He Don’t Play About Me

Prologue

I’m not Jesus; I can’t turn water into wine, but I can turn a crack rock into some bands and feed my family. My name is Gio. Baby, you would think I would be some soft ass nigga behind a desk, but instead, I feed the block on Crenshaw that good dope.

Nobody tried me. Well, I can’t say that. One person tried me.

Islah.

When I met her momma, I asked her what Islah meant. She told me it was Muslim. She said it meant to reform, to improve… and then, with a straight face, she told me her daughter was going to make my life better.

She wasn’t wrong.

Islah accepted a nigga’s thuggish ways and never made me change, even learned how to move in the streets so she can stand tall beside her daddy. I loved that woman with everything inside me.

But that doesn’t make me perfect.

Most niggas don’t want to say they’re fucked up, and I own that.

I put Islah through shit most women would have killed a nigga over. Instead, she loved me harder. I owe that girl the world, but gave her bands to count and drugs to hide instead.

But don’t get it confused, my baby boo ain’t soft at all, you hear me?

Islah knows how to play the game with a smile on her face while she tests every ounce of gangsta in me.

But it’s cool... her mama ain’t built her that way, I did.

She’s the only person on this earth who could really hurt me.

And she tries, as she should.

I deserve it.

But she forgot one thing.

One thing she needs to remember about the only nigga she ever loved. One damn thing that should haunt her dreams as she sleeps at night...

I DO NOT play about her!

Never have.

Never fuckin’ will.

And anything or anybody that tries to come between what we have built will learn.

That’s all mine.

I’ll happily smile in a mugshot behind her.