The Coldest: Stay Dangerous Part 2 (South Kenton Stories: Foe Dub Fo’ Life #8)

1. Rico

Rico

Haze is spiraling.

Only Wynter Shaw gets kidnapped, taken to a city eight hours away, and hit with a hot shot.

We all rode out for her, with Haze, Shad, Brina’s cousin YC and I finding her. Haze and I split off with Snow–Haze’s idea, because I don’t know what to do or where to go with a bitch overdosing in the back seat.

Haze isn’t crying, but her hands are shaking as she types in an address into her phone.

“She’s not going to make it,” she mumbles as she leans onto the middle console. “Go to this address.”

I take the phone and follow the directions to a highrise in downtown Northupton.

There’s no music on. Just Snow in the backseat, in Haze’s arms, whimpering.

How the fuck did I get here?

But I shut my brain off before I can get far. I can muse about this shit later.

Now… now I need to make sure Haze never feels the pain of living without her twin.

I find a park down an alley and hop out fast, pulling Snow gingerly out of the back and holding her close. Haze finds the back entrance, and knows the code to get in.

There’s no one in the elevator as we climb to the eleventh floor.

She also knows the code to the last apartment, so I’m guessing this is Snow’s place.

My guess is right when we file in and I see the mural of female rappers taking up the entire living room wall.

“There has to be some narcan in this bathroom.” Haze is becoming more frazzled by the second. Snow’s breathing is ragged, and she’s limp in my arms.

I follow her into the ensuite bathroom, walking straight into the shower. I turn it on and step under the dual showerheads.

The water is ice cold, slicing my skin and shirt. Snow jolts in my arms, but I hold her steady to me as I ease onto the floor tiles.

“Where the fuck is it?!” Autumn cries, throwing shit out from under Snow’s sink.

“She don’t need it, Haze,” I say, my gaze locked on the infuriating woman in my arms.

Eleven years. Eleven years since I’ve been this close to her. And even that time was a fever dream, a stolen moment before I signed my life away.

Dirt and dried blood rinse away down the drain. Drops of water gather on her lashes. I feel rather than see the shallow breaths she’s taking.

How much shit has she shot up her veins to not be dead right now?

And why does it matter to me?

This is why I keep my distance. Snow doesn’t deserve my attention. Fasho doesn’t deserve me caring about the shit she does.

A whore.

A junkie.

A cold, calculating, manipulative cunt.

That’s what Wynter Snow Shaw is.

Getting too close is like evoking a mirage. The bullshit melts away, and I start to see the girl who used to make playlists of songs I’d never heard of because she acted like she was too scared to talk about her feelings out loud.

“Turn off the shower.”

Haze reaches in and the water stops. Snow is shivering in my arms, but she’s alert enough to hug herself.

I set her next to me on the tiles before I stand and meet Haze by the sink.

Her eyes are glued to her sister as she rings her hands together. A nervous tick she picked up after she was kidnapped.

I curl my index finger under her chin and tilt her head, so that I have her attention.

“Wash her. Make sure she drinks some electrolytes and water, and then you gon’ give her this.” I take a syringe out of my pocket and hold it up.

Haze’s eyes stretch. “Why–”

“I’m always prepared, Haze. You know that. When I come back, we can go back to the city–”

“No.” Haze snatches the syringe from me, but shakes her head profusely. “She can’t go back there. Not like this… she needs help, Rico.”

“They have rehabs, Haze,” I say, though my mind isn’t even in the building anymore.

The Mathers family should have been taken care of. Depending on if my homie Asa is sleep, I can be there and back in an hour tops.

He owes me a favor anyway.

It’s the least I can do. If anyone is gonna kill Snow, it’ll be me, and I don’t take kindly to another muthafucka tryna take my things away from me.

“She did that already and it didn’t take! She needs something else. Something more drastic.”

Her voice shrinking prompts me to meet her gaze.

She’s unflinching, almost, but I see it. The question in her hazel eyes.

My body stiffens. Fighting itself.

Over a decade I’ve given Haze whatever she wants. No questions asked. She’s never asked for much, so it’s never a daunting task, but the fact remains. No doesn’t exist with her.

Until now.

I poise my mouth to say it. I have to. This is too much. Way too much.

And the fact she doesn’t know it, makes it all the more true.

“You’re going back to Belize, right?”

The no is on the tip of my tongue. It’s the only word I can conjure. So I just blink once, confirming my plans.

Ten minutes with that bitch nigga Pooh has me running scared out of the country. I have no problem admitting to myself that’s the case; the work I’ve done on myself this past year has me accepting all my flaws, and my weakness toward Pooh is one of my biggest.

“I know it’s a big ask–”

“It is,” I grind out. Without thinking, I glance over my shoulder. Snow is curled up in a ball in her shower. The drenched jacket she has on is probably the only thing grounding her with us.

When my gaze shifts back to Haze, her eyebrows are kissing. “Rico… I can’t lose her. Not like this.”

“Haze,” I sigh. “You’re not thinking this through. Once I hit that cruising altitude, I’m off the grid. I don’t check in for weeks, and this trip… I ain’t been back to Belize in a year. I was planning on staying a year.”

“That’s perfect,” she stresses, folding her hands to her chest. “A year is just how long she needs to really detox. You said it yourself, it’s nothing in Belize. No distractions. Just the water. You don’t even have to be around her. You can hire someone–a nurse to take care of her.”

I wipe my face hard, my resolve crumbling by the second. “I’ll kill her, Haze. She comes at me foul in any way and I’ll slit her throat. You know that.”

Tears gather in her eyes as she looks away. “She’s dead either way then,” she whispers, shoulders hunching.

I’m the wrong twin for this. Fredo would give a fuck if Snow lives or dies.

I don’t.

In fact, I’d rather her be dead. You can’t worry about someone who’s rotting in the ground.

Just say yes, Rick.

My jaw clenches at the sound of the voice in my head. It sounds like my inner monologue, but it’s not.

It’s a ghost.

My eyes shift behind Haze, and low and behold, there he is.

My mind’s rendition of Fredo, perched on the sink, elbows resting on his knees as he winks at me.

His own eyes dance between me and Snow, before he grins. Tell her you’ll do it.

I hate this nigga.

“Rico–”

“Fine. But it’s my rules, Haze. Mine. You trusting me with her, so do that implicitly. Don’t be having Shad or Turk try and regulate. In fact, outside of them, mum’s the word. I’m deadass Haze. The first time a nigga ask me about her ass, I’m shipping her straight to you.”

She nods profusely, tears spilling over. “I got you.”

“In pieces.”

Fredo snorts, but I ignore him.

He’s the reason I’m even agreeing to this bullshit.

“Get her clean and dressed and knock her ass out. I’ll be back.”

I don’t wait for her to reply, stomping out of the bathroom, tracking water onto the fake wood floors.

I can’t even take joy in fucking up her crib. I don’t even rub my boots into her shaggy white rugs.

Fuck Haze. Fuck Fredo. Fuck Shad.

Fuck Snow.

My phone is out before the elevator doors close.

The line clicks over, and I speak immediately.

“I’m in town.”

Asa snorts on the other side. “The fuck you doin’ here?”

“I’m finna be there in…” I check the GPS. “Six minutes.”

We both click at the same time, and I sigh.

You frontin’ so hard, Rick.

I roll my eyes, refusing to meet Fredo’s gaze in the mirror until the doors open to the parking garage.

Am I crazy for hallucinating my brother for the past five years? Probably. Or maybe it’s not a hallucination. Maybe it really is his ghost, following me around, trying to guide me because he knows I’m lost without him.

It wasn’t long between when I got word he was killed, and when he showed up to me.

Soon as I touched down in Belize after his wake, the nigga was right there.

I go back and forth between the hallucination and ghost theories.

If he’s a hallucination, then maybe I’m not as fucked up as I think I am.

Maybe my mind does know right from wrong, and my conscience just presents as the most solid nigga I’ve ever known so I could at least pretend to listen.

But then, if my brother is a ghost, then he’s just as lost as I am, out in the world. He ain’t leave me, because his soul is right here, going through life as best he can, keeping me as levelheaded as he could without being able to physically restrain me.

But that would mean I have no conscience at all. That would mean when our egg split in the womb, his half got all the goodness, leaving nothing but all the bad for me. All Pooh’s genes, and none of Ma’s.

I can’t decide which is better.

What if it’s both?

“Shut up,” I growl aloud as I speed toward Asa’s grandmother’s crib. Northupton is a casino town, like most of Nevada. But where the mob built up Vegas, Black people built up Northupton.

Asa’s granny lives away from all the glitz and glamour, on a lonely desert road. His van is parked in the driveway, next to a fucking cactus.

I pull in behind him and bounce out, just as he opens his front door and shuffles out.

“I’m guessing this isn’t a social call,” he says, grinning as we dap each other up.

We met in the Marines. Specifically, the off-the-books MARSOC unit I was in during my first tour. I’m Black, and he’s Jewish, so naturally we bonded being surrounded by a bunch of racist white Christian muthafuckas.

“No, it isn’t.”

He gestures for me to follow him. I’ve only been here once, years ago, when I had to make sure he was straight after taking a bullet to the chest. I hate this city, but for him, I braved it for a few hours.

Nothing has changed. Especially the finished basement that could put Shad’s computer room to shame.

“You know the Mathers family, right?” I ask, taking the dry shirt he hands me from his drawer to change into.

Asa crumbles up his face as we take our seats at his dashboard.

“The brothers all got hit up tonight. It’s all over the Net… oh shit! That was you?” He grins at me, mirth twinkling in his blue eyes before turning toward his keyboard.

“Somethin’ like that… but, I need the whole family gone. Tonight.”

Asa’s fingers still, before he turns to me again. This smile is a little more unhinged. He scratches at his chest, where the scar underneath his shirt prolly healed ugly as hell.

“And how do you figure, that lil’ ole Asa Goldstein can make moves like that?”

“You can’t,” I shrug. That much is true. Asa Goldstein has one kidney left, half a stomach, and hasn’t so much as done a pushup in prolly five years.

“Baaaabe, you said we were–oh! Hi Rico.”

We both turn as Asa’s wife bounds toward us. I stand so we can hug.

“But she can.”

“I can what?” Ingrid asks, her head comically turning to and fro.

“I got a job for you.”

Ingrid’s lips part, showing all thirty-two of her teeth as she hugs me tighter. She doesn’t even come up to my chest, so I gotta tilt my head down, but I can feel the excitement vibrating off her.

“My fee went up, but for you it’ll just be a hundred.”

“Bunny,” Asa sighs. “You don’t even know what the job is.”

Ingrid just shrugs, her eyes still on me, expectantly.

Anyone else, it would be a no go. Even my niggas. Nutty has gone soft, now that he’s a father, and he was the only one besides me that operates outside of the code.

No women and children.

But that shit don’t matter to me. Not right now. Any muthafucka that got Mathers DNA gotta go. Babies and bitches included.

Which is why I’m operating outside of Foe Dub. Asa’s loyalty only extends to the muthafuckas inside this crib this second.

Same with Ingrid White. Five-two Black girl who weighs ninety pounds, from Kansas of all places.

But that ninety pounds is all muscle. And she prolly knows a thousand ways to kill someone without a weapon. After all, she’s the one who shot Asa with a jimmy-rigged staple gun.

“Entire Mathers family.”

Her eyes light up as she shakes out of my hold to start bouncing on her toes. “Everyone?”

“Yup. No one is spared. Not even pets.”

She squeals as she looks to Asa. “Can I? Please? Can I?”

There was a time Asa ain’t let Ingrid leave the crib. Her mind is warped so fucking bad, I thanked whoever twice we were able to save Haze from possibly becoming like her.

But love seems to soften her, and now, she’s able to be the killing machine she was trained to be, and still have somewhere soft to land after a job.

“I need to talk to Rico more. Can you give us some privacy?”

Ingrid freezes midjump, before rolling her eyes and stomping out.

“You sure you’re safe with her here? I know yo granny be knocked out like mine be.”

Asa waves me off as he begins scouring the cloud or whatever for these niggas. He doesn’t like to show Ingrid that she has his nose wide open, even though it’s plain as day.

“Bunny loves Bubbee too much to harm me… again. It’ll take me all night to compile all the dossiers, so give her two weeks. No–three, in case she has to go to another location.”

“That’s straight. I’m going back to Belize tonight, so when it’s done, just hit me on my satellite phone.”

“You gonna tell me why my girl is wiping out bloodlines?”

He glances over his shoulder briefly.

I almost laugh at the irony of it all. I was the one who hand delivered Ingrid here for his own form of punishment.

Asa was always recon. She infiltrated us and shot him for no reason at all; it wasn’t even a direct order from her handlers.

I thought he’d build his strength and shoot her in the chest. I never would have thought, years later, he was her handler, and her husband.

And now, I was about to whisk Snow off to Belize.

To my own grandmother’s house.

“They took something from me,” I shrug.

Asa snorts. “Bunny’s probably right outside. She’ll walk you out.”

Sure enough, she is, not even pretending to not eavesdrop. She bounces on the tips of her toes as we exit the house, her smile growing bigger and bigger.

“She must be special if you’re here. I hope next time I see you, I can meet her.”

I shake my head, giving her one last hug before I climb back in the car and drive off.