Chapter 2 Yale
Chapter two
Yale
“Shit, shit, shit,” I mumbled as I ran to my car.
Sirens blared in the background, but I couldn’t stop moving, no matter what.
That was our agreement, no matter what, we didn’t look back or stop moving.
I could feel blood pouring from a cut on my forehead, but that wasn’t stopping me either.
I needed to get the fuck out of here, meet up with Amethyst, and figure out what the fuck happened.
This was supposed to be easy; we had our roles, and we knew what we were doing.
“What the fuck happened?” I got to my car, pulled open the driver’s door, and climbed in.
I pulled the sun visor down, and my keys dropped into my lap.
Quickly, I picked them up, started the car, shifted into drive, and pulled out of my parking spot.
The sound of sirens was getting closer, which meant I had seconds to get the fuck out of here before they flooded the area.
I pulled out of the parking garage, made a left, and pushed my car through the traffic, all the while trying not to look suspicious but also keeping a close eye on my surroundings.
I didn’t relax or take a deep breath until I was on the highway, where I couldn’t hear the sirens or see the flashing lights.
My head was killing me, but I would worry about that when I got to my destination.
Nothing went as planned, and I didn’t understand why.
My phone rang from my passenger seat, and I reached over to grab it without taking my eyes off the road.
“Hello?” I answered as I opened it. During races or runs, we never used our real phones; instead, we bought prepaid phones and used those.
As a joke, years ago, Amethyst bought me a flip phone because of my style.
I loved it and continued to use them even though he hated them.
“Where are you?” Grant questioned me. He sounded more scared than I felt. “Yale, baby? Are you okay? Where are you? Are you safe?”
“I’m okay!” I said. “Have you heard from Amethyst?”
“No,” he denied. “My focus has been on finding you. Where are you?”
“In my car,” I answered as I drove. I hated driving, even though I loved racing. Whenever I was behind the wheel, I wanted to speed, and driving regularly only annoyed me. “I’m going to go back and find Amethyst.”
“No!” he yelled. “Come to me, baby. You need to get off the streets for a while. Just come to my family's house.”
“I need to find Amethyst,” I repeated. “He’d come find me.”
“You have rules, right?” he asked. He knew we did because I’d told him about them.
Grant may have thought that Amethyst and I were unorganized, but that was the farthest thing from the truth.
We had rules, plans, and plans for when those plans fell through.
“You do, right? If something happens, what are you supposed to do?”
“Get away,” I answered with a sigh. “If something happens, we are supposed to get away and wait for the other to call.”
“Then do that,” he said. “Come to my house, after the police activity dies down, we’ll go look for him if he hasn’t checked in.”
“Fine,” I said, even though I didn’t want to. He was right, though. Amethyst and I had rules for a reason. I needed to trust that he’d do his part.
I maneuvered my car through the light traffic and then exited the highway at my designated exit.
Grant lived on the outskirts of the city, closer to the white people than to the inner city.
He said he had matured and realized that the quiet life appealed to him more than the city’s hustle and bustle.
I knew he was full of shit because I’d heard his daddy say more than once that living in the city was too damaging to their lifestyle.
He liked to pretend that they were above the people they made money with.
When I arrived at his house, I parked in the back and then went through the back door into the kitchen. I could hear his brothers yelling, and I prepared myself for the mental war I was about to go through. The Kilmore family was black religious royalty, but they were deep in the drug game.
I came around the corner to see Grant sitting on the couch, his attention on his phone.
His oldest brother, Quincy, stood leaning against the fireplace, a glass of more than likely Hennessy in his hand and his attention fully on me.
His dark eyes freely scanned me from head to toe before he smirked.
The youngest brother, Isaac, sat on the couch opposite Grant, his face filled with concern.
Their middle brother, Paul, stood across from Quincy, smoking a blunt without a care in the world.
Their cousin, Ny’elle, was missing, like always.
He was the black sheep of the family who didn’t come around but did all their dirty work.
“Where is she?” Grant fussed as he scrolled through his phone. “She should be here by now.”
“Yo, special project is here,” Quincy chuckled, then put his cup to his mouth and drank.
Grant’s head snapped up, and his dark eyes took me in.
They were full of concern, and when he noticed the cut on my forehead, he quickly jumped up from the couch and approached me.
“Are you okay?” he questioned as he pulled me into his arms. Grant was tall, standing close to six feet three inches, and weighing around 250 pounds.
Even though he was a big guy, he never used his size to try to intimidate me.
I didn’t feel as safe with him as I did with Amethyst, though.
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “Have you talked to Amethyst?”
“No,” he grunted. Grant never hid the fact that he didn’t care for Amethyst, nor did he like working with him.
However, he knew, just as I did, that there wasn’t anyone better than Amethyst. I was good at driving, but I couldn’t steal a damn thing to save my life.
Amethyst could and did. “He hasn’t answered the phone. ”
“I thought you were spotting for him?” I questioned him, slightly confused. That was one of the rules of this race. There had to be a spotter for each player involved.
“I got pulled at the last minute, and Quincy stepped in,” he replied, and nodded toward his oldest brother.
Although Grant was a good person, his brothers were not.
They were all hard, cold, and didn’t give a damn who they hurt as long as they made their money.
I hated being around them, and Grant knew it, which is why I was surprised to see them when I walked in.
“Alright, I’m going back out there,” I said.
“Let me get my keys,” Grant said. “You aren’t going out there alone.”
“Okay,” I nodded. Truthfully, I was happy he offered to go.
My head was killing me, and I needed an extra pair of eyes.
When he left the room, his brothers started to laugh.
“What’s funny?” I looked around the room.
The brothers exchanged looks that had me questioning what they knew that I didn’t. “What’s the problem?”
“It ain’t a problem for us, more so for you,” Quincy said. “There’s a price tag on your heads. That’s why he wanted you to come here instead of searching for Amethyst.” It took me a minute to process what he said, but I knew I heard him loud and clear. “The second you show your face, it’s over.”
“What?” I reared back, confused as hell as to what he was talking about. “What do you mean there’s a price tag on our heads?”
“That was one of the deals,” Quincy said from where he was standing. “Grant didn’t tell you, did he?”
“Tell me what?”
“The terms and conditions of this race,” he smirked. I wanted to yell at him, ‘obviously, I didn’t know shit,’ but that wouldn’t do anything but feed his fucking demented ass personality. “The winner got the slips.”
“He said that,” I nodded. “Tell me what I don’t know.”
“The losers paid with their lives,” he replied, and I took a step back.
“Our lives for half a million?” I questioned. That was the amount Grant said we would get for winning this race. Quincy shook his head. “No?”
“Not even close,” he answered with a shrug. “It was your life for five million apiece. This was a fifteen-million-dollar race.”
“A fifteen-million-dollar race?” I yelled. “We didn’t agree to that shit!”
“You did when you agreed to race,” Quincy said, then walked to the couch and sat next to his brother. “You got the five million for your life?”
“You know I don’t,” I said, shaking my head.
I was barely making it, and racing cars was my means of earning a living.
I’d been working for the Kilmores for years, long before me and Grant’s relationship and before Amethyst. Quiet as it was kept, I was looking forward to walking away after this race.
I needed a way out of this. The only things I wanted after this were to maintain my relationship with Grant, to receive the money from the win, and to see Amethyst walk away before it was too late.
“You gotta figure something out,” Quincy suggested, and I cut my eyes at him.
Hell yeah, I had to figure something out because I liked my fucking life.
I wasn’t ready to die, and I knew that the niggas that they dealt with wouldn’t care if I didn’t know all the terms. I agreed, so that meant I was responsible for my payment. “Shit, both of you do.”
“Wait, you said both of us?” I questioned, and he nodded.
“That best friend of yours is on the hook for his half,” Quincy answered. “We got the money to cover Grant.”
“Fuck!” I groaned and paced. This wasn’t just on me; it was on Amethyst, too.
We were on the verge of walking away. I only had two more classes to take, and I would be graduating, and Amethyst had to finish paying off med school.
My eyes filled with tears, and I quickly wiped them away.
The Kilmores weren’t going to see me cry, not now, not over this.
“How much time can you get me to figure this out?”
“None,” Quincy answered. I stopped moving and gave him my full attention.