Page 2 of Weddings on the West: Vol. I Brick & Destiny

“What the fuck did you just say?” Ma snapped.

“Nothing, Mother,” Kilo mumbled. I snickered, making Ma shoot a stern look our way. We both shut up instantly. Pistol, the middle child of The West Squad, sat there looking stoic and pissed off as usual. The nigga rarely smiled. I take that back—the only time he ever smiled was when he was inflicting pain on someone. Pistol was the enforcer of the family, Kilo was the heart, and I was the brain. Somehow, Mama managed to master all three, but once we were old enough and graduated from college, we were forced to step up.

“As we all know, I’m not getting any younger,” she started with her dramatic ass. I rolled my eyes.

“Yeah, we know,” Kilo huffed indignantly.

“Nigga!” she yelled as she chunked a vase at him. I started to laugh before I realized it was my shit she was throwing. Then, I dove in front of Kilo to save my three-thousand-dollar art that she was tossing around like a dodgeball.

“Listen!” I stood up, placing the vase on a table far away from her looney ass. “I pay a lot of money for my shit. If y’all can’t respect that, then I’m gonna have to politely ask y’all niggas to leave.” I knew my words were in vain because nothing about my family was polite, and they didn’t respect boundaries. All I could do was pray Ma would get to the point before my expensive shit became collateral damage. “Now go ahead,” I urged her.

“I’m ready to retire,” she announced, making all three of us roll our eyes. Every three business days, she was on her bullshit, talking about how she was too old for this shit, and she was passing it down to us. We all knew that she was way too much of a control freak to ever give us full control, so we just let her get her shit off.

“Okay, cool. Well hand over the keys… What, you want us to throw you a going away party or sum’? I can get a cake from Costco. Them muhfuckas slap!” Kilo said with a shrug.

“No, I want y’all to get married, so I can pass this off properly. It’s long overdue,” she scoffed.

“Married?” All three of us jolted upright and blurted at the same time.

“Now y’all can’t hear?” she fussed. I heard her crazy ass just fine, but I sat there in silence because if she thought I was giving up my bachelor lifestyle for her after I had already given up so much, she had another thing coming.

Never mind that I wanted nothing to do with this shit anyways. According to her, she had three boys in order to pass on the family legacy. I think her young ass was just out there fuckin’ and got trapped with three kids before she was even old enough to graduate high school. In her defense, she had been locked in with our Pops for pretty much her entire life, so it wasn’t like she was just giving it to everybody. He was a hustler and ended up getting gunned down by a rival when I was four, leaving her to raise us alone. Her parents turned their backs on her, so he was really all she had.

Then we were all she had.

She was eighteen years old, with three kids under five, no help, and a hundred thousand dollars in drugs in her dead boyfriend’s back bedroom. She could have sold that shit wholesale, moved us somewhere far away from The Sleigh, and gave us a nice, normal life. Instead, she stayed, flipped it, and created an empire.

“Ma, I don’t understand why you think we need to be married in order to inherit anything!” Kilo complained, sounding every bit like the annoying little brother he was. His question was still valid.

“Because dummy! I’m not leaving this shit to y’all without knowing that you have someone to carry it on,” she said as if that shit made sense.

“I don’t even want kids,” I reasoned. The thought of having a tiny person in my space blowing snot bubbles and breaking all my shit completely disgusted me.

“Too bad,” she replied with a shrug. “If you want to inherit the family business, there has to be a fuckin’ family to pass it on to! Do you know how hard I worked? What I gave up? Why would I just let my shit die off with y’all?”

“What if we choose not to accept?” I asked. It was no secret that I wasn’t the most enthused about being an heir to this shit. I had a Master’s degree in Economics and constantly had some of the most lucrative businesses in Sleighton at the ready to start a career that would have me well off for the rest of my life.

“Then I take all my shit back. You can start over, but you’ll be starting from scratch, and I’ll expect repayments for all the money I put into your schooling and businesses. And y’all know how I collect,” she said with a conniving smile stretched across her face. As beautiful as my mother was, she was ten times as manipulative, and sometimes I fucking hated her ass. What kind of mother would extort her kids for money she offered them? I should have known that shit would come back to bite me. I could recover from losing the club, but losing it and having to pay her ass back? I don’t think there was enough money on the West Side of Sleighton to get her hooks out of me. When none of us argued or gave any further commentary, she continued.

“So, I think we’ll go in order, oldest to youngest. Brick, you have one year.”

“One year for what?” I asked, brows as high as they could go since apparently I was the one on the chopping block first.

“To find a wife,” she said, like was that simple. “Then Pistol a year later, and finally Kilo a year after that. Then I’ll sign over everything to the three of you equally.”

“What if one of us isn’t able to deliver?” Pistol asked, his deep voice coming out in a low grumble.

“Then you all forfeit.” The pleased smile on her face made me want to say fuck it, and start working overtime and slinging premium dick on the side just to pay her back what I owed her. If it wasn’t for the fact that my brothers would lose too, I definitely would have walked away. Once again, when she didn’t hear any opposition, the smile returned to her face. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.” She turned and stormed out dramatically, green coat flapping in the wind that she created herself. My jaw clenched as we looked around at each other awkwardly.

“So… you gon’ marry ol’ girl that just left?” Kilo asked with his brows raised. “I mean… her ass was fat as fuck.”

“Fuck no,” I huffed, walking to my kitchen so I could grab a bottle of water to replenish some of the fluids Mina had just slurped out of me. When I returned, they were still sitting there looking exactly how I felt—like they just got sentenced to five to ten.

“Damn, so are we really gon’ let her crazy ass bully us into getting married?” Kilo asked, running his hands through his locs. He looked over at the door nervously like he half expected her to come in there and smack the shit out of him for calling her crazy. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Shit, we might have to. Y’all know she don’t fuck around about her money. I got some saved up, but not nearly enough to get from under her, and you know she don’t play fair,” Pistol said anxiously, rubbing his hand up the back of his neck. If his unhinged ass was nervous, then I knew something. After we graduated college, I was gifted a strip club, Pistol got a garage, and Kilo got a shopping center. We all had legit money, but the catch was that mama made herself a shareholder, meaning she had final approval on any major changes.

“Man, nah. We ain’t gotta do this shit y’all. She’s full of shit. Once she realizes that we’re not doing it, who else is she gon’ leave the business to?” I asked. My brothers nodded in agreement as an eerie silence settled over us. “Let’s just let it ride. She’ll forget about it. She can’t possibly be serious about this.”