Chapter 45 Amethyst #2
“Man, look, y’all can figure out your family drama shit later,” Citrine said, shaking his head. He sat back and moved back and forth.
“Blood doesn’t make you family,” Nine said.
“I learned that a long time ago.” He wiped his hand over his mouth, then let out a deep breath.
“Alright, so I looked into what you said, Amethyst. Like Citrine said, it looks like you’re right.
Quincy has been using accounts that are in Yale’s name.
” He looked up and smirked. “Grant had them set up before his death. Looks like years ago at that, so the activity didn’t raise any red flags. ”
“What do you mean by years ago?” Yale asked, sounding surprised. “I never gave him permission to have anything in my name.”
“Looks like you did.” Nine turned his computer around to show us. “This is your signature, isn’t it?” He tapped the screen. “The date is a few months before y’all got married, right? You don’t remember signing these?”
“That’s not her signature,” I said, shaking my head. I knew Yale’s signature better than I knew my own, and what Nine was showing us wasn’t it. He looked up at me and nodded.
“Alright, well, let me do a little bit more investigating.” He turned his computer back around. “This was done at a bank, which means they have to have security cameras. I may be able to find the footage.”
“That was almost ten years ago; it could be erased by now,” I said.
“Normally, they only have to keep it for up to six months, but this bank doesn’t follow the same rules,” Nine said, then chuckled. “They keep their shit on the cloud forever.”
“Why?” I asked. “And how do you know?”
“Because the fucking FBI keeps harassing them and losing,” Nine chuckled.
He looked over at Kenbral and smiled. “You in private and professional shit, huh?” He went back to typing and shook his head.
“The bank owner hit me up years ago and asked me to hook them up. It was one of my biggest contracts until I got the one with the city. Niggas didn’t even realize they were giving me unlimited information access.
I could hack into the bank’s records and find out what I needed.
You’d be surprised by what you can find out going through bank servers, and then I used the city cameras to find the niggas I needed to find. ”
“Alright, so say you can find the footage, then what?” I asked. What I had in mind was to find out who it was and if it mattered now, I wanted their connection to Grant and the Kilmores. If they were useful now, I would snatch them up.
“Let’s make sure the footage is there first,” Citrine said, and I nodded.
Nine’s fingers stopped moving, then his face twisted.
“What?” I questioned him. He shook his head, then started typing again, only to stop and look over at his wife. Cross glanced at the screen, then up at him, then back at the screen. “What?”
“I found the video,” he said and tilted his head to the side.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “Let us see.”
He turned his computer around and then pressed play. I leaned forward when the video started to play and squinted. There was no fucking way I was looking at Lavender standing next to Grant and Quincy. She was younger, but there was no doubt in my mind that it was her.
“So, she ain’t new to this at all,” I chuckled and sat back. I looked over at Krude, who was talking lowly with Mercy. When he felt me looking at him, he raised his head to meet my gaze.
“What’s up?”
“It’s Lavender,” I answered him.
Krude’s face twisted, and he shook his head. “Nah, man, ain’t no way,” he said. “That shit was doctored or something. My bestie ain’t with the shit like that.”
I quickly turned back to Nine and sat forward. “Y’all didn’t tell him?” I asked, and Nine shook his head. “Why the fuck not?”
“We were going to say something after we left here,” Cross answered. She pushed her round glasses up her nose and then sat back.
“Say something about what?” Krude stepped forward. “What don’t I know?”
“Lavender and Tank were responsible for the shit that happened with Yeti,” I answered him.
Krude’s face twisted in confusion. “She came in first, I’m guessing to distract him, and then keep the girls preoccupied, then Tank came up.
He chopped it up with Yeti, then Yeti got a call and stepped aside.
When his back was turned, Tank snuck up on him. ”
“That doesn’t mean Lavender was a part of shit,” Krude said, shaking his head.
He was protective of the people he cared about, and we all knew he would take it hard.
As goofy and over-the-top as he was, Krude was loyal by nature and didn’t just trust anyone.
If he brought you into the circle, then that meant he looked at you like family, and he’d brought Lavender in.
“She came first, right? Then she might not have known.”
“When she came out of the room, she didn’t even blink at the sight of Yeti down.
She stepped over his body, kissed Tank, and they walked out hand in hand,” I said.
I knew what it was like to be the last person to learn something, and from the looks on everyone else’s faces, they all knew. “We have it on video.”
Krude turned and looked at Mercy with a serious expression. “You find that funky flower bitch and gut her from the top of her whack ass raggedy bust down middle part wig that’s been plucked too many damn times to her seven-toe having feet.”
I looked over at Xoey because I knew they had hung out a few times and whispered, “She has seven toes?”
“How the hell would I know, Amethyst?” she whispered back.
“You went to them girls’ nights before, didn’t y’all go get y’all feet done a time or two?” I asked, and she shook her head. “The fuck were y’all doing then?”
“At the court,” she answered with a straight face. “Or on the game busting niggas asses in COD or 2K.”
“You and your friends got real nigga tendencies,” I said, shaking my head.
“Thank you,” she smiled sweetly at me. “We try.”
“Alright,” Krude said, turning back to the group. “So Funky Flower is an opp. Who is snatching her up?” He looked around the room. “And what about Tank? Anybody got eyes on him?”
“He’s being watched,” Kenbral said, nodding.
“Reject Nigga with Gray eyes, I don’t need no damn FBI involvement.
I need some real niggas on the move.” He mugged Kenbral, then kissed his teeth and turned to Givens.
“Light skin thug, bring your ass on. I need you to earn your stripes. I’m sick of hearing Naee’s ass say you wouldn’t hurt a damn fly or bust a damn grape. ”
“Who the fuck is Naee?” Givens and Mercy asked at the same time.
“One of the homies from my reading group,” Krude answered.
“She ain’t too big of a fan of Givens’ ass.
I don’t even know why. Well, I do, she said he’s soft and ain’t shit but a nigga Albert Eistein, and I regret finding out what the fuck that means.
” He pointed at Mercy and twisted his face like he smelled something he didn’t like.
“You’re nasty just like Harlot, sister-cousin.
” He pushed off the wall, shaking his head.
“Y’all have no idea how stressful this shit is.
Finding niggas that will work in this friend group.
All y’all fucking crazy and like to kill people.
Do you know how hard it is being the only sane person in this fucking group?
” He threw his hands in the air and shook his head.
“I’m fucking tired, somebody’s gonna have to pick up my slack for a little while.
” He looked over at Givens and mugged him.
“Now bring your ass on. I gotta vet your ass again because of that funky bitch.” Krude walked away.
“Nine, drop Tank’s location. I will handle this shit. ”
“So, we are letting him go after Tank?” Kenbral asked, laughing, after Krude was gone. “He won’t find him.”
“You are doing the same thing that every nigga does before they realize the kind of nigga he really is,” I said to Kenbral.
“He’s a fucking clown,” Kenbral replied.
“Krude is probably the smartest nigga in the room,” Exodus said, finally speaking up.
He sat forward and mugged Kenbral. The DeCortes didn’t take too kindly to disrespect, and it showed on all their faces.
“He just likes to laugh, and for the people around him to be happy, but keep thinking those jokes he tells are for your benefit if you want to.”
“Because they’re not,” Cross said, shaking her head. “It’s his way of staying calm.”
“A calm Krude is a safe Krude,” Mercy interjected. “A calm Krude doesn’t kill anybody who looks at him wrong.”
“A calm Krude doesn’t spend time in an asylum,” Exodus said with a chuckle. “Which is probably the safest place to be if he isn’t calm.”
**
“What are you working on?” I looked over Yale’s shoulder to see her sketching on her iPad. It was an oval-shaped diamond with green gems around it. “Who’s that for?”
“McCoy,” she answered as she continued to work. “Earth ordered it a few days before the party. I have to find a new jeweler, though, so until I do that, I’m at a standstill.”
“It’s pretty.” I stepped back from the chair, pulled it from the desk, and took her hand.
Yale didn’t realize it, or if she did, she hadn’t mentioned it yet, but we were falling back into our old ways.
Without her paying me any attention, I guided her from the chair, sat down, then pulled her into my lap.
She continued to work while I rested my forehead in the middle of her back and palmed her stomach.
“Why did you stop working with your old jeweler? You’ve known him for years. ”
“Something he said,” she answered as she worked.
“What did he say, Sunshine?” I lifted my head and stared at the back of hers.
“He mentioned working with Grant,” she replied, and my eyebrows damn near touched my hairline.
“Mentioned?”