Chapter 17
Elijah Montclair
We were having a small candlelight vigil for Elias tonight.
It was tucked away, very low key, behind one of our family warehouse locations.
It was the original Montclair warehouse.
The one that my great- great grandfather started out with.
Not many people knew about this spot. It was one of those spots that was damn near an historic landmark.
We kept it preserved, so this wasn’t a spot where we worked out of.
Before shit really got big within the Montclair organization… before the big money… before the big drugs, the trucks, this is what my great- great grandfather started out with.
Walking into the warehouse this evening, after not coming down here for a few years, I promise you could still smell the hustle that went into it. The grind, the long nights, and all the ambition that he had when he started this shit many years ago.
One of the last times that I came down to this spot, I had Elias with me.
I remember us talking about the plans that we had.
We talked about leaving our mark in the game the same way that the Montclair men before us had done.
All those dreams came to an end the moment that my brother was gunned down right in front of me.
I haven’t been the same since that shit.
I haven’t slept. Haven’t eaten anything.
I felt like I was walking around like a fuckin zombie.
As if I wasn’t hurting enough behind that, I got word that Riot was never hit that night, and that Dolo’s brother had survived the shooting.
That nigga was in the hospital recovering, while the plan for me, and my family was to bury my little brother tomorrow.
You would think with all the shit that I had going on, that Eduardo would have spared me, telling me that we could push the payment date back, but that didn’t happen.
That nigga never left town, and he pulled up to my spot to collect.
I paid him his money, and he never sent his condolences about Elias.
Fucked up thing is that he knew my brother was killed.
I can’t tell you what my plan was going to be going forward.
After we laid my brother to rest tomorrow, I may get out of Miami for a little while.
The night my brother was killed, I had been hellbent on going after Riot, and Dolo.
I was thirsty to get at them. I had family in my ear, telling me that I needed to chill, and lay low for a little while because if I tried to come at them on my own, I was going to get buried next, just like my brother.
I had no crew to back me. I knew Dolo was looking for me. I couldn’t go to war with that nigga on my own. At first, I thought I could, but realistically, I knew I couldn’t.
He was going to want me dead for what we did to his brother.
My father wasn’t going to back me either because that nigga was so angry at me.
He was blaming me for what happened to Elias.
He felt like I failed at protecting him.
Mind you, this nigga failed at fuckin protecting us.
He was so mad at us because of the drugs that were stolen from us, that he went on for weeks without talking to us.
If we were in some kind of communication with each other, we could have told him all the shit that we had on our back, and he could have helped us.
He was too busy worried about the family name that he felt we ruined, so he wasn’t any help for us.
Right now, we were posted at the back lot of the warehouse.
The emotions out here were heavy. This was a private candlelight with just family, and close friends.
We couldn’t advertise this shit because I knew the kind of nigga that Dolo was.
He would come air it out if we had took to social media, telling the whole world where my brother services were going to be.
We had security out here. They were making sure to walk the premises, and they had orders to gun anyone, or anything down that didn’t have any business here.
No women were here. No children either. Only men.
We had to come this way because even though the address was confidential, and even though it wasn’t going to be a big event, we couldn’t be too trusting and have women, and innocent children here, just in case shit did go left.
There were hundreds of handles that flickered against the concrete.
Pictures of my brother were framed, set up at the front, and in each picture, he was laughing, and smiling, showing all 32 teeth.
Elias was a street nigga at heart, but he was the biggest jokester.
He loved to laugh. He loved having a good time.
Nigga loved to pull pranks and shit. Wherever he was at right now, if he was able to look down at us and see us, I’m sure he was somewhere laughing, calling me all kinds of bitch niggas, and hoe ass niggas because of the way that I had been crying.
We were twins, but our personalities were much different from each other.
While he was always laughing and joking, I’ve always been the more serious twin.
When we put those black balloons in the sky for my brother, I felt as if that’s when it hit me that he was really gone.
I turned to look to my right, and that’s where I spotted my father.
He was standing there with his arms folded below, and there were dark frames that took up just about his entire face, so you couldn’t really tell if he was crying or not.
He wasn’t speaking to me. He hasn’t said two words to me ever since the night that I called him, telling him what happened to Elias.
Niggas could be hypocritical as fuck. He was the same nigga that brought me, and my brother into this fuckin life.
He was the one that had been telling us since we were kids that this life was going to be waiting for us once we were old enough.
He had to have known the shit that we were up against. He was just looking for someone to blame, and sadly, I was the one.
I felt like there was nothing that was going to keep me in Miami anymore. I wanted to go somewhere else and start the fuck over. Probably get the fuck away from this street life. Once I said my goodbyes to my brother tomorrow, Miami was going to be a thing of the past for me.
Meanwhile… On The Way To the Candlelight
Dominique ‘Dolo’ Shaw
“How we looking in there? Everybody got they vest on? Look to the nigga that’s next to you, and make sure that his vest is on, and make sure that it’s on correctly.
Everyone needs a weapon in their fuckin hands.
Don’t wait until we get out of the van to reach for a weapon.
Have that shit on you right now. The location may be ducked off, but it’s a chance that they might still be expecting us, so we need to be ready.
Stick to the motha fuckin play. I’m not leaving that fuckin site unless I see Elijah down on his ass with a fuckin bullet to his head!
” I spat, talking into the walkie- talkie, needing these niggas to feel me.
We were pulling up and were four vans deep.
It was damn near sixty of us. I told ya’ll before that money talks.
Miami would forever be that city where all you had to do was pay up if you wanted something to fall in your hands.
I’ve been hunting, letting word get around that I had fifty bands for anyone that could put me in the same room as Elijah.
Somehow, I got in touch with one of the security guards that was working the candlelight tonight.
He was able to find me, let me know what the play was, and I made a promise to him, telling him that I had fifty racks for him if he came through for me.
I told that nigga that if he made us walk into a trap, that I was killing him, along with anyone, or anything that he loved.
He assured me that he wasn’t on any bullshit with me, so here we were, pulling up deep.
“Copy. We on it,” someone said back into the walkie-talkie.
Every man that I had in charge of each van spoke back, let me know that they heard me, and that they were ready.
I dropped the walkie- talkie, and I looked over at Riot.
Her vest was on, and she was holding a Draco in her hands.
She was ready for this shit. As much as I wanted to have her sit it out, while the niggas took care of it, it’s not what she wanted.
She wanted in with all the smoke, and I was letting her.
“Come here,” I called out for her, and she quickly walked over to me, standing right in front of me.
I checked her vest, making sure that it was on her securely.
She was good. I checked her pockets, seeing that she had extra magazines inside that were already loaded.
Her hair was tied back into a knot, and she had a bedazzled ski mask that was sitting on the seat, that she was going to place on before we got out of the van.
She didn’t look nervous, and that was the part that made her dangerous.
I’ve taken plenty niggas with me on “a ride”.
Niggas would be in that van, leg bouncing up and down, shaking, fearing the unexpected.
Riot wasn’t like that though. She was chilling.
You would think that I was getting ready to take her to a baseball game right now or something, judging by how calm she was.
“I see you already got the extra mags in your pockets. What about a knife? Just in case you get close and got to slice a nigga. I know that’s your go to move,” I voiced, and she smiled at me, while bending down for a second, just so she could pull her pants leg up, and show me that she had a sharp knife tucked away in her sock.