Long As You Know Who You Belong To 2

by Bri Noreen

  “Wait, he did what?”

  “Pay attention, got damn it! I barely have time to tell this shit once let alone twice for your retarded ass.”

  “Lady, ain’t nobody fucking retarded. You’re just not making a lot of sense. Why would he want you, the bitch that tried to take him out, to have his baby?”

  “I don’t see what the hell you’re confused about. Are you looking at me? Your father isn’t the only one who wanted to put a baby up in this. I just never let anyone close enough to even consider it. But your father presented me with an offer I couldn’t turn down.”

  “So you’re telling me my father wanted a child so bad that he fucked you, the hired hit? My father was fine as hell. He could’ve had any bitch he wanted.”

  “Very true. But all he wanted was a child. He wasn’t looking for a chick that wanted to inherit his fortune or be all up in his business or even be the mother to his child. All he wanted was an heir to raise on his own without the fuss of having a woman.” She shrugged. “He liked what he saw in me I guess.”

  I scoffed. “I don’t know why. You seem like a mean, cynical old bitch to me.”

  “I may be just that, but I’m also smart, tenacious, ambitious, and finer than a mothafucka. Who the fuck knows what went on in Hero’s mind and why he really chose me of all people. But he did, so there I was, and after thirty-two hours of labor there you were. He really wanted a son but after he saw you, he fell in love. Having you was the best thing I ever did.”

  “If that’s the case, why didn’t you fight him to be in my life? Why did I have to grow up motherless?” I yelled, hopping off the hood of the car.

  “Oh, shit. I see you’re taking this literally. No I mean, my career took off after Hero hired and paid me. What I was making before him was chump change compared to what I was able to make after a few referrals and jobs from your father. I guess you can tell that I’m not the breast-feeding, rock-a-bye baby type. I was glad that he didn’t want me to have a part in your life. Lord knows I didn’t need no damn baby to slow me down.”

  The shit that was coming out of her mouth had my trigger finger itching. All my life I had wanted to feel the love of a mother, and the day she enters my life, she makes me want to fire one through her dome. I counted to five in my head to calm myself down. I had already killed one part of my plan. I had to keep in mind that Nine, my long lost mother, was my only option at this point. Swallowing my pride, I pressed on with my plan.

  “Fuck all this family reunion shit. I was better off with a single father anyway,” I spat hoping that it would sting her a little. She looked unfazed. Stupid cunt. “I have a job that I need done, and I’m hoping that you can help.”

  “If you got the cheese, I got the means. Say the word.” She folded her arms against her chest.

  “I need someone kidnapped and brought to me.”

  “Brought to you to do what? Last I heard you were an event planner. Fuck you gon’ do, plan their funeral?” She laughed.

  “Well you must not be up on your current events. I’m actually a missing person because my dirt-bag ex tried to burn me to death in a trap house. And now I want that mothafucka’s head.”

  “I don’t do kidnappings, baby girl. You want me to kill him, cool. But if not, we have nothing left to discuss.” She stood and walked toward her car.

  Was she serious? Just like that? “That’s it?” I screamed out of desperation before I could stop myself.

  She whipped around and frowned. “Excuse me?”

  “You just pop up, drop a bomb on me, and then refuse to help me like I didn’t pop out of your vagina?”

  “You act like I owe you something. I gave you life, and that’s where my debt to you ended. You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me, so if you want to get technical with it, you really owe me.”

  “Fuck you and your dried up pussy! You’ve never had to do a got damn thing for me, and the one thing I ask you for, you deny me. Fuck you!” I screamed. Spit flew from my mouth as pure rage consumed me. I wasn’t mad at her per se, but she was the last straw. She was the only option I had. Without her help, Grey was going to slip through my fingers and get away with everything he’d done to me. Angry and out of options, I hopped back into my car and sped off.

  So imagine my surprise when the old hood rat hit my line and accepted the job. She had a bunch of stipulations, but she agreed to my timeline and my price. I was just waiting on her to get here and accept her payment and go over the plan. I felt kinda bad for going against Roman because I really had planned on hopping an island and riding his dick under the palm trees as a celebration present to myself, but oh well. This nigga Grey had to go by any means necessary.

  Grey

  August 2015

  “Fuccckkk!” I screamed.

  I couldn’t believe this shit. I was on a high like no other when I left Blaze and headed to the airport this morning. A nigga had gone and taken my baby completely off the market and nothing made me happier. I had never imagined myself as a married nigga, but after last night, I couldn’t picture myself not sliding that ring on her finger.

  I left Blaze this morning because I got an urgent call from Ma Dukes stating she had some information about the niggas that had been trying to sell product on my turf. I didn’t want to risk having the conversation on the phone, so I told her I would see her soon and hopped on a flight. As soon as I pulled up to Ma Dukes place, I could feel a chill run through my bones. Something wasn’t right. I sent a quick one up to God, hoping that I wasn’t walking directly into a setup, but what I got when I opened the door was much worse.

  Sprawled out on the hardwood floor, was Ma Dukes with her head barely hanging on to her body. Some twisted fuck had run through the crib and murked the only other person in my life that meant something to me outside of Kimani and Blaze. Tears threatened to leak from my eyes as I looked at the woman who had loved me like she had given birth to me, but I pulled myself together. I knew Ma Dukes backwards and forwards, and if she had something major to tell me, she had left it somewhere safe in case something happened to her. I ran upstairs to grab a sheet to cover her body and a pair of cleaning gloves and got to searching.

  I came up for air an hour later and still I had nothing. Whoever had done this had taken all the artillery I normally stored in her basement behind a false wall and all the cash I had left her to hold. I didn’t give a fuck about that shit, but I was dying to find the clue she’d left me about them fuck niggas who probably did this to her. Frustrated, I plopped down onto the dining room chair and buried my head in my hands. I wanted to fucking cry so bad. Her death hurt like a muhfucka. But the smell of baked goods near my nostrils caused me to lift my head. I smiled at the cake that I hadn’t noticed she’d made. She was always in the kitchen cooking up some shit, I thought to myself. Going on a hunch, I grabbed the cake dish and felt around. Sure enough, I felt a thick stack folded papers taped to the bottom. Smiling at the ceiling, I silently thanked her for having my back even when she was gone.

  I ripped the paper from the bottom of the cake dish and unfolded it. They turned out to be a series of birth certificates. I scanned them quickly and was left in complete fucking awe. Not only had Ma Dukes clued me in on who was behind everything and probably her murder, she had also dropped some wild news on a nigga. I folded the paper back up and hurried out of the house with my cell phone pressed to my ear. Brandin answered after the first ring.

  “Yo, I got answers. I need Erika and Bailey in ATL. I’ll meet you at the spot in twenty-four.”

  “You got it.”

  I hung up the phone and hopped into the rental. A wicked smile formed on my face. Shit was about to hit the muhfuckin’ fan once I touched down in Cali.

  Roman

  August 2015

  “What happened?” I asked when I saw him. I walked into his office, which was on the basement floor of the building he owned.

  “Hell if I know. The only shit you trusted me with is the bitch you got me laying wit’ ever
y night,” he mumbled.

  “Well, can you tell me something? I know you didn’t have me race all the way over here to feed me some bullshit about you don’t know. The fuck happened?” I sat down in the chair across from his desk.

  Running his hand over his hair, he started. “Shit, I was minding my business, making calls and shit to make sure we had everything straight for next week. I just so happened to look at the security cameras. That’s when I saw this pretty-ass nigga strolling up to the door. He approached Mark at the front desk about the girl, and I came out to help him handle it.”

  “What do you mean help him handle it? You didn’t do shit to the nigga, did you?” I bolted out of my seat and into his face.

  He mushed me and sucked his teeth. “No, nigga, I ain’t stupid. I told him that there was no one here by that name and showed him a copy of our lease records. He looked a little suspicious, but he didn’t ask any more questions. He just left.” He sat down. “The way I see it, we have a day or two before he comes sniffing around here again. What I’m trying to figure out is how his ass knows anything about her being alive.”

  I looked at my identical twin brother, Israel, and our expressions mirrored one another’s. I couldn’t understand how we’d wound up here either. As far as I knew, Kimani believed that Blu was dead. I had pulled every possible string I had to get her out of that hospital in Arizona and transport her to Atlanta within hours of her admittance. I paid the doctor at the hospital handsomely to tell Kimani the grim reaper had come to claim his budding family and had paid for a medical cadaver to take her place at the funeral. I had been close to having the funeral home accidentally cremate her, but when Grey asked them to make sure that the casket was closed, I decided against it. The funeral home that he’d contracted to plan the services was run by a nigga that owed my father. So I settled his debt by having him follow my instructions to the letter about her funeral. No one could even have a doubt in their minds that Blu was dead. I kinda felt bad for Kimani because he and his bitch were just collateral damage. However, I also knew that if Kimani were to suffer, in the long run, Grey would become weaker. So I knew what I was doing when I nabbed Blu. I wanted Grey to suffer in any way, shape, or form he could imagine.

  Because of the great lengths I had gone to keep Blu a secret, I couldn’t understand how the fuck this nigga ended up this close to finding her ass. Everything that had taken two years to iron out was beginning to fall by the wayside. Karma’s ass had dipped on me, Ashlynn was dead, Kimani knew Blu was alive, he and was looking for her. What the fuck else could go wrong at this point?

  I looked at Israel and got lost in my thoughts for a moment. When we had agreed to go after Grey, we’d also agreed to go at him with so much finesse and thought that there was no way that we couldn’t end up on top. This grimy mothafucka had taken everything from us just by running his fucking mouth. Our father, Jorge Nueva, was his connect. When Grey got caught up in some trouble after a drug deal had gone wrong, which resulted in a deadly shootout, he ratted our father out to the feds to get away with the shit that they were about to charge him with. The feds rained down on my father with fury. Determined not to go to prison, my father went out in a hailstorm of bullets. Not only did we lose our father that day, but our little sister, Italia, had been shot in the head, sending her straight into a coma that she still hadn’t awaken from.

  As if taking my family away from me wasn’t enough, the feds seized everything. Cars, drugs, money, bank accounts and businesses were all taken from us. Luckily, my father had planned for such a day. He had been smart enough to stash away money for us with someone he trusted. I had used most of the money he’d left to plan my get-back on Grey, and the rest my brother and I had invested in a few businesses mostly located in Atlanta. But I had invested too much into destroying Grey to not get the result I wanted. At this point, I was running out of time for the type of revenge I had in mind. But fuck it! This nigga would just have to die.

  “Scrap the plan,” I ordered as I stood.

  “What? The fuck you mean? Our fucking sister is in a coma, and our father is dead because of that snitch-ass pussy. And you’re saying fuck the plan?” Israel raged. His eyes blazed, and I could see that he was close to ripping my head off. Because of his anger issues, I had put his ass on babysitting duty. I couldn’t risk him tripping off of some bullshit and blowing things. But in hindsight, I guess it didn’t even matter.

  “That’s not what the fuck I mean. We thought too long and hard about this. We’ve overcomplicated it. Why don’t we just kill this mothafucka?” I pondered out loud. “We wanted to strip him of everything that he had and then what? Let him live?”

  Israel looked at me with confusion in his eyes. “I don’t know, man. This was your fucking plan!”

  “I know, I know. I just think that all the shit that has gone wrong is a sign. We just need to come at this nigga simple and plain. Take something that he could never get back. ”

  “And what is that, bro?”

  “His life.”

  Blu

  August 2015

  I closed the door behind me softly, picked up my suitcase, and headed down the hall. I had dosed him with Doxepin once again, but this time when I left, I had no intention of coming back. Living side by side with a man I had come to realize I didn’t know at all, was getting harder to do. I couldn’t look him in the eye with the same love and respect I’d once had. And I couldn’t hold back the contempt that I felt for him any longer. So I’d laced his favorite drink with the potent sleep aide and fled the scene like a thief in the night. I’d stolen all the cash in his wallet and packed up anything of value and dipped.

  I called a cab, and when the driver asked me where we were headed, I froze. The most obvious choice was to take the $350 I had to my name and get to a train station, but I felt like there was some unfinished business I needed to take care of first. So I asked the driver to take me to the club where I had seen the green-eyed cutie, hoping to get some closure. It was still a little early, especially for a strip club to be popping, so when I arrived at Clappers, there were barely any cars in the parking lot. Grabbing my suitcase, I walked inside and headed toward the bar. I cleared my throat to get the attention of who I thought was the bartender, and he turned around. Once again, I was transfixed by the pretty green eyes that stared back at me. I couldn’t speak, and it was clear that he was having a hard time too. After a few moments of silence, I smiled sheepishly and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.

  “Blu.”

  The way my name sounded coming out of his mouth made me involuntarily close my eyes and savor the sound. It was one word, but I could feel the whirlwind of emotions that carried that word from his lips to my soul. He had exhaled it. It was like he had been holding his breath all his life just to be able to utter that one word…a name. It was my name. I wasn’t sure who he was and why I was so drawn to him, but something strong was forcing me to continue my inquiry.

  “How do you know me?” I all but whispered once I finally got myself together.

  He looked at me wide-eyed and with a hint of disbelief. I waited for him to say something, but instead he walked around the bar and grabbed my hand. He looked at my suitcase and then back to me.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t…I don’t know. I guess I’m going away somewhere. I had to see you before I left. There’s something—”

  Before I could get another word out, he leaned forward, boldly grabbed my face and planted his lips on mine. My body grew weak to the point where he had to grab me at my waist in a hurry to keep me from falling on my ass. His kiss filled my body like the blood pumping through my veins. My body inflated with love, and I felt like I was floating on air. He pulled away and he took my breath with him when he did.

  “You can’t. You can’t ever leave me again.” He breathed.

  Grabbing my hand, he walked me toward the back of the club, through an exit door, down the hall and into an office. I took a seat on the co
uch, and he sat next to me. He grabbed my hands and looked into my eyes like he was pleading with me to remember something.

  “So you have amnesia?” he asked.

  “No. Maybe? I don’t know.” I sighed. “All I know is when I woke up in the hospital, the last thing I remembered was meeting my best friend for lunch. I thought it was 2014.”

  “Wow. So you don’t remember me at all?”

  “No.” I stated reluctantly. He dropped my hands and hung his head. “Are you Kimani?”

  “Yeah, that’s me, ma. I was your man before you got shot.”

  “That explains why your name was on my admittance papers.” I sighed.

  “You…” he choked on his words. “You were pregnant with my kid.”

  I could see the tears forming in his eyes, and without a thought, my hand flew to his face to wipe them away. He looked at me in shock, and I withdrew my hands, scared that I had done something I wasn’t supposed to. Cautiously, he eased his face toward mine and I could clearly see he was going for another kiss. I welcomed it. Although my mind couldn’t put the pieces together, my body recognized this man off rip. His touch sent small waves of electricity through me, and I moaned into the kiss. Easily, he maneuvered his body on top of mine as I laid back on the couch. Breaking away from the kiss, he rested all his weight on one arm as he used his free hand to push a strand of hair away from my face.

  “I missed the fuck out of you, ma,” he whispered.

  I couldn’t return the sentiment, so I pulled his face toward mine to steal another kiss. There was something intoxicating about him that made me not care that I didn’t really know who he was and what our journey had been. I just wanted him. He deepened the kiss as my hands roamed his toned body. My panties were soaked just from his kisses, and it made me kind of scared of what he would do to me next and how my body would react. He grabbed me up from the couch and yanked my shirt off my frame. His approach became more rough and passionate as he stripped me down to just my lace thong.