by Shan
“I believe you, Cuba. I don’t see you as doing anything like this,” Detective Jameson said.
“Well, if you believe me, then why are you even questioning me as if I did?”
“Because Rue said that he believes that you planted those kilos of cocaine under that seat, and it was all because you were jealous and mad. He said that the two of you had just fought a few days prior over him and your sister Alaska. You found out that he was sleeping with Alaska and that the child she was carrying may have been his. He showed us text messages between you two where you said you would kill him and her for what they had done to you.”
“Wait, what?” I asked in disbelief.
Rue and Alaska? The baby might be Rue’s? What the fuck? I tried to process everything that was happening. Tears ran down my face, but I still felt like they were playing with me. Alaska would never betray me in such a way, would she? I wasn’t sure about shit now.
“Yo, y’all lying to me! Look, just let me call my parents. Y’all ain’t gonna charge me with nothing, then I should be able to go home, right?”
“We’re gonna charge you with a count of murder, two counts of conspiracy to commit murder, and possession of a narcotic with intent to distribute if you don’t start talking. If what Rue said isn’t true, then tell us what is true. Where did that amount of cocaine come from, and who would want to kill Bryson, Rue, and your sister?”
I shook my head and brought my stare down to the floor beside me. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. I just knew that I wasn’t about to snitch on Rue. I knew the dope had to have come from somebody they robbed, because they had gone out to hit a lick earlier that day before taking us to the fair, but I didn’t know who it had come from. Rue never mentioned names whenever he talked about the dirt he had done. He always said the less I knew, the better for me, and now that I was sitting there faced with a load of phony-ass charges, I understood what he meant by that. If I didn’t know shit, I couldn’t say shit. Not that if I knew anything I would snitch, but still, I understood.
Before I could say anything, Detective Madison set a tape recorder in between us and pressed play. Rue’s voice was groggy and stressed, and he almost didn’t sound like himself, but it was him. I knew my man’s voice anywhere. Everything that they’d told me Rue had said, I heard him repeat himself in that recording, but for some reason, I was still in disbelief.
“We had a fight, and I threatened to kill him and a chick, but it wasn’t my fucking sister we were fighting over. The ho’s name was saved as Brielle in his phone. I saw text messages between the two of them going back and forth about hooking up again, and I clowned Rue for it. We broke up for a couple of days, but as usual, he found a way to make me forgive him. He bought me this bracelet,” I said as I held up my arm. “Told me it was over, and that it would never happen again. I didn’t know anything about my sister, man. Not about them keys . . . and nothing about why somebody would want to kill them. No matter what, I wouldn’t do that to my sister. They killed her right in front of me. I wouldn’t do that to her. You gotta believe me,” I cried as the pain I felt watching my sister being gunned down tore at my heart all over again.
“It’s not about what we believe, Ms. Lance. It’s about what you can convince that jury to believe. Those messages alone are a hard piece to walk away from without you giving yourself a leg to stand on,” Detective Jameson said.
“But I don’t know anything. You said you believed I hadn’t done anything.”
“And again, it’s not about what I believe. It’s about what you can convince the jury that is set to convict you to believe. We’re gonna give you some time to sit here and think this through.”
I nodded my head as the detectives got up and left me sitting alone. I thought about everything and how shit just wasn’t adding up to me. I had held Rue down through thick and thin, and no matter how many times he’d cheated on me, I had always taken him back. It wasn’t because I was a weak bitch, but the fact that I loved him and was scared to see what life was like without him, and that alone had always kept me coming back. The addiction I had to Rue was strong. It was something that I just couldn’t break if I wanted to, and I never felt like I was wrong for feeling that way until now. My parents had tried to warn me that falling in love with a thug was going to lead me down a path of destruction, and it had always gone in one ear and out the other.
Damn! I wish I had listened. I wish I could turn back the hands of time. I wish I could do things all over again and that Alaska and I could choose better. I wish . . .
But it was too late to wish now. Not one of those wishes would ever come true.
Chapter 1
Khian Prince
3 Years Later . . .
“Khi—” Selena started, but I cut her off.
“Man, bitch, get your muthafuckin’ ass in the car,” I yelled as I loosened my tie and unarmed the alarm on my cocaine-colored Maserati. “Sick of your ass always fuckin’ embarrassing me with your bullshit.”
I pulled the door open and fell down into the front seat. Quickly starting the car, I pulled off the minute Selena’s ass touched her seat. I didn’t even wait for her to close her door before I was racing out of the parking lot of the movie theater.
Selena sighed and flipped her long, brown hair over her shoulder. Selena was half black and half Mexican with pouty, thick lips that she always kept poked out. Her green eyes made her peanut butter-colored skin stand out. When we met, I was mesmerized just like any other nigga by her thick-ass hips and fat ass. Shorty had that video-vixen-type shape, looking like she did time in the gym. I just had to have my way with her, but shit went too far. My dumb ass just had to get her ass pregnant, knowing damn well I wasn’t beat for no long-term relationship with her; but even then, I tried to make it work.
I shook my head as I glanced over at her, while she placed her hand over her small but round belly and moved it in a circular motion. She was pregnant with my second child, and we weren’t sure what we were having yet. I was hoping for a junior, being that I already had a little princess.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, man?”
“You don’t have to keep disrespecting me and calling me out my name, Khi. All I did was ask you a question,” Selena whined.
I leaned back into my seat and gripped my hand tightly around the steering wheel. I was getting mad all over again with the way her ass had just clowned me in front of a bunch of muthafuckas I didn’t even much know. We had just come from dinner and seeing a movie—my attempt to spend some time with her big-headed, ungrateful ass. But shit, it was never enough for a bitch like Selena. She was always complaining and nagging about some shit.
“’Cause I’m getting sick of your shit, Lena. You doing childish-ass bullshit, and I swea’ to God you pushing me to the point where I’m about to give up!”
“You’re the one that got mad at me because I called up one of your little groupie bitches and put that ass in her place! The fuck is the bitch calling you all hours of the night for? We can’t even enjoy a night out without hoes calling you, Khi! I took your word when you told me Bri was always blowing you up just to be petty, but now I don’t know. It seems like bitch after bitch is always dialing your phone. Something has to be going on.”
“Your ass is fuckin’ stupid, yo! I walk off to go to the damn bathroom and come back with you in a full-blown argument with a bitch, You don’t fuckin’ listen. Listen, Lena!” I said as I mocked the little boy from the Listen, Linda video meme. “I’m not fucking that bitch you talked to, or any other bitch! She fuckin’ works for me just like any other ho calling my phone. If I gotta go out and fuck these other hoes, then why the fuck am I coming home to you every night? I might as well be single. Don’t you give me the pussy every time I fuckin’ want it?”
“Whatever, Khi. That’s not what she was saying. She sure didn’t say she was just your worker.”
“Yeah, because she was fucking with your goofy ass. You calling her up and checking her over so
me shit she ain’t e’en much doing. What the fuck you think she gonna say?”
“Khi, we have a child on the way! I’m pregnant with your daughter, and you out here fuckin’ these nasty bitches. Especially Bri’s junky ass! What if I catch something?”
I sighed but was relieved when I pulled up in front of our home. I pressed down on the button on my keypad that opened my gate and erratically drove inside before it could even fully open. As much as I cared for Selena, I was getting sick of her constantly accusing me of cheating when all I was doing 90 percent of the time was working. Of course, bitches came at me left and right, trying to throw themselves on me, and I ain’t gonna even lie. Every now and then, I sampled a few, but them bitches knew not to go running their mouths, and it wasn’t like I was gonna tell Selena shit. I wasn’t sloppy about nothing I did in the streets, and Selena’s ass was just being fuckin’ crazy. Every accusation she made wasn’t based on shit but her own fuckin’ insecurities.
Even though I wasn’t trying to fuck with Selena like that in the beginning, I treated her good—just like I did with any chick that I made mine. I moved her ass up in my house, bought her a car, and paid all the damn bills. She didn’t have to do shit but sit on her pretty little pregnant ass, but I guess being that her mind was always idle, she found shit to come at me about. I had put a ring on her finger and told her one day we would be married, but it would be a cold day in hell before I walked down the aisle with Selena. She was too insecure, always throwing a tantrum whenever I left the house, and constantly calling my phone and asking me a thousand muthafuckin’ questions while I was working. Fuck I look like marrying her ass knowing the shit wasn’t going to change? I wanted to blame it on her raging hormones due to her being pregnant, but Selena had always been that way. No matter how much love I tried to show her, she always found room to say that it wasn’t enough. I was just tired of her shit.
“Let me guess: you’re about to leave again?” Selena let out a frustrated chuckle.
“Yeah, you know I got shit to do. Mrs. Davis called me, too, talking about some shit is going down at Briana’s crib, and I need to get over there to check on Skylarr. After that, I got this business to handle with Tramell, but I’ma be back after that,” I told her, just trying to dead the tension so when I did come back, I would feel comfortable in my own damn home. She hated when I spent more time in the basement than I did with her, so she needed to just dead that shit now.
“Chmmp, some shit always going down at Briana’s. Damn! Why won’t you just admit it that you’re fucking around on me? That you’re sleeping with her,” Selena yelled as she aggressively reached for the handle of the door.
I grabbed her arm to stop her. “Lena, I’m not cheating on you. Damn, what I gotta do to make you believe that?”
“Let me see your phone.”
“Are you fuckin’ serious?”
“Yes, give it to me.” Selena held her hand out to me, and I wouldn’t hand her the phone. She reached over to grab it out of my lap. I grabbed my iPhone just in time, and that only seemed to make Selena angrier. She backhanded me in my mouth, drawing blood with the eight-carat diamond ring that she wore on her finger. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry, Khi. I don’t—”
“Bitch, get the fuck out of my car. I’m done with your ass,” I said without even looking in Selena’s direction. I ran my tongue across my bottom lip, and then reached over in the center console to search for a napkin for the blood that was pooling inside my mouth. I then slid my hands into my pocket and gritted down on my teeth.
This was another reason why I would never walk down the aisle with her. Selena had a serious problem with her hands, and although I had never hit her back, it was becoming harder and harder each time for me not to. This was the final straw for her. My relationship with Selena was becoming toxic, and me sticking around would only bring out a side of me that would possibly land her in a grave. She just wasn’t worth it.
I hated to have another baby mama out there caring for my seed but not carrying my last name. I had made the same mistake with my first baby mama, Briana, but it was what it was. I wasn’t going to force this shit with Selena. I was going about shit with her for the wrong muthafuckin’ reasons anyway, and hell, maybe she acted this way because she could feel it. Either way, I knew when it was time to let shit go. Bitches like Selena, and even my first baby mama Briana, were bad for business.
My brothers and I had finally gotten our drug operation off the ground after putting in years of hard work, and I wasn’t about to let anyone bring us down—no muthafuckin’ body. Everybody knew us in the streets as the Prince brothers. It was five of us total. We grew up in East Dallas and had later moved to the South in our early teens when our father, Cain, had gotten thrown in jail and our mother, Angela, couldn’t afford to take care of us on her own. She moved us in with our grandmother in a small-ass four-bedroom house where my mother’s brother, our uncle, also lived.
Shit, we knew all about the struggle then. All five of us had to sleep in one bedroom with only two twin beds available to us. And at that time, we shared everything from our clothes to our shoes. The oldest of us, KaeDee and Cassidy, were the only two that got the new shit, and they had to pass down their old stuff to us. It was fucked up and sometimes depressing as hell, but it made us all have a bond that could never be broken. We respected our grams and our moms so much for the sacrifices and all the hard work they put in just to feed us. Having five hardheaded li’l niggas to take care of wasn’t no joke, and they did that shit making sure not one of us got out of line.
Even then, they couldn’t stop the fact that we were some born hustlers. The minute we got our feet wet in the game and made a little dough, there was no stopping us. KaeDee was the first one to hustle when he got in contact with a goonie named Moe, who our father used to get money with back in the day. He fronted KaeDee some weed, and it was get money ever since.
Them niggas Cassidy and KaeDee tried their best to keep us young ones off the block, but I wasn’t having that shit. I was sick of fuckin’ hand-me-downs, and I needed to have my own bread in my pocket. They protested for the longest, but they ended up finding out the hard way how beneficial I was to have around when I had to pop some nigga with sticky fingers when he tried to roll up on my fam. Murking that nigga was how I got my name, Killa Khi, and was crowned to be the thorough-ass nigga that I was known as today. I was the one that made sure we were known out there. I was the one that would never stop beating down the block until we had made enough to cop our first brick, and then, our second. I was so muthafuckin’ hungry back then, and I had promised my brothers that we were gonna be some muthafuckin’ kings. ’Til this day, I was still making good on that promise.
Things had changed a little bit, like KaeDee going off to school to become a lawyer, and Cassidy and our youngin’, Emon, being locked away. That made it just really me and the young one, Daelan, out there putting in that work until them niggas came home. KaeDee got his feet wet still from time to time, but we tried to make sure he never really got down and dirty. We needed his smart ass to keep shit legal for us.
“Khian, did you hear me?” Selena yelled, snapping me out of my thoughts. I glanced at her, and then took my attention out the window. “I said I’m sorry. Baby, just talk to me. Don’t make that decision right now while you’re angry,” Selena pleaded.
She tried to grab for my arm, but I pulled it away and turned to face her. I had so much disgust and hatred in my eyes for her, and I could tell by the pain written in hers that she could see it. She knew that it was best for her to back the fuck down and leave me alone. “Okay, I will see you when you come home. Hopefully, by then you would have changed your mind.”
I waited until Selena got out of the car, and I quickly sped back down the driveway. I didn’t even wait to see if she got in safely. That’s how mad I was. I just didn’t care anymore. Glancing at the digital clock on the stereo, I realized that I was running fifteen minutes behind for my meeting, and I still had to st
op by Briana’s to see what was up with her and my shorty. I had promised my goonies that I would meet them at the factory, help them with the count, and even planned to surprise them with a bonus.
The crew had been working hard to help me and my brothers get our drug operation just where we needed it to be, and shit, I just wasn’t the type to let hard work go unnoticed. I believed in honoring those that gave their loyalty, because then it was more than likely that they would never betray us. As long as we showed our appreciation, they would, in turn, do the same for us.
I reached over and turned the knob of the stereo up to the max and began to bob my head to Rich Homie Quan’s “They Don’t Know” as the music blasted through the speakers. Just as I leaned back in my seat and prepared for the ride across the city to Briana’s, the flashing light of the gas signal and the beeping sound alerted me that I was almost out of gas. I shook my head and pulled into the first gas station I spotted. Before getting out of the car to pump the gas, I shot the li’l homie Tramell a text:
Running late, but I’ma be on my way after I check on Skylarr. Don’t let nobody leave til I fall through.
* * *
It was a little after midnight when I finally pulled up to Briana’s house. I grabbed my .380 that sat inside the center console and tucked it inside of my slacks before turning off the car and stepping out. I looked up and down the dark-ass block, noticing a few of Briana’s nosey neighbors outside lurking and watching her crib like a hawk. I didn’t know exactly what had gone down but knew it had to be interesting enough that muthafuckas was still hanging around outside. I had gotten a call from Briana’s neighbor saying that Briana may have been in trouble, but that was all that she’d told me.
But when is Briana not in any trouble? I thought before I loosened the first couple of buttons around my shirt. I had gotten all dressed up, suit-and-tie-type shit for Selena’s ass, which was something I hardly ever did, and that birdbrain bitch had fucked up my entire night.