by Dutch
Gloria gripped the sheets and her eyes rolled up in the back of her head as she moaned, “Guy, pl-pl-pl cum, I-I-I can’t take any… more.”
Guy was in a zone. He had never seen a pussy so red on the inside. It looked like the inside of a watermelon. He loved watching his dick slid in and out, her pussy coming over and over until he pushed all the way inside her with a grunt and came deep inside her pussy.
He collapsed on top of Gloria, trying to catch his breath. Gloria cradled his head to her chest and kissed it gently.
“I love you, Guy Simmons.”
Chapter 7
Ty looked down at his Blackberry as it vibrated in his hand. It had been so long since Karrin had called him. He hadn’t erased her from the phone so he stared at the name—Karrin.
After all that Gloria had told him about his mother, now wasn’t the time to relive painful memories or open old wounds. He let the call go unanswered. Instantly, she called back. Ty couldn’t ignore her twice.
“What up?” he answered, looking up and down the block as he walked to the car.
Silence.
“Yo,” he barked gruffly.
“Hello,” Karrin said, her angelic voice sounding unsure, like footsteps on thin ice. “Are you busy?”
His pride willed him to say yes. Click! But his heart used his mouth to say, “No.”
Karrin took a deep breath then said, “I need to see you, Ty.”
“See me?” he echoed with a wounded chuckle, “See me for what?”
“Don’t act like that, Ty, because I know you want to see me too,” she spoke quickly so she wouldn’t lose the nerve to go on. “I know our situation is… awkward, but if we could meet, not for long, but long enough so we can both speak our mind.”
“First off, we ain’t got a situation. That ended the moment you said I do. Secondly, the only thing on my mind to say is goodbye!”
He took the phone away from his ear, but he still heard her vaguely.
“…love me.”
Ty put the phone back to his ear. “What?”
“I said… tell me you don’t love me,” Karrin urged him, scared of his reply.
“I don’t love you,” he answered, but without conviction or sincerity.
The words were like a dagger to her ears, but she knew it wasn’t his heart talking.
“Please, Ty, just for a little while. Meet me at our old spot, okay? Please. After this I won’t bother you again. I promise.”
Ty sighed heavily. He knew this situation could lead to major problems, but he couldn’t resist seeing her again, just one on one. Besides, he felt he owed her at least that. “Gimme an hour,” he told her then hung up without hearing her reply.
Charlie Goodnights in Raleigh was a popular comedy club. It was the place that Ty had taken Karrin too many times. It was a regular cool out spot for them, Vee and Cat.
The place had a nice crowd when Ty walked in. The male comedian on stage already had the crowd in an uproar.
“….so I turn on the light and then she say I forgot to tell you!” said the comedian with the Chris Tucker type hi-pitched voice.
Ty spotted Karrin sitting up near the front. She was so beautiful to him. A cinnamony bronze that gave her skin the radiance of Egyptian gold. Her chestnut brown eyes gave off Sade’s sultry seductiveness and had a way of hypnotizing Ty whenever he stared into them. He studied her as he walked up. She had her hair like he loved it. In an upsweep, one curly bang hanging down and slightly curling along her cheekbone.
She’s your brother’s wife now, he thought bitterly to himself, but he wondered if she was his brother’s wife or had his brother married his girl. As he reached the table, Karrin started to get up as if to embrace him but he cut that short.
“Don’t get up,” he mumbled as he sat down.
“How are you, Ty? You look… good,” Karrin said, but wanted to say fine.
She had grown up with him and watched him become a man. From the Timb boots, sagging pants and gaudy jewelry to GQ status, expensive understatements and tailor made suits. She smiled, to her thinking it was her that picked out the outfit he was wearing. From the Mauri gator sneakers to the Evizu jeans and Gucci button up.
The waitress came over and delivered their drinks.
“Henny and Coke, right?” Karrin smiled slyly.
“Yeah,” he answered, not showing his appreciation for her remembering. He downed half his drink with one gulp.
Karrin leaned forward. “Thank you for coming.”
Her comment dropped into an awkward silence. All that could be heard was the rousing applause as the comedian finished his set.
“What you got to say?” he asked directly.
“Why?” was her simple reply.
“Why what?” he retorted.
“Why didn’t you return my phone calls? Why didn’t you write me back when you were locked up? Why, all of a sudden did everything we shared have to end?” Karrin’s voice broke, tears brimming in the wells of her eyes.
“The life I lead, I don’t need any distractions, yo. I mean… I guess somewhere along the line I stopped feeling the same way,” Ty tried his best to come up with a valid excuse, but he knew he was coming off sounding weak. He wanted to tell her the real reason, but he could never do that.
“I see,” she said, lowering her eyes. She dabbed at them with a napkin.
“What about you?” he questioned. “Why’d you marry my brother?”
Karrin sipped her VSOP and replied, “It doesn’t matter now.”
“It matters to me.”
She looked him in the eye and answered, “Because he asked.”
Ty held her gaze with a confused look on his face. “Because he asked??? I don’t get it. If what we had was so real how could you just up and marry my brother?!” His voice rose an octave, so he looked around to make sure no one heard him wearing his heart on his sleeve.
“I didn’t marry for love, Ty. You’re the only man that will ever have my heart. But I’m no fool either. If I’m gonna settle then I’ll be damned if I’m a struggle too,” she told him matter-of-factly.
“So you married for money.”
“I married for security.”
“You married for money,” Ty replied, finishing his drink. “Better him than me, huh?”
Karrin sucked her teeth. “Don’t play with me, Ty… you know what I mean! I would’ve eaten beans out the can with you, did a bid with you day for day if I had to, so don’t even go there.”
“Yeah well, we don’t always get what we want, do we?” He stood, tossing a hundred on the table. “Congratulations on your marriage.”
“Ty, wait,” Karrin called after him, getting up.
Ty made his way through the club. Karrin caught up with him near the door. She grabbed his arm so he’d turn to her.
“I just…,” Karrin began, but her words and emotions were all jumbled up inside. So instead, she expressed them with a kiss.
The kiss caught Ty by surprise, but when she wrapped her leg around his calf like she used to, he knew they had gone too far to turn back. Ty tongued her back, tasting the VSOP on her tongue and feeling the passion in the way she sucked his tongue. He finally found the strength to break the kiss, but he pulled away reluctantly.
“It’s not over,” Karrin whispered seductively as she walked past him.
Ty’s mind was in a whirl as they stepped out the door, but reality struck quickly when a barrage of bullets was suddenly unleashed all around him!
At the time, Vee was driving to Lagrange, a tiny town between Goldsboro and Kinston. It was also the place where he’d been raised. As he turned off highway 117 into the city limits, he spoke on the phone talking to Sami.
“Yeah, dawg, the cookout’s Saturday, so come thru wit’ like thirty steaks!” Vee told him in code. The conversation never mattered; it was only the number that had meaning. It meant how many kilos of heroin Vee wanted.
“Well since it’s your birthday, I’ll pay for half,” Sami replied,
meaning half was consignment.
“If you feelin’ that generous, you bring the drinks!” Vee joked.
“See you Saturday.”
Click.
Vee was in a mellow mood because business was doing well. The Wolf Pack not only had a nice chunk of Durham on smash, they also had opened up shop in Greenville and Wilmington—two spots that were in Kev’s territory. Vee’s mentality was, if we gonna war let it be for something I did, not for something you think I did! Referring to the Guy Simmons shooting. He knew Kev would catch feelings but he felt like the Simmons’ were over rated. Guy was an old timer and his sons never knew what it meant to be hungry. So how could they go to war with wolves?
But besides business, his soul wasn’t at peace, which was why he was going home to Lagrange to see the old woman that raised him.
Vee drove straight through the city itself and drove along an old country highway bare of any street lights. The road was lined with trees. He felt like he knew these woods better than most animals because he spent his first seven years on this earth exploring them.
He turned a narrow dirt road. It was really a driveway about a tenth of a mile long. He came to a small white house with a tiny porch with enough room for one rocking chair. The front door was open as he always remembered. The screen door was the only thing separating the inside of the house with the outside elements.
He knocked once on the screen door then opened it. He smiled knowing that it would be unlocked. Anyone was welcomed and no one dared come with evil intent because Ms. Sadie may’ve been a kind woman but she was also a root worker.
Some days there’d be a line of people and cars waiting to see the famous Ms. Sadie. They came from miles around for various reasons. They never paid her because she didn’t ask for money, but Ms. Sadie never wanted for anything. Vee didn’t even know what money was until he was almost nine. But he never went to bed hungry.
“Mama?” Vee called out, entering the living room. Mahalia Jackson sang on an old am/fm transistor radio.
“In the kitchen, baby,” he heard her tiny voice call out.
She almost sounded like a little girl, but she was clearly an old woman. No one knew exactly how old because even folks that looked her age had always remembered her looking the same when they were young. Vee knew old people had a tendency to exaggerate, but Ms. Sadie certainly looked the same when he was a child.
He bent over to hug her tiny frame then kissed her on her wrinkled cheek. Her hair was a grayish white but her eyes were still sharp as a hawk. She was snapping green beans into a pot when he arrived. Vee sat down at the small kitchen table catty-corner from her and slouched down.
“Victor, sit up. That’s bad for your back,” she quietly scolded him.
He leaned forward, resting his elbows across his knees.
“What’s poppin’, Mama?” Vee asked with a smile.
“What’s what? What’s poppin’? Boy, I don’t know what that foolishness mean. These beans is what’s poppin’, the bones in my back is what’s poppin’,” she chuckled.
“I know my favorite girl ain’t gettin’ old?” Vee joked.
“No, but I ain’t gettin’ no younger neither. How you? How’s the baby and yo’ girlfriend?”
“They good. They in B-More.”
“Why?”
“A little heat, but nothin’ I can’t handle,” Vee assured her.
“Hm-mmm. What I tell you about trouble? Take a minute to get into—”
“And a lifetime to get out of,” Vee finished, having heard it a million times. “I ain’t in trouble.”
“If you say so,” she replied, continuing to snap beans in silence then added, “You still got that pouch I give you?”
“Never leave home without it.”
“You ever look inside it?”
“No.”
“Don’t,” she replied firmly then met his eyes, “Ever.”
Vee nodded solemnly.
“Now…,” Ms. Sadie said, wiping her hands on a dishrag, “tell me about these dreams you been having.”
A cold chill went up Vee’s spine. No matter how many times she did it, it always managed to shake him. He hadn’t told her about any dreams, but like everything else, she just knew. That’s why he had never lied to her. It was useless.
Vee rubbed his hand over his face then began.
“I’m walking in the pitch black. I can’t even see my hand in front of my face… it’s that black. But I can hear my footsteps… you know? The thunder flashes and I can see I’m in the woods. I get scared ‘cause I don’t know where I’m at, but I know I’m ‘posed to be somewhere. All of a sudden I hear music and laughter… I look and I’m in front of a pool room but its back in the day. Somebody gettin’ stabbed by some fat dude with a… I don’ know, a fuckin' sickle like the grim reaper be carrying. I step over the dude and go in the pool room. All the laughter stops and I see my mother…,” Vee’s voice trailed off, relishing the face. He had never seen his mother but Ms. Sadie had described her so many times he knew what she looked like. “My mother, she wit’ a bunch of gangstas… she walks up and hands me this… ring. But it ain’t gold or platinum or silver, it’s like made of… ivory… bone. I put it on and it becomes this fly ass gold ring with an emerald in it. Soon as I put it on, the gangstas start shooting each other, but the dude with the sickle kills ‘em all,” Vee finished, shaking his head.
Vee looked over at Ms. Sadie. She had her eyes closed as if she were seeing the dream with him.
“Then… I’m at a pool and Cat is there. She keeps calling my name, but when I answer her she don’t hear me. I tell her, ‘open your eyes,’ because they closed. All of a sudden, fish start jumping out of her into the pool. Next thing I see is a beautiful fish jump out the pool with wings. As it flies off, she tries to chase it. I’m steady callin’ her name… but she don’t hear me.”
Ms. Sadie took a deep breath and opened her eyes. “The darkness is the unknown. The questions you have about your past. The ring represents wealth and power. Once you get it, the bloodshed will ensue, but death will assist you in defeating your enemies. But the only way you can get it Victor… you must find your mother.”
Vee sucked his teeth. “Man, fuc… forget her,” he spat.
“Honor thy father and mother that thy days on this earth shall be long!” she bellowed.
“You my mother. I’m my own father,” Vee replied.
Ms. Sadie smiled and took his hand. “Yes, Victor, you are like a son to me. I raised you from a baby. But all the anger, hurt and confusion that’s so built up in you can only be lifted with understanding. You’re like a time bomb ready to explode, but anger doesn’t make you a man. A man would face head on, whatever stands in his way. Go… find your mother.”
Vee sat contemplating Ms. Sadie’s words then asked, “What about Cat and the fish? I remember you said fish mean somebody pregnant.”
Ms. Sadie chuckled. “Most of the time,” she said then her smile disappeared. “You need to check on your family. Spend time with them. All the money in the world can’t replace that.”
Inside, Ms. Sadie grimaced. She knew exactly what the dream meant, but there was no way she could prepare him for that and there was nothing she could do to stop it. He bent down and kissed her on the cheek. She watched him leave with a heavy heart. He had been through so much pain in his life and she knew it would only get worse.
Chapter 8
Ty sat in the hospital waiting room, seething. All he could see and taste was blood. Vee’s! He couldn’t believe Vee would make a move on him like that, especially with Karrin with him. He would’ve never made a move jeopardizing Cat, because Cat and Karrin were cousins. But that was before… before Vee showed him that it was truly war.
Ty knew the Wolf Pack hadn’t put the hit on Guy, because they couldn’t benefit from his death. Vee was ruthless, but he was a thinker as well. Ty was the only one that could’ve stopped an all out war, now Vee had made it personal and for that, he’d pay with h
is life. Ty was adamant about that.
The good thing was he hadn’t been hit. But the bad thing was Karrin got shot. As they stepped out into the barrage of bullets, Ty’s street instincts instantly kicked in, and he dove back in the club pulling Karrin with him. He had seen the two gunmen standing outside, but they were young, impatient and nervous. As soon as they saw Ty’s face they let off at him; not wanting to give him a chance to put his hammer game down. They already knew Ty wasn’t to be fucked with, so they didn’t want to give him a chance to react.
The shooting of Karrin seemed devastating because there was blood everywhere. Ty was guilt stricken. He knew meeting with her would be trouble, but not like this! He had no choice but to call Kev, because if Karrin died….
Upon arriving at the hospital, Ty found out she only got hit in the shoulder. It was the shock and fear that made her lose more blood than the wound naturally warranted. For that fact, they wanted to keep her overnight for observation.
Kev entered with one of his men in tow. Ty could see the fire in his eyes. Ty knew the nigguh was heated, but he hadn’t expected Kev to sucker punch him with a lunging straight right that sat Ty right back down in his seat. It happened so fast only a few people saw it.
“Stay the fuck away from my wife, nigguh!” Kev hissed.
The punch Kev landed had Ty’s jaw throbbing and his eye twitching. His whole being wanted to jump up and mash Kev’s ass out, but he knew he deserved it.
“You got that,” Ty replied, rubbing his jaw. “But, don’t ever do it again!”
“What you mean don’t do it again?!” Kev barked and started at Ty again. This time Kev’s man restrained him. Kev spun around and spazzed on his man. “The fuck is on your mind?! Take yo’ muhfuckin’ hands off me! This a family affair!” The dude quickly complied.
Kev turned back to Ty and bent down to eye level. “Don’t you get it lil’ brother?! Yo’ bitch chose me,” Kev smiled. “Don’t tell me a chick got fly Ty fucked up in the head? I thought you respected the game, playa?”
“Yeah, I do. Just respect it when you see it… big brother,” Ty smiled back. He wanted to tell Kev his wife wasn’t married to him; she was married to his wallet. But since they say love is blind, he decided to leave Kev in the dark.