Chapter 15
Street was the heavyweight champion of the world and Brielle’s father was in jail for the shit she did.
Before they got him to the precinct, he was singing like a canary, and placing all of the blame on BJ.
He was immediately picked up too. Letting the justice system handle that, and not taking matters into my own hands when my cousin first found out, that shit was hard as hell.
My uncle had finally gotten his justice.
I should have been on top of the world with all the good shit going on around me.
Instead I was sitting in my house alone for the sixth night in a row staring at a phone that Simone wasn’t answering.
I had called over 100 times since the DNA results dropped.
All them calls, zero answers. I had pulled up to her house twice and knocked until my knuckles hurt and she never came to the door.
When I tried my key on the third visit it didn’t work.
She had changed her locks without saying a word to me about it and that hit harder than anything she could have said out loud.
I had tried going through Brielle.
That lasted about thirty seconds before she shut me down and told me that it wasn’t her business or her place.
Street and Bri had been at his place together since the night of Veteran’s arrest. I had caught Brielle briefly in the hallway and asked her to talk to Simone for me and she had looked at me with genuine sympathy and told me she loved me like family but this was between me and Simone and she was staying out of it completely.
I respected it. That shit didn’t make it easier but I respected it nonetheless.
I was glad for Street though. I meant that from the bottom of everything I had. That man had been in love with Brielle since he was a skinny kid from the hood sitting in a private school cafeteria not knowing if he belonged there.
He had always belonged with her. Anybody who had been around them for five minutes knew it. Kyla was a good woman and I genuinely felt bad for how that ended but Street’s heart had always been in one place and everybody knew it including Kyla, I’m sure.
She had told him to choose and he had chosen. I damn sure didn’t expect this. He was feeling Kyla one day and the next he was back under whatever damn spell Bri had.
That was Street. He had always known what was real to him.
I just wished I could figure out how to fix what was real in my own life.
My phone buzzed on the coffee table.
Sandra texted.
I picked it up.
Sandra: Something is wrong with Amara. I don’t know who else to call. Please come now. I’m at my mother’s address.
She sent an address right after.
I was off that couch and grabbing my keys before I finished reading it.
What the hell had happened to my baby?
—
The address took me to the other side of the city. Forty five minutes out, away from everything familiar, into a stretch of neighborhood that got quieter and more spread out the further I drove.
Houses sitting far apart from each other. Trees. Dark streets with no foot traffic. The kind of area where nobody was watching and nobody would hear anything that happened. Why would Sandra momma live all the way out here?
I noticed all of that and drove toward it anyway because Amara was there and that was the only thing that mattered.
Sandra’s truck was parked outside when I pulled up. The house was dark from the outside except for one light somewhere in the back. I got out and went straight to the door and knocked hard.
No answer.
I knocked again louder.
The door shifted under my hand. It wasn’t latched all the way. I pushed it open and stepped inside.
“Sandra.”
Dark. Quiet. The kind of quiet that made your skin crawl.
“Sandra.” I stepped further in and let the door close behind me.
The lights came on.
A young nigga stepped from behind the door with a gun pressed to the side of my head before I could turn around.
And Tavarus was sitting on the couch across the room with his gun aimed directly at my chest.
I stood completely still.
I ran my hand over my head and let out a slow breath because I already knew exactly what this was and exactly how stupid I had been to walk through that door. When I got that text, I wasn’t thinking about a trap, all I was thinking of was my daughter needing me right now.
Tavarus looked at me with something on his face that wasn’t anger. It was past anger. It was a look that said he’d been waiting a very long time for this moment and was now sitting inside it.
“You really thought I was slow,” he said.
Not a question. “I sat back and watched you move for years. Watched your cousin fight his way up. Watched you corner man your way into legitimate money after you stole mine. Watched you and that little real estate bitch looking at houses.” He tilted his head.
“You thought I just forgot what you did? Or that I was too dumb to figure it out?”
I didn’t say anything.
“I would’ve let it go,” he said. “The kidnapping. The money. I would’ve eventually let that go because business is business. I got jacked, you made your point and Street paid his debt. I didn’t suspect him, we moved on. I was willing to close that chapter.” He paused. “Until my daughter was born.”
The room was still.
“She came out, I looked at her and I already knew. Nothing about that baby looked like me. Not her complexion. Not her features. Nothing of mine.” He leaned forward slightly.
“But I’m a patient man. I waited. Watched her grow.
And the older she got the more I kept seeing a face I recognized but couldn’t place.
Then I thought back, Street came by that one time and you were with him.
Your face kept popping up in my head the older my baby got.
I looked at you and looked at her and the whole thing clicked into place like a puzzle piece.
” He sat back. “Same time Street owed me thirty thousand dollars my wife got snatched. Hundred thousand dollar ransom. I paid it.” He looked at me steady. “That was you.”
Still nothing from me.
“Answer me something,” he said. “And since this is the last conversation you’re ever going to have, answer me honest. Did you take it from her? Did you take the pussy? Or did Sandra give it up willingly.”
I looked at him across that room.
“Since I’m dying today anyway,” I said. “Sandra begged for it. All ten inches of it. Multiple times. She didn’t want to stop. That was a freaky ass old hoe, hell, she was my first old bitch and I won’t lie like she ain’t put it on me. You know how she is.” I taunted this nigga.
Tavarus was quiet for a moment.
Then he laughed. Low and genuine and that was somehow worse than everything else.
“Yeah,” he said. “That sounds about right.” He shook his head once.
“I’ll make sure I keep taking care of your daughter the way I been doing.
She’ll never know her real father died a fuck nigga.
” He looked at the man behind me. “And I might send her mama to meet you too when I’m done thinking about it.
” He raised his chin toward the man holding the gun to my head. “Monte. Handle this.”
“I don’t think that’s happening today.”
The voice came from the back of the house.
Mazi walked out of the hallway with his gun up and aimed at Tavarus and his eyes were cold and steady in a way I had never seen on my little cousin before in my life.
Tavarus looked at him with shock and fear mixed together.
“You set me up,” Mazi said. He kept walking forward until he was in the middle of the room.
“Let me in your operation knowing exactly who I was. Had me moving your product thinking I was getting close to something when the whole time you were using me to send messages to my brother and my cousin.” He kept the gun level.
“Your people killed my father. You played with my family. And now that Veteran is gone and facing everything he’s got coming — you don’t have anybody above you to hide behind now! ”
Tavarus looked at him for a long moment.
“Monte,” he said again. Quieter this time. He wanted Monte to kill me and Mazi now.
“Nah.”
Monte stepped out from behind me.
He walked around so he was visible and he looked at Mazi and I looked at Monte and understood everything in about three seconds. This was Mazi’s boy. The one he had grown up with. The one who had been inside Tavarus’s operation since before Mazi ever walked in. He had gotten Mazi in.
Monte had been the connect the whole time.
“I can’t let you do it,” Monte said to Mazi. “You got too much ahead of you. NFL draft. Your whole life. I’m not letting you carry this.” He looked at Tavarus. “This one’s mine.”
Tavarus looked between them and I watched him calculate his options and come up short. Just as Tavarus was about to pull the trigger…
Monte moved fast.
When it was over Tavarus was on the floor. The room was loud for a second and then quiet again. Monte was already stripping everything off him. Watch. Chain. Phone. The money from his jacket pocket. He worked fast and without hesitation like somebody who had done this before.
When he was done he stood up and looked at Mazi.
“Get your cousin and go,” he said. “I’ll handle everything here. You were never in this house.”
Mazi stared at him. Then nodded. No words needed to be said. Everything was understood.
“Your brother is heavyweight champion of the world, your father just got his justice tonight you getting drafted to the NFL and Melo to the NBA. Don’t let this take all of that away. This nigga Tavarus was a waste of space.” He looked at me. “Take him and go.”
I looked at Monte standing there in that dark house and felt nothing but respect for a man I barely knew. He had just made a decision that most people never had the courage to make.
I nodded as I walked towards the door with Mazi behind me.
“I’m going to get at you,” I told him. “When things settle. I’m coming to find you.”
“I know where I be. Get at me.” he said.
I grabbed Mazi by the arm and we went out the front door and got in my car. I pulled away from that house, drove and didn’t look in the rearview.
Mazi was quiet in the passenger seat for a long time.
Then he said — “Is it always like that?”
“Like what?” I asked, confused by his question.
“That fast. That final? He was gone in the blink of an eye.”
I kept my eyes on the road. “Yeah,” I said. “It is.”
He nodded and looked out the window.
We drove back toward the city in the dark and I thought about Amara. About Sandra. About Simone’s changed locks. About Street and Brielle finally being in the same place after everything it had taken to get them there.
I thought about Monte standing in that house making a choice he could never take back so that a kid with a future didn’t have to.
Some people gave everything they had for the people they loved and never got anything back for it.
I understood that differently tonight than I ever had before.
I got a private call and I ignored it. When my phone rang again, I answered it.
“Deon. Where are you? This is Sandra, I’m using my house phone. Please be careful. Tavarus has taken my phone and my car. I think he might be after you. He knows. I don’t know how, but he knows.” she cried into the phone.
“Calm down. It’ll all be fine. Thanks for the heads up, but I’m out of town right now, so don’t worry or stress about that. Call me a little later, and chill. Okay?”
“Okay. I’m sorry to have bothered you, I was just nervous.”
“You good. We’ll talk later.”
I ended that call feeling fucked up for Sandra. She had to know what kind of nigga she married though. I didn’t trust her as far as I could throw her, so I had to lie to her to protect myself.
After I dropped Mazi off, I sat there and sent a text to Simone.
Me: I know you don’t want to talk to me. I know I hurt you and I know you have every right to feel everything you’re feeling. I’m not asking you to forgive me tonight. I’m just asking you to know that I love you and I’m not going anywhere. Whenever you’re ready I’ll be here.
I put the phone down and waited a few minutes.
She didn’t respond.
But I meant every word and I was willing to wait as long as it took because Simone was worth waiting for. I had never been more sure of that than I was right now. After experiencing what it feels like to be without her, I knew that this is not what I wanted for me.
I was going to be a better man in all aspects moving forward.
Not just for Simone, but for Amara too. They deserved the best me.