Chapter 2 #2
My baby could trauma dump at the drop of a dime. It wasn’t her fault. She just said whatever came to mind.
“That ain’t the point, Lovey. I think ten years too long. I’m trying to get you off birth control by next year.” My time frame damn near made her choke on her mimosa. I had to reach over and tap her back just to ease her coughing.
Using the table napkin, she dabbed her eyes before a tear slipped and ruined her makeup.
She looked at me with terror masking her face. “A year?”
“Too soon?”
“Way too soon.” Upon hearing her response, I let out a deep sigh. She could sense the defeat that weighed down on me, which prompted her to get out of her seat and make her way to my lap.
She kissed my lips a few times until she got a smirk out of me. “Let me open up Reign in Vegas and Kinza in Brooklyn. Then I’ll get off the pill, and you can have your big-headed-ass baby.”
“You and your brother walk around with them big-ass domes on your shoulders, and you think I’m gone be the reason our baby got a big-ass head?” I snorted a laugh.
She waved me off with a laugh, and we continued breakfast.
Anguilla was beautiful. We spent the last day relaxing, and we got around to enjoying some of the excursions our resort offered, like jet-skiing and snorkeling.
We touched back down in the city, and shit was back to the regular program.
“My boy came back with a motherfuckin’ tan.” Jersey dapped me up.
I laughed. “I needed that fucking honeymoon, man.”
Jersey was my guy who I grew up with. Our mothers were best friends until my mother died of cancer.
We didn’t like each other at first and felt like our mothers were forcing us to be cool with one another because they were close, but after a while, that nigga grew on me.
We got into everything together. It was safe to say that if I was rocking, he was rolling.
“I bet. How’s the wife?”
“Planning our next vacation already. I spoiled her ass a little too much.”
“She running them fucking pockets.”
“Son, that girl don’t know what a fucking budget is.” I shook my head.
My baby was spoiled through and through.
She went from her brother making sure she had everything under the sun to providing it for herself, and now that she was my wife, she expected queen treatment from me.
I knew the type of woman I made my wife, so I gave my card up each time, no questions asked.
Jersey laughed while taking a seat across from me. “That’s why we gotta keep the city on lock. We got paid a little visit while you were away.”
I watched him pull out his phone and tap the screen a few times.
He then handed it over to me. My heart dropped at the sight of one of my soldiers’ obituary on the screen.
Nymir was a young cat with a lot of heart.
I had put him on about two years ago. He was starting off small, but that shit ain’t matter to him since all he wanted to do was provide for his grandmother.
Seeing his picture photoshopped with some angel wings just didn’t sit right with me.
“Why nobody fucking called me?” I clenched my jaw as I handed him back his phone.
In response, Jersey smacked his lips. “You was on your fucking honeymoon. You and wifey deserved a week to just enjoy being married.”
I ran my hands down my face. Shit like this never sat right with me.
I hated death and everything that came with it.
The fact that somebody could be alive and breathing one second, then be dead and gone the next was some shit I could never wrap my head around.
Nymir was loyal as fuck and had a good head on his shoulders.
I wished I was able to turn back the hands of time and prevent this shit from happening.
“The fuck happened?”
“Nymir was playing ball, shit went left, and him and some nigga by the name of Knox exchanged words. Next day, Knox rolled up on Ny in the projects and popped him. Nymir was taking out the fucking trash. He wasn’t even strapped,” Jersey explained with a shake of his head.
My jaw tightened as anger flashed in my eyes.
These young niggas were moving fucking reckless and taking lives off the dumbest shit.
They stayed strapped and ready to blow just to flex that they were crashouts.
None of them thought about what came after.
The mourning, the funerals, the fucking Feds sniffing around.
“Over a fucking basketball game?”
“Shit tripped me out too until I found out who the fuck that nigga Knox run with.”
I leaned up in my seat. “Who?”
“Silas.”
Keeping the whole east coast on lock was hard fucking work, no matter how people tried to downplay the way I got put on.
When Priest passed me the torch, there wasn’t no fucking blueprint.
He trusted me to figure that shit out, which I fucking did.
Soon as motherfuckas found out Priest, Kaymen and J’Ru stepped down, they thought I was an easy fucking target and they could come for what’s mine.
Silas was a Detroit nigga who was adamant about competing with me. I remained chill for the most part, peeping his moves to see what type of timing he was on, but now that his people had put down one of mine, wasn’t no coming back from that.
“Of fucking course. What’s the word on Knox?”
“Nigga went ghost. We looking for him now.”
“Find that nigga. We can’t let Ny go out like that.”
“You know I’m on it.”
“You reached out to Ny’s people?”
Jersey sighed as he leaned back in his seat. “I got up with his grandmother briefly over the phone. Let her know we will take care of shit once you touch down.”
One thing Priest, Kaymen and J’Ru did instill in me was to always take care of my people.
In order to have a village, I needed to know how to be a villager.
I knew nothing would put Nymir’s grandmother in better spirits; however, I was gonna make sure she ain’t have to worry about shit else.
Nymir did what he had to do to provide for her, and just because he was taken from her senselessly didn’t mean she had to go back to struggling.
“I’ll pay her a visit. Keep this shit contained until after Ny’s funeral.”
“Heard you, Ahk. Welcome back.”
Shit like this had me wishing I could stay ducked off on an island with my wife forever, but it came with the fucking territory.