41. Rico
Rico
The back hallway of the South Kenton Community Center is in a tizzy. From my vantage point in the corner, next to the ceremonial big ass check I’m to present, I see all the aides and staffers and volunteers trying to direct traffic and get Slime ready for his punk ass speech.
It’s no secret the nigga has presidential aspirations.
From what I can gather, he’s supposed to be announcing his mayoral run after I present the check.
The current mayor is a Birch Baby himself, from Pooh’s time, but he’s not seeking reelection, which is the only reason Slime’s young ass has a shot.
His cold eyes find their way to me as his mother straightens his tie.
Whoever is sponsoring his political ambitions is cool enough with Pooh to where he can put his foot down and niggas listen.
Luney is back good in any hood, and I don’t have to worry about my tires getting shot out on a random Tuesday.
I thought I would feel a way, having Pooh come to my rescue, but honestly, it’s nice not having to cultivate a full-proof plan without actually killing this nigga, since I know that no matter what, it isn’t what Fred would want.
And apparently, I’m the only muthafucka who actually adheres to what he would want.
I blow him a kiss, but quickly decide that’s not enough, so I push myself off the wall, grab my big ass check, and stroll right up to him.
Fiorella beams at me before finishing Slime’s tie. “Is my little red planet here today?”
“Ma, how you know Mars?”
“We went to Mass the past Sunday and Mars got to meet his Nonna,” I grin, leaning in to kiss her cheek.
“He has such good manners, Gio. I know you’re busy with your campaign, but you really should make time.” She lightly chastises him, before patting his chest gently. “I’m gonna go find your brother.”
As soon as she leaves, Slime takes a step closer. “You clearly ain’t learned shit from putting my mama in yo line of fire.”
I can’t help but roll my eyes at this nigga.
“Is my nephew yo son or not? If you wasn’t on bunk you could have been the one to take him to meet the fam.
Now I gotta be the good son Fiorella needs.
Gianna’s a lil’ sad we can’t be siblings who kiss, but I promised to put her on the lil’ homies–ah ah ah.
” I plant my fist on his chest and look around, cheeks hurting from smiling.
“You wouldn’t want all these good people to know the nigga wanting to be mayor may dress it up, but he’s still only a low down thug from the projects.
You know, yo anger scares Fiorella, Giovanni.
You ain’t helping yo case to be around my nephew right now. ”
Slime swipes my fist off him, clenching his jaw. “You think you hot shit because you got Pooh to pull some strings. Yo day is coming, Luney. Sooner than you think. And I hope to God you made it right with Him or you prolly never gon’ see Fred again.”
I chuckle once, shaking my head. “You so blinded by yo anger, you gon’ end up doing some shit you can’t come back from.
Just like I know you Ford tough, you know my get down.
So ask yourself; why the fuck I aint end this shit a long time ago?
Why have I spared you over and over and over again?
‘Cause I’m a good person?” I tilt my head to the left.
“‘Cause I feel guilty for lying to you?” My head tilts to the right.
“‘Cause I haven’t had the space, time, and opportunity to truly make you wish you were dead? No, dumbass. Get a clue, nigga. And get the fuck over it. Everyone else has.”
This nigga ain’t mature enough to be my mayor. I’m fasho voting for whoever runs against him.
Even as the press conference drones on, and I’m on stage, I’m over this shit. I’m only here as a representative for the Second Chance Foundation as a favor to Roe. Technically, I’m Vice Chairman of the Board, so I’m not out of place. I just didn’t want to leave Snow’s bed this morning.
And she knows it, too, the way she arches her back in an unprovoked nude I have to turn the brightness down on my phone to see and admire.
She knows exactly what she’s doing. Her new mirror came last night, and instead of waiting for me to set it up, this is how she shows me the position of it in her room.
I’m in the middle of telling her all the shit I’m gonna do to her facing the mirror when the mistress of ceremonies announces my cue. I put my phone away and walk up to the podium, scanning the room before leaning in.
It’s mostly community members, very little BBs which means very little security. It’s not that odd, since we’re at the home plate, but still… ain’t politicians supposed to be secured?
I lean into the mic as my speech plays on the teleprompter.
“The Second Chance Foundation is committed to providing equity to all marginalized groups, but particularly, citizens south of Zelkova Street. As someone with close ties to the Birch Housing Projects, I’ve spent many afternoons in this very gym, utilizing the different programs of the South Kenton Community Center to stay out of trouble, from the late Ms. Bea’s daycare as a baby, to helping to deliver meals to our elderly residents every week as a teen.
So it’s an honor to give back in such a monumental way, to an institution that has helped shape me, and a man who continues to… ”
My eyes lock on the nigga dumb enough to walk in here with a black mask on, like he won’t stick out. He balls up his lips, visible even from behind his mask, and lifts his gun as he advances through the crowd.
Time slows down as I glance to my right.
Slime has this smug ass look on his face, trying to look everywhere but the gunman coming right at us. Coming right at me.
This nigga.
Amateur.
I snatch the nigga up, pulling him until he’s right in front of me, just as the first bullet whizzes through the air. It strikes him in his shoulder. Not even a quarter of a second later, a second and third bullet strike him on his chest, and his other shoulder. A fourth strikes his abdomen.
The impact drops both of us on the stage. Screams erupt, and everyone begins to run out of the gym. Slime cries out, twitching off of me. My eyes balloon as bloody circles begin to spread all over his upper body.
“GIO!”
The gunman hops onto the stage, ripping off his mask as he falls to his knees in front of him.
Intense ringing fills my ears. The look on G’s face is indescribable, as his eyes bounce from one gunshot wound to the other.
“I’m so… fuck, bro,” he whispers, each hand switching as more blood pours from Slime’s mouth down the sides of his head.
Sirens snap me out of this horror movie, and I’m able to stumble onto my feet and grab G and his gun.
“Come on, we gotta go.” I start pulling him toward the hallway, but he’s resisting.
“I can’t leave him!” he cries. “I can’t leave him like this!”
“G, you not dying by cop, bro. LET’S GO!” Strength I didn’t know I had helps me pull this nigga into the hallway, to the utility closet. I close the door just as police and EMTs storm the center, but we’re already halfway into the secret passageway that leads us into Tower Two.
As soon as we’re in the clear, I fist this nigga’s hoodie with both hands and slam him into the wall three times.
“What the fuck was you thinking, Guiliano?! At a fuckin’ press conference?
! I should snap yo fuckin’ neck for playin’ with me!
Killing yo brother ain’t shit compared to how I’m finna make you feel. ”
He doesn’t fight back at all. No matter how many times my fists land onto his face. He head just snaps back, and tears by the boatload begin to mix in with the blood coming from his nose and mouth.
I take a step back, and he slides all the way to the floor without my support.
“Do it,” he says, spitting blood on the floor. “Kill me. I can’t live without Gio.”
His gloved hand jerkily wipes his face as he openly wails.
My feet back me up to the opposite wall. Lungs seizing up, just like my throat. I can barely get air through. My head feels funny, and soon I’m sinking to the floor, too, unable to stop watching G break down in his hands.
Four shots to the chest. Slime would have to have some serious angels to keep him here. He’d have taken his last breath, right before G lifted his gun and made the cops shoot him, too. Them niggas ain’t even twins, but I know they can’t live without each other. Everyone ain’t as strong as me.
But coming at me like that, G deserves to at least have a few days with it, before he finds another way to die. I quiet down the rest of my thoughts, shutting down my mind though my body is still being weird.
I’m glued to the ground. My eyes are glued to G. A couple people walk past us. They glance at us, before quickening their steps. A paramedic siren gets quieter and quieter, before turning off completely.
When G lays on his side, I finally muster up enough strength to get to my feet. Without another word, I walk away.
It’s well into the night by the time I’m released from the police station.
Most of the time was spent waiting it out.
Once Roe came in, he had me released in thirty minutes, since I actually didn’t do shit.
We opted to go through the back, and promptly at two oh one, I was walking through Snow’s apartment, the adrenaline leaking through my body with each step.
She was asleep when I came in, but now that I’m showered and changed, she’s sitting up in her bed, watching me.
“The only reason I wasn’t down there acting a fool was because your lawyer called and told me he’d handle it. Since when do you have Rowan Wyatt on retainer?”
I shrug, collapsing onto her soft ass bed. “Roe’s the homie.”
I turn on my phone, but the amount of notifications I have are too overwhelming, so I power the shit back off, slide it off the bed, and crawl towards my woman.
She accepts me with open arms. Every time she does, I’m still surprised. Surprised we made it here, that I can even hold her and feel her heart beat steady against my ear.
“Patience says he’s alive,” she says, her finger tracing the shall of my ear. “He was alive when they brought him in. Been in surgery all day and night, but he’s alive.”
I hum, holding her tighter to me. “It was G.”
“His brother?!” she asks, horror evident in her voice.
I hum in agreement. My lungs begin to seize again, as my morning replays over and over in my head.
“Take your time,” Snow says, perfect as ever. The tension in my shoulders releases, just a little, but enough to know I can go on.
“I, uh, always knew there was a chance me and Fred would have to live without each other. But… him dying alone, it eats at me. Ate at me. I never thought either of us would go out alone. We wasn’t born alone.
I hated that for him, Snow. That he was reduced to nothing.
I wished for a long time that, if he was meant to die as early as he did, that maybe, I could have been there with him, at the very least. He wouldn’t have had to die alone.
” My eyes begin to sting from not blinking, but I still hold my eyes open, and try to will the scenes from earlier to stop.
“But you’ve changed your mind?”
My nose begins to run, but I can’t unwind my arms from Snow to wipe it. The only thing I can do is try to keep the tears in my nose as I nod my head on the side of her chest.
“G was aiming for me.”
She tenses, but because my woman is perfect, she holds her tongue, even as I feel the questions mounting in her head.
“I didn’t even think I could snatch Slime as fast as I did.
He took four to the chest. I felt each bullet.
I thought I got hit, too, but none of the bullets had an exit point.
Slime was dying, Snow. And G… he wanted to die with him.
He was ready to shoot himself or aim at twelve.
I pulled him away, and got us out… I ain’t ever seen a grown man cry like that before. ”
“Why did you take him away?” she whispers.
My eyes clamp shut, but not before more tears soak her nightie.
I fight past the tightness in my chest. “I couldn’t let him watch his brother die like that, Snow.
Even if he was aiming for me, he doesn’t deserve to have that shit replay over and over, no matter how short his life may be.
You think that’s what you want, to be there in someone’s last moments…
someone you love, to help them over to the other side, but standing in that moment, that shit will do worse than kill you.
And he prolly deserves that special type of hell…
he and Slime been trying to take me out since we came back from Belize.
Niggas got at us in the desert, kidnapped Nan, all type of shit, Snow.
I should have left that nigga to watch the light drain from his brother’s eyes…
I’m getting soft as fuck, Snow. Mekhi says love not making me soft, but it is, because before, I prolly could have stomached it.
I prolly would have finished Slime off, just for G.
But all I could think about was Fredo, man.
Something broke in me the day he died. I felt it, Snow.
I felt his last breath. But to see it? I wouldn’t have survived that, man.
And the way G broke down, he wouldn’t have survived that shit either. ”
“I miss him so much.” The words tumble out of me, much smaller and more broken than the others.
I hold onto Snow for dear life, and try to fight back the shudder from forming.
“I miss my brother, man.” A mix between a cough and a sob releasing from my throat, before I make myself melt into her embrace.
“And I hate… I hate that the person he chose for himself may not get to know the one piece of him left.”
Snow keeps me close as I let all the shit from the past few years leak out my eyes and onto her, and she doesn’t complain, not once. She just keeps tracing the shell of my ear, her fingertips dig into my side with her other hand, not letting up until I cry myself to sleep.
I miss you too, brodie. More than you’ll ever know.