There was no way the sound of the gun had woken him. In our neighborhood, unfortunately, that was the norm. He was bundled under his Tasmanian Devil blanket. I slowly tiptoed over his floor and then reached down to kiss the top of his head. His braids were all over the place. I stared at him for a bit before making my exit.Slowly, I closed his room door so that it wouldn’t make a noise and wake him up.
I stood choked up in my kitchen, thinking of the memory. Thinking of the night that I was saved. I didn’t even realize that I was crying until my hand involuntarily wiped away a tear. This is why, when Theo died, I took Tahari in. His mother wasn’t shit. And the night he came to live with us, and Giovani told me what she had done to Tahari, I wasted no time scouring the streets for her and then whooping her ass. I caught her outside of a damn liquor store. She was drunk and looking like a damn mess. I don’t even think she knew Theo was dead. It didn’t even matter because I whooped her ass until I was musty. And then while she was on the floor still clutching her Vodka bottle, I told her ass that she better stay the fuck away from Tahari. Being a mother was a sacred thing. I almost died giving birth to Giovani, so I didn’t play with my role as his mother. As a mother, period.
Tahari literally had nobody but us. He needed family, and he had family. I just hadn’t brought myself to tell the two of them that they were brothers. I remember when they were both little, if I was outside with them, people would naturally assume that Tahari belonged to me, too. They both had the same brown skin complexion that Theo had. Giovani had grown his hair out and had locs, just as Theo once had. What killed me morethan anything is just how much Giovani acted like a man who didn’t raise him. It had to be the genes. He walked like Theo and everything. When he and Tahari would sit to eat, they even fucking ate alike.
They played the part. One didn’t move without the other. Even now, I could tell that they were into something because, randomly, money would appear on my nightstand. If they didn’t tell me, I wasn’t going to ask. They were thicker than blood, although they were exactly that. I feared that if they knew they were related biologically, the dynamics would change between them. Tahari grew up in a two-parent household, and here I was just a single mother with Giovani. I didn’t want any animosity to grow on my son’s part with this information. He asked so many times when he was growing up who his father was. A piece of my heart broke that I never had the guts to tell him. Sooner or later, I had to sit them both down and reveal this secret.
Chapter 13
Trigga
Ghost said this would be our last time doing this. He found another spot and said his contact promised it was supposed to be just as good as the first lick. So, here we were in another MB’s Auto. One tucked away on a side block and hidden from the main road. It was placed near a row of industrial buildings. There was little to no foot traffic in the area. Although the place was secluded, I still wanted to be in and out, so we moved quickly. Ghost was clearing out the front lobby and garage while I decided to go toward the back. After rummaging through some utility closets, I found my way to a space that seemed private. The office felt different the second I stepped in. It was too quiet.
Out there, the shop carried that hollow echo of metal and movement. There were faint sounds of scrapes from Ghost shifting things around. I knew that he was going through shit trying to see what was take-worthy and what wasn’t. At the last lick, he was checking inside the tires and everything. The distant clank of tools could be heard, but in here? It was still. It was like I had just stepped into a space that didn’t belong to the rest of the establishment.
I eased the door halfway shut behind me, more out of instinct than anything, as my eyes started working the room. I was looking for the same things that we had lucked up with on our first lick. Ghost swore this one was just like the last. He said this building had the same type of setup and that we would walk away with the same kind of reward. But something in my chest wasn’t sitting right. It was just a feeling. A tightness crept in slowly. I moved closer to the desk. I started scanning papers that looked too organized. All of them were invoices for work done at the shop. Whoever ran this building wasn’t sloppy.
Everything had a place, and everything was in it. That alone should’ve told me this wasn’t just another easy lick. Whatever we came looking for had to be carefully hidden, and I’m sure it would take us a while to find. Which we didn’t have. I didn’t feel comfortable sitting in this spot for too long. I was looking around the room, wondering where someone would hide some bricks. We checked all the utility closets because that’s where they were tucked away in the last spot. But we didn’t find anything in those.
My eyes were bouncing around the room as my mind raced. Then my pupils drifted up, and everything stopped. Photos lined the wall. They were framed, clean, and placed perfectly along the eggshell-colored surface. Whoever owned this office was big on family. I stepped closer without thinking. It was like I was being pulled in. And the second I really looked… my stomach dropped. I touched the frame and tilted it slightly as the air in my chest turned heavy, like I had forgotten how to breathe right. Maliah’s eyes were staring at me. There she was, frozen in moments I had heard her talk about. A birthday dinner. A middle school graduation. A random candid photo where she was smiling as if nothing else mattered in the world except for the people around her, living in the moment. I recognized the joy in those picturesbecause I’d seen pieces of it in real life. I put that same exact smile on her face every chance I got…
In the privacy of my car, where it was just her and me, I watched her eyes shrink in size with her bright smile as she enjoyed a pint of butter pecan ice cream while she sat next to me. It was her favorite. We sat parked outside of Whip N Dip, a local ice cream parlor that we both enjoyed. Every chance she got, she snuck out of the house. If her parents were not home during the day, or once everyone was asleep. It didn’t matter when she tried her best to always make time to see me.
“You want another one?” I asked her when I heard her plastic spoon scraping the bottom of the container.
“Mm mm, this was good enough. Thank you. I had a day and needed this,” she said with a sigh.
Without thinking, I had leaned over and kissed her deeply. The taste of her butter cream ice cream still sat on her tongue. When I pulled back, she was staring at me, and I could see her start to blush. She was so damn cute. And as I looked in her eyes, I could see the innocence in them.
“Tell me about it.”
I reclined my chair back and turned slightly to face her so that I could give her my undivided attention. She went on and on about how her dad had restraints on her but not on her brother. She was annoyed with how her little sister would bribe her out of her expensive clothes. I even got some gossip from the old school I no longer attended. She was on a roll, just getting everything off her chest. And I sat there looking at her and just listening. She was so fucking beautiful, even the way her nose flared with telling her story made the corners of my mouth turn up….
I blinked away the memory from when we first started dating. Maliah was looking to escape the strict lines of her household. She wanted to be free of the rules and obligations that her parents laid on her. The moment was so small but meant so much to me. Because during our small sneak meetups, she was able to escape a little. I stared at the picture, and my face got hot. Hot with embarrassment about what I was truly doing. From what I had done to her family. This was really her. My jaw tightened as my eyes shifted to the rest of the photos, already knowing what I was about to see before I even focused.
I saw her mother, her siblings, and then him. He was standing right there at the center of it all, like the foundation everything else was built on. Because, well, he was. He was their rock. And here I was taking from the man. I had already been in his presence. I unknowingly shook his hand and then hours later robbed him. I already sat in a space where he welcomed me like I wasn’t the type of person who would ever cross him like this. He welcomed me into his home, broke bread with me, and this is what I was accidentally doing secretly. I knew that the big house and fancy cars came from somewhere. This nigga was moving weight and a lot of it. I thought about Mali and just how this shit would affect her if she ever found it. I thought about what her dad would do to me if he ever discovered the shit either. I wondered if she even knew the kind of man her dad was.
My chest sank. This wasn’t just another shop. This wastheirshop, and we were in the middle of robbingherfamily. I backed away from the picture-filled wall like any one of her family members could hop out of one of the frames. My back bumped into the desk behind me as a sick feeling rolled through me so fast that I had to brace my hand against the edge of the surface to steady myself. My mind started racing. It wasn’t about the money anymore. It wasn’t about the play.
All I could see was her. All I could think about was her face if she ever found out. The way her voice would sound, saying my name with something other than softness behind it. She would be laced in disappointment from my betrayal. I didn’t even think about the consequences of any of this shit until now. Now that all the pieces were together, I knew that Ghost and I were fucked. This wasn’t just some random man we were stealing from. The look of fear in Chino’s eyes when he saw the bricks we were trying to sell him told me everything I needed to know. I wasn’t out here in these streets, not really. So, I wouldn’t know shit about this Ruiz Cartel that Chino spoke of.
But I’ll tell you what I do know: Chino seemed scared of them, and he was one of the scariest people in our hood. If he thought before betraying them, then we should have taken heed and done the same exact thing. Just an affiliation with a cartel like that meant that you were somebody of importance. Maliha’s dad had to be rooted in deep. This had to be a man who had power, and I’m sure he was well respected. He had every reason to make an example out of anybody who crossed him, including me.
The door creaked behind me, so I turned around and drew my gun from my waistband immediately. When I saw Ghost standing there masked up, holding two duffel bags, I lowered my weapon.
“We gotta go.”
My voice came out sharp and cut through whatever Ghost was about to say before it could even form. I was already moving to make my exit. I stepped out of the office, like staying in there any longer was going to make the situation worse. That feeling in my chest had turned into urgency now. I didn’t look back to see if Ghost was following. I didn’t wait for a response. And I didn’t explain. I just moved quickly and focused. I was heading straight for the exit like Mr. Browne would pull up at any moment. Myhead was on a swivel as I made my exit. I still hadn’t looked back to see if Ghost was following me, but I knew he was because I could hear his feet shuffling behind me.
The money didn’t matter anymore. I was in a pure state of panic. When we made it outside, both of our sneakers hit the pavement and started moving. We walked off where we both parked outside in that pocket of darkness tucked along the side of the shop. The night air was cooler than it had any right to be. It slipped under my clothes and pulled at the sweat that was still clinging to my skin from being inside that building. My Impala sat right there by the curb like a silent witness. We both still had our ski masks on. Neither one of us had thought to take them off.
Ghost came up on my right side first. He was breathing heavier than usual, and frustration was already written all over the way he moved. I could feel it before he even spoke. It was that tension that reeked from him that always showed up when he felt like I was messing up something he thought was simple. He stopped a few feet from me and shook his head like he couldn’t believe what just happened back there.
“Nah, nah, nah,” he started. His voice was low, but I could tell that he was heated. “What was that in there? You just folded for no reason.”
I didn’t even look at him at first. My eyes stayed on the building. on those same walls we just came out of. I was still trying to process how something that should have been a regular lick turned into this.
“We ain’t find the bricks,” he kept going while stepping closer. “We ain’t even finish the job. And you just pulled the plug. What… the fuck… happened?” he asked again, this time with more grit to his tone.
