“He’s the nigga who tried to kill me. Did a piss poor job. If he was half good, he would’ve made sure I was dead.” I took another gulp of coconut water.
“Shouldn’t you be glad he wasn’t good at his job?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would you rather be dead?” she asked a pregnant pause later.
“Would you?” I countered, eyes going from her shoulder to her face.
“Nah, I have a lot more hell to raise and life to live. Current circumstances are not forever. Now are you gonna answer my question?”
“Sometimes I wish I had, maybe this wouldn’t be so heavy. Then others I wonder if this is what they mean by a second chance. If so, am I squandering it?” I didn’t like the way my honesty with her made me feel, so I opened the file to focus my attention on anything but the current moment.
Most of what was inside of it I already knew because it was public knowledge, but things like where his baby mother and grandmother stayed were new.
She was silent for a minute before she spoke again. “The person who shot me will never walk this earth again because I gave myself peace of mind instead of trusting the system.”
“And you sleep peacefully?”
“Like a baby.”
I just looked at her, wondering how someone so beautiful could be so deadly. Did it bother me? Not at all. If anything, it made me want to know her more, even though I should have been focused on other things.
Shorty and I talked for a while longer, watching the sun set in the distance. Because there weren’t many lights on the pier, it was dark as fuck by the time we walked toward the parking lot.
“Honestly, it was nice talking to you, even though I still don’t know your name,” she admitted when we reached the blacked-out BMW M5 she hit the locks on.
“You didn’t ask for my name.”
She nodded, then stood straight in front of me, looking into my face. “What is your name?”
“Iso,” I responded coolly, feeling all the blood in my body rush to my dick. This woman was beautiful, from her slightly slanted, piercing eyes to the way she rocked six braids mirroring the late Pop Smoke’s style. Hers were much longer though and did something to me with the way they traveled down her back and contrasted that rich almond skin of hers.
“Iso. I like that. Well, I guess I’ll see you around.”
“We’ll see,” I responded and watched her sexy ass slide into that sexy ass car before she pulled off. I didn’t need any distractions, but something about lil G.I. Jane had me way past intrigued.
I pulledup to one of the addresses in the file, his grandmother’s. She lived in Marshall Row, a lowkey extension of Watertown but it was considered the suburbs, or the outer lands to Briar natives. When I pulled up a few houses from the address, I quickly spotted him. He was the goofy ass nigga with the shaped up ’fro amongst several others shooting dice in the driveway. My soul wanted to spray the whole fucking collective, but what would it do for me? Was retribution worth continuing the cycle? He was the only one who had wronged me, so why would I shoot up the crowd?
Because unlike them I couldn’t be with my people, couldn’t hug my son on this holiday. I was watching a nigga enjoy his kin while mine mourned me.
I didn’t get out of the truck blasting or do any young nigga shit without thought or acknowledgment of consequences. Instead I pulled off, headed home to rest and ponder things that should have been easy. Nothing was ever easy, especially not for a dead man.
For the next couple of days, I watched Bo come and go as he pleased, creating what looked like triangulation between his baby moms’, his girl’s and his grandmother’s houses. He was on edge about something, maybe all the drugs I’d burned up at Adrian’s spot. She wasn’t selling anything and he damn sure wasn’t that high on the fucking food chain to take a loss that big and survive. He wasn’t eating like that and I knew it.
I was pulling up to my lil hideaway out in Westvale when Lee hit me up, telling me to come by the shop. He probably had the trucking business paperwork I needed.
Before I died on paper, I had been working to legitimize everything I’d attained in the streets during my brief time there. I never had any intention of staying in them long or ever becoming some hood rich nigga, because that did nothing for me. It wasn’t my fault that when I stepped in, I dominated things in a way that Rich Jordan Sr. had groomed RJ to do, but he never had it in him. Niggas didn’t follow phonies and nepo babies. They followed and listened to the nigga who stood on the streets with them at a point, the one they knew not to test because that dog was very much alive in him. When I ran the streets, I always had one goal, to make it out and never get too high off the profits I saw from risking my life and soul.
It took me about forty-five minutes to get to the pawn shop. I backed into the park, then sat there for a moment studying my surroundings. I had to be aware of everything. It was nothing for a nigga to recognize me, and right now, that was something I didn’t need.
The coast was clear, so I pulled my hoodie over my face and got out of the car. I then walked over and knocked on the back door of the shop.
The door opened about a second later. It wasn’t Lee, but instead Liora, and my shit bricked instantly. She was fucking beautiful.
“Hey.” She greeted me quickly, allowing me in and leading the way through the small hallway into his office.
“What’s up?” I greeted. When we entered his office, I quickly noted he wasn’t there, but before I could say anything, she extended a thumb drive toward me.
