Chapter 12
I was in the kitchen washing dishes when the doorbell rang.
Marcus was in the living room watching something on the tv, and if I wasn’t mistaken, it sounded like boxing. I heard him get up to answer the door, and I didn’t think anything of it until I heard the voice coming from the front door and my hands stopped moving in the water.
Xavier. I knew his voice from anywhere.
I dried my hands and walked to the living room doorway and stopped.
Street was standing on the other side of the open door and Marcus was blocking it with one hand on the frame.
Something was already wrong with the energy between them.
I could feel it from ten feet away. Street’s face was controlled, and I knew that meant he was holding something back that was fighting to come out.
His eyes went past Marcus the second I appeared and the look that he gave me and what was in them made my stomach drop.
Something had happened. I just didn’t know what. How did he have my address? And why was he here? Was he here to tell Marcus that we’d had sex weeks ago? My nerves were on edge and I was panicking.
“Bri.” His voice was even. “I need to talk to you.” he called out to me over Marcus standing right there in front of him.
Marcus looked back at me over his shoulder. “You okay with him popping up like this? What is this about?”
“Yes, it must be something important.” I walked forward. “Marcus this is Xavier, you two met at the hospital.”
The expression changed on Marcus’s face, then it was gone before I could read it fully.
He looked back at Street and the two of them looked at each other for a moment and the air in that doorway was thick with something I couldn’t name.
They looked like they wanted to beat each other ass, and this made me even more nervous.
At the hospital, the encounter seemed fine.
“I need to have a minute with her,” Street said. Not asking Marcus. Telling him.
Marcus didn’t move immediately. That small hesitation told me something.
“Marcus.” I touched his arm and Street looked like he wanted to kill the man as he removed his hand off him. “Give us a minute please.”
He looked at me and then at Street one more time before he stepped back from the door and closed it in Streets face.
He didn’t go far. He sat down on the couch in the living room with a clear line of sight to the front door and picked up his phone.
I noticed that he didn’t actually look at the phone, he just fumbled it around in his hand out of anxiousness.
“Brielle. Why is the guy you’ve had dealings with in the past at our door? You don’t think that’s disrespectful?” He asked without even looking up at me.
“I don’t know what he wants, maybe it’s about his little brother, you know…
he did just get shot. If he is here, it has to be serious because we don’t talk often at all.
I would never disrespect you, especially not in our home.
He is just a friend, and his family is like family to me.
” I lied, Marcus nodded and didn’t respond.
I stepped outside and pulled the door mostly closed behind me.
Street was looking at me and I looked back at him. The look that was on his face up close was worse than what I had seen from across the room. This wasn’t the cold controlled anger from the gym parking lot. This was something deeper than that.
“What happened? Why are you here?” I asked, nervously.
“I need you to listen to me and I need you to hear everything before you say anything back.” He kept his voice low enough that it wouldn’t carry through the door. “Ok?”
“Xavier you’re scaring me.”
“Just tell me you’ll hear me out.”
“Okay. Talk.”
He looked at me straight.
“Marcus’s father is BJ.”
I stared at him. “What? Yes, those are his initials, but I’m confused.”
“Bernard James Jennings. Goes by BJ. He is the same man who orchestrated the hit on my father because he wouldn’t throw the biggest fight of his career.
My father was dead two days later after refusing.
” Street’s jaw was tight and his eyes were steady on mine and he wasn’t blinking.
“Marcus is his son Brielle. BJ placed him in your life specifically because of your history with me. To keep eyes on my world without me knowing.”
I took a step back.
“Xavier, I know you may be upset that I’m with this man, and because of everything I’ve done in the past, but this doesn’t make sense. I’ve know him all my life. He’s been around the family since he was born.”
“I know how this sounds, but think about why you’ve just gotten with him a few years ago. If he’s been around that long, he should have been your childhood sweetheart. You’ve said yourself he keeps up with me and my fights. Why is that?”
“You’re telling me that the man I have been with for two years—”
“Was planted. Yes.”
“That’s—” I stopped because I didn’t have the word for what that was. My mind was trying to find a place to put what he was saying and not finding one. “That’s insane Xavier. Marcus is not — he doesn’t — he’s not that kind of person.”
“He knew Mazi got shot before you told him anything. You heard him on that phone call. You came to me because something felt wrong. You already knew something wasn’t right.
Listen to what I’m saying, this isn’t a game, and this isn’t small.
My father is dead because of his father.
Shit is about to get ugly, and I’m here to give you a heads up. ”
I looked at the door behind me. Then back at Street.
“I heard a phone call that I didn’t fully understand, but I don’t want to believe that I’ve been used.”
“Brielle.” He said my name and something in his voice made me stop. “I went to Legal. He has been investigating my father’s murder for well over twenty years. He has documentation that shows everything I just told you.”
The words landed on me one at a time and each one hit differently from the one before it.
I put my hand over my mouth.
I thought about Marcus watching every one of Street’s fights. Following his career obsessively. Knowing statistics and records and fight details that went beyond what a casual fan would know. I had thought it was strange. I had told myself it was just admiration.
I thought about him on that phone in his office saying it shook him up, that the graze could have been worse, that was the point. This made me think that the man I’d been with could have a part in hurting an innocent kid because he hated and was obsessed with Street.
I thought about two years of dinners and conversations with a man who had been perfectly positioned in my life from the beginning.
My father had introduced us.
My father had pushed me toward Marcus before I had any attraction to him.
My father had practically celebrated when I told him Marcus and I were serious.
Something cold moved through me. And my mind fell on my father. He hated Street so if what Street was telling me was true, then my father knew that. He was very close to Bernard. They were partners and childhood friends.
“How did BJ know about me and you,” I said slowly. “How did he know our history well enough to use me to get close to you.”
Street looked at me and I could see him deciding something.
“That’s what we’re still figuring out,” he said carefully.
“Don’t do that. Don’t protect me from something I need to know.” I looked at him straight. “How did BJ know?”
Before he could answer the door opened behind me.
Marcus stepped out.
He looked between me and Street and whatever he saw on my face made something change in his. The easy comfortable expression he always wore shifted into almost anger. Something careful and calculating underneath the surface.
“Everything good out here,” he said.
Street looked at him.
And I watched Street look at him in a way that made me fear that Street was about to knock him out. it was terrifying.
“We’re talking,” Street said. Flat.
“Looks like the conversation is done.”
Marcus stepped beside me. “She’s good. You can go.”
“Marcus don’t—” I started.
“I’m not talking to you,” Street said to Marcus. Still flat. Still controlled. But something underneath it that made the air on that porch feel different. “Step back inside.”
Marcus looked at him. “This is my house.”
“I know whose house it is. I don’t give a fuck either!” Street held his eyes. “Step back inside and let me finish talking to Brielle.”
“Xavier.” I put my hand on Street’s arm. “Stop.”
“Since the nigga can’t mind his business, tell him what I told you Brielle.
” Street kept his eyes on Marcus. “Ask him who his father is. Ask him why he knows so much about my career. Ask him about that phone call you overheard that morning after my brother was in the hospital. This nigga been using you.”
Marcus went very still.
And that stillness was the most damning thing that had happened in the last five minutes because a man with nothing to hide didn’t just get quiet like this A man with nothing to hide would speak up for himself.
Marcus went still and looked at me and in his eyes was something I had never seen before in two years of being with him.
He was calculating what I knew.
“Bri.” His voice was softer now. “Come inside. Whatever he’s been telling you—”
“Did your father have my father to hook us up because of Street? Did you pursue me with an ulterior motive?” My voice came out louder than I meant it to and I didn’t care.
Two years. Two years of this man in my home in my bed at my dinner table while his father had blood on his hands that went back twenty years and connected directly to the man I had loved my whole life. “Answer me right now.”
Marcus looked at me for a long moment.
Then he looked at Street.
And the look he gave Street in that moment told me everything his mouth hadn’t said yet. It wasn’t confusion. It wasn’t denial. It was the look of a man who had been found out and was now deciding his next move.
Street saw it too.
I felt Street move beside me and I grabbed his arm with both hands he was beyond livid and I understood why. His father had been killed and if that wasn’t enough, the possible killer may have still been fuckin with Street and his family, and unknowingly using me to help.
“Don’t,” I said. “Xavier. Don’t.”
Street stopped but his whole body was locked and his eyes were on Marcus. Street knew that legally, he couldn’t put his hands on anybody without losing everything. I just needed him to calm down. I could feel everything in him that was right on the edge of coming forward.
“You need to get your things,” I said to Marcus. My voice was shaking but I kept it steady enough. “And you need to get out of this house. I don’t even know who you are, but you can bet that I’m going to get to the bottom of all of this.”
Marcus looked at me. “You’re making a mistake.”
“Get. Out.”
He looked at Street one more time. Then he turned and went back inside.
I stood on that porch and my legs were not cooperating the way I needed them to.
I grabbed the railing and held on. I was trying my best to breath and Street was right there beside me and didn’t say anything.
He didn’t touch me, he just stood there and let me have the moment which was exactly what I needed.
After a minute I looked at him.
“I’d never do anything to intentionally hurt you and I pray that you know that.
I’m taking your word on this because you’ve never lied to me.
I don’t know what to do right now, but I’m gonna get answers.
Marcus silence was more than enough. Please, just leave before you do something that you can’t take back if you stay here and wait for him to come back out. ”
Street looked at me and I didn’t know what to make of the expression.
“You know with every action, it’s a consequence. I’ll respect you today, but I’ll die behind my family. And I refuse to go out the same way my father did. Marcus, his pops and yo pops too, they’ll be handled if I find they had anything to do with my brother getting shot.”
I thought about fourteen years of a boy from the hood who had never once been anything other than exactly who he said he was. I never wanted to contribute to all the pain life had brought on him. I loved him so damn much. Life just always got in the way of us.
“I’m sorry,” I said quiet. “For all of it. How hard life had been, for all the fucked up people one encountered. And most importantly, for everything that I put you through.”
Street looked at me.
“Don’t do that right now,” he said. “Handle what you gotta handle tonight. We’ll talk soon.”
He pat me on my shoulder like he didn’t trust himself to do anything else and walked back to his car.
Although I had been with Marcus, my heart had always been with Street.
I thought he felt the same but looking at him today, I feared he’d really moved on and was possibly in real love with Kyla.
He came here to warm me, and he left just as quick.
I watched him go.
Then I went inside to deal with the life I had been living that was never actually mine. And as soon as the man left my house, I was going to speak with my father. I needed answers.