Page 75 of Love me Like XO

Fire lit in my eyes watching them haul my baby off like a fucking criminal, but on my mama I was about to fix this shit. Imade a quick call to my lawyer telling him to get his ass to the courthouse, before pulling up on the bitch who obviously wanted my attention.

To my surprise, she was sitting on her front porch barefoot, seemingly waiting for me to pull up. A sneaky smile pressed against her lips when I stepped out of my truck, as she told her girls she knew I’d be here.

“Long time no see, papi.” She hopped off the stoop and made her way off the porch. What she didn’t expect was what happened next. I didn’t hit women, but I’d shoot a bitch any day. I pulled my gun from the front of my pants and within seconds the nozzle was at her forehead.

“This how you wanna play it? Out here feigning for the type of attention that’ll have you on the front of an obituary? Over mine I’ll lay you and all these hood ass hos’ out then do my sentence proudly. You fucked up when you pulled up to her spot, but now you in the midst of getting yo’self-killed for calling twelve pressing those fraudulent ass charges.”

Tears streamed down her face as she now held her hands together in her face. “I’m sorry, papi. I just missed you. I can?—”

“Drop them by tonight or on my life there won’t be a crevice in this city for you to hide.” I poked her forehead with the gun, before putting it up and walking back to my car. My message was loud and clear, now I had to have my ass at the station on the steps waiting on them to release my baby. A nigga was about to have to eat a lot of pussy to get back on her good side, but I was up for it.

About two hours later Ree was let go. Not only had the lawyer I sent up there did his job, but shorty dropped the charges. They didn’t have shit to hold her on, not to mention Suzy was five-nine while Ree’s ass was barely touching five-two. It was hard for anybody to say her lil’ ass had done that much damage to shorty. I knew she had though, because Ree was a violent lil’motherfucker when she got mad. The type of temper that had me wanting to keep her on ice, and the main reason I told her last time she had to keep her hands to herself.

“You ain’t talking to me?” I asked about five minutes into the ride.

“What am I not talking to you about, Malik?” she had yet to face me as I drove in the direction of the house.

“You deserve to be mad. To be pissed, but I promise you I handled that shit. On my life that shit is handled, an?—”

“I’m not mad at you, Malik. I’m thinking. Can I do that?” she continued to look out of the window.

“As long as that shit is aloud. I’on wanna feel like you pulling away from me. I can’t take that.” After my last statement, I looked away from her and focused on pulling in the parking garage.

Once I was parked, I looked over at her. She had yet to say anything, but she had unfastened her seat belt. Then in pure fucking astonishment I watched her push her leggings and underwear down until they hit the floor of the car before seconds later leaning over my seat and un-buckling my jeans. Instead of stopping her, I watched her hand disappear in my jeans as she reached for and gripped what was rightfully hers. Everything about me was rightfully hers.

Climbing into my lap she used the side of my seat and the middle console to for a minute to balance her weight. Then her eyes locked on mine. At the same time my hands found her sides.

“I could never pull away from you. I ne…Sss.” She lowered herself on me rolling her eyes to the back of her skull, unable to finish her sentence. When she reached the base, she paused, attempting to get comfortable, before her eyes landed on me again.

“I ain’t going nowhere, Malik. And that’s what scares me.” Then she bucked against me, beginning a ride bound to have me bussing in minutes if I didn’t watch it.

AMIA

I sat in the back seat of the Tahoe watching the landmarks as we moved through the streets of the city. I had been with Celia since I got discharged from the hospital, and she was nice for the most part. A little erratic if you asked me, but only when she had that shit up her nose. Other than that she was cool and we were silently plotting on my brother. She had yet to tell me the truth of why she had so much beef with my brother, why she had banded up with the police and that guy Rikov to do any of this. As a matter of fact I had been cooped up in her house for the last few weeks bored out of my mind when they didn’t need information out of me. They being Rikov and Detective Givens because Celia didn’t bother herself with the small details.

“Contrary to what you may believe everything I’m doing is not because I have some deep spirited vendetta against your brother. In fact I don’t hate your brother, I hate mine. Had Zero done as I wanted and killed Georgio, I wouldn’t have had to involve Givens. Your brother is smart, and clearly not easily moved.” She started to speak out of nowhere, prompting me to look in her direction.

“What do you mean?”

“My father used to run my family and being the oldest, I thought when he died, I'd get everything. I’d become the head of the family and I'd be in charge of business affairs. But I was wrong. My father had chosen to give everything he had to his son and not his daughter. A sexist old pig, and that's why I don't feel bad for having him murdered. I did what I had to do. Now I will do what I have to do when it comes to my brother. He is not fit tolead a family. I mean, think about it. Zero and Malik have been torturing our family since they cut off our pipeline. And what has he done? Absolutely nothing. He has sat by and plotted and plotted and plotted… not once thinking that maybe he should strike back. Maybe we should show our power. So here and there I've done little things, you know, trying to incite the violence, trying to create the war. But do you know what my brother did? Absolutely fucking nothing. Giorgio has sat back and watched Zero rise to power and take our streets. So now Georgio must expire so I can take back what belongs to my family.”

I just stared at her because the things she was saying sounded out of whack, but in her mind they made sense. Inciting violence, creating a war. My brother wasn't stupid.

“So when your brother kills my brother, we’ll make sure that Givens is there to get him. Zero will go down for murder and then Rikov will kill Malik. Plan is brilliant.” She clapped at her own words.

“And how are you going to make sure my brother kills yours?”

“Easy. Small transgressions from my brother that won’t actually be from my brother. In so many words I'll keep doing things and making them look like they're from him. Of course my brother will continue to move around the city not knowing what’s next. It’s like sending a rat into a snake pit. The violence… insight a war.” She began to chuckle to herself.

“What do you mean insight a war?” I was curious about this declaration she kept making.

“The product missing was me, but your brother figured it out so I had to embellish a little. Likely he still blamed Georgio. What I didn’t expect was for him to fire back… but that was good. Still not enough for Georgio. My mama and abuela died in that laundromat fire and he did nothing but call and threaten Zero.” By now she had tears streaming from her eyes.

“I will take my revenge on Zero, but first I’ll have him behind bars where he cannot protect his new… weakness. There is much more to be done with her. I’ll be paying her a visit soon.” Celia smiled wickedly.

I knew then she was talking about Empress when she said that. After hearing everything she said, I didn’t respond. Regardless of how I felt about my brother the last thing I wanted was him in somebody’s jail and Malik dead. However the one thing I did know was that I had already gone through with it, so there was no turning back. No time to turn back and decide I didn’t want to help these people.

“Where are we going?”

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