Chapter 10 #2
One of them laughed while backing me into the corner.
He grabbed me by my arm so aggressively that it almost pulled me off my feet.
“Let me go!” I screamed while trying to fight him off, but he dragged me out of the room anyway.
My bare feet slid against the floor while panic completely took over my body once I saw my parents tied up in chairs at the kitchen table.
Duct tape wrapped around both of their wrists while blood ran from the corner of my father’s mouth.
“Daddy!” I cried out, and my mother was sobbing so hard she could barely breathe while my father kept trying to move against the chair. Whoever these men were had already beaten him badly, so badly that you couldn’t even see the dark brown skin complexion that he’d passed down to me.
The man holding me shoved me down into a chair beside them before another man stepped forward to tie me up. When the man standing back, watching everything, walked up to me, he grabbed his ski mask, and the second he pulled it off, my stomach dropped.
A cold smile spread across his face while he stared directly at my father. I recognized him through Amir; it was Scotty—the owner of the tattoo shop that Amir had taken me to.
“Sahir, I told you I wasn’t fucking playing about my money, didn’t I?”
My father lowered his head without saying anything, looking more ashamed than scared at this point.
“Please,” my mother cried. “Please don’t do this in front of my daughter.”
Scotty ignored her completely before finally looking over at me.
The debt. The threats. The fear my father felt came entirely from this man. Someone, I’m sure, I could’ve easily had this called off with through Amir.
“Hold on, Scotty, wait,” I said quickly, and he raised an eyebrow before really looking at me. I could tell when realization set in because his eyes widened. He didn’t know it was me sitting in this chair at first, but now he does. Thank God, because I’m sure this situation was about to get bad.
“Amir can get you the money he owes. Trust I'm not just a random girl. He is the father of the baby I’m carrying. Remember me? I came into your shop with him for this tattoo on my forearm,” I rushed out before fear made my voice crack. “If you call him, he’ll help. I swear he will.”
For a few seconds, Scotty just stared at me silently before a laugh suddenly escaped him. Not a normal laugh either. It sounded cold and twisted, like hearing somebody joke during a funeral.
“Oh, I do remember you. You pregnant, you say?” He rubbed his chin slowly while shaking his head.
“Ain’t this some interesting shit. That mutha fucka be sticking and moving, don’t he? Hoe ass nigga.”
I felt my heartbeat speeding up while confusion washed over me.
“Wha, what does that mean?”
“Amir doesn’t know it, but my wife admitted to me about a month ago that she had been fucking his ass. She told me to kill him because he seduced her, but I wasn’t moving on her time.” The evil in his eyes was making my skin crawl.
“So, I've been continuing to let him smile in my face. Let him shake my hand, while I’ve been trying to figure out how to hurt his ass in a way that would actually matter to his cold hearted ass. I mean, a man who gets his whole family killed can’t care about too much, right?”
“He didn’t get his family killed; he wouldn’t have.”
“Yes, he did! He called the orders on that and let us know where to find those niggas. I see you don’t know baby daddy that well after all. The Quatar family is wiped out because of him.”
He stopped directly in front of me before looking down at my stomach again.
“But now, look what God sent me in the form of karma for him,” he said with a grin that made my blood run cold.
“A hidden baby mama that’s going to allow me to keep the tradition he started, and continue shedding Quatar blood in the city. Different motives, but that same blood.”
My eyes instantly filled with tears once he reached into his waistband and pulled out a gun.
“Please don’t do this.”
My mother started screaming while my father fought against the chair so hard that it tipped over to the floor.
Everything around me started sounding distant beneath the ringing in my ears, but I could still hear my mother screaming and my father cursing Scotty while trying desperately to break free.
Then two gunshots rang out through the kitchen, back to back, and I looked up just enough to see blood splatter across the floor before both of my parents went limp in their chairs.
He stood over me next.
“Damn, I can’t wait until that nigga finds out I’m the one who killed his baby mama and his child. I'll probably tell him right before I smoke his ass too.” He spoke out loud, before he sent two hot bullets into my body, instantly taking my breath away.
Scotty then calmly pulled his ski mask back over his face like he hadn’t just destroyed my entire life in less than five seconds.
He and the men he was with rushed out, leaving me bleeding on the kitchen floor beside my dead parents as the sun light shined down on my father and mother’s face reminding me that the day had just begun.
To think I was just praying for peace, but now I was wondering, had Allah ever really been listening?