by Mikal Malone
“Derrick?” I asked, not believing my ears.
“Yes. Derrick. He really looked out, girl,” Mercedes said smiling a little more than she should have.
“Them niggas got us fucked up!” I said trying to wrap my mind around someone hurting one of my girls. “I’m just happy you’re okay.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Carissa said again. “I’m as tough as nails!”
“I know Lavelle flipped, didn’t he?” I questioned.
“Yeah…but I already handled it!” Mercedes told me proudly. “But they did air out everybody else in that mothafucka just for not stopping it.”
“So you finally got a body on your gun?” I giggled. “Look at you, trying to be gangsta.”
“Naw…I’m not gangsta, I’m cute! But I will fuck somebody up about my girls.”
It was silent for a minute as I looked at all of them.
“Let’s make a pact. That we’ll always have each other’s back from this moment forward.” I put my hand in the middle and all of theirs covered mine.
“Nobody can break our bond!” Kenyetta said looking at all of us.
“Nobody!” Mercedes and Carissa added.
Our hands dropped after we fortified our friendship.
“Well…now that that’s out the way. Let’s get shit back in order. I’m back now!”
Chapter 19
What’s Up
January, Saturday, 6:00 p.m.
Thick
Thick couldn’t believe that Zakayla had lied to him about being pregnant.
He had plans to wife her and give her everything she wanted. He had already spent big money on the luxury apartment, the diamonds on her fingers, the clothes in her closet, and her truck. However, nothing proved his love more than dumping his longtime girlfriend and business partner Yvette. But after finding out she was nothing but a liar, he felt the only thing he owed to her was paying her hospital bills.
He was on his way to check out the affairs at Emerald City when he noticed Yvette outside running business. He smiled a little because he hadn’t seen her in weeks. What caught him off guard was not how she was putting niggas in check and handling business, but how good she looked. He could tell she’d lost a lot of weight and now she looked like she did when he first met her.
“I’m not trying to hear that shit! Now you know your fucking hours, and I expect you to be on your job!” Yvette yelled as she grabbed the hood of his coat.
“Yvette, I missed three days, man. That was it!”
“I don’t give a fuck. Since I been in charge of security, yo ass only been out of work one time. Now all of a sudden you need three days? Don’t fuck with me, Veil! Now get back to work.” She was scolding one of Harold’s soldiers.
He walked off and did as he was told. The soldiers realized that unlike the other women, Yvette wouldn’t waste no time putting somebody in check or pulling the trigger. Her feistiness and the weight she lost began to turn Thick on.
He parked his truck in front of Unit C, and walked toward her. When Yvette saw Thick, she started off in the other direction. She wasn’t prepared to see him. Not yet. He quickly grabbed her hand before she was able to make it up the stairs. He knew if she made it inside, her friends would be in her ear telling her to leave his sorry ass alone.
“Come here for a sec, Vette.”
“I gotta go.” She tried to pull away but his grip was tight.
“Where you going?” he asked.
“Me and you ain’t got nothing to talk ‘bout, Thick. It’s over, remember?” “Look…I fucked up okay. I was wrong for even trying to play you. I let that bitch get in my head and I gotta live with the possibility of losing you. But I swear I’m ready to do right by you.”
His words, heavy with passion, caught her off guard and she so desperately wanted to believe him. But deep in her heart, she knew she couldn’t.
“Thick, why you doing this to me? Please let me get on with my life.” Tears ran down her face. “Do you know how hard it was for me to move on? Why can’t you let me go?”
“Because I love you that’s why. Come talk to me in my truck,” he said trying to get her away from the watchful eyes of her friends.
“I can’t, Thick.” She attempted to walk away again.
“Yvette, please…just give me one minute,” he begged looking into her eyes.
It was the first time in a long time she heard the passion in his voice.
“Okay. Only for a minute,” she conceded.
When she got in his truck, the familiar sight and smells snatched her back to a time when things were good with them. Maybe we can work on it, she thought. Maybe he really does love me.
When he came around to the driver’s side of the car, he jumped in, closed the door, and pulled around the back of the building. The smell of the Touch cologne by Burberry he wore made her want to take him in her mouth. He let his five o’clock shadow come through, and shaped it up, adding a distinguished look to a handsome thug. She couldn’t help but stare at him, and admire how sexy he made a pair of jeans, Timbs, black shirt, and Coogi jacket look.
Before she could say anything, he reached in and kissed her. For a minute, she inhaled him then moved into his kisses. Her pussy began to throb as her heart was getting rid of what it had told her for the past few weeks. Here she was, smelling him, touching him and she didn’t want it to end. Some kind of way, she managed to pull away from him, not wanting to give in too easy, not yet anyway.
“What’s wrong, baby?” he asked. “I said I was wrong for what I did to you. That bitch got in my head and fucked shit up. But I knew all along you were the woman for me. And I ain’t never letting that shit happen again. That’s my word, baby,” he said touching her leg and sending chills through her.
“You hurt me, Thick. You hurt me bad. Do you know how it felt to see you walk arm and arm with another woman? You acted like you didn’t even know me. Like I had done something to you. You couldn’t even spend five minutes to tell me why it was over between us.”
“I know. But you know how much I been wanting a baby. That bitch told me she was pregnant and I fell for it.”
“Yeah but you cheated on me too! With all the shit that happened, you making me forget about that. You cheated on me, Thick. She should’ve never been able to pretend to be pregnant in the first fucking place!” Tears fell from her eyes.
“I know, baby. That’s why I’m glad ya’ll fucked that bitch up, otherwise I’da married that scandalous hoe.”
“Thick, I didn’t know nothing ‘bout that,” she said as she wiped the tears from her face. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she got what she deserved, but I didn’t give the word on that shit either. I had made up my mind that you were gonna do what you wanted to do. And there was nothing I could do ‘bout it.”
She didn’t want him thinking that she was so desperate to be with him that she gave the order.
“Well whatever,” he said. “I’m just glad it was done. But I do love you. Let’s move on from this, and work on us, baby.” He gently grabbed her face and kissed her lips.
Yvette’s heart started to beat rapidly. When Thick moved his body close to hers and reached across her body to push her seat all the way back, the anticipation of making love to him consumed her. She didn’t think he deserved her body, but she couldn’t resist him either. It was like he owned her, as if she still belonged to him. He unbuttoned her coat and gripped her breasts. She gave into his touches and confirmed her feelings with soft moans.
“I want to make love to you, baby. I miss this pussy so much. Remember how we used to make love in my truck? Let’s take things back to the way they used to be.”
His words sent a wave of rage over her as she remembered him sleeping with Zakayla in his truck. Her hate took over when she thought about how she begged him not to leave, and he played her in front of all of her friends.
“You love me?” she asked as she breathed heavily into his kisses.
“Yes, baby. I fucking love you
, girl,” he said, his mouth covering hers and his dick reaching full thickness.
She moaned into his mouth. “Do you need me?”
“Yes, baby, I need you…..I need you.”
She pulled away, startling him. “Well you should have thought about that before you walked out of my life. It’s over. Go fuck that gimp in the hospital bed. I’m through with you!” She got out the car, slammed the door and ran toward the building.
After three unsuccessful attempts to get her to come back, Thick decided that he wasn’t gonna be played. He noticed that in her rush to leave, she dropped her keys on his floor. He picked them up and devised a cold plan that would mean death, and ending his friends’ relationships with their women.
Thick pulled up on an unsuspecting Critter in the alley behind Unit A. Even though it was dark, he knew the small-framed Critter anywhere. As high as he’d gotten over the years, he’d never lost his glasses and he always wore a dirty suit and dress coat like he was still working for the government. Thick could tell he was trying to cop some dope and the dealer he was talking to was giving him a hard time. That nigga always want a freebie, Thick thought. He knew his plan would work because Critter was fiening.
“Critter! Come here, man,” Thick yelled from his truck.
Critter moved as fast as he could to the truck, even though the withdrawals were making things hard on his body.
Critter immediately started explaining. “Hey, man. I ain’t bothering nobody, honest.”
“Calm down, nigga. I got a job for you. You wanna make a couple of bucks?”
“Yeah. Sure, man.”
“Look…you gonna need some help. You got anybody that can help you bring some boxes down to my truck.”
Critter looked around and saw Rod talking to another fiend in the yard. He flagged him down and they both stood at the passenger side of Thick’s truck. Thick told them that he needed them to get his box from A55, which was one of the stash houses in Unit A. Thick gave them the Yvette’s key and told them to get a box marked Thick’s things. When they returned, he promised to give them dope and $50.00 apiece.
Critter and Rod eagerly accepted the keys and hurried up to Unit A to get the box. With their judgment clouded, and all they could think of was getting that dope and satisfying their high. When they got off the elevator, they ran down the hall toward A55. When they reached the door, Critter grabbed the key from his pocket and opened the door. Rod followed behind him and moved into the apartment.
The moment Kristina saw Critter and Rod coming through door, she removed both of her guns from their holsters and unloaded multiple bullets in their bodies. Critter, although riddled with bullets, tried to crawl out of the apartment.
“Please…please don’t kill me. Thick—”
Before he could get his sentence out, Kristina walked over top of him, and put two caps in his face.
When she was sure they were both dead, she picked up the keys off the floor, and noticed they were Yvette’s.
Afterwards, she put in a call.
Chapter 20
What’s Up
January, Sunday, 11:45 a.m.
Cameron
“I’m telling you this is some bullshit. Yvette would have never given Critter her set of keys. She must’ve dropped them or something, baby.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Cameron asked Mercedes in their bedroom.
“So what’s gonna happen now?”
“We gonna have a meeting tonight. But you know shit is tight again since we got those extra bodies on us. That’s over three bodies in three weeks. Five-O gonna be on our shit hard.”
“I know. Damn!”
“But don’t worry ‘bout nothing.” Cameron reached in and gave her a kiss. “As long as we have each other, we straight.”
“Is that right?” Mercedes smiled.
“That’s right. Now you know I talked to my baby girl Chante, right?”
“Naw. You didn’t tell me,” Mercedes said as she rubbed his shoulders. “Well what happened? Did you find out why her ass been cutting up in school?”
“Yep. She say we don’t spend no time with her, for one. And for two, she said her friends been clowning her about your moms fucking their grandpops behind their grandmas’ backs.”
“You lying! She said that?”
“I wish I was. So she felt she had to defend the family. So my lil shawty was about to knife a mothafucka!”
“But the teacher, baby?”
“She said that bitch ain’t do nothing to help when she told her they were teasing her. So she flipped on her ass. I don’t blame her either.” Cameron laughed.
“It’s this area, baby. We got to get from around here,” Mercedes said, looking at her engagement ring.
“We will.” He kissed her ring. “Just as soon as we get married. But for now, we’ll look into some private schools.”
“Okay.”
“And where’s Lil C? He been out the house more than me lately.”
“Out there on the yard with his friends. Leave him alone, he just trying to be like you.” She smiled.
“I know right. My lil nigga just like me.” He stood up and put on his bulletproof vest. “Well let me see what’s up with this meeting. I’ll let you know the status the moment I hear something.”
“I love you.” She reached in for a kiss.
“I love you more.” He grabbed one of her nipples and squeezed it. “I’m fucking them walls up when I get back tonight.”
“Promises, promises.”
“And look. Tell Yvette everything will be okay and to keep her head up. We in this thing together.”
“I will. But we all feeling fucked up ‘bout Critter. Kristina had to do what she had to do but he really looked out for us.”
“I know, baby.” He hugged her. “But business is business and he ain’t had no business being in our stash house either.”
“You right.”
“Well I’m on my way to this meeting. Keep my plate warm and my pussy tight,” he said as he left out.
“What you saying, Thick? ‘Cause what you telling me don’t make no fucking sense, man,” Cameron yelled at the emergency meeting held at Thick’s mother’s place off of Minnesota Avenue in N.E.
“I’m saying that Yvette put our entire operation in jeopardy by wearing her feelings on her sleeve, man. And if Kristina hadn’t been on point, who knows how much money we would’ve been into Dreyfus for,” Thick said as he drank Absolute Pear on the rocks.
“I understand why you may be upset, but I’m in love with Carissa, man. We been looking at new places to live and everything. Last week we put a deposit down on a new apartment out in Forestville, Maryland. So what you telling me now don’t even make no sense,” Lavelle said.
“And when were you gonna tell us you were taking one of the girls out of Emerald?” Thick asked.
“Soon,” Lavelle said realizing his oversight.
“That’s the kind of shit I’m talking about. This entire operation is falling the fuck apart!”
Thick was unsympathetic with his friends and their reasoning for not wanting to end their relationships. He felt what needed to be done needed to be done even if he was the one that set Yvette up. For his own selfish reasons, he wanted them to end the relationships with their girlfriends, and pledge loyalty to Emerald City and Emerald City only. But what he hadn’t expected was so much resistance, especially considering a few of them slept with other women on a regular basis the same way he did.
He hit his fist on the table and walked around it, eyeing each of the members of the squad. “Listen….what would have happened if it had been somebody else running up in the house? Dreyfus would’ve came in blazing just like he did on Tyland! And here ya’ll are, sitting here crying over some bitches who’ll probably leave ya’ll asses in a couple of months anyway! Now if ya’ll are loyal to anything other than Emerald City, let me know. ‘Cause right now I’m confused. Maybe we’ll have to revisit who’ll be running things in Emerald C
ity.”
“And what the fuck is that supposed to mean!” Dyson asked as he stood up.
“Just what the fuck I said!” Thick shot back. “Now I want to know right here and right fucking now, what the fuck do ya’ll plan to do? Pledge loyalty to Emerald City by ending the relationships with the bitches that could ruin us and focus on business at hand?” He paused. “Or go on with what you doing and risk something worse happening, the next time one of them gets mad.”
The room fell silent.
Thick asked, “By a show of hands. Who’s in and who’s out? The time is now.”
No one made a move until Dyson drank from his cup, wiped his hand on his jeans, looked at his brothers in blood, sweat and tears, and raised his hand.
“I pledge loyalty to ya’ll,” Dyson said.
Thick looked around the room, placed his gun on the table and said, “I’ll lay down my life for every one of you mothafuckas!”
After that, Cameron and Lavelle both looked at one another searching for who would betray the woman they loved first. Because, unlike the others, they intended to place the women in their lives on their arms. Lavelle quickly swallowed all of the drink in his glass and poured another glass. With as much hesitation and hurt as a man who didn’t want to walk away from someone he loved could muster, he reluctantly raised his hand.
“I pledge loyalty to my brothers too. Don’t let me down.”
Cameron was fucked up when Lavelle folded because he realized he was the only other person outside of himself, who loved his woman. But Cameron also knew the day would come where he too would have to choose. But he never knew it would happen so soon. So without wasting any more time, he made his decision.
“I pledge Honor, Loyalty, Obedience and Silence to the Emerald City Squad, always.”
For the next hour, they devised a plan that would keep the women in office permanently, and dissolve their relationships completely over the next six months. They figured if they’d gotten used to working for them as opposed to being in a relationship, nothing like what happened to Yvette would happen again. They were convinced by what Thick was telling them, that they could convince the women that a strictly business relationship was best for everyone.