Epilogue
UZI REAVES
Two months later
“Didn’t I just walk over here and correct you like ten minutes ago?
You keep aiming too low. The goal is for you to aim higher and bust nothing but head shots.
The goal is to kill a nigga that breaks into your house.
Not shoot them in the leg. Make your gun go higher than that,” I said, stopping in my tracks, as I reached one of my students. Her name was Crystal.
Of course, the news station asked me what made me start this program up.
I was honest, telling them that I was tired of turning on the news, and seeing so many women losing their lives, simply because they didn’t know how to protect themselves.
Once I gave more of a back story, that’s when I went into detail, sharing with them a little bit about my program.
The main thing that I kept preaching was awareness.
A lot of women lacked in that department.
They were in their own little worlds, feeling like certain shit might not happen to them.
We all know that the battery was placed in my back months ago, learning about the robbing and killing of Yolanda.
That was our friend. You know, a few months ago that her fiancé was on trial because they wanted to hit his ass with conspiracy.
He was sentenced last month to thirty years after prosecutors proved he helped orchestrate the robbery, and killing of Yolanda.
I think about Yolanda often. Stories like hers is the reason I was going so heavy with this class.
Women deserved a chance. I wanted them all to have a chance at defending themselves.
To make it home to their loved ones. Yolanda wasn’t given that chance, so I was doing everything in my power to train different women, so that they wouldn’t have to share the same story as her, and others that were wrongfully killed.
With all this promo that my program was getting, when it was time for the ladies to sign up last month, the site crashed multiple times, due to so many people logging on at one time.
I knew that I was going to have a big turnout this time, which is why I opened the spots up to 80 girls.
With that, I had to switch things up this time around.
Meaning, all 80 girls wouldn’t come in at one time.
Everyone had their designated days that they would come in, which would make the class sizes smaller, and allow me and my team to be able to tend to everyone, and still have it feel like an intimate setting.
“Uzi, I’m so scared that one of these bullets are going to fly back, and kill me,” Crystal said to me, literally standing there with the gun in her hands, shaking. She wasn’t the first woman to come into this class and have this fear. I’ve heard that same line far too many times.
Crystal was a young girl. Only 21- years old.
On the first day of class, when I had the girls introduce themselves, her story stood out to me.
She was telling us how she worked at a popular restaurant here in Miami, and how toxic the atmosphere was.
She shared that she worked amongst a lot of petty ass girls, that were always bullying her.
She’s even gotten into a few fights before at the job, in which she got her ass beat in all the fights, so she was coming here to learn some kind of protection.
She admitted to being soft as hell, green, and she would often allow people to take advantage of her and bully her.
She came to the right place because I was going to get her right.
“Crystal, please! Girl, you know how many people shoot their gun every day? You don’t think that half the world would be dead right now if every time someone shot a gun, a bullet flew back?
Retire that dumb ass theory right now, please.
The only thing that’s going to fly back at you is a little kick from the recoil.
That’s not enough to kill you. Pretend that it’s one of them hoes from your job standing in front of you, and please take the whole upper half of that paper off.
Go ahead,” I said, raising the target paper a little higher for her.
She got in her stance that we taught her, but I had to hit her legs a little bit, so that she could spread them.
I fixed her arms too, having her aim higher, and it took about ten seconds, but she finally went ahead, and she squeezed the trigger, looking like some damn body this time.
Satisfied with that she did, I clapped my hands.
“Better. Put the gun down and reset. I’ll be back over here to watch you again,” I let her know, and then I walked off.
I chose to stand in the back of the range. My eyes danced around the entire place, watching all these women get professional gun training. I just knew that Wesson was proud of me. I could feel it.
I was using my gift. A gift that he told me that I had many, many years ago. This entire range was filled with women who wanted to learn what they had to do to protect themselves, and their family, and they were getting trained by the best.
I turned my head, so that I could look to the right of me, and they landed on Riot.
I offered her a position to come in the mornings to train, and to know Riot is to know that she didn’t like people like that, so I expected her to turn me down.
She kept true to her word, and she called me, wanting to know what the schedule was going to be.
She showed up. She’s been showing up, and you want to know what’s crazy?
The new girls here actually liked her mean ass.
I think it’s because they knew about the shit she was out here doing in the streets, so they felt like it was somewhat of an honor to go under her wing in class.
Riot was training two girls right now, fixing their position, and walking them through how to shoot properly. Just as I was made for this, Riot was too. Riot was going to be something big. I could feel it in my gut that she was going to be one of the biggest to come out of Miami.
So yeah, this was pretty much how life was going for me.
I was giving my all to these classes. I started this class on a hunch.
Thought it was something that I could do, so I tried it out, and it’s been good to me.
Business at my hookah lounge that I owned with my sister was still good.
In fact, we even locked in a contract with Dolo’s new security company, and he took over the security at the lounge.
Dolo’s security company was going to be something big.
That boy was running a tight ship over there, and I loved what he was doing.
The laundry business was good too. Dolo had his men swap out the entire 24 hours that it was open.
Those dudes that tried to run in there and rob the place never came back.
That was the last time that I had to pull my shit out on someone in an attempt to use it.
That’s because life has been so quiet lately. I hoped it stayed like this.
I did keep true to my word and funded the funeral arrangements for Tamera, and her children. Although it really wasn’t much left of them because they had been buried under that dirt for so long, at least the family finally got answers, and peace, knowing that they had been found.
My kids were doing good. You know they kept me busy.
Loco was still hell bent on me giving him just one more, and then he promised that he would never ask me for another one.
At first, when he started asking me that, my answer had been “hell no”.
These days, I told him to just give me a little more time. That’s where we were right now with it.
That’s all for me. That hot head Uzi, that was quick to pull my gun out if someone even looked at me the wrong way had retired. Don’t get me wrong, that person still resided there, but I would only have to bring her out from time to time.
These days, protecting my peace just felt so much better than having to prove a point. It took me years to have this kind of mindset though. When you live a life where the goal was to protect your peace and stop trying to live strictly to survive, you’ll realize that it’s much better this way.
Dominique ‘Dolo’ Shaw
“One more nigga, and then we’re done. Come on,” I said, standing over my brother, holding the weighted ball in my hands. I’d just finished doing my last set of ab work with the weighed ball, and I was waiting for Diego to finish with his set.
After Diego was shot, he started his journey with physical therapy.
With that, it caused for him to somehow ease his way into working out.
Because I wanted to fully support my brother in his recovery journey, I started going along with him to the gym, and before you knew it, it wasn’t long before I started throwing on some basketball shorts, and gym shoes, getting in the gym with him.
I’ve always been a slim dude, with a little muscle here and there.
I could eat a bunch of bullshit, but my size stayed the same.
I got in the gym, and suddenly, that shit started feeling like therapy for me.
Lifting weights, running on the treadmill, walking on the stair master, and all the other crazy shit that I liked to do was all therapeutic for me now.
I used to talk shit to Loco, Phantom, and all the other cocky niggas in my life, telling them that they were big as fuck, but now I was in the gym, ready to get just as big as those niggas.
“You want to be a fuckin fitness instructor so bad, bitch!” Diego shot to me, down on his back, dripping in sweat, looking like he wanted to slap the shit out of me.
I laughed at him, as I continued to stand over him. He did his last sit-up that I was waiting on, and once he finished, that’s when he tossed the ball down on the side of him.