The Prada Plan 5

by Ashley Antoinette

  * * *

  Hands shackled. Feet shackled. Shuffling inch by inch. Indie had never felt more emasculated in his life. This is exactly where society wanted him; the black man locked up. But Indie couldn’t make himself out to be the victim. He had played right into their hands. He had chosen to sell dope. He had chosen to cheat his way to the top when he took a seat on Vartex’s board. A series of irresponsible decisions had led him to this point. He was away from his woman, his children, and the system was trying to throw double digits at him. If they succeeded, he would be another black man leaving multiple women alone to raise his seed. For the first time he realized that the moves he had been making hadn’t been worth the inherited risks. If he had taken that same focus and applied it to any other trade, he would have soared. He didn’t have to make every dollar hand over fist while ducking the law. He could have been just as accomplished had he gone legit. It was the brainwashing of the hood that told him he couldn’t do any better, as if poisoning his own people was his only option. To think Indie had been proud of how well he had adapted to the game. He was like a duck to water, but it was a vicious cycle. It was all a part of the plan to keep black men from leading their communities. Like a fool, he had taken the bait.

  Indie stood in a line of other inmates, as naked as the day he was born.

  “Bend over,” a correctional officer demanded.

  His pride told him to resist, but he knew that now was not the time to make things hard on himself. He did as he was told, along with every other inmate in the line.

  “Cough.”

  Indie gritted his teeth as he stood up. The degradation was humiliating. He couldn’t help but imagine his ancestors doing the same thing, but the difference was Indie had picked this life.

  “Hold still! You will be sanitized before moving forward,” the CO announced. Suddenly a mist fell from the ceiling. The smell of alcohol filled the air as it covered the inmates. Sanitized? Fuck, I look like a dog? Indie thought. He was surprised the next step wasn’t to sterilize him. That’s what this was about anyway. Prison was damn near cultural genocide for the black family. Prison was the same as death in Indie’s book, and he felt like less than a man for ending up there.

  Next they cut off his hair, removing the signature dreadlocks that YaYa had fallen in love with. By the time he made it onto his cellblock, he hardly recognized himself. No part of Indie feared the place. He had reigned supreme long enough for his name to ring bells among the other black inmates inside. Prison was all about connections. Whoever had the greatest allegiance was usually the most powerful. It was the Aryan skinheads and Latin Kings that he would have to look out for. As he was escorted to his cell, he made sure he kept his eyes in front of him. There was no need to grandstand or try to be difficult. Those who did that usually made themselves easy targets. Indie would mind his business until someone else forced him to mind theirs. At that point he would put in work to defend himself, but he didn’t want to start no fires. Indie would be as civil as those around him allowed him to be, but if anyone tried him, he was prepared for the savagery.

  Keeping his head up would be the easy part. It was being away from YaYa and seeing the look of sorrow that he had seen on her face in the courtroom that would eat away at him. He was aware of her issues regarding Parker. What does she want me to do? he thought. He needed Parker and YaYa on the same team now more than ever. He wanted to be a part of King and Sky’s life. He didn’t want to have to choose, and although respect should come easy, it was hard to earn in a situation where emotion was involved. Parker’s presence hurt his wife. The very notion of Parker made YaYa feel threatened, and he wished there was a way he could reassure her. He simply needed their support. Whether they liked it or not, they both were a part of his life forever. There was no changing that. The bloodlines of his children connected them. He hoped that everyone could reach a level of maturity that would allow things to be easier. Indie had no clue that Parker’s intentions were rotten, of the wicked ways that Parker had antagonized his wife. No matter how good of a front she put up, Parker would never accept the fact that he had married YaYa. So the mutual respect he hoped for was wishful thinking. The beef between YaYa and Parker would last a lifetime. Indie would always be stuck in the middle.

  * * *

  Carrying on like life was normal was torture. Parker had felt this emptiness once before in her life, and it was always sparked by the same man. She had been through this loneliness the first time she had left town. When Indie was absent from her life, nothing seemed right. Getting him out of her system was like weaning herself off drugs. Through all their ups and downs, Parker always had hope that eventually they would end up together, but Indie’s current circumstance made that impossible. With him locked up everything was at a standstill. King was acting out in school. After seeing the feds storm into their home and haul his father away, he had a chip on his shoulder that even her most stern discipline couldn’t remove. Indie being sent away was worse than him being with YaYa. It was making her soul cry. If the bail hearing was any indication of how the trial would go, Indie would be railroaded. Neither Parker nor YaYa would win. He would be lost to the system. Parker hadn’t been able to focus on anything all day. Teaching her courses had proved so challenging that she had canceled her classes. She sat in her lecture hall, behind her desk, staring at the message on Indie’s burner phone. A knock on the classroom door caused her to look up as one of her colleagues entered the room.

  “Professor Banks, I received your note. I came right away. You said it was urgent.”

  Parker went back and forth in her mind about what she was getting ready to do. She knew that she should just let Indie handle his own affairs, but she desperately wanted to prove her worth to him. She could be his ride or die. She was down. She understood the game and could have his back. That’s what he sees in me, she thought. Parker needed to prove that not only was she nurturing, grounded, and intelligent, but she could be his confidant as well. She was willing to live life on the edge with him if he let her. It was insane because YaYa wanted to prove she could match Parker’s book smarts, and Parker wanted nothing more than to be as street savvy as YaYa. They were trying to one-up each other in the race for a man, when there was no one prototype that he preferred. He had loved them uniquely for the characteristics they already possessed. Changing themselves was more to compete with one another than to accommodate Indie. He didn’t want a pliable woman. He wanted a solid one that would love him through every phase of evolution he went through, until the day he left this earth. Maybe I should just leave well enough alone. Let him handle it his way, she thought.

  “Professor Banks?”

  Parker stood and shook her head as if she were clearing out the cobwebs. “I’m sorry, Samar. It’s been a long day. I have something I need you to do for me. I’m trying to trace a number or a possible location on this device,” Parker said as she handed him the burner phone. “Is that possible?”

  The kid in front of her was a tech scholar who came to New York City from India to study computer coding. He was always in her classroom working on the campus system. Any computer issue she or any of the staff had, they always referred to him. The fact that the Indian kid had a crush on her would work to her advantage to get him to help her get the information she needed.

  “Yes, of course,” Samar replied. “It’s simple enough.” Samar got into the phone without even asking for the passcode. “Which number is it?”

  “There is only one number in it,” Parker said.

  Samar looked at her curiously. “Whose phone is this? You don’t have me doing something illegal, do you?” he chuckled uncomfortably.

  “Yes, I am an international drug dealer, and you are my trusted consigliere,” Parker laughed jokingly as she nudged him with her elbow. She was good at playing this side; it was easy for her to assimilate, to wear that mask that covered her melanin and made her seem like she hadn’t come up in the roughest neighborhood in the city.

  Sam
ar laughed genuinely and then explored the phone’s settings. What had seemed like a mystery to her seemed to be solved effortlessly in seconds. “Well, it is a Sicilian number, but it’s been pinging off of cell towers here in New York.”

  “Can you tell me where? Specifically?” Parker asked. “And who the number belongs to?”

  “I would have to do more digging to tell you whose number it is, but Liberty Island was the last place it was used,” he answered. He frowned. “This is odd. The phone was used close to midnight. The Statue of Liberty is closed at that time.”

  “Do you think you could hack into the footage on Liberty Island that night?” Parker asked.

  “No, I’m sorry, Professor Banks. That is against the law,” Samar protested as he handed her back the phone.

  Parker walked over to the classroom door and locked it before drawing the blinds closed.

  Samar’s discomfort was evident. The kid didn’t know what he was getting himself into. “I should really go,” he said. His thick accent shook with anxiety as she walked toward him.

  “Samar, please,” she said as she approached him. She leaned into him, her body pressed against his as she placed her hands on his chest. “I would be so appreciative. It could be our little secret. We could have a lot of little secrets.” She was so close to him her breath tickled his ear, settling him on fire. Parker actually felt sorry for Samar. His culture required him to be a virgin until marriage, and just the feeling of her against him had him hard with lust.

  “I can’t,” Samar moaned. “I’m here on visa. If I am caught—”

  Parker bit his ear slightly as she whispered, “We won’t get caught.” She was desperate to find out the identity behind this foreign number. She would do almost anything to get what she wanted out of Samar. Her hands slid down his body, and she rubbed him.

  He moaned, and his eyes closed as his mouth fell open.

  “Who knows how I will repay you? I would owe you,” Parker rubbed her body against his, practically dry-humping Samar. His hands roamed over her backside.

  “You want to know what I feel like inside?” Parker asked. “How wet it can get? It doesn’t count if nobody else knows. Just you and me.” Parker groaned.

  “Oh, God, yes,” Samar whispered. Parker reached under her dress and pulled down her panties, stepping out of them. She put them in his pocket. “When you get me what I want, I’ll give you what you need,” Parker whispered. “Until then, you can keep these to play with.”

  Parker grabbed her handbag and briefcase and walked out of the room. Her heart was beating frantically as she rushed to her car. It wasn’t until she was inside that she broke down and cried. She had never been the type of woman to use her sexuality as a tool of persuasion. She felt dirty, and shame filled her as she gripped the steering wheel. I can be his ride or die, she thought, but she couldn’t help but wonder how many times YaYa had been required to sell her soul for Indie’s benefit. Was this what it took to hold on to a man like Indie? Was this only the beginning? As Parker headed to King’s school to pick him up, she told herself that it was worth it. That Indie would come home and be so appreciative that he would come back to her. Even with those thoughts floating in her head, she still felt like her value had been discounted, and she promised herself that she would never do anything like that again.

  9

  YaYa’s tears seemed endless. She had left Skylar at Elaine’s for days. She didn’t want her daughter to see her in this state. She didn’t know if she was crying because Indie was denied bail or if it had been seeing him with Parker that had done it, but she couldn’t stop. It was like she couldn’t control her feelings. She hated that her happiness depended on Indie’s loyalty. She should have been able to trust him to keep her in a state of bliss, but she had been miserable ever since they had gotten married.

  Seven days had gone by, and YaYa knew that she would have to pull herself together. She couldn’t be this kind of woman, this kind of mother. When everything fell apart, she had to keep it together for the sake of not only her own well-being but her child’s as well. There were so many things that needed to be taken care of. With their accounts still frozen, YaYa was left with nothing. She would have to do a magic trick that many black mothers before had done by turning nothing into something. On top of Indie’s legal bind, their financial one needed to be solved as well. It was all falling on her at once, and she didn’t even know how to begin to pull up her bootstraps. The doorbell forced her to pull herself out of bed.

  YaYa checked the monitors to find Elaine on her doorstep, waiting patiently while holding Skylar’s hand. YaYa rushed to the bathroom and rinsed her face with cold water. She didn’t want anyone seeing her like this. Broken, her heart ripped out of her chest. There was no fixing the heavy bags under her eyes. She slicked her short hair to the back and took a deep breath before heading to the door.

  “Mommy!” Skylar shouted as soon as YaYa answered.

  “Mommy’s baby!” YaYa said and bent down to hug her princess tightly. She had almost forgotten how good those little arms felt around her neck. Skylar darted by her and rushed up to her room, leaving YaYa to face Elaine.

  “Indie is worried about you, YaYa. He calls every day asking why you won’t answer his calls,” Elaine said. “Don’t you think you owe him some type of explanation?”

  YaYa crossed her arms. “I don’t owe your son anything.” She couldn’t stop her eyes from misting. “Do you know he was arrested at Parker’s house? I was up all night waiting for him to come home, and he was over there. They didn’t process him until three in the morning. Do you know what has gone through my mind? Just thinking about him there with her that late.” YaYa shook her head. “He loves her, Elaine. I can see it when I look at him. He says it is about his son, but it isn’t. There is more to it than that. He wants her in his life.”

  “You need to talk to him. I don’t know much about what is going on between Indie and Parker, but I know one thing.” Elaine paused as she grabbed both of YaYa’s hands. “He loves you. Always has.”

  “Yeah, well, love doesn’t seem to be enough lately,” YaYa responded as her chin hit her chest in despair.

  Elaine lifted YaYa’s face and held it in the palms of her hands. “Just go see him. The two of you need to talk. You have children together,” Elaine said as she placed a hand on YaYa’s stomach.

  YaYa frowned and stepped back slightly. “Elaine, I’m not preg—”

  YaYa stopped speaking midsentence. Zya’s words played back in her mind: The animosity you’ve caused between them won’t easily go away. Especially when they find out what I already know.

  “Oh, my God,” YaYa whispered. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I can’t be pregnant.” She replayed the past few months in her mind. She had been moody, tired, overly emotional, and most recently sick to her stomach. She had chalked it up to being stressed, thinking that the pressure of married life was getting the best of her. Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine that she was with child. How had she not noticed until now? Her period had come, and although it had been faint, YaYa never dreamed that there was a seed growing inside of her. She was out of tune with her body, so focused on dysfunction that she had missed all the signs. This was insane. Denial flooded her as she shook her head. “This is a mistake. I can’t be.”

  “YaYa, if there is one thing I can recognize it’s a hormonal woman. You’re gaining weight, subtly, but still I can tell, and you’ve been all over the place lately,” Elaine said. “If you didn’t know, I’m going to be the one to tell you. You need to take a test, and you need to go see Indie. Now is not the time to pull away from him. You might be right about Parker. She probably is trying to weasel her way into your spot, but you are giving her more than enough opportunity to do so by giving up. Indie needs your support right now, and if you aren’t there to give it to him, her company is going to look mighty good.”

  “I’ll go see him,” YaYa promised. “Please don’t say anything to him. I don’t ev
en know if I’m pregnant yet.”

  “I won’t say a word. Take care of yourself, and let me know if you need me,” Elaine said. YaYa closed the door and then bolted up the stairs. She headed straight to the bathroom as nervous jitters filled her. The idea of another baby should have brought hope to a dismal situation, but for YaYa it did the exact opposite. She knew that if she was pregnant, there was a possibility that Indie might not be the father, and that would tear her family apart.

  She rifled through her cabinets until she found what she was looking for: a pregnancy test. It was so old that she wasn’t even sure if it would give her an accurate reading, but she didn’t have the patience to wait. She ripped it open and sat down to pee on the stick. Her heart had never raced so fast. Impatience turned to frustration as two minutes felt like two hours. Her hands shook as she picked up the stick. Her internal alarm went off as tension grew in her bones: sure enough, a pink plus sign glared at her. YaYa grasped the edge of her bathroom sink and let her head fall down in dismay. This would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. She had been so consumed with thoughts of Indie’s dealings with Parker that she had been completely blind to the fact that she had missed her cycle by almost three weeks.

  Even if it turned out to be Indie’s baby, it was still disastrous. He was locked up, his money untouchable. She couldn’t possibly take care of another child. She hadn’t even figured out how she and Skylar would survive without Indie there to take care of them. The pressures on her shoulders were instantly magnified. When had she become so dependent, not just on Indie, but on men in general? She had started out on her own, doing whatever it took to make sure she could survive. There had been no shame when it came to using what she had to get what she needed, but that was in her younger days. It was before motherhood, before love had entered her life and shown her what it felt like to be valued. She couldn’t go back to that. For one, the stretch marks, healed burns, and weight gain wouldn’t allow her to.