CHAPTER TWENTY #2
This bitch ass nigga Zach wanted a war, and I was gon give it to him. I was tired of being humble, BooMan was gone. And this was just the beginning of the fucking massacre that was about to come.
* * *
BooMan was dead.
Tiona was dead.
And Zach was still breathing.
That was the part that had my blood boiling the most. His bitch ass was still somewhere posted up, probably smiling, thinking he had one up on me because he took one of mine. He had no idea what he had just started.
I drove for a while with no music on, just the sound of my engine and my own breathing filling up the car. My mind was all over the place. BooMan’s blood. Yah-Yah’s face when I put her out. Tiona begging for me to spare her life.
And the shit with Sheree, was another problem I ain’t have the patience to deal with tonight. Whatever Yah-Yah saw in my phone, whatever Sheree texted, whatever disrespect had got thrown around, I couldn’t even process that shit right now.
My brother had died in my arms. I had blood on my clothes, blood on my hands, and blood on my soul, and all Yah-Yah wanted to scream about was a bitch sucking my dick.
I loved Yah-Yah. I did. I loved her more than I was comfortable admitting sometimes. But tonight she had picked the wrong fucking time to press me.
I hit the corner hard, pulling onto a darker block near one of my stash spots. I needed another gun. More clips. More everything. If I was about to go at Zach, I wasn’t going half-prepared. I was about to turn the whole city upside down until somebody brought me his head.
I parked behind the building, cut the lights, and sat there for a second.
That’s when I heard it.
A thump, it was real low, but I heard and it cause me to freeze.
At first, I thought it came from outside the car, so I sat still, listening. The alley was quiet except for the distant sound of traffic and a dog barking somewhere down the block.
Then I heard it again.
Thump.
This time, I knew exactly where it came from, it was coming from my trunk.
My eyes narrowed.
I slowly reached for my Glock on the passenger seat and wrapped my hand around it. My first thought was that somebody had planted something on me. A body. A tracker. A setup. In the life I lived, paranoia wasn’t a weakness. Paranoia kept you alive.
I got out the car slow, keeping my gun low at my side as I walked around to the back. The night air was cold against my face, but I barely felt it. My whole body was alert now. Every nerve in me was awake.
Another muffled sound came from the trunk.
Somebody was in there.
“What the fuck?” I muttered.
I looked around the alley, making sure nobody was watching. Then I hit the trunk button.
The trunk popped open and my eyes widened at what I was looking at. It was fucking Sheree.
She was bound up, with her mouth taped, and mascara running down her face. Her hair was all over her head, and her eye was swelled up. For a second, I just stared at her.
She looked up at me like she had just seen God and the devil at the same time. She started making muffled noises through the tape, twisting around like she thought she was about to get loose.
I tilted my head, confused as fuck.
“What the fuck is this?”
She cried harder, trying to talk through the tape.
“How the fuck you get in my trunk?”
She shook her head fast, trying to say something, but it came out muffled and panicked.
I looked at her busted lip. the scratches on her arm, and the way her dress was ripped. And my mind went straight to Yah-Yah.
Nah, Ain’t no fucking way.
I stepped back, running my hand down my face.
My phone started buzzing in my pocket right then, and when I pulled it out, Yah-Yah’s name flashed across the screen.
I stared at it.
Then looked back down at Sheree. She was crying and shaking like a leaf now. I answered the phone, but I ain’t say nothing. For a few seconds, all I heard was Yah-Yah breathing on the other end.
“You find that dick sucking bitch yet?” My jaw flexed.
I looked up at the black sky, then let out a slow, humorless laugh.
“Yo’ you done lost yo’ fucking mind.” She didn’t respond.
“You hear me, Yah-Yah? You done lost yo’ whole fucking mind.”
“You embarrassed me,” she said, “You let that bitch play in my face.”
“So you put her in my fucking trunk?”
“And did!”
My eyebrows pulled together. “What? How? Yo’ ass aint even strong enough to pick a bitch up, I hope you aint have no nigga around my crib.”
“What? I aint you, I don’t cheat! Ask Zurie,” she said, her voice still calm. “Since you wanna know how she got there so bad.”
My whole body went still.
Zurie?
“What the fuck Zurie got to do with this?” I asked, my voice dropping lower.
“She drove your car.”
For a second, I ain’t say nothing.
I couldn’t.
I looked at the trunk again. Looked at Sheree. Looked at the inside of my own car like it had somehow betrayed me too.
“Say that shit again,” I said slowly.
“Zurie drove your car,” Yah-Yah repeated. “Me and Mya handled Sheree. Zurie pulled up in your shit and popped the trunk.”
I closed my eyes.
Zurie was the same muthafucka who barely liked being around conflict, who always tried to act like she was above the messy shit, had somehow got dragged into Yah-Yah and Mya’s crash-out session and drove my fucking car to aid and abet a kidnapping.
I let out a laugh, but it wasn’t funny.
It was the kind of laugh a nigga let out when life had officially started playing in his face.
“You mean to tell me,” I said, pacing beside the car, “that my woman, her sister, and my sister jumped a bitch outside her own club and put her in my trunk?”
Yah-Yah stayed quiet for a second.
“She shouldn’t have disrespected me.” She finally said.
“That ain’t what I asked you.”
“And I answered enough.”
“Yah-Yah, where the fuck is Zurie?”
“Don’t worry about Zurie.”
“Don’t tell me not to worry about my sister after you just told me she drove my car for y’all to kidnap a bitch!”
Sheree started making noises again, kicking her legs against the trunk like that was gon’ help her. The sound made my headache worse. I looked down at her, and she froze instantly.
“You and Mya better get somewhere and sit the fuck down,” I said into the phone. “And I mean that.”
“She wanted to be in yo’ life so bad,” Yah-Yah said. “Now she is.”
“Yah-Yah.”
“What?”
“You think this cute? Huh? You think this some funny shit? Do you know what the fuck I got going on tonight?”
“You mean after you put me out?” she snapped, and finally I heard the hurt under all that coldness. “After you dragged me out that house like I was nothing? After I found out you had this bitch sucking yo’ dick and you looked me in my face like I was the problem?”
I rubbed my hand over my mouth.
“BooMan died tonight,” I said through my teeth.
“And I’m sorry about BooMan,” she said, her voice cracking for the first time. “I am. But you don’t get to break my heart and then tell me when I’m allowed to hurt.”
That shut me up.
For a second, the alley got quiet. Even Sheree stopped moving.
I didn’t have a comeback because she wasn’t wrong. But she wasn’t right either.
“What you want me to do with her?” I asked, even though part of me already knew I shouldn’t have asked that question.
Yah-Yah sniffed, then her voice went cold again.
“I don’t give a fuck what you do with her. Go get yo’ dick sucked, I know you need it after tonight.” She spat then the line went dead.
I stood there with the phone still pressed to my ear, staring into nothing. Then I slowly lowered it.
My first instinct was to call Zurie and spazz on her ass, my second instinct was to call Mya and cuss her ass clean the fuck out., and my third instinct was to call Yah-Yah back and tell her I loved her, even though I was mad enough to put her head through a fucking wall.
Instead, I did none of that.
I reached into the trunk and ripped the tape off Sheree’s mouth, and helped her out the trunk. When she climbed out the trunk, she gasped, she was coughing and crying at the same time.
“Sontae, please! Please, I didn’t even do shit! Yah-Yah and some bitch jumped me outside my fucking club! And yo’ sister, Zurie, she was driving your car! She popped the trunk! I swear to God, I ain’t lying!” I stared at her.
She was crying so hard she could barely talk, but I already knew she wasn’t lying. Yah-Yah had admitted enough. And Yah-Yah was a lot of things, but when she was mad, she ain’t have no reason to lie. She wanted me to know. She wanted me to feel that shit.
“You texted my phone?” I asked.
Sheree blinked through her tears. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Sontae, I was mad. I ain’t think—”
“You disrespected my woman?”
“Sontae…” I nodded slowly.
“That mouth of yours got you fucked up tonight.”
She shook her head fast, tears sliding down her temples. “I’ll leave y’all alone. I swear. I won’t say nothing else to that bitch. I won’t call you. I won’t text you. I won’t even come around you.”
I leaned against the back of the car, staring at her with no expression.
“Get in the front seat, and just don’t say shit to me, I’m bout to take you home.” She didn’t respond she only nodded and did as I asked.
Sheree had always been cocky, she thought because she had a lil’ money, and a lil’ history with me that she had some type of permanent pass. She didn’t understand that passes expired.
Booman was dead. Zach had to pay and Yah-Yah had officially crashed the fuck out. Mya had helped. And Zurie was involved.
No matter how mad I was, no matter how much I wanted to cuss Yah-Yah out, no matter how badly Sheree had fucked around and found out…I knew I was the cause of all of it.
I got back in the car, started the engine, and pulled out the alley slowly.
This has been one hell of a night.