Chapter 11 #4
Before the car even came to a complete halt, my hands were already moving. I held the gun up in the light for a second, reacquainting myself with an old friend. I turned it over in my hand, kissed the barrel, and brought it up to my nose and took a slow pull, smelling the stainless steel
Lauren glanced over and immediately looked back at the road. "Why are you like this?!"
I smiled to myself and clicked the safety off with my thumb.
Whoever this woman was behind us had clearly never dealt with Big Bane before, and tonight was going to be a real educational experience for her.
"Pull over and let me out," I said, already reaching for the door handle. "You get to that airport, get on your flight, and don't look back at nothing."
"Big Bane, no —" She looked at me with that face, the one that meant she was already feeling too much and trying to hold all of it in at once. "What are you going to do, you can't just —"
"I'll find my way back. Go to your sister’s house."
"No—" She grabbed a fistful of my shirt and held on. My smirk dropped when her eyes went glassy. "No. You are not getting out of this car."
I reached over and took her face in my free hand.
"Mrs. Bankole." My voice came all the way down. "I won't be too far. I promise you I will see you soon."
She shook her head with wet eyes as she pressed her lips together.
"It's an order, Doc." I kissed her lips quickly, before pulling away. "Slow down and let me out right now."
She made a sound in the back of her throat, but the Benz already slowed down. Her whole body fought the decision as her hands shook.
I grabbed the door handle the second the car slowed enough and looked back at her one last time.
"Go!"
She was still shaking her head as she kept going.
I turned around in the middle of the street, and faced the beat up sedan that had been on our bumper for the last six blocks.
I put the biggest smile on my face as I raised the gun and stood there in the middle of the road.
The sedan screeched.
Their brakes locked up before the whole car fishtailed sideways. It jerked to a stop maybe thirty feet from where I was standing.
I just stood there completely still, letting whoever was behind that windshield get a real good look at what they had followed.
I walked to the driver's side door and yanked it open.
She was exactly what I expected. Her hair was wild, and the makeup was streaked all down her face from crying so hard. She was running on nothing but rage, heartbreak, bad information. I knew his ass lied on Lauren to save his own ass.
His fiancée was just hurt. She had followed the wrong woman across the wrong city and ended up here, staring up at me from the driver's seat like she was only now understanding the full weight of the decision she had made.
I shot at both of her driver side tires.
POP!
POP!
"Get out," I said.
She scrambled out of the car still holding the gun.
"DROP IT." I aimed straight at her face before she could process what was happening. "Right now. On the ground. DO IT."
The gun hit the pavement so fast she almost dropped herself with it.
I kicked it behind me without taking my eyes off her and stepped into her space, close enough that she had to crane her neck back to look at me.
I aimed the barrel directly between her temple and held it there.
She started crying again.
"My wife," I said, "ain't got shit to do with what that man did to you. Not one motherfucking thing. You going after her when she don’t owe you shit. You need to go run after than man, not her. She didn’t even know about your looney toon ass. The only reason you ain’t dead is because of her."
I let that sit on her for a second.
"You go near her again and Big Bane gone kill you and everybody you love. And trust, Big Bane don't say things he don't mean."
She was hyperventilating so hard she couldn't form a word.
I held the gun on her for one more moment before I tucked it back in my waist. Then I turned around and walked away from her.
Left her standing next to her car on the street with a flat tire, and a real clear understanding of who Lauren had behind her.
After minutes passed, I called her so she wouldn’t lose her shit.
She picked up on the first ring and I could hear her crying so hard, I just knew she was finna go straight to sleep on that flight.
"Hey."
She said my name back and it came out broken in three places.
"Shhh." I waved my hand in the air even though she couldn't see me. "Stop all that. I'm good, you good, everybody breathing. Calm down, it’s not good for your heart."
“The woman?”
“I let her live.”
She tried to calm down, but it took a minute.
"I need you to check your phone," I said, already sending it while I was talking.
"What —"
"Just check it."
A few seconds of sniffling and then silence while she looked. It was a cashapp for two stacks.
"Bane —"
"Is you gone listen to Big Bane or not?”
She sighed.
“Use some of that to park your car at the airport. I’ma come get it so don't worry about that.
The rest is to ease your nerves and get yourself some dinner.
" I started walking, scanning the block for a cross street.
"I gotta handle something first. Go find somewhere nice to eat, on me. Big Bane finna wrap this shit up."
She had stopped crying, but then she got quiet.
"Bane." Her voice dropped. "Don't you dare kill him."
I stopped walking.
I looked up at the sky for a moment and exhaled through my nose.
"Babygirl." I kept my voice calm. "I'm not killing nobody. Go spend the day with your sister, enjoy your hometown, and I'll find you soon."
She didn't say anything right away.
"When am I going to see you?"
I smiled to myself and started walking again.
"Should be a day or two. I'll call you." I paused. "I love you."
I heard her exhale, like she was finally letting something down she had been holding up all night.
"I love you too," she said quiet.
I hung up the phone and before I could stop myself I was skipping.
Three, maybe four skips before something in my peripheral vision reminded me where I was and what I looked like.
I stopped.
Two dudes on the corner were staring at me, trying to decide if what they had just witnessed was real.
I looked at them.
They looked at me.
I bucked at them.
They both stepped back so fast one of them nearly came out of his shoes.
"What?" I spread my hands out. "A man can't be happy he got his wife back?"
They mean mugged me before they walked past me. I smiled to myself and turned back around and kept walking.
I pulled out my phone, opened the messages, and pulled up everything I had on Malcolm.
I cracked my knuckles and kept walking.
Lauren
I had been practicing what to say the entire ride over.
Something that didn't immediately give away the fact that I had just been in a high-speed chase through Baltimore with my estranged husband they knew nothing about, and was currently somewhere in the city looking for my ex boyfriend.
Something that sounded like a normal sister visit and not like my entire life had come apart and rearranged itself in the span of forty-eight hours.
I had nothing by the time I pulled up.
The house was exactly what Layla had always wanted and exactly what I expected her to have; a two-story colonial house with a wide front porch, window boxes with actual flowers in them that were actually alive, and shutters painted a deep navy that somebody had clearly touched up recently.
Kylo kept this place up and it showed in every detail.
I walked up the stone walkway to the porch light and rang the doorbell.
I heard her before I saw her.
“AHH!”
The door swung open so fast it was like she had been standing on the other side of it waiting. She screamed and launched herself at me.
“Hi Lay.”
She locked around my neck, rocking us both side to side on the porch while I grabbed onto her just to keep us from going over the railing together.
"Layla —"
"Don't say anything, don't say a damn word, just let me have this," she said into my shoulder.
I laughed and held her tighter, letting her get her feelings out.
Her shoulders shook, but it had nothing to do with excitement. I pulled back and this girl had actual tears running down her cheeks. Her bottom lip did that thing it had done since she was five years old when something hit her somewhere deep.
"Girl, what are you crying for?"
She wiped her face with the back of her hand and looked at me in disbelief. "Because you love me so much you wanted to surprise me, knowing how much I missed you." She sniffled. "That's why."
I wasn’t going to burst her bubble. I pulled her back in and hugged her again and let her have every bit of it.
Kylo appeared in the doorway behind her with the calm energy of a man who had been living with Layla long enough that none of this registered as unusual to him anymore. He looked at the two of us on his porch and just smiled.
"Hey, big sis. I see somebody missed you."
Layla was still not letting go, which meant she didn't see the face I made at her husband when he said that.
"Hey bro." I patted Layla's back and looked at him over her shoulder. "My sister treating you right?"
Layla released me then, stepping back and rolling her eyes so hard I was surprised she didn't strain something. "Don't come in here on no bullshit."
"I'm just asking a question —"
"In my house —"
"Our house," Kylo said, already moving toward me with his arms open. He hugged me tightly, genuinely glad I was there.
I hugged him back because I knew my sister was putting him through it. She was always a lot, but he made it clear it was never too much for him.
"Happy you're here to deal with your crazy ass sister," he said low enough that only I could hear it.
“Not too much on her… but I get it.”
I laughed under my breath. He grinned and pulled back.
"We gotta catch up," I told him, and he nodded.
Then the stampede started.