Page 129 of Heart Of A Goon II

“Exactly. It’s quiet.”

I heard the stairs creak and saw Quasim coming down dressed for a workout. He came and kissed his grandmother and stole some of her coffee. “Mais açúcar,” he said in Portuguese.

She cut her eyes at him and squeezed his face before kissing him. “Vejo você falando mais,” she replied.

I didn’t know what they hell they were talking about. All I saw was muffins and went over to them, then stopped myself. “Gams… these straight?”

She looked at me offended. “Those are for my love buns… I keep that stuff out of reach during the day.”

“Love buns?”

“Grandkids,” Quasim said, as he grabbed a muffin and nodded for us to head out through the front.

I didn’t realize how hungry I was with the way I bit into the muffin soon as we left the house. Quasim closed the door, said a prayer and then marked the cross across the door.

“You always do that?”

“Yeah, want them covered always,” he replied, taking a bite out of his muffin, as we walked towards the beach.

In the distance, I saw Cappadonna running with Capella and Rory. They were running slower because he couldn’t keep up, and then he threw a tantrum once they got ahead of him.

Me and Sim laughed as we watched him yell at his grandfather and father to stay there, while he ran ahead of them. Each time they tried to move, he would stop and yell.

“This kid, man,” Capp chuckled the closer that we got to them.

Capella shook his head. “He so damn independent now… knows what he wants. Didn’t even let Promise bully him.”

“All good things. It means the therapies that you have him in are doing their job. The fact that he let Alaia put paint on his hands and didn’t flip out told me everything,” Capp replied.

“Being a father is the hardest shit I have ever had to do. I thank God for giving me another chance to do it,” Sim said.

Capp looked at him. “Now you got a possessed son and an angel baby.”

“Nigga, stop,” Quasim laughed.

“Oh shit… damn baby done ran too far,” Capella cursed, as he took off running towards Rory, who had made it a good distance.

We continued to walk along the beach. “How you feeling though?”

“Shit, not good. I don’t know how this shit could go. My picture all over the news and I had to block Devon.”

Capp stopped walking. “He’s probably losing his shit right now, Forty.”

I shrugged. “Can’t drag him down into this shit. They look for every reason to nail his ass to the cross and this won’t be one of them. Robinson knows what he’s fucking doing.”

“Amaria’s pops?”

“Fuck that, the FBI director?” Quasim added.

Robinson knew that I knew something and he was determined to take me down. It wasn’t because me and Amaria were in love. I had always been careful to keep our shit separate from him. I didn’t even attend family functions she invited me to, because I never wanted him to get the wrong impression.

Comfortability caused problems, and I knew the kind of man Robinson was. Once he was comfortable with you, he asked for favors. I wasn’t on the straight and narrow by all means, but I did that shit for my people.

“Me and Amaria have been investigating the RHK case. She’s as invested as I have been and been helping me piece this shit together.”

Ever since Zoya told me about her ex-boyfriend storing the evidence at her house, I knew this shit went deeper than I thought. With the killer resurfacing and leaving bodies everywhere, I felt like I needed to figure this shit out.

What made me more invested was when Amaria said she saw that same box of evidence in her parents’ garage when she was visiting them. She was getting a box of pictures from college and stumbled upon the box.