Chapter 4 #2
“Yo, come on,” he kept saying while gripping my shoulder. “You’re not staying out here.”
I didn’t argue because I didn’t have the strength to.
And more importantly, I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
That’s how I ended up at his house. When he showed up at home with me in tow, his mother didn’t even hesitate.
She didn’t ask me any uncomfortable questions either.
She just opened that door and let me in like I was hers, too.
She fed me, checked on me, and made sure I was straight.
And Ghost stayed right there with me through all of it.
That’s why I will never second-guess that man.
He’s my brother, not by blood but by everything that actually matters.
Ghost’s eyes narrowed, and he leaned closer like he was trying to read me.
I could tell that he didn’t want me to be in the house with a bunch of strangers.
He only heard of the things I had to say about Maliah.
He never met her because he didn’t go to our school.
And I had never gotten the chance to bring her around because our little meetups were probably an hour at most. More importantly, there was no way that I was going to bring her to the hood.
She lived in a damn mansion. She didn’t deserve to ever grace areas like where I lived.
I knew that Ghost was about to give me attitude because the thing was, he and I had something planned for tonight, and I knew that her last-minute request could easily rub him the wrong way.
Simply because I was going and I didn’t give a damn what was planned.
Whenever Maliah called, I always came. I always would.
“Aight… but you still about to do the run tonight, right? I heard from one of my jits that there are bricks inside MB’s Auto on 25th Terrace.
There’s supposed to be a whole lot of cash, too, because they haven’t done their bank run yet.
We could move quick and make out with a big bag if we’re smart. ”
I froze for a second. MB’s Auto, something about that name was familiar as fuck, but I couldn’t pull it together. All I knew was that my gut gave a flicker of warning when I heard the name. I shrugged it off, though.
The most important thing was how he got this information. The last thing I wanted was for us to risk our freedom breaking into this business and it be nothing inside.
“How did you hear this?”
Ghost screwed his face up before answering.
“You are always so damn scary. Mr. wants to know every damn detail. This young boy around the way used to work there, and he said he saw some shit in there with his own two eyes.”
“Why doesn’t he work there anymore?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
“For stealing.”
“Bruh,” I busted out laughing, “they are going to suspect that nigga first.”
Ghost shrugged like he didn’t give two shits. And I knew that he didn’t just as long as things didn’t get back to us. He didn’t care who was caught in the crossfire.
“His ass knows better than to talk,” he said flatly.
I exhaled slowly while dragging my hand down my face. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been here before.
After his moms took me in, shit got real, and I mean fast. She had two teenage boys in one house, and that shit was not cheap.
She was doing everything she could, and I mean everything.
She was working long hours, stretching meals, and making something out of nothing, but I could see it.
I could see the stress of it all. And honestly, I felt like the one to blame because maybe she wouldn’t be struggling this badly if I had never come to live with them.
Maybe they had always been under pressure like this, and I didn’t know it.
I remember there was a time when my mother was fussing at my father because he was giving Ghost’s mother money.
To see this shit up close and personal was doing something to me.
It was the way the bills stacked up on the counter.
And the way his mother would sit at that table late at night with her head in her hands, thinking we didn’t notice. But we did. I definitely did.
And I couldn’t just sit there watching her drown from trying to take care of us.
So, I made a choice not to go back to school.
Because, well, there was no money in attending that building for eight hours.
I’m the one who brought this idea to Ghost. He was unsure at first, but once I laid my plan out and stressed how his mother was struggling, he agreed.
At first, I told myself it was temporary…
just until things got better. But better days never came.
So, Ghost and I started doing what we had to.
We started hitting little licks at first, starting off with corner stores.
For our first one, we didn’t have shit but ski masks and a hand in the pocket of our hoodie to front like we had guns.
Luckily, that store owner was old and petrified.
With the money from that robbery, we got ourselves two .
22s. Now that we had weapons, it was time to take it up a notch.
Next on our list were local jewelry shops.
Anywhere we knew we could get in and out quickly without too much heat.
We never did anything sloppy. I told Ghost that we would wear the same clothes for each lick.
I saw too many times on these shows that a muthafucka would get caught for simply wearing the same sneakers they wore on a robbery or murder outside to chill.
Na, we weren’t going to go out bad like that.
You see how the nigga James St. Patrick on Power put that hoodie on to put in work?
That’s how I was moving. Also, I made sure that we covered our license plates when we hit a lick because we didn’t need that leading back to us either.
Moving strategically and smart would keep us out of jail for sure.
So, when a job was done, we never did anything loud either.
There was no purchasing of cars or chains.
Plus, we made sure to hit businesses across town.
With the money we got, we kept food in the fridge, a roof over our head, and kept the lights on.
His mother never asked where the money was coming from, either.
I think she just felt relieved to get some assistance.
And honestly, that’s all I wanted for her.
She was a good woman, and her taking me in saved my life, so I felt like I owed her that reprieve.
If Ghost and I running around outside robbing muthafuckas blind is what we had to do, then so be it.
We did what was necessary to survive. At least… that’s what I told myself.
At the beginning of the scheme to get money, sometimes I would feel sick to my stomach just thinking about the niggas that robbed my father.
Luckily, we haven’t come across anyone yet who had a heart of steel and didn’t want to comply with our request to give us everything during a robbery.
To be honest, I didn’t know how I would react to someone if they did.
Deep down, my father was always on my mind, and when he first died, I wondered, too, just like the neighbors, why didn’t he give the car up?
Now that I was in the streets, I knew that the actual car probably had nothing to do with it.
It was the principle of not having another man take something from you.
My father’s demise alone made me want to call it quits with this shit, but the truth was, once that money started coming in, it got harder to stop.
And now here we were… talking about something way bigger than just enough.
Pulling off a lick way bigger than some shit that would put a little bit of change in our pockets after paying Ghost’s mother’s bills and some of her debts.
“If what your boy said is right, then this should be an easy in and out,” I said without emotion.
With me about to meet Maliah’s parents, I had to have my shit all the way together. I had been saving up for a spot of my own, and if we hit a big enough lick, I could make that happen and then go to trade school to maintain everything. Ghost’s grin widened.
“That’s what I like to hear. Let’s get this bread, bro.”
I nodded while trying to focus, but my mind kept drifting back to Maliah.
Tonight, I was going to see her. This girl had me soft as fuck for her.
It didn’t matter if the streets were calling me.
I had to show up for her. Still, there was that flicker of tension at the back of my mind about doing this lick to begin with.
It was something I couldn’t shake, but I buried it.
Ghost and I were supposed to head to that spot a little bit earlier, but I pushed it back after dinner with Maliah and her family.
MB’s Auto could wait… Maliah couldn’t. Ghost leaned against the peeling wall of the stash house while tossing a baseball from hand to hand.
I walked over to the table that was in the middle of the room.
The blueprint of MB’s Auto was spread out on the table in front of us.
He had gotten that from the boy who had given him all this information as well.
This little nigga must have hated his prior employer.
Or Ghost must have promised him a cut or something.
“Man, you sure about these angles?” I asked while squinting at the layout. “Front door, side entrance, the garage… this place looks tight,” I said as my finger traced the paper.
He nodded while running a hand over his low cut.
“I’m sure. We gotta make sure we know the exits, the cameras, and all the spots someone could sneak up on us. We can’t fuck this up.”
I don’t know why I started having second thoughts, but I did.
“Like you said, we have to make sure we know everything. You still thinking we should hit this tonight?”
Ghost sucked his teeth and then walked over to the table. He placed the baseball down on the surface and then started pointing at spots on the paper.
“It’s a camera here, here, and right,” he paused and squinted his face a bit, “here. This nigga gave me all the details. We’re going to be good.”
I looked down at the layout and then briefly closed my eyes as I tried to picture it.
This location was a bit closer to us than any other spot we had hit, but the things inside could really set us up.
We could use the cash, and as far as the bricks, I’m sure there were a lot of niggas that would want to get their hands on that kind of weight.
Against my better judgment, inwardly I agreed.
I thought of Maliah and how I wanted to have the money to do nice shit for her.
I had a little something-something, but I wanted the kind of money that she was used to.
The kind of money that she was raised on.
She wasn’t even the kind of girl who asked for anything, but that made me want to do it for her even more.
She drove around in a damn white Mercedes-Benz.
A high schooler in a car that costs some people’s annual salaries.
I knew that she was spoiled, and judging by the house that I picked her up and dropped her off at, her parents were fucking rich.
Anything that I could do for her, I’m sure wouldn’t be even close to what her parents were doing, but I was hoping that it would mean something because it was coming from me.
“I’ll roll through MB’s by one, once I’m done with dinner at her house. If you head over before then, just scope the place out. Don’t go in without me.”
“Man, we really have to wait until after this dinner? This girl got you all soft and shit.”
“Soft? Nah.” I would never let him know that. “It’s just… priorities, Ghost. The streets can wait. This…” I tapped the corner of the blueprint. “This can wait a few hours.”
“Aight, Trigga, I hear you. But don’t get held up. Because if you aren’t there by one, I’ll find some other niggas to roll in there with.”
I nodded all while feeling the tension in my chest. The streets and being in love were two worlds I was trying to juggle at the same damn time. But tonight, Maliah came first. Everything else, and I mean everything else, could wait until later.