“Why nobody fucking called me?” I clenched my jaw as I handed him back his phone.
In response, Jersey smacked his lips. “You was on your fucking honeymoon. You and wifey deserved a week to just enjoy being married.”
I ran my hands down my face. Shit like this never sat right with me. I hated death and everything that came with it. The fact that somebody could be alive and breathing one second, then bedead and gone the next was some shit I could never wrap my head around. Nymir was loyal as fuck and had a good head on his shoulders. I wished I was able to turn back the hands of time and prevent this shit from happening.
“The fuck happened?”
“Nymir was playing ball, shit went left, and him and some nigga by the name of Knox exchanged words. Next day, Knox rolled up on Ny in the projects and popped him. Nymir was taking out the fucking trash. He wasn’t even strapped,” Jersey explained with a shake of his head.
My jaw tightened as anger flashed in my eyes. These young niggas were moving fucking reckless and taking lives off the dumbest shit. They stayed strapped and ready to blow just to flex that they were crashouts. None of them thought about what came after. The mourning, the funerals, the fucking Feds sniffing around.
“Over a fucking basketball game?”
“Shit tripped me out too until I found out who the fuck that nigga Knox run with.”
I leaned up in my seat. “Who?”
“Silas.”
Keeping the whole east coast on lock was hard fucking work, no matter how people tried to downplay the way I got put on. When Priest passed me the torch, there wasn’t no fucking blueprint. He trusted me to figure that shit out, which I fucking did. Soon as motherfuckas found out Priest, Kaymen and J’Ru stepped down, they thought I was an easy fucking target and they could come for what’s mine.
Silas was a Detroit nigga who was adamant about competing with me. I remained chill for the most part, peeping his moves to see what type of timing he was on, but now that his people had put down one of mine, wasn’t no coming back from that.
“Of fucking course. What’s the word on Knox?”
“Nigga went ghost. We looking for him now.”
“Find that nigga. We can’t let Ny go out like that.”
“You know I’m on it.”
“You reached out to Ny’s people?”
Jersey sighed as he leaned back in his seat. “I got up with his grandmother briefly over the phone. Let her know we will take care of shit once you touch down.”
One thing Priest, Kaymen and J’Ru did instill in me was to always take care of my people. In order to have a village, I needed to know how to be a villager. I knew nothing would put Nymir’s grandmother in better spirits; however, I was gonna make sure she ain’t have to worry about shit else. Nymir did what he had to do to provide for her, and just because he was taken from her senselessly didn’t mean she had to go back to struggling.
“I’ll pay her a visit. Keep this shit contained until after Ny’s funeral.”
“Heard you, Ahk. Welcome back.”
Shit like this had me wishing I could stay ducked off on an island with my wife forever, but it came with the fucking territory.
Chapter Three
JAZZLYN
Music boomedthrough Reign as I navigated the back of the club. In hand was a thick envelope stuffed with the back-end money owed to the rapper I booked for an appearance. I took the nightclub life to whole different level. Priest always told me that whatever I did, I better be the best at it, and I fucking made sure of that. New York was the fucking mecca for everything. There was no way in hell a popping artist or celebrity was skipping visiting the city, so I made sure when they did touch down, Reign was their first—if not only—stop.
“What’s all this talk about you being the face of the city now?” An old friend, Carmelo, smirked as he opened his arms wide for me to fall into an embrace.
“You heard right. Look how you tapping in with me now.” We shared a hug while rocking side to side. Carmelo and I went to high school together. He was a few grades older than me, and we had a little fling that ended before it could even start. We lost touch when he went to college, but business connected us again.
We parted from the hug, and he took a step back to take a full look at me. The way this bottom lip was crannied between his teeth let me know he was imagining how I would look out of my cheetah print corset dress.
“You got some money on the table for me. Of course I gotta tap in, ma.”
After high school, Carmelo moved to L.A. to pursue a basketball career.; However, after suffering an injury to his knee, his dreams to head to the NBA died. He tapped into music, and now he was not only the producer of some of the hottest songs that sent shockwaves through the club, but he was also managing an up-and-coming rapper named Glossy whose music was circulating all over social media and the radio. It was only right that I booked her for her first show in the city. Whether she had a long and prosperous career after this show wasn’t none of my fucking business. As long as I was making some paper off her while she was hot, that was all that mattered to me.
