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Shabazz spoke up. “Skeen came through on a re-up, and Brandon caught us slippin’,” he explained.
“Nah, the nigga caught YOU slippin’, homie! All I know right now is Brandon is s till breathing, you still breathing, and Skeen ain’t breathing and my product is missing. What the fuck is wrong with that equation?”
“I put it on everything, my gun jammed on me, and that’s the only reason he let off on us like that.”
“Shabazz, you fuckin’ up, my nigga! Skeen’s uncle is coming home in two days, and now how the fuck I’m gonna tell him some shit like his nephew just got murdered?”
Shabazz and Nico both were quiet.
“If your shit jammed and you a real G, then you take a fuckin’ bullet! That’s how you was supposed to get down. But, from what I hear, niggas is telling me that yo’ ass ran like a bitch and left Skeen.”
Shabazz took the phone off speaker and put it to his ear and began talking.“That’s not how it went down,” he replied.
I couldn’t really hear what Nico was saying, but I definitely could tell that he was barking on Shabazz.
“A’ight, yeah. A’ight, I’ll be there. No doubt,” Shabazz said before ending the call with Nico.
Shabazz didn’t immediately say anything to me, and I didn’t say anything to him. The vibe in the room felt similar to the awkwardness of seeing your friend getting screamed on by one of their parents.
Shabazz tossed his phone across the room.
I watched it bounce off the floor. “Don’t stress out, baby,” I said as I continued to nurse his ankle.
I did my best to front and to be a voice of encouragement, but all I could think about was what a difference six months made. Six months ago when I had first met Shabazz, I was feeling him from the moment I saw him. He had a bald head, his goatee was perfectly trimmed, and he had the whitest teeth I had ever seen. And his white teeth complemented his smooth, dark skin perfectly. Shabazz was pushing an all-black Spyker SUV, his swagger was on a thousand, and from day one it seemed like we fucked each other twice a day every day like two rabbits in heat.
It was all good because it wasn’t like I was letting him fuck for free. Shabazz would trick off on me, and he always made sure that I wanted for nothing. But recently that all started to change, and in the last month or so, it seemed like his money, his swagger, and his street cred were all starting to quickly dry up.
Shabazz ran both of his hands down his face. I could see that he was in physical pain and that he was also feeling punked, stressed, and anguished, all at the same time. There was no way at that moment that I could possibly bring up the fact that I was broke and needed some cash. I needed tuition money, car insurance money, clothes money, and spending money.
I knew I needed to rethink this situation. Perhaps it was time to start looking for a new sponsor.
CHAPTER 2
Nico
Two days after Skeen was killed, his uncle Bebo came home from prison after doing seven years in Club Fed on a conspiracy charge. But years before going to jail, Bebo had started a Brooklyn-based drug crew that he called “Ghetto Mafia.”
Back when he’d first started Ghetto Mafia, I was a teenage low-level, hand-to-hand drug dealer in the organization, but I eventually worked my way up to a crew chief and then to a lieutenant. Ultimately, I became Bebo’s right-hand man and the number-two person in the organization. And when Bebo got locked up seven years ago, I took over the head position and had been holding it down ever since.
If I’m being real, I can say that Bebo didn’t know what the fuck he was doing before he went to prison and that’s why he got locked up. I mean, he was street-smart, and he had more heart than anybody that I had ever met. The only problem was, Bebo never had the business smarts that he needed to mix with his street smarts. Me, on the other hand, I had the heart, the street smarts, and the business mind to match.
When Bebo got locked up, we was controlling most of Queens and half of Brooklyn, but now, seven years later, we ran the New York City drug game, moving heroin, cocaine, and marijuana in ten different states on the East Coast and three states in the Midwest. When I took over the organization, we went from grossing 8 million a year to now grossing 1.5 million a month.
With the money we were making, it was nothing for me to make sure that Bebo came home to a brand-new Bentley coupe that was parked and waiting for him in front of Touch nightclub on 52nd Street in Manhattan, which was where I’d decided to throw his homecoming party.
It was around nine-thirty at night when I arrived at Touch with my fiancé Mia, and my swagger was heightened. My driver opened our door, and we stepped out of our Maybach Landaulet in style. I was wearing a $4,000 tailored suit that I had custom made specifically for this party. Mia was wearing a form-fitting black-and-silver Gucci cocktail dress that showed off her ass. And she wore it with high heels that showed off her toned caramel legs.
As we exited our car and made our way past the line that snaked down the block from the front door of the club, Mia and I looked like New York royalty and the ultimate power couple.
With my hand firmly on the small of Mia’s back, I ushered her into the party, avoiding any pictures.
“Nico, what’s good?” one of the bouncers said to me as he removed the velvet rope to let me and Mia go inside.
I gave the bouncer a pound, and I told him to make sure that he escorted Bebo, as soon as he arrived, directly to area we’d be lounging in.
“As soon as Bebo gets here, make sure you let him know we got them bottles on deck for him in the back.”
“No doubt,” he replied.
