Chapter 1 #2
“Has he called you back?” I asked her for what seemed like the thousandth time.
She shook her head as the door was pushed open, and Ledge ambled inside. I sat up in the small hospital bed, alert.
“Anything?” I queried, hopeful.
“Nah. He’s not answering. I know he had an important meeting tonight.”
“How important that he can’t answer the fucking phone!” I yelped, losing any cool I had left.
My blood pressure immediately jumped, and the numbers rose on the machine at my side. Ivy eased herself forward on the edge of her chair. She reached for my hand and looked me in the eye.
“Hey, you can’t keep doing that. That machine is going to go crazy. You have to stay calm like the doctor said,” she instructed gently.
“Listen to the kid.” Ledge nodded toward Ivy as the hospital door opened, and in walked Chevy.
Eyes red and swollen, she seemed relieved when Ledge faced her.
“Chevy—”
“Did you reach her?” she immediately asked, grabbing on to him.
“Not yet,” he answered, and his phone rang.
A tight grimace of dismay spread across his face. Knowledge glanced up at Chevy. Grabbing her arm, he tugged her out of the room, leaving Ivy and me alone. Her eyes lit up suddenly as her phone rang in the palm of her hand. Dear God, please let it be him, I prayed.
Frequency
There were a couple of times in my life where I felt powerless.
It wasn’t the kind of feeling a nigga could get used to.
My father was military. He dealt with covert operations and destroyed entire villages during the time he served.
When he came home, I was seven years old.
I remember it like it was yesterday. My family had come a long fucking way.
To understand where we were, you had to know where we came from.
Fighting that war drove my pops crazy. When he first got home, shit was good.
My moms had money from her family, so we weren’t hurting for shit.
Eventually, Pops took control of the resources, and he spent most of it on alcohol and whores.
Waking me from my sleep at night was one of his little sick games that he liked to play.
Three a.m. was the hour. It was always the hour that he disturbed me.
Drunk, reeking of alcohol, eyes bloodshot, and scaring the shit out of me.
To this day, as an adult, three a.m. is still a rough hour for me.
I wake up in cold sweats, fighting someone in my dreams. I was a little boy still, no power, and my father would laugh evilly while waving his forty caliber around in my face.
Russian roulette was his favorite game, and there were times I pissed myself thinking that gun was going to go off when he aimed that shit at me.
Those were the times where he punished me the worst, locking me in closets or water boarding me like they did him when he was drafted.
He always said he was going to make a man out of me, and until I could handle his games like one, I would pay the consequence.
The kind of fear he instilled in me hardened and desensitized a nigga.
Becoming a hired killer didn’t fuck with my conscience the way that it would your average man.
When I was ten, my father began a new career, and he was secretive about what it was.
At the time, I had no idea what he actually did, but I knew he took frequent trips and made a lot of money.
When he bought the house I currently live in, my siblings and I were in fucking awe.
We were sent to the best schools and took some of the best vacations a family could ask for.
I spent a few summers in the UK before they decided to make that home.
It was around the time I was about to go off to college that I did my best to separate myself from the family name.
My father was the kind of man that was persistent, and he wanted nothing more than for me to join the ranks with him.
Staring back at Ivana, my vision blurred as my eyes misted.
Blinking a few times, I would swear that I was imagining seeing her standing in front of me.
My finger was still on the trigger of the gun, and I turned to where Arrow stood, smirking.
Harbor’s voice is what pulled me back to the present.
I was still holding the phone in my hand at my side.
“Free!”
The terror in her voice tugged on my heartstrings. Suddenly, everything went silent, and I wasn’t sure what the fuck to think.
“What’s the matter, Frequency? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He mocked me, and my instincts reacted.
The gun raised damned near by itself in my hands. I was steady with my aim, fixing the barrel right on his chest.
“The fuck kind of game is this?” I demanded.
“No games here, just revelations,” Arrow conveyed.
My gaze drifted back over to Ivana, and her wide eyes lit up in confusion.
She looked the same, but there was something different about what was behind her irises now.
Tilting my head to the side, I studied her closer.
She didn’t step past the car or Arrow. There was an invisible string keeping her within his proximity.
“Frequency.” Her voice jolted my fucking heart.
For the first time ever, my hand fucking trembled with the gun resting inside it. The fuck was going on? Suddenly, I was disabled. She had disarmed a nigga.
“It’s me. How is Ivy? How’s my baby girl?” she questioned.
I couldn’t answer. I knew what I wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come out. I dropped my arm and let out an exasperated breath.
“What’s the problem? Having some trouble performing?” Arrow teased. “You wanted answers, and now you have them.”
“You told me Kut is the reason what happened to her happened, and then you allow me to kill him and bring her here.” I waved my gun at him. “What the fuck is this about?”
Arrow didn’t answer, and the smugness on his face was beginning to piss me the fuck off.
His guard was still hanging back. My arm swung in his direction, and with one squeeze, I hit him between the eyes with precision.
His body dropped to the ground, and Arrow went in his waistband for his weapon.
Before he could draw on me, I let off another round into his leg.
Yelping in pain, he reached for his wounded limb as he doubled over, gun slipping from his grasp.
I moved swiftly, kicking it out of his reach.
“You still think I’m playing with you?” I said, gritting my teeth.
My phone went off again, and I put it on silent mode this time while I dealt with everything that was going on in front of me.
I heard the fear in Harbor’s voice, so I knew I had to get back to her, but this shit going on was also critical and needed to be addressed.
If I turned my back right now, I was damn sure catching a bullet in it. I wasn’t good to her or Ivy dead.
“You sure you want to talk about this now? It sounds like you are needed somewhere else,” Arrow suggested, panting while his jaw tightened in anguish.
“You have a new woman in your life, very pregnant and beautiful. After all this time, you’ve finally managed to attempt to move on with your life.
Imagine if all that suddenly went away?”
Hurt flashed across Ivana’s face as she studied me carefully. This was bullshit, and I didn’t have time for it. Arrow’s condescending ass tone led me to believe that there was something else at play here.
“The fuck you doing with him, Ivana? Hmm?” I inched closer, startling her with the rage pouring out of me. “How the fuck are you here, and why have you been gone the last seven years? Answer me that!”
Stammering with her words, she stared back at me with fear in her eyes. I reacted by stepping to Arrow as he slipped from the hood of the car onto the gravel. He was bleeding out, which told me I was right on the mark with his artery. When I put the gun to his head, her eyes doubled in size.
“No!” she screamed.
“Why not? Hmm? This mothafucka mean something to you!” I barked at her.
She started to cry, covering her mouth and shaking her head.
“He saved me, okay! From your demented ass daddy! And from you!” she shrieked, and that shit had me dropping my gun at my side once more.
“The fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about your father doing everything that he could to get me out of your life. He hated me from the moment he met me and even more after Ivy was born. He threatened me. And he made it seem like you would back any decision that he made if it came down to it!” she hollered.
“So you believed him over me, the nigga that was supposed to be your man?” I questioned, and her eyes fell to the ground.
Arrow grew weak at my feet, his blood staining the rocks.
“I didn’t know what to believe. I knew what you did. You were just like him—”
“Not with you. Not ever with you. And you didn’t trust me enough to come to me, but you believed in this mothafucka.” I waved my pistol at Arrow, shaking my head in disappointment.
She wept with no control, and I felt a twinge.
I can’t front like I didn’t feel anything for her after seeing her alive all this time.
I didn’t have anything else to say. Raising my gun, I looked her dead in the fucking eye and sent a bullet through Arrow’s dome.
The blast jolted her, and she shook in front of me viciously while holding my stare. I tucked my pistol in my waistband.
“Let’s get out of here before we got company.” I snatched her by the arm and dragged her toward my whip.
I thought I wanted answers, but now I ended up with more than I bargained for.
There was no fucking way that I could leave her here.
At this point, shit didn’t make sense. I knew one fucking thing though: I couldn’t trust her.
She was screaming and cussing me out while trying to yank away from me all the way to the car until I shoved her inside and grilled her coldly.
She knew better than to move another inch.
“Calm the fuck down!” I got in her face, bringing the pistol to her chin.