Chapter 6-Devon #2
“Nah. It’s not, but what can I do for you?” Renae birthed me, but make no mistake, she didn’t teach me anything besides that I could only depend on myself.
“I need you to come by the house so we can talk.” To anybody else, it probably seemed like she wanted to see me because she cared.
From what I heard, most mothers had a level of love and adoration stored up for their kids.
Renae was cut from a different cloth, so I knew she wasn’t trying to get me to stop by for the hell of it.
Dreux’s eyes were trained on me, I could feel his intense glare.
He was a kid and, more than likely, ignorant of how trifling his grandma was.
My son was waiting to see how I reacted to her, and because of that, I found myself biting back on how I wanted to handle her.
“How much you need?” Yeah, I wanted to be respectful, but I also wanted to get this conversation over with.
“Just five stacks. I know you got it, Devon.” Shaking my head, I found myself biting down on my back teeth to keep from going off on her.
Five grand wasn’t anything to me. My problem came into play because she was the one asking me for it.
“Give me an hour.” Hurriedly, I ended the call before she had a chance to ask me for anything else. I could feel Dreux’s energy. He wanted to ask a question but was afraid of what to say.
I hadn’t gone into full details about my childhood because, in my mind, he was too young to be exposed to the things that I’d experienced.
Regardless of what I tried to keep from him, Dreux was a smart kid and could put two and two together to know we didn’t have the average mother and son relationship.
Hell, to be honest, he’d only seen her a handful of times.
“I have to drop off something to your grandma, and then we can go home. Is that cool with you?”
“Yes, sir.” There was a moment of silence, and I knew it was because he had more to say.
My son was a lot like me; he was observant and knew how to ask questions when things didn’t make sense, but he was always respectful with whatever came out of his mouth.
“Does Grandma work, or does she stay at home like Mama?”
“What?” My head tilted in his direction, and for a split moment, I forgot that I was driving. “You saying that your mama isn’t working?”
All of this was news to me. Last I knew, Keesha was braiding hair at her aunt’s beauty shop. Sometimes she did it out of her house too. Braiding her was one of the few things she was actually good at, and not even I could take that from her.
“No, sir. She quit when she got her tax refund.”
I wanted to be surprised, but how could I be? Stupid is as stupid does. The only way she should’ve quit her job off the strength of a tax refund was if she had a foolproof way of flipping it and turning it into a steady flow of income.
If she were thinking, she would’ve used her refund to get her own salon suite. Knowing her scamming ass, she’d probably claimed kids that weren’t hers and had a real come up.
I didn’t have anything positive to say about the news Dreux gave me, so I nodded, kept my comments to myself and continued my drive.
“What’s good, boss?” Micah greeted when he looked up and saw it was me entering the shop. Micah was my homeboy and the next in command at Kutz , whenever I wasn’t around.
Kutz was my first investment and my pride and joy. From the way the building was renovated and designed with sports memorabilia stretching from the nineteen eighties to present day icons, to the people who walked through the door, Kutz was something special.
When I had the idea of opening a barbershop, I knew I didn’t want it to be an average shop.
My vision was bigger than that, and my team was compiled of more than just average men who were skilled with a pair of clippers.
I had a few men who’d never seen the inside of a jail cell, but I prided myself on being an establishment that offered second chances.
With that, most of my barbers had a stack of charges taller than Dreux.
I looked out for them because I knew how it was for society to turn its back on you.
“Ain’t much. Are y’all good?” I looked around the shop and acknowledged each barber with a singular nod. In return, there were a series of responses, indicating that everyone was good. Everybody was in place with the exception of one barber, which wasn’t unusual.
Mack was a new barber who hadn’t quite built his clientele yet. For the most part, he handled walk-ins. He was skilled with his clippers, and I knew if he really applied himself, he’d be a beast.
“Aye, Dreux!” another one of my barbers shouted out, gaining Dreux’s attention. A few of the other barbers greeted him as I made my way to my back office.
I was a few feet from my office when a melody of muffled sounds of pain and pleasure caught my attention.
“I know damn well—” I didn’t finish my sentence before I busted through the closed door and made my presence known.
“Aye! What the hell is going on?” The answer to my question was obvious, staring at the female on her knees and the nigga leaned against the breakroom table, I didn’t need them to give me an answer.
“Damn! My bad, boss. I—” Mack was trying to apologize and explain himself, but there was nothing I needed to hear him say.
He tried to pull away from the female, but she still had her mouth full, going ham like she was getting paid for it.
“Aye!” He forcefully mushed her in the forehead, off of him, making her fall backwards, then he turned away and pulled his pants up. “Boss—”
“Nah, man. Get your stuff and leave.”
“What?” He faced me with surprise covering his face. “D, I just started here—”
“And that means yo’ ass should’ve treaded more carefully. Never let a hoe mess with your bread.” The chick who he’d let ruin his income was still on the floor. Instead of being embarrassed like a normal female, she was smiling at me.
“You can be next, baby!” she cooed, and that was the moment recognition set in. She was the chick I smashed after the grand opening. Crazy part was, I still didn’t remember her name, and after all this, I damn sure didn’t care to know it.
“Mack, get you and this hoe out of here before y’all leave in matching body bags.
” I turned and walked out of the break room but stopped in my tracks when an idea popped into my head.
“And clean this whole breakroom from top to bottom. Men come in here to eat their lunch, and y’all got it smelling like nuts and ass. Don’t make no damn sense.”
I proceeded to my office and locked the door behind me.
Some of my money was in bank accounts, but some of it wasn’t.
I had at least one safe in each business I owned, which was the reason I came here instead of going to a bank.
As a businessman, I needed to have a solid paper trail, but as a previous hustler, I didn’t need Uncle Sam in every aspect of my business.
Once I grabbed the amount of money that I needed, plus a little more, I closed the safe and exited my office. The smell of bleach and lemon cleaner hit my nose, and I knew that Mack was following instructions.
He was young, so I expected him to do dumb stuff, but getting top in the next man’s business wasn’t going to cut it with me. If he could do that, then he’d do anything. Just because he was a felon didn’t mean that he needed to be reckless.
That was a flaw I couldn’t afford to have around me.