Chapter 5 #3
“Get out this car and I swear I’m gone shoot you down to the muthafuckin ground,” he said, his voice shaking with something between rage and pure panic, and for the first time in my whole life, I felt genuinely scared to test a man.
He felt like he’d been set up, so I believed that he’d do what he said he would.
And the way that this was looking, I understood why he felt that way.
But I promise, I had no idea that my boys were going to show up here like this.
In my mind, they were gonna be busy for the day handling business.
He came around to his side of that car in less than a second flat, one gun pointed straight at me, the other hand back on the wheel, and he peeled out that parking lot so fast the tires screamed against the pavement.
He hit the child locks the second we cleared the lot, making sure I had nowhere to run even if I wanted to try.
“Please, call your men and tell them to stand down,” I said, my voice cracking despite everything in me trying to hold it together.
“You cannot hurt your own brothers, Demontae. This needs to stop. NOW! I came out here to talk to you before things got this far, I swear to you I did not know they’d show up today.
I’m just as shocked as you, and that’s why I stood in front of you, to keep this shit from going any further.
We don’t even use that warehouse anymore, so I thought it was safe. What Kaseem told you back there, that was the truth. If you hurt me, if you hurt them, you will not walk away from this. Be smart, son. Please.”
“Bitch, shut the fuck up talking to me,” he snapped, not even glancing my way, eyes locked hard on the road ahead.
“You think I’m stupid? You really think I’m about to believe a single word coming out your mouth right now?
Anybody who know me, know I grew up in the system.
Never had no family and that I’d been looking for my biological mother since I was a youngin.
You just using that shit right now trying to get in my head, but I ain’t dumb enough to fall for it. ”
“Listen to me,” I said, keeping my hands slow, visible, nonthreatening.
“Here’s the letter. I’m gonna reach real slow and pass it over to you.
How would I have gotten my hands on this?
How would you have written to a random stranger who just happens to share my exact same initials?
Explain that to me if I’m lying. This letter came to my house, addressed to me.
I’m Zuri Carter. The same ZC initials they gave you.
I passed him that folded paper, careful, watching his face the whole time.
He snatched it out my hand rough, laid it flat across his lap for a second before grabbing the wheel back with his right hand, steadying the car.
Then he looked back down at it, skimmed it fast while somehow still keeping his eyes flicking up to the road, before settling his gaze back out the windshield.
“What the fuck?” he muttered, shaking his head slow, like his whole world had just shifted underneath him and he ain’t know which way was up no more.
“Demontae, I never wanted this for you,” I said, my voice breaking apart even as I tried to hold it steady. “For neither one of us. I know you want answers, and I want you to have every single one of them, I do. But please, make your men stand down first. Please.”
He sat with that for a second, and I could see him actually contemplating it, weighing it in his head, before something in his face hardened right back up again.
“Hell nah,” he said. “Them niggas back there is your sons, right? You kept them? You been protecting them their whole life, and now you sitting here asking me to spare their asses?” He let out a short, bitter laugh.
“The way I see it, fuck them niggas. They lived they good ass lives while I been out here struggling my entire muthafuckin existence. They got you. They got Kadeem. They had a good ass two parent household, both of y’all right there every single day, while I been a grown ass man since I was nine years old, cause I ain’t never had no fuckin choice in the matter.
And you sitting here asking me to spare the exact niggas you chose over me?
” His voice cracked, just barely, just enough for me to catch it.
“Fuck that. Why wasn’t I good enough for y’all?
Kadeem ain’t want his own son? But the others was good enough for y’all to keep?
They had the life I never did, and you are sitting here begging me to spare them. ”
I saw the pain sitting all over his face just as clear as I heard it shaking through every single word he threw at me.
Now I had some real explaining to do, and all I could do was pray, silently, desperately, that I could still find some way to get every last one of us out of this alive.
I had to break it to him that Kadeem wasn’t his father, and that’s what started all of this.
But looking at how he was driving this car, I knew that he wasn’t about to take anything that I had to say well.