Kevin Robinson
“Amour, why don’t you answer your phone for your Papa?” I sighed into the voicemail, just wanting to hear from my baby girl.
It was the third voicemail I had left this week, and she refused to answer my calls. I knew she was upset about her stupid boyfriend, but she needed to understand this was business. I had to protect everything I had built, and I would be damned if that bald bitch took it away from me.
Not when he wasn’t as clean as he pretended to be. I couldn’t prove it, but I knew he was deeper into this world than I was. He became too nosey, questioned too much and was suspicious about a lot of things.
He had to take one for the team.
I was still recovering from his ass stabbing me.
It was a bitch recovering from that shit.
Even now, as I moved, I still felt sore and the wound had healed pretty nicely.
What brought relief was watching him surrendering on the news.
All was well in the world when I watched him walk from the plane in handcuffs.
Until that bitch said something to him, and he held his head up and winked; his gold tooth had the nerve to sparkle.
That was the same lawyer that had gotten Kofi off, which was nearly impossible. She was sharp, smart and a shark in the courtroom. If she was representing him, there was a chance this shit could be pushed behind him.
He could walk a free man.
I picked my phone up as I watched the reruns from his surrender and punched a few numbers in. “Yo?”
“Hello?”
“Yerr,” Sigel answered.
He was starting to prove that he was good for nothing. I needed things done and all he was doing was playing gangsta out in those streets.
“Need I remind you that you spent your younger years in private schools and a catholic college?”
I needed to remind him every chance I got, because this wasn’t his life. This double life thing was starting to blur for him, and I feared it was consuming him. He was starting to become a liability.
“Why do you bring that shit up every time?”
“Because it’s very relevant to what we have going on,” I reminded him, something he needed every now and again.
“What do you need, Robinson?”
“What have you been up to, Marcus? Just out of curiosity.”
He sighed into the phone. “Nothing. You got me stealing evidence and doing all these side jobs and I don’t have fucking time for nothing else. Then Nyla wants to have a meeting with the team.”
My brow raised. “With that Aimee Gates?”
“I guess she’ll be there… why?”
“I like her.”
“You liked Nyla when she started until she kicked you in the balls for trying her.” He snickered like the shit was funny.
“That was a misunderstanding between me and Nyla. That Aimee is young enough to be a grandchild. I just like her wit. She’s very sharp.”
“Uh huh.”
“You need to put an end to your little girlfriend. I saw she’s representing Fuquan, and she needs to go. Don’t care how you do it, get the shit done.”
“Why the fuck do I have to do it?”
“Cause you have a relationship with her.”
“You think she gonna let me near her now?”
I looked at the phone. “Figure it the fuck out. I want her fucking dead before this trial starts.”
“Whatever… the extra money from you and Preston ain’t even worth this shit anymore.”
“Well, with Case House closing and Menace Caselli disappearing after his wife passed… there’s way more money. I’ll remember to let Pres—”
“That nigga about to go to trial himself.”
I chuckled. “This is where you are wrong… that is getting dropped in the coming weeks. There’s a press conference scheduled for it. When you know people in high places, things disappear.”
He was singing a different tone now that he knew the money would be rolling in. I heard someone on the other line trying to beep in and saw my brother’s name. I ignored his call and planned to call him back.
It was always something with his ass. Always there to clean his damn mess up, and the nigga didn’t bother to leave me alone. He continued to always need more, more, more.
When the doorbell rang, I thought I was about to lose my mind. Could a nigga sit in his draws inside his home office in peace?
“Elena, get the damn door!” I hollered for my wife.
“Take care of the fucking problem, because if Preston asks, it won’t be nice,” I barked, ending the call and checking my camera.
Even with us being older now, that figure couldn’t be denied. She was a damn star, and when I found her and married her, I knew she would be. She came with a little girl, but I put another one inside of her.
I raised her daughter like my own. So much that her children were considered my grandchildren. We built a beautiful life together, and she never asked for much. She came with more than just a child.
She came with HIV.
When I found out that I was positive, I was in denial for years. Sick to my stomach because how could someone so beautiful be so deadly. I resented my wife for years, before I accepted that I was for her, and she was for me.
She never told me how she contracted the disease. Then again, she never spoke about her past life. Almost like she was afraid to speak on it. Thankfully, Amaria was born perfect and healthy.
That was my pride and joy.
My angel baby that grew up to be so perfect. Things changed with us and I liked to blame Fuquan. The transition happened way before she told me about their relationship. When this egg farming business came across my desk. I was ready to investigate until money was transferred into my account.
The less we investigated, the more money I was paid. We had so many cases, so it was easy for that shit to be swept under the rug. That was until that house was raided and I was forced to speak on it.
Forced to pretend that I cared.
How the fuck do you explain some shit like that? Then you had government officials being killed and implicated in the shit. It was either swim or getting ate, and I chose to swim. I chose to put myself first and sink everyone else.
“Baby, your brother just called me… said it’s been an emergency!” Elena called from the kitchen.
I snatched my phone back up and called my brother back. “Now!” he said into the phone, which had my heart beating out of my chest.
It took me no time to toss some sweats on and a hat to drive over to his house. I was so nervous that I didn’t listen to music once, and I had run into traffic on the way over here. I pulled onto his blocks and quickly pulled into his narrow driveway.
I hated this house.
He just felt the need to buy this house because his pride was so big. I told him he needed to sue for the lack of driveway. My Maserati had its ass hanging out, but I didn’t care. My stomach was in knots because I needed to know what the emergency was. What did he need me for?
I headed up the steps and realized his porch lights were on, which was code to let me know he was in the back, down in the basement. I squeezed past my car, and hurried to the back, banging on the screen door.
Recommendation: “Vienna” by Billy Joel
It wasn’t locked like it normally was. Pulling it open, I walked inside and entered the living room. He wasn’t in there, so I went to the back where the bedroom was. The door was closed, so I pushed it open.
He was sitting in bed with his girlfriend in his arms, and her body was limp. I stood there and couldn’t move. What the fuck was I supposed to do? I didn’t know what I was walking into, but it wasn’t this shit.
When my brother caught his first body years ago, I knew everything wasn’t all well upstairs. Instead, I stuck by him because he was my brother. I couldn’t toss him to the wolves. Nothing would allow me to do that.
I made a deal with him. He couldn’t do the shit often and he needed to be smart with how he moved. This shit couldn’t come back on me, and he promised he would be smart.
He would move like I needed him to move, and I believed him. Every time he was in love, he would take his breaks, which I welcomed. The urge was always there and he would kill. As soon as I saw a young woman’s body being reported, I knew he was back to his shit.
This relationship meant a lot to him. He loved her with all of his heart, so he tried to control his impulse. When the egg farming came across my desk, I decided to use him for something.
We needed girls, and he was good at grabbing women undetected. He wasn’t allowed to kill them unless they resisted and tried to get away.
Bodies started being dumped in Red Hook, and that’s when he got the tag of being the Red Hook Killer. This nigga would kill in Disney World; he didn’t give a damn. Things got real hot when he killed that journalist.
She knew too much and was too close to the story. I heard her neck snap over the phone when he did her in.
“Wha…what the fuck, Walt?”
He rocked her in his arms. “She found out, Kev… I had to protect us. She saw everything… my Jo… my baby.”
I watched as he continued to rock her dead body in his arms with tears in his eyes. When my brother met her, he found his everything. Her daughter never liked him, but he was in love with Jo.
Her freshly pressed hair hung over one side of her face, while her body remained limp in his arms. “My baby. I told her the basement was off limits… pleaded with her.” He sobbed.
She was gone.
To Be Continued