“Yeah. That’s dead! Let me handle the rest from here. Ima pay Tavarus a visit myself.”
“Xavier, please don’t do nothing crazy! You gave me your word.” Legal pleaded.
“I’m not. He just needs to know that my brother is off-limits. My family is off-limits. Then, I’ll have to talk to Brielle. I gotta see how much she knows. And if she even cares that she might be sleeping with the enemy.”
Iwas in the kitchen washing dishes when the doorbell rang.
Marcus was in the living room watching something on the tv, and if I wasn’t mistaken, it sounded like boxing. I heard him get up to answer the door, and I didn’t think anything of it until I heard the voice coming from the front door and my hands stopped moving in the water.
Xavier. I knew his voice from anywhere.
I dried my hands and walked to the living room doorway and stopped.
Street was standing on the other side of the open door and Marcus was blocking it with one hand on the frame. Somethingwas already wrong with the energy between them. I could feel it from ten feet away. Street’s face was controlled, and I knew that meant he was holding something back that was fighting to come out. His eyes went past Marcus the second I appeared and the look that he gave me and what was in them made my stomach drop.
Something had happened. I just didn’t know what. How did he have my address? And why was he here? Was he here to tell Marcus that we’d had sex weeks ago? My nerves were on edge and I was panicking.
“Bri.” His voice was even. “I need to talk to you.” he called out to me over Marcus standing right there in front of him.
Marcus looked back at me over his shoulder. “You okay with him popping up like this? What is this about?”
“Yes, it must be something important.” I walked forward. “Marcus this is Xavier, you two met at the hospital.”
The expression changed on Marcus’s face, then it was gone before I could read it fully. He looked back at Street and the two of them looked at each other for a moment and the air in that doorway was thick with something I couldn’t name. They looked like they wanted to beat each other ass, and this made me even more nervous. At the hospital, the encounter seemed fine.
“I need to have a minute with her,” Street said. Not asking Marcus. Telling him.
Marcus didn’t move immediately. That small hesitation told me something.
“Marcus.” I touched his arm and Street looked like he wanted to kill the man as he removed his hand off him. “Give us a minute please.”
He looked at me and then at Street one more time before he stepped back from the door and closed it in Streets face. He didn’t go far. He sat down on the couch in the living room with a clear line of sight to the front door and picked up his phone. I noticed that he didn’t actually look at the phone, he just fumbled it around in his hand out of anxiousness.
“Brielle. Why is the guy you’ve had dealings with in the past at our door? You don’t think that’s disrespectful?” He asked without even looking up at me.
“I don’t know what he wants, maybe it’s about his little brother, you know… he did just get shot. If he is here, it has to be serious because we don’t talk often at all. I would never disrespect you, especially not in our home. He is just a friend, and his family is like family to me.” I lied, Marcus nodded and didn’t respond.
I stepped outside and pulled the door mostly closed behind me.
Street was looking at me and I looked back at him. The look that was on his face up close was worse than what I had seen from across the room. This wasn’t the cold controlled anger from the gym parking lot. This was something deeper than that.
“What happened? Why are you here?” I asked, nervously.
“I need you to listen to me and I need you to hear everything before you say anything back.” He kept his voice low enough that it wouldn’t carry through the door. “Ok?”
“Xavier you’re scaring me.”
“Just tell me you’ll hear me out.”
“Okay. Talk.”
He looked at me straight.
“Marcus’s father is BJ.”
I stared at him. “What? Yes, those are his initials, but I’m confused.”
“Bernard James Jennings. Goes by BJ. He is the same man who orchestrated the hit on my father because he wouldn’t throw the biggest fight of his career. My father was dead two days later after refusing.” Street’s jaw was tight and his eyes were steady on mine and he wasn’t blinking. “Marcus is his son Brielle. BJ placed him in your life specifically because of your history with me. To keep eyes on my world without me knowing.”
