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“Respectfully, Averie, both of y’all can kiss my ass. I found my husband riddled with bullets. Y’all were the last ones on my mind.”

“Well.” Raya threw her hair over her shoulders. “We should have been the first people to cross your mind. Since we’re the one with the kids.”

“Girl, you make everything about you. Move ‘round,” Jahree chimed in.

“If I don’t move around, then what?” Raya said.

“Not today.” Shameek stood in between us. “If your only concern is if my niece will be straight, she will. I can’t speak for yo’ ass though.” He looked her up and down.

He then looked at Averie. I could tell he was disappointed in her. They had a pretty decent relationship from what Rah would tell me.

“And when it comes to my nephew and niece from you, I got them, too. Let this be the last time y’all get disrespectful to my muthafuckin’ sister-in-law. She don’t fuck with nobody.”

“Is the driver ready? I got to get out of here,” I told Shameek.

“Yeah,” he said. “Y’all walk her to the limo and follow behind her closely. I want one of you muthafuckas outside the gate at all times and another inside the gate,” he stated.

I didn’t even talk to my daddy on the drive back to my estate. There wasn’t nothing left to say. Today was final. The final fucking goodbye. Everyone was worried about themselves. While I was going home to an empty ass mansion. When we arrived, I just sat in the car for a second.

“You want me to stay? I don’t mind,” my daddy said.

“No, I’ll be fine. If I need you, I’ll call.”

“You sho’?”

“Positive.”

He grabbed me and brought me in for a hug and then placed a kiss on my forehead.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Dad.”

He watched me walk into the house before I heard his old school Caprice crank up and pull off. I slipped my heels off and carried them in my hand. The house was quiet and eerie.

“Everyone keeps telling me to be strong…but they ain’t tell me how to do this without you, Rah.”

CHAPTER 2

SHAMEEK KING

My brother had been in the ground for a few days now and business for me hadn’t stopped. Unlike my brother, I liked to get my hands a little dirty. He was more of the cleaner image for the King Estate. I didn’t want to be clean. I liked to be the one to look a nigga in their eyes when they couldn’t keep their end of a deal. My Pops flooded the city with drugs back in the seventies and early eighties. When I was young, I was always infatuated with his jewelry and money. When he would go out of town and my mama was busy shopping, I would sneak in their room and put his jewelry around my neck. My brother, Rahmelo, would make me take it off and put it back where I found it.

Rah wasn’t perfect, but the nigga came damn close. I was proud to say I was his little brother. When we got older and my Pops started putting us in his business, Rah immediately wanted nothing to do with the drug game. I jumped in headfirst. Rah came around a little later. Even then, I knew his ass wasn’t in for the long haul. Our pops seen it, too. One thing Rah was good at was money. He had this head bob thing he would do when Pops was counting his money. He knew when he had miscounted. Now that I was thinking of it, Rah may have been a little genius. He knew when money was short as soon as the rubber band hit it. He said it made a certain sound.

“Nigga, I miss you. You left me here to clean up all yo’ muthfuckin’ mess,” I told him as I sat his shot out. “I took Kaiden to get his hair cut yesterday. I got them kids, bruh.”

The dirt was still fresh, and we were waiting for his custom slab and headstone. On Fridays, we hung out together to catch up on the business side of things. We would pour a shot and I would let that nigga vent about anything he wanted to. His life was a little more complicated than mine. I didn’t have any kids, and I wasn’t connected to no bitches. They may have claimed me, but I never claimed them.

“Boy, you would’ve flipped yo’ shit had you seen how baby mama number two acted. I told yo’ ass when you started fuckin’ her she wasn’t right in the head. Wifey held her own though. And Jah got baby mama number two together, too. I don’t want them jumping on that girl. Maybe yo’ ass can go visit the bitch as a ghost and scare the fuck outta of her.” I laughed.

“You kno’ what fucked me up the most? I be ‘bouta to pick the phone up and tell you some funny shit and realize yo’ stubborn ass can’t answer no more.”

My phone started ringing before I could go on.

“Yeah?” I answered.

“Where you at?” Pops asked.