13. Pearce
PEARCE
Shit had hit the fan in the absolute worst way.
When Tasha showed up in Cabo, I was determined to not let it ruin our trip.
After I got the news of my father’s arrest, I still didn’t want to leave.
But when I got word that his connect had been arrested in one of the largest drug busts in the last few years, I knew I couldn’t stay in Cabo.
Big bad Kalim had no clue he was being targeted by the Feds and while they were watching him, he led them straight to his plug. Shit was all bad.
I didn’t really give two fucks about the nigga, but I wasn’t happy that he was in jail.
In all honesty, I didn’t know how I felt.
Most days, I was certain that I hated the nigga.
But I found myself wondering why he was still selling drugs with all the money he had.
Not knowing when to say when had been his downfall.
All my life Kalim had been untouchable. Knowing that he’d been hemmed up had me feeling some kind of way.
And the fact that Tasha decided to show her face in Cabo.
That shit had me hotter than fish grease.
I didn’t have anything to say to her, but seeing her face made me feel shit I didn’t want to feel.
I’d been having so much fun with Vanya that with each passing day, I thought about Tasha less and less.
Her finding out her cousin was alive had her more than ready to get back home.
Even if he was going to rob my father, I was glad for her that her aunt didn’t lose two kids.
I wasn’t going to visit my father in jail, but his attorney did reach out to me and let me know that Kalim wanted me to keep things in order at his construction company and strip club. I could do that.
The strip clubs all had managers that kept the place running smoothly.
My father went to the one in Diamond Cove a few nights a week to see the women more than he went to actually do any work.
It was as if the moment my father was placed in cuffs, he forgot all about our feud.
His attorney had reached out to me more than once with instructions from my father, and I did everything he wanted me to.
He was an asshole for sure, but I wasn’t going to kick him while he was down.
My father didn’t murder Marlon’s homie or try to murder him.
His goons did it, so it would be very possible for my father to beat those charges.
However, if the police questioned Vanya and she cooperated, his ass was grass.
I doubted she would because she was already worried about my father.
If she got on a stand and testified against him, he might not care about her having the same last name as me.
So, the murder and attempted murder charges could possibly be beat.
But while they were trailing him, the Feds had witnessed more than one transaction between my father and his plug.
I had no clue how he was going to get out of that.
I had been back from Cabo for two days and had been running nonstop the entire time.
Because of that and jet lag that I never recovered from, I was exhausted.
I didn’t have too much time to think about anything.
When I got home and saw an unfamiliar car in my driveway, I was stumped until Tasha got out.
Sucking my teeth, I blew out a breath and emerged from the car.
I wasn’t in the mood to have a conversation with her or to hear anything that she had to say.
I just wanted a shower and my bed. Earlier, after I smoked a blunt, I had demolished a honeybun and a bag of Doritos.
As tired as I was, that would suffice for dinner.
The look I gave Tasha wasn’t a friendly one. Without speaking, I walked right past her. “I get that you’re mad, Pearce. You have every right to be, but you don’t have to treat me like this,” her voice cracked.
I whirled around to face her. “I can’t treat you like anything if you’re not around me. You keep doing that shit by choice when I told you I don’t have shit to say to you, Tasha.”
“You’re not even going to let me explain?”
“Explain? My phone number hasn’t changed. You didn’t call or text me to explain before now, so why do you think I give a fuck? Man,” I shook my head. “I swear I’m not in the mood for this right now.”
Despite my words Tasha stepped closer to me.
“Your father went from threatening me to humiliating me to offering me money back to threatening me. He looked me in my face and told me that you were stringing me along. H-he said that you were going to marry someone that was worthy of having your last name. He brought my mother into it. He even threatened to burn down my uncle’s store.
I panicked; I didn’t know what to do.” Tears ran down her cheeks, but that didn’t move me.
“And it seems to me that he didn’t lie because here you are rocking a wedding band,” her face contorted with disgust.
“If you panicked and your first thought wasn’t to call yo’ nigga, then I was wasting my time with you anyway.”
“How do you make money, Pearce?” The way she stuck her chin out while her bottom lip quivered made me think she already knew the answer.
“What?”
“How do you make your money?” she repeated slowly. “Is it simply from a cleaning business?”
“I don’t know what you’re asking me but if you have something to say just say it,” my jaw muscle ticked.
“Your father told me that you get money by being a hit man. I wanted to laugh in his face and tell him he was just pulling shit out of his ass until he started making a lot of sense. That made me wonder if what else he was saying was true. If I didn’t know that what else didn’t I know?
He was threatening me and telling me stuff about you I didn’t know. What was I supposed to do?”
“Talk to me!” I roared so loud that she jumped. “All you had to do was come home to me.”
“Do you get paid to kill people?”
“Does it matter? You’re gone right?”
“And I’ve been miserable this entire time. I cry every day. And I come back, and you’re already in the bed with some chick on our trip. Married to her! Why are you even acting like you care that I left? You have clearly moved on!”
“There is no our anything, Love. You forfeited the trip when you took money to walk out of my life.”
“Are you with her now? Is the marriage real or some arranged fake shit that you’re doing to make daddy happy?” I saw the hope in her eyes. She wanted me to tell her the marriage to Vanya wasn’t real.
Pressing my hands together in a praying motion, I inhaled deeply through my nose. “We are done, Tasha. I promise you.”
I turned and walked inside. As tired as I was, after that confrontation, I knew I would be too wired to sleep.
I huffed like an angry bull. A sudden thought made me laugh angrily.
Kalim really told her what I did for a living.
He told another human being that I was a hit man. “Bitch ass nigga,” I mumbled.
He was going to say whatever and do whatever to get Tasha out of my life, and it worked.
Shorty had me going crazy all because of some BS that Kalim put in her ear.
Every time I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt he made me regret it.
Snake ass, rat ass, nigga. My blood was boiling.
Next time his attorney called, I was going to tell him to tell his client to get someone else to handle his affairs.
No matter what he did in the past, no matter how many times I swore I was done with him I’d always back track. Because he was my father.
Anything bad that happened to him his ass deserved it.
I sat down on the couch, and my left leg bounced anxiously.
I wanted answers then. I didn’t want them anymore.
Tasha pretty much forced them on me, and it made me feel worse.
Nothing he could have told her should have changed the way she felt about me.
I had spent the last year doing everything I could to show Tasha how much I rocked with her, and she folded quicker than a lawn chair off the strength of what a person that I barely dealt with said.
That showed me that if her back was against the wall, she wouldn’t stand ten toes down for me.
“Fuck!” I blurted out as I stood up to get weed from my bedroom. Smoking would be the only way I made it to sleep.
Running one hand over my waves, I tried my hardest not to get frustrated from my mother’s line of questioning. The day after my blow up with Tasha, I went to visit my mother, and she was asking me about my father.
“Can he have visits? Are you going to go down there?”
“I’m not sure and no.”
“Why?” her brows furrowed. “I know you two aren’t the closest, but he is your father.”
“And what does that mean, ma?” my tone came out icier than I intended it. “I’m his son, and he never used that reasoning to cut me any slack.”
“What are you talking about?” my mother frowned. She was genuinely confused. “Did something happen?”
“A lot happened. He paid Tasha to leave me. Told her that I was going to marry someone else. He even threatened her and her uncle’s business.
” Before walking inside my mother’s home, I took the band off my finger and slid it into my pocket.
She didn’t need to know that I married Vanya to protect her from Kalim.
“Oh my God,” my mother’s jaw slacked. “Why on earth would he do that?”
“Because he told me she wasn’t good enough for me.
He wanted me to marry some chick named Adrienne.
He talked about Tasha like she was scum.
Never once did I think about leaving her because he wanted me to.
She knows what kind of man I am. She believed him over me.
Just straight up left without a word. I’m not doing it.
I couldn’t care less about his construction company or his strip club. ”
“I’m speechless. I just don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry you have to deal with that.”