When Keyshawn told me it was Michelle who’d crashed and almost died in the wreck and not Larissa I was in complete shock. There was no way that flashy piece of shit convertible was Michelle’s car; she wasn’t into shit like that. It had my cousin’s name written all over it. Angelo found Candi, through one of his boys; she was loyal, young, and a straight-up little tomboy grease monkey. I told her a hundred times to make sure there weren’t no car seats or no toys or shit like that in the car she fucked up. We ain’t count on the babysitter seeing her when she was trying to leave. But Angelo was in good with everyone in Miami, it wouldn’t take but so many phone calls and so much hand washin’ or passin’ money to get her cleared.
The whole car routine was really just to scare they asses. I was hoping Larissa would get banged up and then I could get her while she was in the hospital on some real dramatic-type angel of death shit. Unplug her life support, put somethin’ in her IV, I didn’t know. According to Angelo, the bitch was doing side jobs with Lania and her girls. I couldn’t help smirking at that shit. The thought of Larissa hoin’ herself out was a mess, enough to make me damn near piss myself. Now that we knew she was gettin’ close to Lania it would be nothing to get her off by herself and handle business.
I stood over her now with the barrel pointed at her head.
“You look a li’l surprised, cuzzo, but it’s nice seein’ you too. Get your ass up.” I didn’t know what kinda shit Lania had them trippin’ off of. She and all them model bitches stayed high off something. Larissa stood up, looking at me like she couldn’t tell if I was a hallucination or a some kind of monster back from the dead.
“You dead, Honey. Either this some kinda voodoo-zombie shit or I’m havin’ the craziest fuckin’. . . Lania, can . . . can you see this bitch too?”
I almost laughed at her dumb ass. I don’t know why we wasn’t filming that shit. Keepin’ the gun on my target I turned my head in Lania’s direction. “Lania? You good? Can you drive yourself home or I need to get someone to take you?” She was still sittin’ in the sand lookin’ like her world had ended or her heart was broken, I could never tell wit’ her overly dramatic ass. Angelo told me all ’bout the little fucked-up love affair she was havin’ with her stepbrother and shit. She was the main reason why he was so fuckin’ timid and on the fence when it came to gettin’ Michelle where we needed her. Some kind of brother-sister power struggle they all seemed to stay goin’ through.
“I’m good. You’re going to finish this now are you not?” She weaved where she stood, looking at me expectantly as if she didn’t already know my answer.
“I am. This shit ends today.”
Lania staggered to her feet and walked back in the direction I’d seen them approach from earlier.
“Honey, please, I’m sorry. We ain’t mean to do shit to you. You just got caught up in—”
“Y’all ain’t mean to get me locked up? What the fuck you think was gonna happen when you called and reported that car Rah gave me?” I stared at her, half expecting a real logical heartfelt answer, knowing her ass ain’t have one.
“Honey, it was Rasheed we wanted to fuck up, ma. Not you. You don’t wanna do this shit.”
“The fuck you gonna tell me what I do an’ don’t wanna do? You don’t even know what I’m gonna do.”
“Anything you want you got it, just say the word. If I can’t make it happen I’ll find someone who can.”
I couldn’t hide the sneer that spread across my face. Amazing how people will promise you shit they ain’t got and don’t even know if they can get when they got a gun pointed at their head.
“There’s nothing you can give me that my new man, Angelo, hasn’t.”
Even though her ass was high she knew what that name meant comin’ out of my mouth. “How the fuck you get connected like that?” She whispered it, more like a thought out loud than a question directed at me.
“I want my daughter and I don’t need you to get her back. All the times I sat and watched you put yo’ hands on my child, like you was disciplining a damn dog. The way you talked to her.”
Shock was written on her face. She didn’t know I knew about the abuse, the welts, the bruises. The way she talked to the kids when Michelle wasn’t around. From what I remembered Larissa couldn’t stand kids, never really could. She just played the mommy role around Michelle’s ass and that was it. Nothing could have prepared me for the anger that seared through me in a heated flash. The nozzle flared on the silencer, and I watched the shock in her eyes change to fear and then pain as she fell down onto the sand, holdin’ her side.
“I ain’ mean nothin’ by it. How my momma and grandma raised me, even how Grandma did you. Remember? I ain’t know no different.”
She stared up at me until the pain faded from her eyes, until they were no longer the bright green I always remembered. Blood ran down the sand toward the ocean and I watched the trail for a second, wondering if I was gonna be just as bad with Paris because of how I was raised. I vaguely remembered being ordered to pull switches from rose bushes with the thorns still on ’em. Gettin’ whoopin’s across my bare legs because I’d fallen asleep in church or back talked. Extension cords, yardsticks, and flip-flops were regular weapons of ass destruction because we was always gettin’ into something and doing shit we usually had no damn business doing.
“Good job; you are making me more and more proud each day. Pretty soon you’ll be cold and calculated enough to be your own capo.” Angelo had been watching me from the sidelines as usual, just in case I’d gotten cold feet again. He ain’t have to worry about that shit happening, not when my daughter was involved.
“As much as I like it when you talk that talk, I have no idea what that means, baby.” He always mixed that Italian shit in when he spoke and sometimes I could pick it up, but I’d never heard him use that word before.
“Capo means boss. You lookin’ like a beautiful angel of death right now.”
Boss. I liked the way that sounded comin’ from his lips. I still had one more mu’fucka on my list to show exactly who’s boss.
CHAPTER 27
SAVE THE BEST FOR LAST
After takin’ care of Larissa’s ass we had to chill for a minute so Angelo could cover up the sloppy work Lania did on Curtis. She was gonna get herself fucked up in the game if she ain’t stop takin’ all that shit an’ then runnin’ around makin’ stupid decisions. Keyshawn was supposed to be keeping his eye on Michelle but something told me by the way he rarely checked in with Angelo, and how Lania seemed to stay upset with him, he was fallin’ off. One of us needed to make a move before that nigga’s puppy-lovin’ ass slipped up and decided to either tell Michelle wassup or get her out the area.
It was one of those random days in August when Angelo hit me, letting me know they’d found the bodies in Emporia. That meant Michelle’s little security team would probably be giving her the news that Rah was dead. Which meant it was time for me to make my move, end this shit for good, and get my child. All I could think about was holding and kissing her little chubby face. I walked up to the side of the house, pissed that it just so happened to be raining buckets from the damn sky. I was soaked, but I wasn’t gonna let a little rain keep me from doing this shit. Lightning split the sky open as I thought this through one last time.
The back door was unlocked, just as planned. I was glad Keyshawn didn’t back out on his word. Angelo was already on the verge of havin’ that nigga killed just for GP. I let myself in as quietly as possible, the thunder coverin’ up any little noises I might have accidentally made. I’d only been standing there for a few seconds when she came floatin’ up into the kitchen, tall and regal. I’d always envied her. She was wearin’ a man’s red and blue checkered pajama shirt without the bottoms and her hair was tied up in a little scarf.
I looked at this other woman, who had captured the heart of my man and then thrown it away like it wasn’t more than an empty soda can. Watching Michelle was like watching Snow White fuck around in the forest
with all those damn animals. She floated over and looked at this, then floated over to look at her phone, before fluttering to pick up something else. It was like the bitch moved around in a dream bubble. I’d had enough of watching her flutter around the kitchen and stepped forward out of the shadows and into her line of vision.
“You look so shocked to see me. I was maybe hoping for—happiness.”
She just stood there as her phone broke, glass scattering into a million pieces all over the floor. I could see her ass debating: run or fight; scream for Keyshawn or grab a kitchen knife. I shifted the gun from my right hand to my left, reminding her it was in my hand just in case she’d forgotten.
“You don’t know how to speak to your house guests—offer ’em a glass of water or a dry towel, Michelle?”
“Legally she’s my daughter. I’ve done everything for her—all the things you never could have done, even loving her like she was my own child. I’ve been doing it all, Honey.”
What she was saying shocked me, and especially the way she said it, nothing like Larissa’s dumb-ass begging and bartering. Michelle actually cared about Paris, that much was obvious.
“I’m tired of y’all bitches tryin’a tell me what the fuck I can and couldn’t or will and won’t do. You don’t know what I can do now, Michelle.”
“Honey, all I’m tryin’ to say is that I took care of your daughter the best I knew how. I’ve raised Lataya right along wit’ Trey like she was my own, at no point did I do for one and not do for the other.”
“Who the fuck is Lataya? My daughter’s name is Paris. Here yo’ ass done renamed my child an’ everything, what gave you the got-damn right, Michelle? And where were you when Larissa was out there talkin’ to her like she wasn’t nothin’ but a damn dog? Where was you when she was puttin’ her hands on my daughter, Michelle?”
She was starin’ at me, tryin’ to put the meaning to my words. “She’d never . . . Larissa wouldn’t do anything like that.”
“It’s a shame you got cameras all up in here and still don’t even know what’s going on in your own damn house.” I waved the gun, directing her to carry her ass through the door toward the car waiting outside.
“Wait, what about Trey? What’s gonna happen to my child with me gone?”
Honestly I didn’t feel like she deserved any kind of an answer; my ass didn’t get one when they took my child away from me. “Rasheed’s momma back in Virginia gonna keep him. Y’all took a lot from a whole lot of people on some straight-up selfish bullshit. His momma been depressed, not eatin’, and everybody been worried about her. Having Trey and a little extra money might actually pull her out of the slump she in. Help balance shit back out.”
“Can I tell him good-bye?” She had tears all up in her eyes and I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
“You already know the answer to that. It’s no. Now get ya ass outside. You ain’ ’bout to get us off schedule.”
CHAPTER 28
DON’T BE SO DAMN SMART ALL THE TIME
I let Honey lead me out of the house, rain soaking through my nightshirt and plastering my hair down to my face and forehead. She forced me into the back of a silver Audi. Looking through the rain-streaked rear window I stared at the house. It would probably be the last time I ever saw it and I tried to remember every detail. Before pulling off she leaned over the seat and roughly handcuffed my hands together in front of me. In a sense I guessed I’d earned this shit. Larissa and I had played God, deciding who deserved to be met with what punishment; we altered peoples’ lives and now everything was coming back on our asses full circle.
As the car started to pull forward I couldn’t resist questioning Honey. I had no idea how she’d gotten out or how she’d found us. “So I’m guessing it was you who murdered Rasheed?” I knew her ass heard me. She was squinting through the windshield, trying to navigate us to wherever through the pouring rain, but the car was dead silent aside from the sound of the rain bouncing off of the roof. The wipers moved back and forth, silently speeding up and slowing down with the speed of the raindrops.
“No. I was actually gonna let his ass live. Angelo made the decision before I could stop him.” There was sadness in her voice and regret maybe. There were so many questions I wanted to ask her, but I had to be careful. Honey was hard to read and I didn’t understand how Angelo was tied into all of this. It wouldn’t be long before Keyshawn would wake up and notice I wasn’t in the house and call the police. She wouldn’t be able to get but so far if I could stall her.
I sighed, trying to sound empathetic. “Once again we are at the mercy of our men; they make all the decisions and our lives are either reactions or reflections of their choices.” I waited. If Angelo controlled whether Rah died, maybe I could make Honey realize the situation she was in now was no different than the one she was in before, with a man controlling her, maybe even her money, her home.
“I ain’t at the mercy of shit. No-damn-body is makin’ these choices. I decided to get Rah out of prison. You’d think the nigga woulda said thanks or showed me some kinda gratitude. But no, he ain’t even bother showin’ me the respect of takin’ his dick outta the bitch he was fuckin’ when I walked in to meet him—in the house I decorated for him to come home to.” A flash of lightning lit up the sky, illuminating her face. I could see tears silently trickling down her round cheeks and I lowered my head. At least we were getting somewhere. I was getting to her. I just needed to keep her talking.
“Honey, I hate to say it but Rasheed lived and was always led by his dick, not his brain. For as smart as he was all that shit would go out the window once the blood left his head and that piece of meat between his legs stiffened up. It ain’t neva’ matter how good I was to him or how faithful or how beautiful he thought I was. It took years of dealing with him for me to learn that. He almost died, almost lost everything including me, and havin’ his son ain’t wasn’t even enough to make him change, Honey.” Glancing out the window I tried to get my bearings, figure out where we were just in case an opportunity presented itself where I could bail out of the car.
“You wasted years because of him. Not me. I died and I came back just for my daughter. The time I spent, the pain I know, the shit I’ve seen was because of you and Larissa and no one else. Y’all wrapped everyone else up in y’alls plan to put him away. And what gave y’all the right to decide I deserved to be put away too? ’Cause we was fuckin’? ’Cause me and Rah was in love and you was the spiteful ass baby momma about to be cast aside?”
My mind was on overdrive trying to come up with something to diffuse the anger I could hear quickly seeping into her voice. The last thing I wanted to do was turn this into a power struggle between who deserved what punishment. We were wrong on many levels and I lived with our decision every day, but now wasn’t the time to debate about that shit. Not with me handcuffed on a road to who knews where and Honey pissed the fuck off with a loaded gun.
“I didn’t have anything to do with that, sweetheart. That was all Larissa. When I knew what she’d done the police already had you.”
“Well you can talk that shit over with her when you see her. As far as y’all are concerned I’m done; this shit gonna end tonight and then I’m gonna get my daughter.”
I was scared to even imagine Ris alive somewhere being held all this time when I’d just assumed she’d left us. I could have had people out lookin’ for her if I hadn’t just assumed the worst. Maybe we could have found her. My stomach was in knots at the thought of seeing her, what I’d say, how much time we would have, how Honey was gonna end this. I could see the signs for the pier in the distance and I knew this was pretty much it for me. I didn’t know what’s worse: knowing you’re going to die or knowing that death was coming and not knowing how you’re going to die.
I lowered my head and I started to pray. It was the only thing I could think to do. That’s when I’d noticed it. The color made it stand out in bright contrast against the dark red and blue of my pajama top. I’d forgotten about
the little pink card Keyshawn had given me, and tears filled my eyes as I slid it out of my pocket as quietly as possible, opening the little flap on the back, and pulling out the card.
They told me my key to the city would unlock any lock, but you’re the only one with the key to my heart–don’t ever luse it. Keyshawn
I smiled at the typo; the poor thing was definitely an athlete and not a scholar. His words would have given me so much hope for a future and happiness and maybe even love. If only I’d have opened it when we were together, I could have said how I really felt. Instead I pressed the card to my lips, sending him a silent kiss. I was sliding the card back inside when I noticed something else. There was also a thin gold chain, attached to it a small gold skeleton key. I was scared to slide it over my neck; she might see it and take it from me. If I died I at least wanted to have it in my hand as close to me as possible.
“We almost there.” She sounded cold and detached.
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