16. The Men We Used to Be
Genesis wouldn’t let go of me in the waiting room of the hospital. My baby clung to my neck so tightly her little fingers shook against my skin while tears soaked into the collar of my white dress shirt.
“Daddy,” she cried hysterically. “Is Uncle Jare dead?”
That question damn near cracked something inside me. The hospital waiting room still looked like grief. Camilla paced the waiting area floor, smearing blood on the floor. Security had the doors blocked off from bold-ass reporters who were determined to get a statement from anyone in the family.
Mr. Davis prayed on his knees and tried his best to keep Jared’s sons and daughter calm.
Amara and Aniyah were sitting on either side of Zay, sobbing.
The news coverage was muted on mounted televisions in the waiting area, but they replayed the moment Jared went down over and over.
Newscasters inquired if this meant the Democratic Party would pick a new candidate.
The fuckin’ news reporters didn’t even wait for an update about his status before they assumed his ass was dead.
Channy was hysterical and just wanted to hold Genesis.
She kept kissing her forehead and asking for snuggles, but Genesis only wanted me.
I sat down in one of the chairs. I had Channy sit to the right of me and rest her head on my shoulders, and I pulled Genny into my lap while she buried her face against my chest, trembling.
“Hey.” I kissed the top of her curls softly. “Look at me, Princess.”
She shook her head harder.
“Genny. Please look at your dad, love.”
She slowly raised her head and looked me in the eyes. Her tiny face was swollen from crying.
“My uncle promised he was gonna dance with me after the wedding,” she whispered brokenly. I wiped tears gently from beneath her eyes.
“Uncle Jare is strong. Don’t count him out, Princess, pray for him.”
“But he got shot.”
The fear in her little voice sounded too grown tonight. Zay and I tried our best to keep shit like this away from our daughters. Now they have grown up too fast. They were now too aware of the evils of this world. I held her tighter instantly.
“Uncle Jared is still fighting. I need you to fight the darkness and doubt with your prayers.”
Genesis cried harder against me. My Channy still wore her bridesmaid dress, and her makeup was still smeared beneath her eyes. She looked absolutely terrified and heartbroken.
But in the midst of her pain, she reached for my hand and asked me, “How are you holding up, X?”
She looked toward me, finally, and saw the look in my eyes.
That look made her look fearful. No matter how hard I tried to hide it, I knew my anger was rolling off my fuckin’ body in waves.
It’s been a long time since I was X, the fighting machine, the Nigga who snapped folks’ neck and thought later, but how could I not turn back into that person?
This was Jared. The man who took me under his wing while we were in prison.
The one who taught me to help others with appeals and strategy to keep my mind busy on the inside.
This was my Angel’s brother, who was now fighting for his fuckin’ life.
After everything Zay and I learned from that reporter Daniel, I knew this shit had the Price family written all over it.
I knew they were trying to use his campaign to expose Crown Logistics as dirty, giving them further ammo to paint a picture in court about the character of the Davis and King family.
Character assassination would go a long way toward trying to charge for the murder of Dez.
But why assassinate Jared? The Price family must want all of us eliminated, and I was no longer going to let shit play itself out, not when death and blood came to our doorstep in front of our fuckin’ children.
“X,” Angel whispered quietly.
I stood slowly with Genesis still wrapped around me before carrying her toward Kenya.
“Take my baby for a second.”
Kenya nodded immediately, pulling Genesis close while the twins now clung nearby, silent. I walked toward Chanel afterward until we stood alone near the hallway. The second I touched her waist? My Angel broke down completely. I knew she needed a moment without our Genny so that she didn’t have to.
Tears flooded her eyes instantly while she grabbed my shirt hard.
“Please don’t do anything stupid,” she whispered shakily. “I might be losing my brother, I can’t lose my man, too.”
As much as I understood and heard her plea, I had to go. The look in her eyes confirmed that she already knew I was leaving, too.
I cupped her face gently, forcing her to look at me.
“Angel.”
“No.” Tears slid down her cheeks harder. “Xavier, please.”
Her voice cracked on my name, but Jared was bleeding upstairs, fighting for his life. Peace was gone tonight. I kissed her forehead slowly first. Then I planted a tender kiss on her soft lips. I kissed her deeply and hugged her tight. It was the kind of kiss men gave women before war.
“I’m coming back to you,” I murmured against her lips.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“X—”
“I’m not letting anybody take my family from me. Especially not before we grow our family.”
Tears spilled faster down her face instantly.
The shooter didn’t just attack a mayoral candidate tonight. They attacked my whole world, which made this personal enough to wake old ghosts.
Chanel grabbed my jaw tightly.
“Please don’t lose yourself again.”
“In all of your letters to me, I felt the same melancholy tone. X, you were broken. Your mind was held captive.”
Man, I love this woman. She had me now in the flesh and still read all of the letters I sent, and she didn’t receive them until twenty years later.
She had no reason to read them now other than wanting to know every part of me, even the ugliest parts I wanted to escape now.
She was afraid of losing me emotionally to violence.
I rested my forehead against hers quietly.
“Too late for halfway measures now, Angel.”
The surgery doors opened suddenly behind us.
Camilla shot upright, immediately rubbing her stomach while YaYa grabbed her hand.
Everybody stood at once and made their way to the surgeon. My chest became tight instantly.
The doctor removed his mask slowly. “He survived surgery.”
The entire room collapsed with relief at the same damn time.
Camilla's eyes streamed with tears, and she began shouting, “Thank you, God, thank you.”
Chanel’s dad dropped his head, thanking God. Jazzy covered her mouth, shaking.
Relief hit me, too.
The doctor spoke again. “We have to put him in a medically induced coma to protect his brain. There was so much blood loss and swelling. We had to give his organs a chance to speed up and heal. We did all we could do; the rest is up to Jared’s body to fight to be here.”
Hearing that Jared had to fight some more after fighting every day for twenty-four years broke something in me. Rage bloomed in me. Someone with the last name Price pulled that trigger, and they would pay today.
The doctor kept talking afterward, but I barely listened. Because my mind already moved elsewhere, I was plotting my revenge, and I would start with that disloyal fuck ass Nigga, Miles, for answers.
I looked toward Zay across the waiting room. He already looked back at me knowingly and began to walk over to me. And just like that, no words were needed.
The Kings were about to come outside again.
Zay dragged Miles from his cell in the basement of our war room. He sliced his sides in small, shallow cuts over thirty times on either side of his abdomen while he screamed every time he breathed.
I sat across from him inside the concrete room, watching blood drip slowly from his mouth onto the floor, while Zay leaned against the wall beside me, silent as death.
The war room we held Miles and Sharon in sat beneath one of Crown Logistics’ warehouse properties near the industrial side of Crestwood.
This was one of our locations that nobody knew about.
No one came here, nobody asked questions, and most importantly?
Nobody could hear screams through concrete.
The room itself looked like hell. There were metal drains in the center of the floor, exposed pipes, and a single overhead light.
Mile’s blood was already staining the concrete. He was chained to the wall.
Disloyal ass Niggas like Miles deserved to die a slow ass death.
He had been a part of the family for over two decades.
As YaYa’s trusted confidant in college, as a trusted friend Jared and I did time with, and as someone I trusted enough to pay as a private investigator to watch over Chanel.
The whole time this fucker was playing both sides, accepting money from Alan and marrying his bitch ass daughter, Cameron, all because YaYa didn’t love him.
She didn’t see him as her equal. I don’t take too kindly to Niggas fuckin’ with my family, and I sure as hell didn’t respect Niggas that couldn’t lose fair.
Miles stood tied to the main pipe running through the warehouse.
He was barely conscious now, while one eye had already swollen completely shut.
Blood soaked through the front of his shirt, and every breath rattled wet inside his chest. He probably had a collapsed lung.
Zay broke his ribs about twenty minutes ago.
He stomped him with his boots when he refused to give us any useful information about his bitch, Cameron.
“You still think this silence is noble?” I asked calmly.
Miles spat blood toward the floor, and tears began to run down his face.
“See.” I looked toward Zay. “That fake tough shit always disappears eventually.”