Legal’s office was on the fourteenth floor of a building downtown that always smelled like mahogany and old money as soon as you stepped off the elevator. I had been coming here my whole life and it still felt like a different world every time I walked through those doors.
The kind of world my father never got to be a part of. I knew that he would have been proud of Legal. I know I am.
I got there at eight fifty and Mazi was already in the waiting area when I walked in. He stood up when he saw me, we dapped up and I looked at him the way I always did when I was trying to feel him out. I needed to know how he really was underneath what he was showing.
He looked tired. Not regular tired. The kind that came from carrying something heavy for too long without being able to let it go. I peeped that and didn’t say anything about it yet.
“How you feel baby boy? How that arm feeling?” I asked while searching his face for the truth.
“I’ve been better, but my arm is good. I’m almost back to new.”
“You better hope so. You can’t afford to not shine this upcoming season. Yo life is depending on it and you gotta take that seriously if you don’t do shit else.”
“Zay please! Man, I already know I messed up, that don’t take away all the good and right that I did before that one lil mistake. I won’t fuck up again, and I hope you know that.” my brother pleased with me. He was the only person who called me Zay, andI let him because that was our thing. I nodded and dropped the subject.
I knew how it felt to be judge off one mistake and I never wanted to make my brothers feel like that.
—
Legal’s assistant walked us back at nine on the dot. Legal was standing behind his desk when we came in and he looked at both of us. Something flashed across his face that I couldn’t read immediately. He gestured to the two chairs across from his desk and waited until we both sat down before he sat. He didn’t greet us with a hug or none of that good shit like normal. Nah, today he read about business.
He looked at Mazi first.
Then at me.
Then back at Mazi.
“I’m going to ask both of you something and I need the truth,” he said. “No protecting each other, no leaving things out. The truth only. Can you two respect me enough to do that?” Legal asked.
I looked at Mazi.
Mazi looked at me.
“Yeah, fa sho.” I said.
Legal folded his hands on the desk.
“Have you two been trying to get revenge for father’s death on your own?” Legal asked. Now, I was confused. How could I get revenge when I had no idea who did it. I put my ear to the streets since I was a teenager and never got any solid leads. It was a million niggas in Dallas named Bj. That was a lost mission and I accepted long ago that I’d probably never get justice. Although I knew it was a stretch, I just had a gut feeling Marcus wasconnected to that same Bj, but even so, I didn’t go looking for that nigga either, he just popped up with Bri.
“Nah. Why would you even think that? You know when it comes to my brothers, I don’t play that. If that was the time that I was on, that’s something I would handle alone or with Gutta. Never the twins.” I answered honestly while Mazi sat there looking caught up.
Legal sat a folder down in front of us.
“Marcus Jennings, that’s Brielle’s boyfriend that you overheard at the hospital,” Legal said. “His father is Bernard James Jennings. BJ.”
He let that land.
I looked up from the folder.
“BJ is the same man who walked up to your father twenty two years ago and told him to throw that fight,” Legal said.
“When Hood refused BJ went to Veteran and Veteran gave the order since that’s who was really in charge of those betting rings amongst other things. Your father was dead two days later after thinking he was meeting with them for another offer.”
He paused. “Marcus is his son.”
The room went silent.
I sat back in my chair and stared at the ceiling for a second because if I looked at anything else in that room right now I was going to lose it completely. I felt my jaw twitching uncontrollably, then my left eye started to do the same.
