Chapter 14 #2
I had watched enough of his footage with Coach to know how he moved,where he was dangerous and where he could be broken down.
He was a body worker. Patient. He liked to set traps and wait for his opponent to walk into them.
His knockout power was legitimate and consistent and he did not slow down in the late rounds the way some big men did.
He was the best opponent I had ever faced.
I intended to break him anyway.
First round he came out measured and technical, I let him. Felt him out. Let him think he was reading me while I was reading him. He landed a right hand in the second minute that snapped my head back and the crowd made noise of shock, I reset and kept moving.
Second round I started working the body.
The same way I had always worked — getting inside, making it ugly, making him feel me in his ribs before I went upstairs.
He came back with a left hook that caught me flush and I grabbed him and held on while my vision cleared and the referee broke us apart.
This nigga was eating like the rent was due.
He wasn’t laying down easy. I had to really get focused.
I wouldn’t lie like he didn’t have power behind them gloves, this nigga was ruthless and really had me questioning how this would go.
Third round he got me with a combination that put me on the canvas.
The arena went insane.
I was down for a three count before I got up and the referee looked in my eyes and asked if I was good and I told him yes and we went back to it. I had to remember who the fuck I was, who was watching and what was riding on this. That last hit had only pissed me the fuck off. I had to shake back.
He came for the finish and I didn’t give it to him.
Fourth round I flipped it.
I started pressing him the way I had pressed every man who had ever gotten comfortable in a ring with me.
Forward and relentless and not giving him the distance he needed to do what he did best. He landed.
I walked through it. I landed. He felt it.
Round after round we went and by the seventh round I could see it in the way he was breathing.
He was tired.
I was not. I was working his ass like a 9 to 5. I needed him to lay down and stay down.
Eighth round I caught him with an uppercut that stood him straight up and followed it with a right hook that sent him into the ropes. When he came off them he was gone in his legs and I put him down with a left hook. This time he didn’t get up before the count finished.
The referee waved it off.
And the building lost its mind.
Gutta was through the ropes before I finished turning around and he hit me from behind with both arms and we went down to the canvas together.
I let him hold on because my cousin had been here from the very beginning.
From the basements, the alleys and the courthouse to this arena and this moment.
While they announced my new undefeated title, all I could hear was my cousin in my ear. Damn near about to lose his voice.
“THAT’S MY brOTHER. THAT’S THE HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD RIGHT THERE.
” Gutta yelled and it hit me. I’d won! I’d really won the title.
Everything my father wanted, everything he worked for, I got it for him.
This shit was unreal! It was bigger than anything that anyone on the outside could understand.
Coach Ray was in the ring. Legal was climbing through the ropes with my brothers and my mom on his side. I hugged my mom so tight while she cried into my chest. I put my belt in her hands, and we held it in the air together while the whole crowd cheered.
My whole corner was in the ring and the noise was at a level I had never experienced before in my life.
Then Kyla was there.
She had gotten through the ropes somehow and she was in front of me. I picked her up without thinking about it and she wrapped her legs around me. Now, we were on live television in front of millions of people while I kissed her and she kissed me back. The cameras caught every second of it.
When I put her down she was crying and laughing at the same time and she grabbed my face with both hands.
“I’m so proud of you Xavier! You did everything you said that you would!” she said. “You know your father is proud of you.” She cried.
I looked at her and couldn’t say anything back so I just held her. This was really my life. And I had a good ass woman on my side to share it with. She didn’t come with drama, nor was she indecisive. She knew what she wanted and she showed up for me repeatedly.
—
The interviews took forever. After getting pictures with my family, I sent my mom home. It was too crowded and busy for her to stay. She and my brothers left together.
Every camera, every network, every reporter who had a credential wanted two minutes and I gave them all that two minutes they requested because this moment was real and it deserved to be documented.
Legal stood nearby through all of it with that expression on his face that I had been seeing my whole life and understood better now than I ever had before.
He cried real tears from the moment and I knew what it meant to him.
He had promised his best friend that he would look after us.
He had kept that promise.
When the last camera stepped back I moved through the corridor toward the exit and my people cleared a path to the black truck waiting outside. I held Kyla’s arm tight as I led us out of there. The night air hit me when the back doors opened and I stepped out, walking toward the truck.
And then I stopped.
Brielle was standing on the sidewalk twenty feet from the truck.
She had been crying, and not just recently. For a while. Her eyes were red and swollen, she was holding herself like she was trying to keep something in but she was losing the battle. When she saw me she took two steps forward. Ignoring the fact that Kyla was with me.
“Xavier.” Her voice was broken. “I need to talk to you.”
I felt Kyla step up beside me and her hand closed around my arm tight.
I looked at Kyla. Her eyes were moving between me and Brielle and I could see everything she was thinking written all over her face.
“Get in the car and give me just a second,” I said to her quietly.
“Street—”
“Kyla. Please get in the car.”
She looked at me for a long moment. Then she looked at Brielle. Then back at me.
“If you leave me in a car to do this with her right now we are done,” she said.
Flat. No performance behind it. Just the truth and I could tell she meant it.
“I mean that. You get in this car with me and we go. Or you stay here and whatever this is—” she gestured between me and Brielle “—you choose it over me. And that’s it. ”
I looked at her.
I thought about everything she had been. Everything she had given me. The time we’ve spent and how right things felt with her. The way she had just kissed me in the ring tonight in front of twenty thousand people and told me that my father was proud of me.
I looked at Brielle. Crying, and that told me that something had to be seriously wrong. She was standing there shaking and clearly had a problem that she wanted me to know about. She had come here instead of anywhere else she could have gone.
I walked to the truck and put my hand on the door.
And I closed it.
I hit the roof twice with my palm.
Signaling to let the driver know he could pull off.
Immediately, I could hear Kyla calling my phone before the truck reached the end of the block. I looked at the screen. Let it ring. Powered the phone off, put it in my pocket and turned to Gutta who had come up beside me.
“Can you drive us. She too shook up to drive and I need to see what’s going on.” I said.
Gutta looked at Brielle and then at me and pulled out his keys.
—
We got in Gutta’s car. Brielle in the back beside me. Gutta behind the wheel. She handed me her phone without saying anything else. I took it and looked at what was on the screen.
Documents. Photographs. Bank records and communications going back twenty years. Her father’s name attached to things that would have been unthinkable to her a week ago.
Her father was Veteran. It was right here in my face.
She spoke and told me that she went to confront her father about his dealings with BJ. He brushed her off and told her she was crazy. She went back on her own, breaking into his office while they weren’t home. She had found everything she needed herself.
The confirmation of what Legal had suspected, the twenty years of a secret finally cracking open, the man who had sat across Brielle’s dinner table her entire life looking at me with hate that I now understood completely.
He had hated me because I was Hood’s son.
And Hood’s son getting close to his daughter was the one thing that could eventually lead back to what he had done.
“I already called the police,” Brielle said.
Her voice was barely holding together. “I sent them to the house. I have everything they need and I sent it over. I’m so sorry Xavier.
I promise I didn’t know. My father has never given me any reason to think he was this cold, heartless and cruel individual.
I never even suspected he dealt in drugs until I found all his paperwork and ledgers.
I’m going to make this right, although I know you’ll never get back what my father robbed from you. ” she cried.
Gutta looked at me in the rearview.
“We need to get there before the police do. He needs to look you in yo eyes, and you get the justice you see fit before anybody else can make that call.” he said. His voice was cold in a way that I recognized. The same way it got when something was about to happen that couldn’t be taken back.
“Drive then,” I said.