Street Certified Heavyweight 2

Chapter 1

I’d be lying if I said that my cousin hadn’t changed my life. Being Street’s corner man paid me better than the streets ever did, and that was saying a lot.

I wasn’t gone lie and act like I didn’t still move on the side, because I did.

Old habits and old money didn’t just disappear because your life got better.

But it wasn’t my main thing no more. Soon I planned to go all the way legit.

My girl was gone make sure of that, with her upstanding citizen ass.

Street had put me in a position where I didn’t have to risk my freedom every day just to eat, I took that seriously even when I didn’t say it out loud.

Watching him go from fighting in basements to being a top ten ranked heavyweight in the world was something I still had to remind myself was real sometimes.

My cousin was genuinely about to be the heavyweight champion of the world if he kept moving the way he was moving and I had a front row seat to all of it.

That meant something to me that I didn’t have the right words for. Hood niggas were raised not to show emotions, but I was proud as fuck. Everything that I did in the past for him, it was all worth it.

What I did have now was Simone. We even had a joint checking account we had just opened for the house we were about to put an offer on.

That was the most unbelievable part of everything if I was being real.

Me and Simone looking at houses. I never thought that I would be the man to own anything beside a car and a damn social media account.

Shit, I never thought she’d be my girl for real.

She gave me the chase of my damn life, but I didn’t care.

I wanted her ass and did what it took to get her too.

She had turned me into somebody who thought about a real future and I wasn’t even mad about it.

She wasn’t easy to deal with at all. Nothing about her was easy.

She fussed about everything, the dishes, the way I drove, the way I talked sometimes.

But I had figured out a long time ago that her fussing was just her love language.

She cared about the details because she cared about me.

Once I understood that I stopped fighting her on it.

Still, that shit didn’t mean I wanted to go to the grocery store either. She was staying at my crib because her roof was getting fixed before she put her house on the market. She was going to be here for a week and was already stressing me the fuck out. Living together was about to be hell.

“Come with me,” she said Saturday morning without looking up from her phone.

“I’ll be here when you get back.”

She looked up.

I looked back at her.

We did that for about four seconds.

“Come on! Damn!” I said. Having to give in to her spoiled ass.

She smiled, grabbed her purse and I grabbed my keys.

—

The store was packed just like I knew that it would be on a Saturday morning. I was doing what I always did in grocery stores which was exist next to Simone. I would try not to say anything about how long she was taking reading the back of every single box she picked up.

We were on the cereal aisle when something bumped into my leg.

I looked down.

It was a little girl that had bumped into me.

Running and not paying attention to where she was going.

Couldn’t have been more than three. She had bumped into me and stopped.

She was looking up at me trying to decide if she needed to cry about it or not.

I crouched down the way you did with little kids.

“You good? Where your people at?”

She just looked at me.

And I looked at her.

And everything in me went completely still.

She was a beautiful little girl. Deep chocolate skin, thick curly hair in two big puffs, round face.

She was looking at me with these big dark eyes and I felt something in my chest that I had never felt before in my life and couldn’t explain it.

I didn’t want to explain right now in the middle of a grocery store with my girl right behind me.

She had my face.

Not kind of. Not a passing thing that could be explained. My face on a three year old little girl looking back at me like she recognized something she had never actually seen before.

I was still crouched down when I heard footsteps coming fast.

“Amara—”

I stood up.

Sandra stopped the second she saw me.

Four years since I had seen her. She looked good. Put together the way she had looked when I kidnapped her back then. And she was looking at me with something behind her eyes that I’d say was shock.

Her eyes went from me to Simone.

Then back to me.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hey,” I said.

That was the whole conversation.

She reached down, grabbed the little girl’s hand without another word and moved past us toward the other end of the aisle and didn’t look back.

I watched her go.

Simone stepped up beside me and looked in the direction they had gone and then looked at me with a small smile on her face.

“That baby was gorgeous.” She shook her head a little. “Gutta she looked just like you though. Like exactly like you. She could be your twin as a baby. That was actually kind of crazy. Hell, now I’m wondering if our future kid will even look that much like you,”

I looked at her.

“What?” She was already moving toward the next section. “I’m just saying. You and that baby have the same face. Anyway—”

And just like that she moved on and started talking about what else was on her list. I stood in that aisle and nodded along to whatever she was saying and didn’t hear a single word of it. Was that my— Nah, it just couldn’t be. I wouldn’t even allow myself to finish formulating that thought.

—

That night after Simone went to sleep I sat in the dark of my living room and ran the math.

Amara. Three years old. Maybe three and a half.

Four years ago I had Sandra bent over in my bed. What happened between us was some wild shit that I never stopped thinking about. She was the only old bitch I ever had. And even today, she still looked good for herself.

I ran it again.

Same answer.

I didn’t know for certain. Couldn’t know just from looking at a little girl in a store.

Even if that little girl was wearing my face on her like she came out of me directly.

Sandra had a husband. Had been married to Tavarus for twelve years at the time.

The baby could be his. The timeline wasn’t impossible either way.

But those eyes.

I was still sitting with it when my phone rang.

Private number, and I had no idea who the fuck that could be. People knew not to play on my phone. And bill collectors didn’t call this late.

I answered.

“Yeah.”

Silence. Then a voice I had never heard before. Low and calm and deliberate like they meant every word they were saying.

“You think you got away with it,” the voice said. “Four years you been out here moving like what you did would just disappeared. Like everybody forgot and life went on. Like nobody was going to find out that it was you behind that.”

I didn’t say anything.

“We didn’t forget. We been patient. Waiting on the right time.

” Another pause. “You got a target on your back Deon. Has been for a while. Just wanted you to know we coming and you won’t see it until it’s already done.

I hope that money that you took was well worth it.

Hopefully you got a little saved up for your funeral. ”

After that the line went dead.

I sat in the dark with my phone in my hand. That call sat on top of everything else that was already sitting on me.

Could it be about Sandra? About what I did four years ago. About the hundred thousand I took from Tavarus while his wife was in my back bedroom and his people were running around the city looking for her.

Could be something else from a different direction I hadn’t seen coming.

I didn’t know.

What I knew was that somebody had been watching me for four years and waiting, tonight they had decided to let me know they were there. And that kind of call was never just a warning.

It was always the beginning of something bigger.

I put my phone down and looked at the ceiling.

Amara’s face looked back at me from somewhere behind my eyes.

My jaw. My nose. My eyes on a little girl whose mother had walked back into my life today in a grocery store. It was like the universe had been waiting four years to drop that moment on me. Yes I was reckless with her, but I never imagined a baby would be the outcome. Was this baby mine?

If she was mine then Tavarus had been raising my child without knowing it.

If she was mine then the target on my back was heavier and more personal than anything I had been prepared for.

I already knew though.

Somewhere underneath all the maybe and the math, I already knew that shit when she bumped into me today at that store.

She was mine.