Chapter 10
I had the food ordered, the snacks and popcorn on the counter, my place looking like I actually lived in it instead of just sleeping there between training sessions.
I had even lit a couple of candles that I found in the back of a cabinet somewhere which I was never going to admit to Gutta.
Anytime that nigga came over and I’d have candles lit, he’d always talk shit.
Forbid a nigga just wanted his crib to actually smell good,
My driver was twenty minutes out with Kyla.
I had enough time to shower and get right. I did both in record time. The same way I did everything before a fight — focused, no wasted movement, get it done. I wanted to be ready to start our night when she walked through the door, I couldn’t afford to be playing around.
I came out the bathroom and threw on something simple. Dark jeans, a clean fitted shirt. Nothing extra.
I wasn’t trying to show off tonight. I just wanted to be comfortable in my own house with somebody who made that feel easy.
But my mind wasn’t cooperating.
Everything Brielle had said in that parking lot was sitting on me heavy and I had been pushing it back all afternoon so I could get through training and get through Kyla’s visit without letting it fuck up the whole night.
It wasn’t working the way I needed it to work.
The details kept coming back no matter what I was doing.
Marcus knowing Mazi got grazed before Brielle told him anything. Talking about making him scared and wondering.
Saying neither me nor Brielle knew. Talking about my title fight like it was something he had a stake in.
And underneath all of that two letters that had been living in my head since I was five years old in a cold parking lot.
BJ. And whoever this nigga was, Marcus had tied to him.
That alone was enough to get Marcus killed, but I knew that I had to play this smart and not impulse.
Cause if I went to Bri crib and smoked Marcus tonight, I still wouldn’t have the answers I needed on top of risking my life and everything that I had worked so hard for. This shit was tough.
I sat down on the couch and picked up my phone and stared at it for a minute. Legal was heavy on my mind, and I needed to talk to somebody. I had twenty minutes before Kyla got here.
I called him.
He picked up on the second ring the way he always did.
“Xavier. Everything okay?” he answered, knowing that I never called him this late.
“I need to run something by you,” I said. “I got some information today and I don’t know what to do with it yet but I know I need to tell you.”
“Talk to me.”
I ran through all of it. Brielle coming to the gym.
What she overheard Marcus saying through that office door the morning after the hospital.
Every detail she gave me — the graze Mazi caught that could have been worse.
How Marcus had said he doesn’t know, neither does she, the twins won’t figure it out, the older one is too focused on the title fight.
Legal was quiet while I talked. Not the kind of quiet where somebody was waiting for you to finish so they could respond. The kind of quiet where somebody was listening to every single word and making a serious note of it.
When I finished he didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Legal? You there?”
“I’m here.” His voice was different. Controlled in a way that told me he was working to keep it that way. “Mazi was shot?”
“Grazed. He’s okay. It happened a few weeks ago outside a trap house. I handled it with him directly and I thought it was connected to him being in the streets but now—”
“Why didn’t you call me when it happened? Does your moms know? I was wondering what he was doing for money if he never came back and worked with me. Now, I see.”
The question landed flat and heavy and I didn’t have a good answer for it.
“I was handling it, and I’m sure he didn’t call cause he’s ashamed. My mom doesn’t know cause I promised him I would tell her.” I said.
“Xavier.” He stopped. Started again. “That boy is my family too. You should have called me.”
“I know, but at the time, I thought keeping his secret was the best thing to do. I didn’t think he could be caught up in all the other stuff.”
Another silence. Longer this time.
“This man Marcus,” Legal said. “He knew about the shooting before Brielle told him anything?”
“That’s what she said, and the call I overheard at the hospital would make me believe so. I don’t even know this nigga.”
“And he referenced your title fight specifically. As a distraction?”
“Yeah.”
“And you heard the name BJ connected to this man Marcus?”
“In the hospital corridor. He stepped out to make a call and I was at the vending machine and I heard him say tell BJ everything is moving the way it’s supposed to.
” I leaned forward. “That name has been in my head since I was five years old. You know that. You know what I heard that night after my pops was killed in front of me.”
“I know.” Legal sighed. I could hear the stress in his voice.
“So what is the connection. Between Marcus, and BJ, and what happened to my father. Because I know there is one and I know you know more than you’re telling me right now.
When my brother life gets placed in danger, I can’t sit back.
Im coming to you for help, but I’ll handle this alone if I have to. ”
The silence that followed was the longest one yet.
And it told me everything.
“I need you to listen to me very carefully,” he said.
His voice had dropped completely. Flat and serious in a way I had never heard from him before in my life.
“I have been working on something for a very long time. Since the night your father died. And I am not ready to put all of it on the table yet because I don’t have everything I need to do it safely. Do you understand what I’m saying.”
“You know who BJ is?”
He didn’t answer that directly.
“What is Marcus’s last name,” he said.
“I don’t know. I never got his last name.”
“Find out.” He said it like it was the most important thing I could do. “Get me his full name as fast as you can.”
“Legal. Tell me what you know.”
“Not over the phone. Not tonight.” I could hear him moving around on his end. “I need the rest of tonight to put some things together. Can you come to my office tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock.”
“Yeah.”
“Bring Mazi with you.”
That stopped me. “Why do you need him? I don’t put Mazi in the business of grown men. I limit what my brother knows.”
“Because there are things that boy needs to hear and I should have said them a long time ago. I think Mazi may have purposely tried to get close to BJ himself by working under Veteran and it backfired.”
“Working for Veteran? What?”
I was confused at this point. Was my brother selling drugs for people who are used to work for? If that was the case, then Tavarus would have had to put him on. They knew better than to give my brother some fuckin drugs to sell.
A pause. “Just bring him Xavier. And don’t say anything to anybody else about this conversation tonight. Not Gutta, not anybody. Can you do that.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll see you at nine.” He paused one more time. “And Xavier. I need you to be careful between now and tomorrow morning. You hear me? Careful.”
He hung up.
I sat on my couch and held the phone. I looked at the wall across from me and let everything that just happened in that conversation sit on me for a minute.
Legal knew something.
He had been sitting on it for twenty years and whatever it was he wasn’t ready to say it over the phone and he needed Mazi in the room when he said it tomorrow.
That combination told me that what Legal was holding was big enough that it was going to change things for all of us when it came out. Not just for me. For my whole family.
I put the phone down.
Picked it back up and texted Mazi.
Letting him know that he needed to be at Legal’s office tomorrow at nine. And not ask questions just be there.
Mazi texted back in under a minute, telling me to say less.
These boys were stressing me the fuck out.
Especially his lil ass. Mazi was always the rebellious one, Melo was sneaky and girl crazy.
While I was worried about Mazi catching a charge, I worried about Melo making a damn baby before his career could take off. It was really a lot on a nigga.
I put the phone face down on the coffee table, sat back and made myself breathe.
I was going to have to put this down for tonight.
Not because it wasn’t urgent. It was. But there was nothing I could do with it between right now and nine o’clock tomorrow morning and sitting here letting it eat me alive wasn’t going to make Legal talk faster or make the answers come sooner.
Tomorrow at nine I was going to find out what Legal knew.
Tonight I was going to let myself have one normal evening for the first time in a long time.
My gate buzzed.
My driver was finally outside to bring Kyla.
I got up and went to the door.
—
Kyla walked in wearing a fitted black dress that had no business looking that good on her.
She smelled like something that I immediately had to take a step back from because my body was responding before my brain could catch up.
She was soft and feminine, but very classy.
It was like, even when she was dressed down, it was still looking good as hell.
I hugged her at the door and she hugged back. Her skin was soft and she smelled incredible. I let go faster than I wanted to because if I stood there holding her one more second in that dress I was going to be in a situation I wasn’t ready to be in standing in my own doorway.
She stepped inside, looked around and I watched her take it in. The space, the layout, the way I had it set up. She turned in a slow circle with a small smile growing on her face.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.” She was still looking around. “It’s just — you actually have taste.”
“Why does that surprise you?”