Page 2 of The Heart Of A Real Woman
“Pleas—”
Two more shots rang out, cutting her off and sealing her fate. My time with Moses, plus the firearm and defense training I picked up working active crime scenes, kicked in like muscle memory. One to the chest. One dead center in her forehead. And just like that, the pain was over for both of us. Hers permanent. Mine… just on pause. I couldn’t care less to see her lifeless eyes staring up at me. I’d seen more bodies than I could count. This one didn’t hit any differently.
After a deep breath, I used my husband’s burner to call my brother-in-law, the only nigga I felt I could trust at the moment.
“Yo, sup bro?” Pokey picked up on the second ring under the impression I was Casper.
“Not bro.” I sobbed into the phone, and I could hear him shuffling around to turn down the loud ass music playing in the background.
“Sis, you good? Fuck you crying for? What happened?!” He quickly yelled, sensing trouble. “I’m on the way.”
“Good, but don’t go to our home. I need you to be on your way to where I’m at. I’m sending the address.”
“Wait, what? Where's bro at? Is he there wit’ you?”
“Pokey, I can’t speak anything else over the phone. It’s an emergency, okay, bro? Please just come and call the cleaners.”
“Aight, say less.”
∞∞∞
Moses “Casper” Mikaelson
“Bro, we need to talk.”
“Nigga, it's four o’clock in the fucking morning. Thistalkcan’t wait? I have a meeting with an artist that I’m trying to sign in just a few hours. I’ll hit you after.”
“Nah, this important. Get yo’ ass up.”
Pissed, I shot up in bed as I snatched the phone from my ear. I had to double-check that Pokey had hit me on my personal line. Sure enough, he had, and I was confused as to why. If this was some street shit, he knew damn well not to call me on here.
“Shit can’t be too bad. Fuck you hittin’ me on here for?”
“I’ll fill you in when you get here. Come now. Shit is real bad.”
Pokey hung up, and I shook my head. All I could think about was how bad the problem really was. I had a lot of shit going on. Some legal, some illegal enough to get me locked up for life. But thanks to my smart-ass wife, I’d managed to stay untouched. Damn, I hoped my dirt wasn’t finally catching up to me.
Besides the authorities, I had war on my mind too. Living how I lived, that was always part of the game. But this wasn’t thetime to be beefin’ with niggas. I’d just launched my record label, and it was blowing up, putting me dead in the public eye.
As my mind started to wander, so did my eyes, drifting over to my wife’s side of the bed. She was gone. That shit didn’t alarm me, though. I figured she was in her office. We weren’t the happiest at the moment, and I’d gotten used to her sleeping in there, avoiding me. Shit, if a nigga breathed too hard, it irritated Mary’s soul.
Blowing out a breath, I stood from the bed and threw on some clothes before heading Mary’s way. I already had a headache thinking about the tension this was going to add to us. My schedule mostly kept me out of the house during the day, and she hated when I had to rush off even earlier. Why? Hell if I know, ‘cause she hated when I was here too, all up in her face and breathing down her neck. She was irritated if I was gone all day and frustrated when I was home. A nigga couldn’t win.
Once I made it into her office, I glanced over at the lounge area. I noticed it was empty, so I backpedaled and checked every other room in the house. When I still couldn’t find her, I finally headed downstairs, and that’s when I noticed the couch was vacant too.
Biting down on my inner cheek, I started toward the guest house outside, confused as fuck. But as I passed through the kitchen, I spotted something shiny sitting on the island. The diamonds were dancing violently under the dim light, and my heart pounded in my chest at the sight.
I knew Mary’s ring like the back of my hand. I’d spent months with my jeweler, designing it perfectly for her. It was special to me. It was the second ring I’d bought her, the one that showed her true worth. She was my everything. And onceI confirmed she’d taken it off, my heart dropped into my ass. It was clear she had left.
“Fuck,” I muttered as I pulled out my phone to contact my son’s nanny. I needed her to get here ASAP.
An hour later, I reluctantly pulled up to the abandoned warehouse I used for meetings with my crew. But instead of hopping out right away, I sat there for a minute, thinking. My mind was all over the place. I was still trying to figure out why Pokey had called me here and where the fuck Mary was. I’d been blowing up her phone my whole drive, but every call went unanswered. I even tried tracking her phone, but it was clear she had turned the tracking off. That was okay because as soon as I was done with this meeting, I planned to track her whip.
Defeated, I hopped out and met Pokey, who was already waiting for me. As soon as I stepped inside, I peeped his gloved hands as he smoked a blunt.
“Say, I ain’t got a lot of time to spare. What the fuck going on?” I demanded, in a rush. I had to get this shit over with so I could go find Mary, fix whatever the issue was, and bring her back home.
Pokey exhaled smoke through his nose, scanning the area like a hawk. The nigga was more paranoid than me, convinced someone was always lurking, waiting to take us down.
