16. Funeral Music #2
His order number was called right before another, but Moose didn’t move right away.
He stood there a second longer, eyes on Tiara as she talked Tulla’s ear off.
She was too fixated on her husband’s interaction with Moose to listen to whatever she was rambling about.
When the little girl looked his way, she smiled wide.
Moose grabbed his food, and Ayla ended up at the counter to grab hers as well.
“Moose, what are you doing here? I thought you and Nari were going to hang out with Coast and Mozzi tonight.” She picked up her to go bag.
“We decided to stay in.” He was still distracted as the two of them strutted to the door together.
He held it open for her but took one last glance in Tulla’s direction.
He wanted her to see what he couldn’t say.
He wasn’t done with this situation. Outside, the night air hit him hard as his mind raced and his heart beat a little too fast. You would have thought he blew through a whole cocaine pack.
“Oh, okay, I’m heading back to the house.”
“You don’t have nobody with you?” Moose checked with her.
“No,” she answered, rolling her eyes. “Kong is already on my ass about that, which is why I’m heading back now.”
“Yeah, do that.”
Moose fished his buzzing phone out of his sweats and studied the screen. It was a text from Audiemar.
“Coast is in labor,” he revealed, looking up at Ayla.
“Oh, my God! Are you serious?”
Moose nodded before shoving the phone back into his pocket.
“That’s so exciting! I know she can’t wait. This pregnancy has had her so irritable these last few months.”
“Pssh, who the hell you telling?” Moose shook his head.
“Well, we better go. I’m sure Audiemar is heading right to the hospital, and Kong will more than likely want to be there too.”
Moose and Ayla stood on the sidewalk together and some lanky ass pretty boy appeared like he was about to head inside. Ayla looked up, surprised before something like recognition filled her eyes.
“Justin, hey. What are you doing here?”
“Grabbing something to eat.” He smiled at her and cut his eyes toward Moose briefly. “Small ass world.”
“Yeah, it is.” Ayla bowed her head, but Moose’s alarms were ringing.
He didn’t like this nigga. All that charm and harmlessness was a red flag.
“You want to sit down and talk? I know we haven’t had a chance to commit to that date yet. Feels like you been avoiding a nigga,” He jested with a short laugh.
“Then take a hint, nigga.” Moose intervened with a scowl.
“Moose—”
“Who is this nigga?”
“Listen, he’s a friend from school. It’s cool. You go ahead. I’ll see you at the hospital,” Ayla insisted, shoving him in the opposite direction.
Moose was hesitant, mugging Justin the whole time and not really budging from her side. Ayla sighed and shook her head.
“Moose.” Ayla sighed, frustrated.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he looked Justin up and down once again before backing off. Ayla watched him strut to where he’d parked on the curb and focused her attention back on Justin.
“Who is that?” he queried, watching Moose before turning back to her with his hands in the pockets of his jeans.
“Oh, I work for his family, and he’s kind of dating my sister, I guess,” Ayla replied. “Sorry about that. Whole family is a little… off.”
“No shit. Nigga acting like you’re his bitch.” It wasn’t what Justin said, but how he said it that triggered something in Ayla.
She typically knew not to deal with a disrespectful ass nigga.
The word bitch always made her cringe, ever since she was a little girl.
Pausing, a flicker of a memory flashed through her head, then a man’s voice.
Low, dangerous, and deadly. She stiffened, spine tingling, pulse racing as she tried to recall where the memory was from.
“Stupid little bitch!” he shouted before striking her across her face and yanking her pants down.
Suddenly, she was a whimpering little girl again in a dark room fighting for her life with a heavy man on top of her, reeking of alcohol and what she assumed was nail polish. Justin extended his arm and reached for her wrist. A spark shot through Ayla’s veins before she snapped out of her trance.
“You good?” he checked with her.
“I don’t know.” Ayla shook her head and searched his stormy black eyes.
“You look a little shaken up. How about I drive you home?” Justin suggested.
“No.” She shook her head, but something still wasn’t sitting right. “I have someone waiting on me, so I should go.” She brushed past Justin to her car parked across the street, and he skipped to keep up with her.
The snow fell heavier, and the wind picked up around them. Ayla put some pep in her step to get to the warmth of her vehicle.
“Slow up, Lala.” Justin’s voice stopped her dead in her tracks at the driver’s door of her car.
“How did you know to call me that?”
Justin stalled, and her stomach shifted into a ball of anxiousness. She’d felt little flutters before now and ignored them, but this was different. Her baby was kicking. With a light gasp, her hand fell on the round ball that had become her belly.
“’Cause you killed my brother, bitch!” Justin snatched a pistol from behind his back and cocked it. “Gimme ya keys and get in the fucking car!”
“I don’t… wh-what are you talking about?” Voice quaking, eyes misting with tears, she tried to connect what he’d said to her brain, but there was an emotional glitch ripping through her.
He said killed. Her thoughts and memories flickered, going back in time…
in that same dark room she’d been dreaming about, even when she was awake.
A body on the floor. Her head and face throbbing, and blood everywhere.
It hurt so bad between her legs. She thought for sure she was dying.
His dead eyes stared back at her with his mouth hanging open.
Shattered around them were pieces of a lamp. Her mother’s favorite seashell lamp.
“Leron Stokes,” Justin recited with the barrel of his gun pressed against her temple.
Ayla froze, then trembled before backing up into the side of her car.
She hadn’t thought about her auntie Chantel’s boyfriend in years.
It was something she and Inari never talked about.
What did he mean she’d killed him? Inari killed him.
Disbelief crowded Ayla’s face, and she stared off, glossy eyed.
Justin snatched her purse off her shoulder but couldn’t find the keys, so he tossed it.
Ayla couldn’t move as he dug his hands into the pocket of her coat until he found her keyring. He hit the fob to unlock her doors.
“I didn’t, I d-don’t kn-know what y-you’re—”
“Bitch, you think I’m fucking stupid!” Justin spat, rushing into her face and breathing down like a dragon.
“He was the only person in the world who ever checked on me! You took him! So, you gon’ pay for that shit.
One way or another. Now, step up, kiss a nigga like you miss him, and get in the fucking car.
You scream, try to run, any of that bullshit…
and I’ll blow your fucking head off,” he warned, jaw locked angrily.
Moose was meeting his coke connect to reup on his personal stash.
It was one of the ten crack commandments to never get high off ya own supply, so he patroned with niggas outside his arena for his product.
He was still kind of stressed over the whole Inari situation, so he was ready to blow a little before heading back to her.
He didn’t have time to be on Ayla like he wanted when that fuck nigga approached because he was trying not to keep his homie waiting.
Ayla and Coast had become like sisters to him over the last few months, though.
He worried and cared for them like he did anyone else he fucked with.
Shit wasn’t sitting right about the way that nigga hit the corner, though.
Like he’d been watching. Waiting to run into her.
After he paid Nat, Moose went back to his car.
He sat behind the tint for a minute to fill his ring before grabbing a comic book off his passenger seat and placing it in his lap.
Spreading enough coke for two lines, he blew them back-to-back.
When he looked up, he spotted Ayla’s car in the lot as he absently swiped his nose.
She kissed dude on the lips, and he walked her to the passenger side so she could get in her car.
Once he got behind the wheel, he immediately started it, and moments later, they were rolling right by Moose’s car. Immediately, he hit Kong’s line.
“What’s up?”
“Where you at?”
“Waiting on Ayla to get back to Pops’ place. Once she gets here, I’m heading to the hospital to check on Coast,” Kong informed him.
“Yo, I don’t know how long Ayla’s gon’ be.” Moose reached into the passenger seat for the bottle of Don Julio he copped so he could take a shot.
“What you talking about?”
“I ran into her up here at the Shack. Some dude came at her, she said she knew him, and she just left with him,” Moose broke down for him.
“What you mean left with him?”
“Nigga, she kissed this nigga on the mouth, he opened her car door for her, she got in, he got behind the wheel, and they took the fuck off.” Moose didn’t like to gossip, but he had to let the shit be known.
Kong would do the same thing given the circumstances.
“The fuck. Let me hit you back.” He ended the call, and Moose shook his head.
He didn’t know what kind of shit Kong had going on, but Ayla didn’t seem like the type to entertain some random nigga.
After a swig from his bottle, he started his car and got ready to head back home.
Moose wheeled into his driveway half an hour later and let his engine run inside the garage for a minute with the door open.
Taking a puff from the za he’d rolled up before pulling away from the Shack, he shut the car off.
The rest of him was unsettled, raising the hairs on his arms and back of his neck.
Pushing the door open to his car, he reached for the bag of food in the passenger’s seat and got out.
The garage door lowered slowly as he made his way to the storage room door to go upstairs.
The house was dark. Quiet. Eerily so as his heavy footsteps clomped against the wood.
Inari had enough time to sit while he was gone as fragments of memory pieced together in her mind.
The auction house. The masked men. The smell.
His smell. Moose. Then his eyes watching her, dissecting her.
She remembered him holding her before injecting her with the syringe.
It wasn’t rough; more like controlled. His intention wasn’t to hurt, but to subdue so he could pull off the job.
His footsteps stopped at the top of the steps, and cold steel pressed into his temple.
“It was you,” she declared, tone low and lethal.
Arms up, Moose didn’t budge. This wasn’t what he expected to come home to.
Inari’s phone went off with several alerts, but her finger was already on the trigger, prepared to do whatever she needed to against Moose.
At first, she was going to ignore it, but something told her to check.
She’d changed since he left, so she slipped her hand into the back pocket of her jeans for her iPhone.
Danilo: You should have played by my rules.
She read before an image came through. Ayla lay slumped in the seat of her car; head tilted, blood leaking from her head down the side of her face.
The gun slipped out of Inari’s hand and made a loud clatter against Moose’s floor.
Covering her mouth with her hand, she fought a sob when a video populated next.
The engine caught fire, which quickly spread to the windshield until, eventually, the entire car exploded.
“Aylaaaaaaaaa!” Inari wailed, grip loosening on her phone right before it hit the floor beside her gun.
To Be Continued