Chapter Thirty-One
The door to the house in Pembroke Pines was kicked in when I arrived.
When I’d stepped in to find the place I’d once called home trashed beyond recognition on the inside, I can’t say I was surprised.
If Silas had burned the house to the ground, even that would’ve been a believable outcome.
My fingers traced along the dented surfaces of broken furniture, feet stepping around scattered papers along the ground.
In the morning, I would be calling two people—a cleaning service and a real estate agent.
Now that Silas knew about this place, keeping his threats in mind, the only thing left to do was sell it.
Despite the fact that I’d grown to really like this place, I was not grieving its upcoming sale.
The last couple of weeks had really shown me that the appeal of the house had never really been the rooms, but the person in them with me.
So when I walked in to find the house had been turned upside down and shook, all I could do was be grateful that Lauren wasn’t here while it had happened.
I’d only come back to grab a few dozen clothing items to hold Lauren over for a few days until she might need to get some more things.
For now, the two suitcases I’d tucked into the trunk of my car would be enough to hold us both over.
The drive back to The Bayside would need to have lots of twists and turns and stops—insurance in case Silas was having me followed.
I checked the time on my wrist watch. It was only six o’clock in the evening.
No more than ten hours ago, I’d watched my best friend of over fifteen years get lowered into the ground, and before I could even get a chance to grieve, I was steady trying to keep my pulse under control as I worked my ass off to make sure my girl wouldn’t suffer the same fate.
In truth, I was stressed as fuck.
All my life, Silas had never really been able to hold anything over my head.
With us being from the same family, I had nothing he could take from me.
After he’d transferred his billion-dollar crime empire over to me to protect his assets in case of legal setbacks, he’d really thrown the ball in my court.
For all intents and purposes, I could do as I pleased with every penny Silas had ever made.
Before today, my father trusted me so much that essentially he put himself at my mercy by allowing me to control his money.
I thought I was untouchable.
And as I walked out of my father’s office not too long before, I think we both knew I still was.
Why else would he have merely yelled at me for doing something we both knew was unforgivable?
Silas concluded what I already figured—he couldn’t kill me.
If not for fatherly love reasons, Silas still couldn’t kill me because I had all his money.
Unless I transferred it all back, Silas would never be able to murder me without losing everything in the process.
I was untouchable.
But she wasn’t.
After one last go-through of the house, I’d stopped at the landline mounted in the kitchen, pulling out the phone number for Lauren’s room from the back pocket of my black dress pants.
Still wearing the clothes I’d worn to Amir’s funeral, I loosened the black tie around my neck as the phone began to ring.
“Hello.”
Even though I knew she’d been safe all along, hearing the sound of her voice did something to release some of the tension I’d been feeling. Lost in my own relief, I’d forgotten to respond and her second hello came out a little more frantic.
“Hey sorry, relax… I’m fine,” I tried to calm her down. “You okay?”
“Am I okay?” she repeated back to me as if to get me to realize how ridiculous of a question that was. She right… “Kain, what happened?”
There was no way I could tell her the whole truth without scaring her half to death, so I danced around the topic.
“He was mad, but at the end of the day, there’s not much he can do to me without doin’ himself in.
I stopped by the house and got your clothes.
Do you need anything here that you think I might leave behind?
It’s gonna be a little bit before I get back, but I’ll be back tonight. ”
She sighed on the other end, relieved.
“The only thing there that I need is you.”
I cracked a half smile, repeating, “I’ll be back tonight.”
***
I wasn’t surprised to find Jay’s car parked outside of Marlon’s house when I’d pulled into the driveway.
My other two close friends had not been present for Amir’s funeral this morning, so it only made sense that they were spending the day together, walking down a lane of memories, having their own little at-home funeral for our recently departed group member.
“And then there were three,” Jay announced aloud the minute I’d let myself through Marlon’s front door.
Jay could be particularly crass when he was sober, but as I walked into the scene of tobacco rolling paper and a half-drunk bottle of Hennessy sprawled along the surface of Marlon’s living room coffee table, I knew Jay’s tasteless remark was a product of any one of those things.
Marlon laid in silence, hands behind his head and eyes closed. If I didn’t know him, I would think that he was sleeping, but no, that’s just how Marlon rides through his highs.
“You went to the funeral?” Marlon asked, a hitch of surprise in his tone. His eyes weren’t open to see my suit, so I was inclined to ask how he knew, but I didn’t.
“Yeah, I went.”
“I bet you Faye made the ceremony religious as fuck,” Marlon guessed.
Faye was Amir’s mother, the closest thing I ever had to a mother all my life. She’d taken me under her wing when I was in second grade, and for fifteen years she treated me just like she treated her son. Today, however, I lost her, too.
Although she wasn’t angry enough to ask me to leave, she knew there would be no funeral today if not for my friendship with her son. And for that, she treated me accordingly, thanking everyone at the ceremony for coming except for me.
I couldn’t be mad at that. She had every right.
“Yeah, it was pretty religious.”
“See, that’s another reason I wouldn’t go,” Jay bellowed. “Everybody doing everything they can to keep from dyin’ in these streets, but the minute someone dies, black folks steady dancing in church, praising the life lost.”
“It wasn’t like that,” I muttered, taking a seat at the end of the worn, brown couch.
Nobody was celebrating Amir’s departure.
The morning was dark and filled with hateful glares.
No one talked about the good times. No one expressed happiness over the possibility that Amir was in the kingdom of heaven. And certainly, no one danced.
Possibly noting the out of character tone in my voice, Marlon opened up one eye before sitting up and opening them both. He bluntly asked, “Where’s Button?”
He asked the question in place of asking, ‘What’s wrong?’
I didn’t know whether to be annoyed at Marlon’s concern for Lauren, or to be appreciative of it.
I chose neither, deciding to outright ignore his question because if I checked him for it, I’d be doing too much.
Marlon was not pining after my girl. He just wanted to make sure she was alright.
Lauren just had that effect on people. Even Vance had caught wind of it.
But I didn’t have the patience for Marlon’s intrusiveness right now.
“She’s fine,” I got straight to it, my delivery a bit short. Marlon’s shoulders relaxed and he laid back down after drawing in one long drag from a blunt on the table. Jay poured himself another glass of Henny, offering me a glass after filling his own.
I refused, a small part of me remembering why I was never as close with Marlon or Jay as I was with Amir, why I called Marlon and Jay my friends and Amir my brother.
Amir would have caught on straight away.
Amir would have noticed something was seriously wrong, that I was not okay. And he would’ve questioned it, not really expecting a straight answer, but at least extending the gesture.
But Amir was dead.
Forever lifeless under six feet of dirt.
I’d watched his casket lower into the hole myself, an image I deeply regretted allowing myself to see.
I envied the fact that Jay and Marlon didn’t have that picture burned into the forefronts of their minds.
I envied that they could dull their emotions with alcohol and weed.
Smoking with Vance didn’t make the images of that lowering casket go away.
Drinking with Silas didn’t do that either.
Going to the funeral was a mistake. Not because of the unwelcoming faces that met my arrival, but because going to the funeral somehow made Amir’s death even more real.
And I had no idea how to deal with any of this.
***
Every light in Sanaa’s house was lit when my car pulled in to her driveway.
I was still stalling for time, being a little cautious about going straight back to Lauren on the off chance I was being watched.
Since leaving Marlon’s house, I hadn’t really seen any cars or faces that looked familiar.
Stopping at Sanaa’s was just my attempt at being thorough.
From the looks of the cars out front, my other sister Monique was visiting Sanaa as well. On any other day, the idea of being around the both of them as they fussed and bickered would’ve had me start the engine of my Camaro right back up. Today, though…
Today was just different.
As always, Sanaa’s door was unlocked. At the sound of the front door closing, the chattering I heard coming from the living room came to an abrupt stop. I kept my steps quiet, shaking off the stuffy black suit jacket I had over my white button up, as I moved further into the house.
A sound like shushing rang as I rounded a corner toward the living room, followed by loud and defensive screaming while my older sister, Sanaa, tried to lunge at me with a broom handle. She aimed for my head.