Chapter 12
Big Bane
I couldn't sleep.
I had been up since three, lying in the dark of Lauren's living room with the TV on low, her iPad on my chest, watching the call log go quiet sometime around two in the morning. That was when he stopped.
I set the iPad on the coffee table and just laid there listening to the apartment.
I could hear Lauren through the phone. She was sleeping hard. I had heard her breathe like that before, years ago, a few nights before we had that big fight and paused our relationship.
She snored when she was stressed. She would never admit that in a court of law but it was the truth, and I knew it. I laid there on her couch at three in the morning listening to her.
This wasn't some light shit I could just pull up and handle for her overnight. That’s the raw truth nobody ever wants to admit out loud.
When you love a woman who gave her whole heart to someone else, you aren't just dealing with a regular-ass breakup.
You had to deal with the mess of everything she gave him.
You were dealing with the feeling that somebody else had built inside her and left her in pain. I couldn't erase what she had felt or pretend it hadn't been real just because the man who inspired it had turned out to be a fraud.
She loved him. In her own way, whatever that looked like, she had let him in. And watching her try to hide how much that hurt was the thing that had me up at three in the morning.
I scrolled through the call log one more time and put the iPad down.
I got a fresh fit from the shopping center two blocks from her building before the sun was fully up.
It was clean, simple, nothing I would be upset about later.
I picked up a pair of slides while I was at it because comfort was important when you had needed to move easily.
I smoked half a blunt in the parking deck, finished my coffee, and made sure I was right before I pulled up the address I had saved from her phone.
The shop was small as hell. It probably survived on regulars and word of mouth, and a little sign in the window. Malcolm's name was on the door in clean vinyl lettering.
I pushed the door open and walked in for my appointment.
He already had a client in the chair, knocking out a lineup with that easy, autopilot chatter good barbers have down to a science.
Keeping the man laughing, keeping the energy up, moving around with ease.
I had to give him that much, the nigga was charming.
Any other day, I probably would've respected the hustle.
I took a seat along the wall, crossed one leg over the other, and watched him work with a polite smile on my face.
He was off.
I could peep the tells immediately. The way he kept locking and resetting his jaw, his eyes zoning completely out mid-sentence before he’d snap himself back, laughing a beat too late at his own jokes. His body was standing right there by the chair, but his mind was stuck on a loop.
Nigga looked exactly like he’d just sent a crying apology video under a ring light, drowning in the consequences of his own choices.
I noticed the broomstick in the corner and nodded to myself slowly.
I hadn't brought the gun, which meant I was going to have to be creative and that was fine with me. I had handled situations with less.
His customer paid, dapped him up, and walked out into the morning.
Malcolm swept around the chair, reset his station, and finally looked over at me.
"You next, big homie?"
I stood up, shook his hand, and settled into the chair.
He snapped the black cape open and swung it around my shoulders, fastening it at the back. I watched him in the mirror as he picked up his comb and started assessing my hairline.
"What we working with today?" he asked, making eye contact with me through the glass. "Taper? Hard part? What you need?"
"Just clean me up," I said. "Edge me out. I got somewhere to be."
"Say less." He flipped the clippers back on and got to work. For a minute, the only thing filling the room was the low hum of the blades. I just sat back, completely relaxed with my hands folded right under the cape.
Then I said, "Aye, when I booked my session, it said your last name was Shitters?"
He frowned at the mirror. "Nah — it's Shutters, man."
I started grinning slow. "Nah. I said it right."
He looked down at me, and I peeped the first real flash of hesitation behind his eyes. The clippers were still buzzing in his hand, but he tried to fake a chuckle to mask the tension.
"You can just call me Mal, bro," he said, trying to play it cool. "We straight."
"My bad," I said. "I ain't gone do you no disrespect like that."
He lowered the clippers. "Appreciate that."
"Wasn't okay for you to disrespect Lauren though."
The clippers stopped.
The shop went completely quiet.
He stood behind the chair, hand frozen mid-air, his eyes tracking me in the mirror. I watched the exact moment his brain started scrambling, trying to recalculate a situation he thought he had on lock. I just sat there, completely still, watching the panic drop into his eyes in real time.
"Run that by me again, bro?" he asked, his tone getting real cautious now.
"Lauren." I held his gaze through the glass.
"The woman you had layout in your spot while your fiancée was out here thinking she had a whole man.
The one who had to speed away because of the triflin' choices you made and left her to clean up.
" I tilted my head just a fraction, keeping my voice dead-level. "That Lauren."
His jaw tightened. "I don't know what you think you know, but —"
"I know everything," I said simply. "I saw your sorry ass message."
"You saw my message—" He stepped back, the charm dropping away one layer at a time.
“Who the fuck are you, coming up in here checking me about one of my—”
I rose out of that chair so fast , his instincts kicked in as he took a step back. Before the last word could even clear his lips, I brought the glass barbicide across the side of his skull. I smashed it across the side of his head before the last word could even leave his mouth.
He dropped like a sack of bricks, catching the metal footrest of the chair on his way down. Glass shattered everywhere.
I didn’t even give the nigga a second to lie out on the floor.
I dropped down, snatched the black nylon cape straight off the chair, and whipped it around his throat like a tourniquet.
I twisted the fabric with everything I had, cutting his windpipe completely off until his eyes started rolling into the back of his head.
A suffocating rattle caught in his chest.
I yanked his gasping, bloody face up by the cloth until our noses were practically touching, forcing him to look at the demon staring back at him. I wanted him to feel the exact moment his life shifted out of his own hands.
"I’m her husband," I murmured. "You played in my wife's face, you bitch-ass nigga. Now I'm about to fuck you up."
I kept twisting the nylon cape, burying my full weight into his throat. The nigga frantically gripped the collar of my navy shirt. His fingers clawed at the fabric as he fought for a molecule of oxygen, but I didn't ease up for a single second. I wanted to watch the light leave his damn eyes.
But then her face flashed in my mind.
Lauren.
I thought about having to look into my wife's eyes and explain why I was facing a first-degree murder charge instead of coming home.
I let out a frustrated groan, pissed off that I couldn't just finish the job right here. I let go of the fabric and threw him off me, letting his bloody face slam back into the floorboards.
I wiped a stray drop of fluid off my wrist and spat on the floor next to his head. "You lucky my baby got a good heart," I mumbled. "Or else you would be a dead man right now. You and your little fiancée are so fucking lucky."
Malcolm wheezed, clutching his throat as he frantically scrambled backward against the base of his styling chair. "I ain't mean to!" he yelled, his voice cracking into a desperate, pathetic whine. "And I'm not even with the other girl anymore!"
The stupidity of his words made something dark and explosive completely snap inside my chest.
"So you just out here fucking over Black women for no fucking reason?!" I roared, stepping over the glass to crowd him again. "Your lumpy ass should be grateful my baby even looked in your damn direction, you ungrateful son of a bitch. You entitled men kill me with that shit."
I needed to break something before I broke his neck.
I reached over and grabbed a wooden broomstick leaning against the back wall.
I swung that wood with unhinged fury. I shattered the massive wall mirrors into a million webbed, exploding shards.
I smashed the product shelves, sending bottles of oil and alcohol flying into the drywall.
I demolished the styling stations, the leather chairs, the ring lights, and destroyed everything in my sight.
The fracturing of glass and wood echoed through the shop until there was absolutely nothing left but a pile of pulverized garbage.
I walked back over to his trembling, hyperventilating body. I reached down, grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and dragged him up just enough to look into his terrified eyes.
"You’d better be glad Lauren told me not to kill you," I growled, my face inches from his. "Have a good day..."
I let out a cold, wicked smirk. "Nah, fuck that. Have a shitty day, SHITTERS!"
I threw the broomstick right onto his chest, turned around, and walked straight out the back door into the alley.
Once outside, I stopped and took a long, deep breath of the morning air, letting the adrenaline settle back down into my bones.
I casually walked back to Lauren's Benz, drove it back to drop it off safely for her, and called an Uber straight to the airport. By the time I boarded my flight, I was completely calm, tailored to perfection, and without a single scratch on me.