Addicted to a Dirty South Thug

by Shan

  “You leaving?” I asked, and he shook his head.

  He walked to his closet and grabbed something to wear before walking back and standing next to the bed. “You know I don’t talk too much about this dope shit, but I just gotta keep grinding. Just trying to keep my shit going. I worked too hard to let it go. I just feel like I can’t sleep. Soon as I even allow myself to close my eyes, I’m back up feeling I’m getting too comfortable. I gotta keep going.”

  “Okay,” was all I said before I rolled over onto my side.

  “What’s up? Talk to me,” Khi said as he climbed onto the bed and turned me onto my back.

  I looked up into his hazel eyes and rubbed my hand across the side of his face. “I’m good. Just tired. You just be careful and come back home to us,” I told him absentmindedly, speaking of our unborn child.

  “I’ll be back. I got something I want both you and Sky to see,” Khian said, and I nodded as he walked off and headed to the shower.

  * * *

  Morning had rolled around quick after Khian left the house that night, and he hadn’t been back since. I had gotten up around nine to fix Skylarr and I some breakfast, but the smell of the eggs and sausage had me huddled over the toilet for the past few hours. I had whipped up something quick for Skylarr and put a movie in while I laid out on the couch, hardly able to keep my eyes open. I didn’t know how much longer I was going to be able to hide this pregnancy from Khi, because with each passing day, I’d become sicker and sicker.

  After the talk we’d had the night before, I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to keep my baby. This was my first child, and I refused to carry a baby for a man that didn’t want it. I wasn’t one of those type of chicks that felt like a baby would keep a man around, and I didn’t have a problem with taking care of it until I felt the time was right. But I won’t lie and say that it didn’t make me feel bad. I agreed with Khian that we should be married and more stable in our relationship, but it wasn’t like I had planned this pregnancy. Coming home from prison, the only thing on my mind was working and getting on my feet. I had sworn off men, making them the last thing on my mind, which meant that birth control was not something I thought about either. I should’ve been more careful, though, and should’ve run to the clinic after having sex with Khian the first time. I was careless, and now I was here.

  “Daddy,” Skylarr said once the door chimed, alerting us that someone had come in. I sat up on the couch and yawned. I then brought my hand up to my head, feeling dizzy and like I had to throw up again. I decided to lay back down because my skin felt so clammy and just hot to touch.

  “Mama!” I heard Skylarr say, and I was ready to answer her, until I spotted Khi’s baby mama standing a few feet away. For some reason, I started to feel a whole lot of damn jealousy. Skylarr had been up under me ever since I first started my little “job” for Khi, and I had developed a relationship with her. She had started calling me Mama, and I felt like she was my daughter. I remembered the last time when we found Briana half-dead and waiting for Khi outside of his gate. I had felt a way about her returning then. I hated to admit it, but I was happy when we came back and saw that she had disappeared. I saw the love he had in his eyes for that girl, and it scared me to think that she could take something from me that I had just begun to get to know and love.

  I sat up on the couch slowly and folded my arms across my chest. I watched her hugging all on Skylarr and was hoping that my dismay wasn’t evident on my face. It didn’t matter, though, because when Khi showed his face, my face lit up and tears instantly sprang from my eyes.

  “Oh my God. Where did you get him from?” I squealed as I stood up to my feet on wobbly legs.

  “I got him from your parents,” Khi said like it was nothing.

  “My parents?” I questioned in disbelief. “They let you take him?”

  “Hell, yeah. The fuck you mean? Didn’t you tell me that this little nigga was probably Dae’s? Shit, I had him tested against some shit Dae had lying around his house, and yeah, he’s a Prince. I wasn’t about to be letting Rue’s punk ass raise nothing with my blood in it. I’m gonna take care of him, and your parents can’t do shit about it. They know they ain’t trying to see me in court, so we worked some shit out. Here,” Khi said and handed Little Bryson to me. “Briana, go take your stuff and put it up. I got some shit that I gotta handle, but I’ll be back in a while.”

  I looked over at Briana, and for the first time, I noticed the two bags that sat at her feet. I bit down on my bottom lip as I watched her retrieve them and walk away with Skylarr trailing behind her.

  “She’s staying here?” I asked Khi, and he nodded his head.

  “Just for a little while. Why? Is it a problem?”

  “Wish you would have told me. I could’ve stayed at Tangie’s.” I told him.

  He sighed as he looked down at me. He sucked his teeth and touched my face with his hand. “I don’t want her, a’ight? What me and her had is over with, and it has been for a while. But I just wanna make sure she’s good before I let her get away again. She just got out of rehab, and I just want to watch her for a bit. That’s all. You ain’t got nothing to worry about.” Khi leaned over and kissed me on my lips. “What day was that you said your sister got killed?”

  “October third, two thousand nine. Why?”

  “Just asking. Go lay down. You seem like you coming down with the flu or something. Put his big ass down and let him and Skylarr play. They got a lot of catching up to do,” Khi said as he headed to leave.

  “See you later, Khi,” Briana said, causing me to look over my shoulder at her as she stood there with a big-ass smirk on her face. I tried not to roll my eyes, but I wasn’t feeling this shit at all.

  Chapter 28

  Deonna

  “Chanel, go get your backpack so that we can go. I swear, if you be late for school again, you gonna have them people at that school and your daddy after me,” I yelled as I went to open the refrigerator to grab some fruit for the two lunch bags that sat on the counter.

  “Damn right. Women always late for shit, even school that’s only five minutes away,” KaeDee said as he popped me on my ass and kissed me on the tip of my earlobe.

  “Shut up,” I laughed.

  “Shit, it’s true.” KaeDee opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of his favorite juice, Naked. He twisted the cap off and leaned against the island as he looked down at me. I smiled and continued to fill up the bags.

  “What?” I said to him.

  “You look good pregnant.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Prince. You wear it well, too. This must be our boy.”

  “I really hope so. Shit.”

  “How are you feeling?” I asked him, noticing that he was little down.

  “Just wish I wasn’t so hard on Dae after what you told me that Amber said.”

  I sighed, thinking back to the conversation I’d had with Amber a few weeks ago after she’d gotten out of the hospital. She and Little Daelan had come here upon her release, and I had assisted the home health nurses with her care. She was paralyzed from the waist down and required around-the-clock care, so KaeDee and Khi made sure she got the top-of-the-line doctors, nurses, and therapists caring for her. I would sit with her for a couple of hours in the afternoon after work, and one evening she just broke down. She waited and waited for Daelan to contact her after he got settled, but he never did, and after finding out that he may be hiding out with the girl that was partly responsible for her condition, it had really broken her spirits.

  She told me everything that had happened with the boys’ uncle LeeRoy, and how she had unknowingly gotten pregnant by him. That was the reason Daelan hated her so much. I thought that had been the worst of it, until she told me that she did it so that LeeRoy wouldn’t rape Dae again. Amber begged me not to tell anyone, but secrets between my husband and me were a thing of the past. Plus, I felt like he needed to know what happened to his brother and the reasons for his troubles. I made KaeDee promise me that h
e wouldn’t tell Khi or anyone else, but I could see that holding it in for all this time was eating at him. He felt guilty that he had turned his back on him when Khi had been begging him to help with Dae. Now, he and Khi were barely talking, and their whole business was hanging by the wayside.

  “Maybe you should go ahead and tell Khi. I know that I said not to, but I think that Amber would understand if she knew that you all just want to help Dae.”

  “Tell Khi so that he can rub it in my face about how right he was about something going on with Dae?”

  “He’s not going to throw it in your face, baby. Everyone handles their anger differently, and Khi knows that you’re just a stubborn asshole sometimes.”

  “Damn, it’s like that?” KaeDee laughed.

  “Go talk to him. Don’t let too much time go by, and definitely don’t let this small little beef you have boil over like it did with Dae. You gotta be the bigger man sometimes, and I know that you can definitely be the bigger man after what you did for me.”

  “What you mean what I did for you?”

  “You—” I turned to around to face him. I shook my head as tears fell from my eyes. I had done my husband so wrong, and he had forgiven me and given me a clean slate and loved me like it had never happened. I was so foolish to think that there was something better out there than the man that I had spent the last four years of my life with. I didn’t deserve him. I didn’t deserve to wake up next to him every morning, and I damn sure didn’t deserve to be able to be wearing his ring on my finger, carrying his last name, and carrying what I knew would be our little son. If anyone knew my husband, then they would know that he wasn’t much of a forgiving person, so for him to forgive me for the way that I had damn near ruined our family said a lot. I would spend the rest of my life making it up to him. “You gave me another chance at life. I don’t know where I would be if you wouldn’t have forgiven me, and I know I’ve said it before, KaeDee, but I am so sorry for the way I did you. I am so sorry. I don’t know what—”

  “Babe,” KaeDee said as he stood in my space. He lifted my chin and forced me to look at him. “I don’t want you apologizing for that shit anymore. I just want you to make sure that nothing like that ever happens again, because I know—”

  “It never will. You don’t even have to think about that, because it will never ever happen again. I know what I have in you, and I love my family. I will never ever do anything to jeopardize what we have again.”

  “Then stop worrying. We’re gonna be fine,” KaeDee told me as he dried my tears and wrapped his arms around me.

  “I’m ready now,” Chanel said from behind me. I turned around to look at her and laughed at what she’d decided to wear that day. She was tacky as shit, but KaeDee and I agreed that we would start letting her dress herself. She was only three years old, so I didn’t expect much, but it was pretty bad. She was rocking a pair of pink leggings, a gold bodysuit that had different-colored teddy bears, and she had strapped the bodysuit on the outside instead of the inside. I was guessing she couldn’t decide on which of her favorite boots to wear, because she wore one of each, a green one and a brown one.

  “She get that shit from you,” KaeDee said, and I looked up at him and frowned. “Shit, you know we stay fly in my family. Ain’t no way in hell she learned that type of style from me. That’s all you.”

  “Whatever. My little baby looks cute,” I said and fastened her bodysuit the right way.

  “Daelan!” KaeDee called out before kissing Chanel and then kissing me goodbye. “I’ll see you at the office. Hurry the hell up.”

  “Okay, see you soon. Babe,” I called after him.

  “Yeah.” He turned around to face me.

  “I love you.”

  “Yeah, show me how much when you get to the office,” KaeDee said as he again turned around to leave.

  I made sure that I had everything before I gave Daelan and Chanel their lunch bags. We headed to the garage, and I strapped them inside and left as quickly as I could. Daelan had been transferred to the same school that Chanel attended for Head Start to make it easier on me each morning when I dropped them off. The school was only five minutes from our house and about twenty minutes from the firm.

  Each morning, I had to get out of the car to walk Chanel in, because they required that parents sign them in and out for the day. I said goodbye to Daelan, and he took off running in the direction of his class. He didn’t say much these days, and I hoped that everything that had happened over the past couple of months hadn’t traumatized him too much. He went from watching his daddy beat on his mom to her being shot while trying to protect him, and now his mom barely being able to care for him. KaeDee and I tried to show him as much love as we could by showering him with affection, and shamefully, even gifts, but not much would put a smile on his face. He often asked about his father and when he would be home, but KaeDee would always tell him soon.

  After signing in Chanel, I walked out of the school and headed in the direction of my car, which was parked in the lot across the street. I waited for the cars to pass and jogged at the first chance I got. Pulling my keys from my pocket, I got inside and closed the car door behind me. Sticking the key in the ignition, I cranked the car and went to place the car in drive, but I was grabbed from behind.

  “Babe, what’s up?” I heard Tyrin say. I glanced at him through my rearview mirror as he held his hand over my mouth to keep me from screaming. “How you been?”

  I nodded my head, unable to speak, and I could hear him sighing behind me. I hadn’t heard from Tyrin in almost two months, since I told him that I was going to work things out with my husband. Even after I told him and he went up to the firm to confront KaeDee, he had still continued to harass me. He was constantly calling my cell from different numbers, until I had finally gotten it changed. He would send flowers to the firm, along with a note attached that always ended up being a threat to KaeDee. I was scared as shit knowing that Tyrin’s ass was crazy, until he just went away and all the harassment had stopped.

  “Can’t believe you left me again like that, Deonna. Then you got these niggas thinking they bossing up on a nigga and shit. Your punk-ass husband and his brother sent them goonies my way, thinking that shit was gonna scare me. I got hit a couple of times, and I’m fine. Niggas couldn’t even kill me, but they killed a few of my partnas, and they didn’t have to do that to my fam like that. I want revenge, and I won’t stop until I feel better,” Tyrin said.

  All this was news to my ears. KaeDee had never mentioned that, but I wasn’t surprised. I had warned Tyrin to leave him alone, but he wouldn’t, and this was what happened when you fucked with the Prince brothers.

  “They gotta pay for that shit.” Tyrin removed his hand from my mouth finally, and I let out a deep breath.

  Shit, I thought as I turned to look at him just as he shoved a pistol in my face. I couldn’t even open my mouth to say anything before he pulled the trigger, taking the life that I had just gotten back.

  Chapter 29

  KaeDee

  “Mr. Prince, I just thought you should know that the news was reported that Chanel’s school and a few other buildings in the area were closed due to someone reporting gunshots in the area,” my secretary Lisa said as she stepped into my office.

  “Damn, have you heard from Deonna? She should’ve been here by now, and she’s not answering the phone.”

  “No, sir. She had a nine o’clock appointment that I ended up having to reschedule.”

  “A’ight, cool. Thank you. Call the school and make sure everything is okay with Chanel and Daelan. Keep calling until you get confirmation.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She closed my door, and I pulled out my cell phone to call Deonna again. It took a lot in me to forgive my wife after fucking off with that nigga, Tyrin, but after that nigga stormed into my office that day, I realized that I had something that another nigga wanted badly. That shit did wonders for my already crushed ego, but it made me realize that I had a
treasure in Deonna. We all make mistakes, and I forgave her, because I was far from a perfect man. I had stepped out on Deonna a few times when she was in D.C. and I was in Dallas waiting for her to move. She didn’t know anything about it, and it wasn’t no emotional cheating either. I fucked a few bitches and left them alone, but see, women couldn’t do that. They associate sex with love, which is why a man can never take it when a woman does him the same way he’s done her. Deonna’s affair fucked me up, but for the sake of the love I had for her and the daughter we shared together, I swallowed my pride and got my wife back.

  Things had been dope as fuck, too. I felt like I had to go ten times harder in the bedroom, and I guess she felt the same way, because we’d been having some of the greatest sex imaginable. Not only that,but we were back to the nights where we stayed up talking and laughing, just doing shit to enjoy each other’s company. Things were rocky as hell, but if what happened was what it took to have forever, then I was all for it. I knew that Deonna was the one that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. That was why I had married her.

  “Mr. Prince, I finally got through, and the kids are okay. They also lifted the lockdown after not finding anything suspicious in the area,” Lisa said, snapping me out of my thoughts.

  I looked up and realized that another hour had gone by. I had been sitting there staring out of the window at the view and waiting for Deonna to show her ass up. It never failed. There was hardly ever a day that went by that she wasn’t late, but she had never been this late, and never without calling. I was beginning to worry . . . and wonder if she was out doing something she had no business doing.

  I decided to try to call her again, and when she didn’t answer, I pulled up the Find my iPhone app and typed in my password. I waited for what felt like forever as it located her device. I recognized the streets that surrounded where it was picking up, but not necessarily the exact address. I walked over to the computer and sat behind my desk. I typed in the address that showed up on the screen, and Chanel’s school popped up.