that my assumption was right. Something had happened.
I gritted my back teeth and spat, “And you better not lie to me.”
“I don’t know anything. I don’t know!”
Tyson stuttered his lies until I pressed the gun into his temple, showing him that I wasn’t fucking playing.
“Speak!” I demanded.
“Okay, okay!” he cried and sighed. “The nigga is fucking crazy over her ass and just won’t leave her alone, no matter what she says. He’s been trying to fuck her for the longest, but she won’t let him, so he’s been trying to take it,” Tyson said.
I stood still for a moment, wondering if I just heard him right or if I was just hearing shit. But judging from the look in his eyes, I knew that he was telling me the truth.
Wait.
“Are you trying to tell me that nigga wanna rape her or something?”
Tyson froze. His mouth pressed into a straight line as if he didn’t want to answer me.
“Huh?” I shouted, pressing the gun further.
“Yes, yeah! He’s already tried twice, blacked her eye and everything. He said he won’t stop until he gets it, but even more now that he knows you’ve touched her.”