Chapter 18 #3
The room fell completely silent except for the ringing left behind in my own ears, that sound swallowing up everything else for a second.
My mother flinched hard but ain’t scream, ain’t move, just stood there frozen, adjusting her own clothes like she was bracing herself for whatever was coming next in her own direction.
Demon was mumbling “no” over and over under his breath, staring at Ben’s body slumped in that chair like he was trying to erase the whole scene he’d just witnessed, like enough denial could undo what just happened right in front of him.
“He didn’t want you,” my father said, turning to Demon, voice flat, almost gentle in its cruelty. “Save your tears.”
Then he turned to my mother.
“Zuri,” he said. “What is your son worth to you? You made him out of lust. Out of loneliness, whatever you wanna call it. He’s been a menace to this entire family since the day we crossed paths with him in business.
Sent a hit on your own son while he was locked up.
Kidnapped you, put a gun to your head. Kidnapped Tattiana’s daughter too.
And as long as he’s still breathing, ain’t none of our other children safe from him.
You got the opportunity right now to right your wrongs.
So what you say?” He paused, letting that hang heavy in that room.
“You know everything he’s done. Now you gotta choose.
Him, or the rest of your kids standing in this room right now. ”
My mother’s whole body was shaking now, tears streaming steady down her face, dripping off her chin.
“He was an accident,” she said, voice breaking apart completely.
“But he was never a mistake to me. Don’t make me do this, Kadeem.
I owed him so much more in this life than what I ever gave him.
We’ve all made mistakes in this room today.
But you cannot kill my son. That’s my blood standing right there in front of me.
I wanna save my family, all of it, every piece of it, but it ain’t fair for you to make me choose between my own children. I won’t do it. I can’t.”
She looked between Demon and my father, back and forth, desperate, her whole face searching for some way out of this that didn’t exist.
I nodded slow at Namier and Zaire, both of them already understanding, both of them raising their weapons without a word needing to pass between us.
“Zuri, baby,” my father said, voice hard now, final.
“You can’t have it both ways. Not this time.
This boy waged a whole war against this family.
Tried to kill your own son while he sat in a cage helpless.
You don’t know him, Zuri. Not really. Not the man he actually became out here in these streets.
Loose ends like this can’t be left hanging.
You already know how this go. You always have. ”
Demon lifted his head, blood and dirt still smeared across his face, and looked straight at me, something final settling into his own eyes.
“You muthafuckas gone pay for this,” he said, voice shaking with rage even now, even beaten, even tied to a chair with death standing right in front of him.
“I’m gone hunt every last one of you to the fuckin end, you hear me?
Kaseem. You mad cause I had yo wife first and gave her a baby.
I’ll always be her first love. And every single time you look at my daughter’s face, I’ll be sitting right there too, a permanent reminder you can’t never erase. Sucka ass nigga.”
I looked at him for a long moment, feeling nothing but cold settle into my chest, no anger left in me, just something flat and finished. This wasn’t my brother. He could never be. He was a problem that needed to be eliminated.
“Yeah,” I said. “Alright.”
My father took one step back, giving us the room.
Me and both my brothers lit that nigga up together, all three of us at once, no hesitation between any of us, no words needed. All that could be heard was gunshots.
My mother screamed from somewhere deep in her soul, a sound I ain’t never heard come out a human being before, and she collapsed straight down onto that floor, sobbing, screaming, her whole body shaking with grief.
It was done.
That whole problem, gone, permanent, for good this time.
I looked over at my pops. He looked a little relieved, some of that tension finally leaving his shoulders for the first time since all of this, but still broken underneath it, still carrying something that wasn’t ever gonna fully leave him after today, no matter how much of that tension unwound out his body.
He stepped clean over my mother’s body without even looking down at her. He walked straight past her sobbing on that floor and out that door into the morning light without a single word.
And I knew right then, standing in that room full of smoke and blood and two bodies that used to be men, that this marriage, thirty two years deep, was over.
He’d given the green light to kill her son.
She’d watched her other three sons pull the trigger on him.
She was never gonna be the same woman again after this morning.