Rozalyn (Includes Tamar Preview)

by Shan

  Zavier and I were homeless. Well I was homeless after all that shit went down. The apartment manager found out about it and drew up the papers to have us evicted immediately. Zavier was trying to hang in there with me, but I finally convinced him to go back home, and I would be alright.

  Latoya let me stay with her for a couple of weeks, but Keylan and I kept getting into it because he wouldn’t give me any damn info on Tae. He was always telling me that if Tae wanted me to know anything then he would have called and ask to speak with me. Punk ass nigga.

  After I left Latoya’s house, I went to stay with Brian and his family. I was so happy that they offered. I mean; I was the reason that their house got burnt down, but I guess they said it was only a temporary problem to a permanent solution.

  The insurance they took out on the house allotted them to be able to re-build bigger and better by adding an extra bathroom and an extra bedroom. I was thankful for that. I really don’t know if I would have been able to look Brian in the face again if they ended up homeless and without. Like I was.

  It wasn’t so bad though because it only lasted for a month and a half before Tamar told Brandon to move me in the house that he’d purchase. I couldn’t wait until he got home, so I could see what took him so long to make that decision. I guess he really didn’t want me moving in with him.

  Anyway, the house was big and beautiful. Everything a Princess like me dreamed of. Only problem was; it was lonely as ever. Brandon came and went every now and then, but something was going on with him, and it was better when he wasn’t here.

  Tavon came through every now and then, as well and whenever he came I was out the door and over either Brian’s or Starr’s house. I wasn’t about to be around that fool after he sent somebody to kill me. He tried to apologize, but I wasn’t trying to hear that shit.

  DING. DONG. DING. DONG.

  I got up from the comfortable spot I was laying in and walked over to the window to see who it was before opening it. I didn’t see a car or anyone standing at the door so fuck it. Walking back over to my spot on the couch, I picked up my book "Thug Matrimony" part of the Thug series by author Wahida Clark and flipped back to the page where I had left off. Soon as I got back into it, I heard the sound of the doorbell again and then banging on the door followed behind it.

  DING! DONG! DING! DONG! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  I sat my book back down on the coffee table and walked over to the window. As soon as I went to peek out of the blinds, I heard the knob twisting and pushing on the door. I ran over to the door and yelled, "Who is it?"

  "Open the fucking door!" I heard someone yell, but I was unable to recognize the voice. I went over to the couch and grabbed my cell phone to call Brandon. Panic took over after I heard someone trying to kick the door down!

  "Oh, my God!" I yelled. My hands began to tremble, and it caused me to drop my cell phone onto the floor. I dropped down to my knees and grabbed the phone just as the front door swung open and flew off the hinges.

  I got up from the floor and ran towards the stairs and at the same time dialed Brandon’s phone number. I put the phone to my ear, but it was too late, and I was too slow. Someone grabbed me from behind and carried me back down the stairs. They tossed me onto the couch.

  There were four men, dressed in all black; all four were wearing ski mask with the only visible facial features being the eyes and lips. My hands moved in a circular motion around my stomach just to verify that my baby was okay. Nobody said anything. They all stood in one straight line facing me and only stared.

  One of the masked men finally stepped forward placing his hands on his hips and tossing one hip to the side. It was not a dude; it was a female. Shalea? I questioned myself.

  I heard that she was able to get a suspended sentence only if she participated and successfully completed a drug and rehabilitation program and of course snitch on Tae. Could this be her coming after me for what happened?

  "What’s up bitch? Don’t look so scared," she said. "I know that nigga got some money up in this bitch somewhere, so let’s find it and then murk this bitch and this bitch‘s baby!"

  "I know it’s you Shalea, take your mask off hoe! What you mad cause you couldn’t get Tae to get you pregnant after all that time, you washed up ass hoe!" I shrieked. I was so damn mad and scared. I had spittle seeping from the sides of my mouth.

  WHAM!

  That bitch slapped the shit out of me and caused my face to burn with pain. I knew then it really was her hiding behind the mask.

  "I got this bitch! Y'all handle up on everything, and I guarantee you, she’ll be waiting right here."

  The three other bandits that were with her spread out throughout the house searching for money that they suspected was hiding somewhere in the house. I purposely rubbed on my stomach in a slow, circular motion, and talked baby gibberish to my unborn son just so I could piss this bitch off. She sat on the coffee table in front of me and turned her head away, but she could see me out the corner of her eyes.

  "It’s okay baby, mommy is right here. Calm down, Jr," I teased. Shit if they were going to kill me then why not tease her as before I go.

  "I’m so sick of you young ass bitches. Why the fuck you couldn’t find your own damn man?" she asked.

  "I thought I had my own man. I didn’t know about you until I was already pregnant. Wasn’t my fault he didn’t love you enough to keep his dick in his pants."

  "Whatever, just sit down and shut the fuck up until we get what we came here for."

  "Girl ain’t no money in this damn house. Go ahead and do what the fuck you gonna do to me and get this shit over with!"

  "Don’t worry China doll. I got something real nice for your ass. You should have aborted that baby and went on about your damn business and left me and mines alone. Now you gotta pay the price for coming along and fucking up what I had."

  I could see the corner of her eyes fill with tears, and I somewhat felt bad for her, but damn it wasn’t my fault Tae didn’t want to be with her anymore. How can she be mad at me for how it all went down? Tamar made a choice, and that was to be with me. She should just accept it and move on.

  All this shit was unnecessary and as a matter of fact, if this bitch wanted to kill me and my baby, she was going to have to fight to do it. I quickly grabbed the ashtray sitting on the end table next to me and slammed it across the back of her head as hard as I could.

  "Shit!" I watched her go down to the floor, but not down as hard as I wanted her to. I took off running only to run into a body that felt like a wall of hard steel. At least I knew this was a man. He caught me grabbed me by my throat. The sleeve of his shirt rolled up past his wrist and revealed a tattoo that said redruM. I’ve seen that tattoo somewhere, but couldn’t think of where.

  "It ain’t no money up in here! Ain’t shit up in here, the whole upstairs empty!" The guy holding me by the throat said.

  "Are you sure?" Shalea yelled as she rubbed the back of her head.

  "Go look for yourself. It’s not even any furniture up there. The whole upstairs is fucking empty! I knew I shouldn’t have listened to your ass!" the one holding onto me said.

  "Shut the fuck up nigga! Your payment wasn’t coming out of what we found up in here anyway. So if y'all wanna get paid do what the fuck I told you to do with this bitch!" Shalea ordered.

  "Yea, you better have our fucking money!"

  "Just make sure you do it exactly the way I said to do it. I’m going to sit here and watch." Shalea placed her hands on her hips again and made that same damn pose like she was doing a photo shoot or something. "What the fuck y'all niggas waiting on?"

  The guy that was holding on to me picked me up and tossed me onto the couch. I was shaking, sweating, and nervous as hell. I wasn’t sure how they were about to kill me, but I felt like there was no way I could get out of it. I watched as he went in his pocket and pulled out a Trojan condom.

  "Oh, my God! Please no!" I stood up on the couch and tried to climb over, but one of the
other bandits ran to me before I could make a move. He slammed his fist into my face causing me to fall backward onto the couch.

  WHAM!

  I wasn’t about to give up. I wasn’t about to let him just rape me. The first dude with the redruM tattoo tried to grab me, but I gave him a swift kick to the stomach that did nothing to his hard body! I tried again, but this time gave him a kick to his nuts which backfired when he punched me dead in the center of my nose. Blood gushed out onto his shirt. He grabbed my legs and pushed them open. He then held one leg down with his knee.

  "Hold this bitch arms down," the tattooed one said before pulling my sweats off.

  I didn’t want to give up, but I had to. I could feel my baby ball up into a knot, and I could tell that he was scared and uncomfortable, as well. I stopped fighting when one of the guys grabbed my arms and held them down onto the couch.

  The first dude pulled my sweat pants off and then my panties. Tears poured from my eyes, and I looked over at Shalea and noticed that she was fully entertained. She took her place back on the end of the coffee table and crossed her legs.

  "Please don’t do this. Please?" I begged. I felt the bandit ram his penis inside of me taking no mercy. I tried my best to wiggle and squirm my way out of it, but they were holding me down so tight. "Get off of me! Stop it!"

  "Oh, bitch take it! Don’t go easy on her! Fuck her guts out!" Shalea yelled.

  "Shut up!" he yelled.

  He pounded his pole into me harder and harder and with each stroke his arms became weak. He leaned in towards, and I took this as another opportunity to break free and get him off of me.

  "Mmgh, Mmgh," he grunted.

  He came closer to me, and the scent around his neck was way too familiar, something that I’d smelled before. I opened my mouth as wide as it would go and planted my teeth into his neck where I bit and clenched down hard onto him.

  "Aaggh! Aaggh fuck!" he screamed.

  Once he came up for air, blood shot from his neck. He took his hand to cover up the gash, and I brought my foot up to give him another kick to his nasty dick that he just pulled out of me.

  My kick fell short, when a blow connected to my face, followed by another one, then another one. I felt the bones in my face crack with each punch they delivered to me.

  They started with my face, but it wasn’t long before they delivered them to my whole body. My face was covered in so much blood that I could no longer see what was in front of me. After a few moments, I no longer moved and neither did my baby boy.

  POW! POW!

  18: Brandon

  I was in the middle of eating dinner with my ex-girlfriend Brittany. I’d been trying to get back with her for the past few months, but haven’t been so lucky. I stopped paying her any attention, stopped spending time with her, taking her out and all that when this shit happened with Rozalyn and Zavier.

  I abandoned her because I actually thought I had a chance of being with Roz. I finally got Brittany to come to dinner with me by telling her that shit was going to be different and that I was going to start putting her first. Now here I was, jumping up in the middle of our conversation, running out of the restaurant, and driving off without even saying as much as goodbye to her.

  I would never admit it aloud, but I was secretly in love with a girl that I knew I couldn’t have. Tamar was my little brother; at least I loved him like a little brother. If it wasn’t for him and his family taking me in, I don’t know where I would be right now. Probably dead or locked up for killing my stupid ass father. Who knows? I know if it hadn’t been for them taking me in, I wouldn’t be where I was today, and I was grateful for that shit.

  I was grateful for Tamar more than anything, not to sound like a homo or anything, but that dude have come through for me more times than I count. Especially growing up with a daddy like Tae’s, a Vietnam vet, that took his work and the things he learned very seriously. So much so that he passed everything he learned down to all of us.

  He would show us a skill, make us practice, and then test us to see if we knew how to do it correctly. If we didn’t, he would beat us or make us do something strenuous such as squatting and holding our hands out to the side with loads of bricks on them.

  I would always get the skill wrong and end up getting beat or doing the exercise. Tae got so tired of seeing me getting beat or struggling to balance four bricks on each hand that he would help me practice the skill until I got it down. He would stay up all night with me; even on school nights we would be up until three or four in the morning trying to get me right.

  I was the reason Tamar had to commit his first murder at the age of thirteen years old. Some punk ass nigga we were in Jr high with kept picking on my ass and beating me up every time I turned around.

  Tahj got wind of it, kidnapped the lil’ boy, and brought him to the basement. He handed me a pistol and told me to handle him. He told me I was not to leave until I put a bullet in him and he was no longer breathing.

  I couldn’t do it though, no matter how many times Jeremiah McCall kicked my ass and embarrassed me in front of the whole school, I couldn’t kill him. I sat there with the gun pointed at him for six hours, shaking, sweating, and ready to shit myself.

  Tamar was able to sneak downstairs when Tahj left to go to the liquor store before they closed. He snatched the gun from my hand, shot him two times in the head, and shoved the gun back in my hand. He then ran back upstairs, climbed back in the bed, and pretended to be asleep.

  When Tahj made it back from the store, he checked on me before he drowned himself in his bottle of Crown Royal. When he saw Jermiah’s body leaking, he had the biggest smile on his face. It was a sinister grin that suggested that of a proud father. He congratulated me on becoming a man. What kind of shit is that?

  He made the twins come get rid of the body, and nobody ever spoke on it again. Tamar never told anyone that he was the one that pulled the trigger either. For that, I am forever grateful.

  POW! POW!

  I fired two shots in the back of one of the muthafuckas that was pounding his fist into Rozalyn’s face when I walked into the house. Over the years, killing became like second nature to me. I wasn’t no Keylan or anything, but if I had to pull the trigger on a muthafucka' I would.

  The other dudes that were dressed in all black including a ski mask over their face took off running towards the back of the house, and I followed.

  POW! POW! POW!

  I clipped one of them in the shoulder but he was still able to escape through the back door with the rest of them. I ran back into the living area where I dropped the first fool that was now trying to crawl his way out the front door.

  I ran over to him and kicked him in the stomach forcing his whole body to flip over to his back. I knelt down and peeled the mask off of his face and damn near fell the fuck out when I saw who it was.

  19: Keylan

  "Latoya! Toya!" I yelled. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on, but Brandon just called saying he needed me and Latoya to get over to Tamar’s crib as soon as possible. He sounded frantic and panicky, so I grabbed my 92 berretta and 4-5. I wanted to be prepared. "Toya, hurry the fuck up!"

  She came running out of the bathroom looking like a runway model; her caramel brown skin was glowing, her hair stopped at her neck in a bob cut. Standing at five-nine, with hips and thighs to kill, she was rocking the hell out of a Donna Karan sweater and a pair of stretch denim jeans by Marc Jacobs. I shook my head, and grabbed my keys from the dresser and walked out of the room.

  "What? You don’t like what I got on?" Toya asked as she followed behind me to my X5 BMW SUV, actually it was Toya’s but I haven’t told her yet. I just purchased her and her mom this house and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hand her over the keys to the BMW just yet. Not that she wasn’t deserving of it or anything, but I wanted to make sure we were on the same page about the baby she was currently carrying. Anytime her skin glowed, it usually meant that she was pregnant. "I guess you do have a problem with it since you
not answering me."

  "I ain’t got a problem with it Toy. B said it was an emergency and you go dress up like you about to do a photo shoot."

  "Well if Roz is about to have the baby I know everybody gonna be taking pictures. I wasn’t about to be caught wearing a head scarf and pimple cream." Toya pulled down the visor and checked herself out while rolling a coat of lip gloss onto her lips.

  "Did you call them people and make the appointment, Toy?"

  "Call what people and make what appointment?"

  "You wanna sit here and act like you stupid, like I’m stupid."

  ‘I’m keeping it."

  "You not keeping a damn thing, Toy. Just ‘cause your friend having a baby don’t mean that the agreement we made from the beginning has changed. I’m still deep in this shit and bringing a baby in this world is not the smartest thing to do right now."

  "Tae is in the game and he’s having one—"

  "Don’t compare me to Tae, alight? Besides we not even sure if it’s his or not."

  "Oh my God, I know that’s your boy and all but I know you don’t believe that nigga when he say that baby ain’t his."

  "Yea, I believe him."

  "So, why did he write her asking her to name the baby after him?"

  "That nigga ain’t say that shit."

  "Oh, yes he did. I saw the letter he wrote to her. Tamar is in love with Rozalyn, but he wants to pretend like she ain’t shit when y'all around. The baby is his and he knows it."

  "We’ll see."

  After a thirty minute drive we pulled up in front of Tamar’s house. I told Latoya to stay in the car while I went to check to see what was going on. She may have thought that we were here because Rozalyn was going in labor, but I had a feeling something else was going on. I checked my berretta and then brought it to my side. When I walked up to the front door, I noticed the door was hanging off the hinges making an eerie, squeaking noise.