Page 12 of Mafia Kings & Wedding Rings
“This is important too, Ivo,” my wife reminded me.
“I know.” My shoulders slumped, and I tucked my phone back into my pocket. “And… I’m with whatever you are. If you want to use Emerald, I’m good with that.” I really wasn’t.
It wasn’t that I was against it, I just caught a glimpse of a red flag to all the ways this could go wrong. At the same time, the thought of her carrying my seed left me less burdened than when we walked through those doors this morning. A nigga would be lucky as hell for a woman like Emerald to birth his child. I knew this was going to be my baby with Jordan, but Emerald would be the biological mother too. It was wild the way life had come in this odd circle.
“I think we should do it!” Jordan clapped her hands happily. “Just think, we can get reacquainted, reminisce on old times. We used to have fun together in high school, and I’d love to hear about what you’re doing now and see Sapphire. You would be making our dream come true too.”
Emerald probably walked in expecting one thing, but when she sat down, it was obvious the last two people on the planet she expected to run into were me and Jordan. There was some obvious hesitance, and she tapped her fingers against her hand in her lap while her gaze volleyed from me to Jordan more than once. I was familiar with that gesture. She was unsure.
“If you both are on the same page with it, then we can let Dr. Steinholt know. She mentioned I would start the implantation and everything immediately.”
“Yes! Let’s do it!” Jordan couldn’t conceal her excitement if she tried. “This is all a sign. I know it.”
I wasn’t so sure about all that, but this is where we were. After conversing with the doctor, the three of us ended up on the elevator together, heading down to the lobby. Jordan hadn’t stopped talking since seeing Emerald; meanwhile, she was a bit closed off and timid. The elevator doors swung open, and I let the women get off ahead of me. Jordan sifted through her purse while Emerald fell in stride beside her to the double entrance doors.
“You have to give me your number so that we can be in touch. I want to be there for you for everything. If you need anything, call me. I’ll send Ivo’s number too. If you can’t reach me, call him.” She dug out her iPhone and tapped at her screen a few times.
“We don’t have to do that right now,” Emerald voiced.
“Girl, please. You are not going through this alone. We want to be there for you, right babe?” Jordan glanced toward me, and Emerald’s gaze slowly followed.
“Yeah. Of course.” I nodded and glanced at my watch. “Jay, we gotta go if you still trying to do lunch. I gotta get to the office.”
“Fine.” She rolled her eyes but finished getting all of Emerald’s information. “It was good to see you, Em. I guess we’ll see you soon.” Jordan stepped forward and embraced her, which threw Emerald off.
“Yeah. Soon.” She nodded.
Jordan moved faster than me. She had an extra pep in her step and everything. This morning, she seemed so discouraged, but seeing Emerald had changed all that. In a lot of ways, it had changed for me too, and this surrogacy shit didn’t seem so bad. My concern was my self-control. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt Jordan, but there was an immediate pull to Emerald the minute she walked into that interview room.
Breccan ‘Brick’ Marek
“Pussy, you think I give a fuck about you and yo’ little weak ass crew? You know who the fuck I am?”
The viral video of me whupping some niggas in the club was everywhere I clicked now. That shit had made it to every podcast discussion and Shaderoom-type platform for the past few weeks. It was the third altercation overall that I’d had this year that resulted in my spending a night in the drunk tank. Seated on the couch inside my bedroom, with one leg propped up on the table, I pulled from the blunt I brought to my lips and shook my head while studying my phone screen.
“We have to nip this shit in the bud, Brick,” my producer and publicist, Armon, sighed.
He sat across from me on a big recliner with his MacBook open on the center table. The bedroom at my parents’ house was like my own little apartment. I didn’t have to leave the room most days if I didn’t want to. Our cook would send food up, and I had a bar and mini fridge and my own private bathroom with a walk-in closet.
“What I’m supposed to do, Mon? Muhfuckas want to keep coming for me. Am I supposed to sit back and be some bitch ass nigga and let them pop off about me and my people? I wasn’traised like that.” Shaking my head, I tapped out of the clip and tossed the phone on the table.
Shit was growing more frustrating on top of the reading of my pops’ will.
“You have to figure out a way to clean this up. Right now, it’s looking like you’re reckless and arrogant, using the Marek name to wield fear and power over everyone else. It makes you look heartless and mean. Like a bully.”
“Muhfuckas don’t know me. They only know the image I put out there for them to see. That’s only part of it.”
“You’re right. I know that, and so do you. The world doesn’t, and that’s how you’re getting paid. You have to show them there is more to Brick Marek than what they see. Now, the bottom line is you are a Marek, and that does mean something. You have a legacy to preserve.”
Sucking my teeth, I hopped up and took another drag of my blunt.
“Now you sound like my pops and this shit he left in his will.”
“What you mean?” Armon asked, leaning back in his chair.
“According to him, if I want to get my hands on my inheritance, I have to be married in the next twelve months and produce an heir twelve months from then.”
Speechless at first, Armon stroked his beard, and I could practically see the wheels moving in his busy brain. I’d known this nigga since high school. He was ahead of his time with technology back then, and now he was a genius with the shit. He was a one-man show to me, able to do all kinds of shit, even though he had put a few people on in the background so that he had more time to be available to me. He was good at delegating, negotiating, and making shit happen, so I trusted him with my career. In all these years, he’d never led me wrong, even when I didn’t agree with all of his ideas.
