2. Rico
Rico
Asa and Ingrid are gracious enough to lend us their jet. Haze is dropped off in Kenton first. Turk is on the tarmac waiting for her. I don’t get out.
I tell myself it’s because I don’t wanna answer any questions, that I don’t want any reminders that I’m doing the right thing, that I should do whatever Haze asks of me, even if it’s to my detriment.
So instead, I text him, telling him to take care of her, before I turn off the phone I use in the States.
He knows I’m in a mood, so he stays on the tarmac when Haze brings up my duffel that he packed for me with all my essentials. I check it while she goes into the bedroom to check on Snow.
My satellite phone. Another cell. Two macbooks and a PC laptop. Passport, cash, and… a Scrappy Doo stuffed animal.
My lips twitch before I stuff everything back inside.
“Okay,” Haze sighs. I stand and pull her into a hug. She chokes down a sob before squeezing me tighter.
“Thank you,” she breathes.
“I’ll hit you when we settled in.”
She nods, and then she’s gone.
We’re cleared for takeoff before they’re out of the private airstrip.
When Snow first broke up with me, I chucked it up to her being upset. She’d come back.
But then, she didn’t. And a line was drawn, when Turk, Fredo and I couldn’t find her, and Haze’s worry turned into hate.
My Hazey isn’t built for hate. It was killing her, wishing death on her sister. So I held it for her. It was easy enough; the bitch left me high and dry, anyway, and I finally had an excuse to be outwardly hostile to her.
But, even that got old. Especially when it wasn’t reciprocated. I annoyed Snow. Maybe even grated her nerves. But it was obvious that even though she dumped me, she didn’t hate me.
Or so I thought.
Until she fucked Set.
And then my hostility and hate for the junkie in the back of the plane became a part of me. Permanently inside the blood that pumps in my veins.
And now she’s all mine for the foreseeable future.
I could kill her. I could skin her alive, while she begs for forgiveness. I could even keep her high off heroin, just to see how she nods off when she’s all alone.
I bet even her precious Shaddy doesn’t know she dabbles in that.
Killing herself. Not even slowly.
She doesn't know that only I have the authority to take her life.
She’ll find out soon.
I’m so giddy I can’t even sleep on the plane. Telling Nan about our guest will invite more questions than answers, so I send her an email to ready my special guest wing at our villa.
She’ll do as I ask, and I’d rather her interrogate me in person than in the air.
You can’t kill her, Rick.
I roll my eyes and turn my head. The stewardess has already retired for the flight, so I don’t bother answering Fredo in my head.
“Why can’t I?”
He’s sitting next to me, in the same fit he’s always in.
The last one I’d seen him in, when I popped back in the city a couple months before he died.
White tee with a birch silhouette pressed on it, one of Ty-Ty’s prototypes for the clothing line he abandoned.
Jeans, and J’s. His TUNE chain, too, diamonds dancing on his chest. His hair is down, with streaks of blond all throughout that hide the big ass tattoo on his neck.
I’d asked him who convinced him to bring that back, and that’s when he told me about the young bitch who had him all fucked up. We laughed about it.
I wish we could laugh about it again.
Fredo folds his arms and smirks. “All this time, and you still love her.”
I scoff. Even in my head, the nigga is talking bullshit. “Cap.”
“Nah,” he says, chuckling. “Actual, factual. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be plotting.”
“You don’t know me nigga,” I say, waving him off.
“Nigga, I am you. And you know I always fucked with Snow. Maybe when she gets sober y’all can make something shake.”
This nigga is tripping, which means I’m tripping. “She fucked Set.”
Fredo just shrugs. That’s all he fucking does sometimes. “You don’t give a fuck about that.”
“Yeah, that’s where you wrong.”
“I mean, yeah, yo feelings hurt–”
“Negative–”
“But, if by some way you get out of your own ass and y’all, I’on know, talk, her fucking with Set don’t mean shit. You know him, and you know her. Neither of them was in love.”
“I’d have to have feelings for them to be hurt, Fred. I don’t feel shit for that bitch back there. And even if I did, she fucked my day one. Repeatedly. For years.” I lick my lips and clench my jaw to shut the fuck up. If I think about it too hard, I start wanting to curse his ass out.
“You can’t curse me out, nigga. I wanted to dead it before anything happened, but that pride of yours… besides, you burned her. I’on know, Rick. It sounds like y’all pretty even, and that’s just the shit y’all know about each other.”
“Why can’t you just rest peacefully? I don’t wanna talk about Snow.”
“I’ll be here as long as you need me, Rick. And you need me, especially now.” He chuckles as he settles into the seat and closes his eyes.
Fredo never got on my nerves this bad when he was alive.
My security team meets us on my private airstrip when we land. Snow is still knocked, so I carry her off the plane and place her in the back of the car waiting for us.
“Everything’s been copacetic, jefe,” Reno tells me. A distant cousin, he was educated in the States but that nigga is as thorough as they come, which is why he’s my head of security at our estate.
“Stop calling me that shit,” I grumble as we make our way to the villa.
He meets my gaze in the rearview mirror and grins. “You know, Fredo said something about you being tripped up by a girl with freckles a long time ago. This her?”
I lean up so my head is in the front with him. “Spread the word with our primos, cuzzo. Anyone look at her, touch her, shit, think about her, they goin’ on the boat. That bitch falls and can’t get up, she better stay on the fuckin’ floor. Am I clear?”
This nigga just grins harder. “Yeah, I’ll spread the word. But I’m not leaving her on the floor, primo. Dramatic ass.”
I lean back in my seat. “Well, you got enough sense to not take it beyond that. Other niggas don’t.”
He snaps his fingers like he forgot something. “She the reason I had to reinforce the chains in that room? Rico, the fuck you got going?! Ay, you know what? Don’t tell me shit. And they call NiNi crazy.”
“Any nigga who goes by NiNi willingly is crazy,” I mutter, making us both chuckle.
Niggas swear I’m Luney, and I don’t deny it.
But there’s a reason I don’t really bring my niggas to Belize. Ain’t no reason to have a crossover episode, and Nutty doesn’t need any bright ideas.
We pass the boutique resort my family built and runs and travel down the road to where my family resides.
While Nan was slumming it in Kenton, she sent every penny she could back home, and she wasn’t the only one.
Her siblings did the same thing, and now we all live by the beach.
At least, most of the elders do. The young wild niggas still go back and forth to the States.
My villa is closest to the resort, since Nan is the most hands on with it, though it’s still half a mile down the beach.
Usually, when I come home, I breathe easier. But this stay is unlike any other stay, and I can’t bring myself to relax.
“Need help?” Reno asks as he shifts the car into park.
“Yeah. Keep Nan ‘nem busy while I get her settled.”
He nods and turns off the whip as I throw my duffel on my back and start gathering Snow in my arms. She’s dead weight, still, and if I didn’t know any better, and heard her snores, I’d swear she was dead.
Reno skips ahead of me, yelling in Spanish for Nan, while I turn right immediately and walk through two hallways to my special guest wing.
The wing I had designed for if I ever follow through on my plans to kill Pooh.
I bypass the sitting room and enter the bedroom. One of my cousins is a carpenter, so all the furniture is handmade from locally sourced wood. Sheets a brilliant white. Reinforced and treated windows and sliding doors that lead to the beach directly.
It’s fun to dump Snow onto the California king bed and go into the bathroom to get a first aid kit. Most of her cuts have scabbed over, so I just apply ointment to her bald head and face, as well as that track mark on her arm.
Satisfied that she’ll live, I put it away, then chain her to the specially made metal chain deadbolted to the wall beside the bed. It’s long enough for her to go to the bathroom, and even the sitting room.
I wanted to outfit her neck, but I let her make it, and chain her ankle instead.
The only mercy she’ll get from me.
She’ll be out for a few more hours, so I feel comfortable locking her inside, then locking up her wing, so I can update the house.
When I turn, Nan is already there, narrowing her eyes at me, playing with her locs.
“Hit me!” Reno yells from the front of the house. I’m sure Nan went upside his head a few times, and he needs to ice it.
“?Quién está ahí, Ricky?” she hisses, shifting her eyes behind me.
I smirk. She’d never admit it, but my aunt Aree getting killed fucked her up for years.
She was no better than Ma, staying cooped up in her room, or hanging with Ty-Ty’s Granny, reminiscing on simpler times.
I thought Fredo dying would be her last straw, but these last few years, Nan has become a spring chicken.
I missed this side of her, even if the reasons behind it are so bullshit.
“No one, Nan. You cooked?”
“You know I fucking cooked, Ricky. Now, don’t lie to me again. Who the hell is chained up in that room?!” she says in Spanish.
All she does is speak in Spanish now. Like she renounced everything from Kenton.
“It’s a girl. Haze’s sister.”
Her face balls up as she stops fingering her locs.
“She off that shit. I’m helping her get clean,” I say, answering her unspoken question.
But that’s not enough for Nan.
“Ricky–”
“You’re not to help her. You’re not to intervene. You do, and you know what I’m on.” I take a step into her space so she knows I mean business.
Her eyes stretch before she bares her teeth at me. It’s almost comical, since she maybe comes to the middle of my stomach, but she still tries to come off menacing.
“Cabrón,” she spits, before turning and stalking off, her locs slapping against me.
She won’t speak to me for a little, but I successfully put her in her place, and that’s worth the trade-off.
Picking up my forgotten duffel, I amble to my own suite, and take a much needed shower.
I keep clothes here, so I never pack any.
Slipping on joggers, socks, and a black wife beater, I grab the Scrappy Doo stuffed animal and pass three doors until I stop at a door with blue and green marker all over it.
The door is ajar, but I still knock to teach the occupant about privacy.
“I’m in the bed!” a small voice yells.
Pushing the door open, I smirk at the ruffling of sheets.
“You telling stories, huh?”
The moving lump in the bed freezes. I take a seat on the bed and snatch the comforter back.
“Tío!” the little boy gasps, grabbing at the comforter. “I’m supposed to be sleep! Nan said–”
“Nan is sleep, Mars. Like you should be. But I got something for you.”
I lift Scrappy into his field of vision, and I’m rewarded with a snaggle tooth smile.
Mars grabs the toy and hugs it, letting me take in his hair. It’s so much longer than it was a year ago, pulled back out of his face into a braided ponytail.
Little arms try to connect behind my back as my nephew hugs me tight.
“I missed you, tío,” he mumbles into my stomach.
I hug him back just as tight, tickled by his accented English. “I missed you more, Mars.”
I’d facetime of course, but kids don’t give a fuck about that. He’d only be tuned in if I was chewing him out. It’s nice to be in person, even if the older he gets, the more he looks like his pops.
The more he looks like me.
He leans back and grins. “You missed my birthday.”
“No I didn’t. It’s today, silly billy. That’s why I got you Scrappy Doo.”
His grin widens. The nigga loves to lie, just like me.
“Gotcha!” he chuckles, grabbing his new toy.
“You got school tomorrow, my boy. I ain’t expect you to be up-up.”
“Can you tell me a bedtime story? About Daddy?” He folds his hands and tries for a puppy dog face, and since he only turned five, it still works.
Tell him the reason why you got him Scrappy.
“Aight,” I say to both of them. “Settle in.”
Mars pulls the covers over him and lays down with Scrappy tucked underneath his arm. I turn down his nightlight, and settle into the arm chair next to his bed. Fredo’s leaning on the wall, smiling at his seed.
The son he never met. The one he barely got to even know about. The one who has his whole face.
“Aight, so, one thing about Fred was…”