Hated by Many, Loved by None 3

by Shan

  “She said that she didn’t tell him anything. He doesn’t even know that she’s handling his business from what Dom told me. I don’t know. It’s a whole bunch of craziness going on. He said that he didn’t want to get too involved in it, but felt like we needed to just step up and make sure we back her on this cause she’s obviously in over her head,” B.B. said as he pulled away from the curb.

  “Damn, so he didn’t put her up to this? She just out there on her own?”

  “That’s what it sounds like. We ain’t got time to worry about that though. Call up Rain and make sure she ready and shit make sure you ready. I see you sweating over there. Calm down. Everything gonna be alright.”

  I checked the mirror and could see that my entire head was filled with sweat. I opened the glove compartment and grabbed a few napkins to dry my head and then took in a few breaths. A lot was on the line, and I was just ready to get this shit over and done with.

  ***

  We had arrived at the meeting place about fifteen minutes before Rozalyn was supposed to be there. I reached under the seat and grabbed the chopper and hopped out of the car followed by Turk, B.B., and Joe-Joe.

  “I don’t see nobody here yet, but I’m gon check around back,” Joe-Joesaid, cocking his 9 mili and walking away.

  “Turk , go with him,” B.B. said and came and stood by my side.

  We started walking around to front of the place, checking things out to be sure everything was legit. We had to be sure that no one was waiting to ambush our asses. I still only trusted Rain’s ass half-way and knew that everything she’d told me could either be the truth, half the truth, or just false as hell. This could be another one of her plots to set me up and bring me down even further than she already had.

  Yea, she had been giving me all the dirt on that nigga Chino anytime she’d found something out, but that still didn’t mean that she wasn’t playing for the other side. Coming from her, there was only so much I could trust.

  After we were done looking around, we saw a set of headlights coming from the road. A champagne colored Infinity with chrome wheels pulled into the parking lot and parked right next to B.B’s car. I watched in anticipation as the driver killed the lights followed by the engine.

  I was able to see that it was Rozalyn and that she was alone. She stepped out of the car with her stilettos pounding the pavement like she owned the streets. She was dressed in a tight fitting black dress that wrapped around her small curves perfectly. She was dressed to kill even though she looked like she couldn’t hurt a fly if she wanted to.

  This was worse than when Jahzara decided that she would move bricks to get money and make a statement. This game was not for women. Rozalyn’s little ass showed just how little she knew about this shit.

  “So, y’all sure this nigga said he was gonna rob me?” Rozalyn asked with her accent on swoll. She looked me up and down and then met her eyes with mine.

  “That’s what we’ve been told. I mean, we don’t know for sure, but like I said whether he is or not, that nigga won’t be making it out of here alive. So you’ll either get your money and keep them birds, or you’ll just leave with the same thing you came with,” I told her and tried to keep my eyes focused on her face.

  Rozalyn crossed her arms over her chest and glared at me. “I don’t know how I feel about this. This was a dude that a longtime friend put me in contact with. She vouched hard for him so I really hope he ain’t on no bullshit.”

  “Well, what did your husband say about it?” I asked her searching her face for a reaction to see if what B.B. said earlier had any truth to it.

  “Let’s go inside. I don’t want to be standing out here waiting around like this. I’m sure he’s somewhere watching. If he was smart, he would be somewhere watching.”

  I nodded my head and followed behind her as she took us to the small office like building. She pulled out her keys and opened the door. B.B. and I followed behind her.Turk and Joe-Joe stayed outside.

  “I thought that dude Black was gonna be with you,” B.B. said to her and began to walk around the office building.

  “He’s here. I can’t tell you where because I have no idea, but he’s around,” Rozalyn took a seat behind the desk that was in the middle of the floor and leaned back in the chair.

  “Where the work at?” I asked looking around.

  “That’s here as well. Look, stop asking me so many questions. You’re making me nervous and I’m already nervous enough each time I do this. So I need you to calm down,” Rozalyn said. “Y’all walking around with these big ass guns like you part of some damn army or something. Just calm down.”

  She looked down at her phone and then back at me. “It’s 8:30, so if he doesn’t show up in the next ten minutes. I’m leaving.”

  I nodded my head and left out of the front of the office building in search for B.B.. I found him in a small room on the left side peeking out of the blinds with his cell phone on his ear. He said a few words into the phone and hung up.

  “Aye, let’s go,” B.B. said.

  “What you mean let’s go? That nigga ain’t here yet,” I said in confusion.

  “Dom just called and said he heard from somebody that they setting this damn girl up. He said the place is most likely surrounded by DEA and the FEDs,” B.B. rushed out of the room and I followed behind him. “Rozalyn, let’s go.”

  “Nah, I said I will give him ten minutes,” Rozalyn said nonchalantly.

  “Look my bro just told me this whole shit is a set up and that the place is surrounded by the law. Let’s go lil mama. Like you said, that nigga here somewhere. Unless your pretty ass wanna be sitting in a cell for the rest of your life,” B.B. walked over to Rozalyn and pulled her out of the chair and headed towards the door. “Let’s go.”

  Soon as I pulled the door opened, I was looking down the barrel of a gun. It was the nigga Chino. After all the pictures of him that Rain had sent to me, I would recognize his face anywhere.

  “Drop it, nigga,” Chino said to me looking down at the chopper I held down by my side.

  “I ain’t dropping shit,” I said and could hear B.B. cocking his pistol behind me.

  I looked over Chino’s shoulder and saw the big guy that was about to kill Rain back in the lot of Maryland. He had Turk in front of him and a pistol to his head.

  “I said drop it!” he yelled and shoved the gun in my face.

  I closed my eyes shut tightly and then opened them again. I knew this shit could go either damn way. I had said it over and over again, which is why I was so nervous before coming here. I thought about Jahzara laying back in the hospital and wondered if she would ever wake up. I wondered if I would have a chance to see her again, sit by her side and hold on to her hand like I’d been doing for the past few weeks.

  Before I could even make my mind up to do anything, Joe-Joe had set things off. He had blew a hole so big in the back of the big nigga’s head and caused everyone to react. I brought the chopper up from my side and swung it around, knocking Chino in his face. I pushed Rozalyn out of the way and started letting the chopper go.

  Tat-ta-tat-tat tat!

  I just shot, not really giving a fuck who I hit at this point. Chino and Turk was caught in the damn middle with nowhere to go. They tried to run, but with Joe-Joe right behind them and me and B.B right in front them, they were like sitting ducks. Everybody was trying to duck and dodge and take cover, but there was none. Nobody’s life was spared. I kept shooting and ran behind the desk where Rozalyn had been sitting while B.B ran off to the corner.

  The environment was so closed in that it sounded like we were in the middle of a civil war. This shit was crazy as hell. I watched as Turk’s body fell and blood squirt from his mouth and from a hole in the center of her chest. Shit. I hated that shit happened to him, but

  Bullets continued to scatter all over the place for a few minutes longer until everything had suddenly gone quiet.

  24: Jahzara

  “James, did you see that?” I heard my
mama say.

  “See what?” my daddy replied.

  “Oh my God! James get the doctor! Get them quick!” she yelled as her voice cracked with tears.

  I cracked my eyes open, but I was unable to see anything but darkness. I tried once again but it was still so dark and my eyelids were so heavy.

  “She moved her hands. I saw her move her hands,” I heard my mama say; not sure what she had meant by that.

  I moved my right hand and brought up to my face and that’s when I heard her scream.

  “Oh Jesus! Oh thank you Lord!” she prayed.

  Suddenly, I felt someone touching my face and a sticky substance peeling away from my eyes. I tried once again to open them and this time there was light. It was so strong that I had to quickly close them due to the brightness practically blinding me. Slowly, I opened one eye this time to try and get adjusted to the light before I opened the other.

  My mama snatched my hand into hers and squeezed it tightly. Her face was covered in tears and her makeup was running down her face. I didn’t know why she was crying or why she looked like she was staring into the face of a ghost. She cracked a beautiful smile through all that watery pain and I tried to smile at her back when I realized I couldn’t. I pulled my hand away from hers and brought it up to my mouth and there was some huge plastic thing covering it.

  I didn’t know what was going on. The last thing I remembered was sitting up in my hospital bed and my dad and I talking about the basketball game that was on. I didn’t have a tube my throat or any of this shit. I began to panic and pulled at the damn thing. I wanted it out of me. I wanted to talk and ask questions so that I could find out what was going and what happened.

  “Just a minute. Soon as the doctor comes in we will take that out of you,” the nurse said to me and I tried to relax my breathing.

  It seemed like forever had gone by before a tall black male with a long white coat had come to into the room. He placed the stethoscope that hung around his neck in his ears and then walked over to me.

  “Well, look at here, out for six weeks and you finally decided that you had enough rest, Mrs. Simmons,” the doctor said to me and I wrinkled my brow in confusion.

  What did he mean out for six weeks? Out for six weeks where?

  “Sounds good. Sounds excellent,” he turned around and grabbed a pair of gloves from a box on the wall behind him. He then began to pull tape from around my mouth and tossed the tape onto the floor.

  “Take a huge deep breath in and then blow it out as hard as you can.”

  I did as I was told. It felt like one of my organs was being pulled out of my throat as he removed the huge ass tube from me. I began to cough, but that didn’t stop me from trying to speak. I had to find out what the hell was going on with me.

  “Mama,” I said and my voice was all dry and crackly.

  “Oh my God, Jahzara. Oh Lord, thank you so much,” she grabbed my hand and kissed it before showering my face with kisses. My dad walked around to the other side of me and began to do the same.

  Did I have the surgery and something had gone wrong? I felt myself breaking down.

  “Daddy, what’s going on?”

  “That tear next to your heart caused you to have stroke,” the doctor began explaining. “Your heart wasn’t functioning properly and your organs began to shut down which caused you to go into a coma. You’ve been in a coma for six weeks now.”

  I looked from my daddy to my mama for either of them to confirm when I thought about something I had said before.

  She’d been going on since before the detectives arrived. She almost made me wish that I had been in a damn coma so I didn’t have to hear her mouth. Those words replayed in my head over and over again. It was like a bad tune that I just couldn’t seem to get out of my head. I looked at my mama and felt so bad that I had said that about her. She could be a pain in the ass sometimes, but I still loved her. I reached out and wrapped my arms around her, squeezing her as tight as my body would allow.

  “I’ll be back through to check on you all later. This is awesome news today and she looks well,” the doctor said before he exited the room and my mama ran over to him and hugged him.

  I lightly chuckled and then reached out to my dad to give him a hug as well.

  I can’t believe that I’ve been in a coma for six whole weeks. I shook my head and thought about all that I had gone through over the past year. I’ve been given so many chances at life that I knew that it was a sign to straighten up and fly right. I started thinking about future and how I had put my life on hold to be Quin’s wife.

  “Have you all heard from Imran? He told me that he would be here for my surgery?” I asked thinking how I wanted him to be a part of my future.

  My daddy nodded. “He was here with you just about every day that you had been in that coma. He called yesterday morning and asked did we want anything for breakfast and that he was on his way, but he never showed up. I tried calling him a few times but didn’t get an answer.”

  He took his cell phone away from his belt clip and then looked at the screen.

  “So he was here with me every day?” I asked hopefully. Those words were music to my ears.

  “Yea he was. He has been a great support system to us,” my mama said, surprising the hell out of me.

  “I’ll step outside and try to call him. I know this will be news that he will be glad to hear.”

  I watched as my daddy walked out of the hospital room and into the hallway with his phone to his ear. My mama took a seat next to me and just held on tightly to my hands. I could see that she was so happy. I hoped that after all this that we could maybe begin to work on our relationship. She was never happy with the decisions I made, and we were constantly at each other’s throats. I wanted it to be different, and I wanted her to know that I loved her.

  25: Imran

  My phone began buzzing in my pocket as I rounded the corner of the hospital. I looked up and saw Jahzara’s dad pacing back and forth with his cell fixed at his ear. I reached in my pocket and pulled mine out and chuckled when I noticed that he was calling me. He finally brought his head up and spotted me with a huge smile lining his face. I’ve never seen him smile like that during all these weeks I’ve been at the hospital.

  Last night, I had barely escaped death and still ended up leaving that muthafucka with nothing. Chino and Ray did plan to rob Rozalyn and didn’t bring a dime along with them. I hated that I have moved on them so suddenly because I still ended up with nothing. At least it was over and I was alive. Them fools were dead and I didn’t have to worry about them anymore.

  If me and my boys wouldn’t have been there they probably would have killed Rozalyn’s little ass. She didn’t have any backup. I think she made that nigga Black up. Her dumb ass had come there solo. It was just her and those ten bricks that she was riding around with in her trunk. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on with that damn girl! I hope that somebody talks to her or Tamar about that shit quick, or else she’s gonna wind up dead really soon. She has no clue what the fuck she’s doing.

  It wasn’t my problem or for me to worry about. As far as the whole thing with my uncle Dom thinking it was surrounded by the DEA and FEDs was all misinformation that had been given. We were able to walk away from that shit with our lives and hopefully not ever have to worry about the police.

  I had stopped by Rain’s hotel room where she’d been staying seeing as how she didn’t show up like she was supposed to. When I’d gotten there, the hotel informed me that she’d checked out and turned in her keys. I called her a few times and was unable to get in contact with her. I assumed that he had run in fear that I would kill her and she was right. I had plans to murk her, but she got lucky, and got away.

  “Hey,” I said as I reached James. I held my hand out and shook his and he pulled me in for a hug.

  “She’s awake man! She’s awake,” James said cheerfully.

  Immediately, I lit up on the inside with joy. After that shit that wen
t down last night, I needed some news like this. I rushed into the hospital room and Jahzara and I locked eyes with one another. She was sitting upright with her hands crossed over the front of her, smiling up at me.

  “You’re here,” Jahzara said to me and held her hands out. I leaned down and hugged her and then sat next to her on the bed.

  “What’s up? You okay?” I asked looking her over.

  “Yea, I’ve never felt better. Are you okay?” she asked raising her brows.

  “I’m good. I’m real good.”

  “Imran, I have so much that I want to say to you-”

  I cut her off, “Don’t worry about that right now. I’m here alright and I’m not going anywhere. We good, okay?”

  Jahzara nodded her head as a single tear fell from her eye. I used my thumb to wipe it away and just stared at her. I don’t know why we had to go through all of what we had endured, but through all the hate, I still could see that this was the woman I loved. We had to go through our tests in order for us appreciate one another more.

  I was gonna stop being mad at her for what Honey had done and for what Quin had done, and I was gonna stop being mad her for aborting my seed. I hoped that she could forgive me for allowing Rain back in my life because as much as I wanted to blame her for the bullshit and drama she had brought my way, I had brought her some as well when I allowed Rain back in. Hopefully Rain would stay away and never come my way again.

  We have another chance to focus on one another, and right now all I want is for her to get better so that she could get out of this hospital and we can start all the way over. I want to get to know Jahzara, not the stripper or the wanna-be drug dealer, but the real Jahzara. I want her to get to know me the same.

  I can’t say that I’m gonna change my life around just yet cause I’m still young and hustlin’ isn’t something I’m ready to let go of yet. Even after all that shit that went down last night, I’m still itching to get my hands on some kind of work.