Page 56 of Welcome to the Table
This was going to be a hellified meeting tomorrow night. Only Grove and I knew the code to the door, so I wasn’t worried. I walked back over to where Nino’s body was, but his head was across the room.
I looked at Grove. “Nigga, was that necessary?” I shook my head.
“Yeah, that nigga couldn’t be trusted. I called the cleanup crew already,” he said, then we both heard a loud noise and turned around.
There stood Jaci with a blade in her right hand and Thiago’s head in the left, with a smile on her face that didn’t meet her eyes. Her hands were trembling, her eyes bloodshot red, and she was walking slow as hell like she was caught in a trance. I didn’t have any words to say because shit had gone from bad to worse in seconds. I met her eyes.
“Who is this nigga? I found him trying to run outside because y’all had twenty minutes, and time was up,” she said, putting her weight to one side.
“Do you know what the fuck you just did!?” I was trying to hold my composure, but I couldn’t. She’d just started a fucking war. And Melph? That nigga was in the middle of it and didn’t know.
“You just killed Fanucci’s son. What the fuck were you thinking?” I kept going. “Where is the rest of his fucking body, Jaci?” I asked her, and she laughed like the shit was funny.
“Right by the back door. That nigga’s body was heavy, so I grabbed the lightest thing. Now, can we go to the fucking mall?” She rolled her fucking eyes at me like this shit was a joke.
Calliope was gonna be pissed.
Jaci was too calm for me. She had me fucking scared. I looked at Grove, and he shrugged. Jaci’s pupils were black. This was her first kill. I knew she would be fucked up after the adrenaline wore off. I ran my hand through my hair, trying tofigure out how the fuck I would tell this shit to Athena and Calliope. They would blame me for the shit, but this wasn’t my fault.
As if reading my thoughts, I heard Jaci say, “This is not on y’all. I saw that nigga run around the building and knew something was off, and your twenty minutes were up, so I did what I had to do. He didn’t see me coming, so it was an easy kill. I will tell them about my part in this to soften the blow,” she said, but the faraway look in her eyes didn’t go unnoticed. I didn’t want this shit for her, but it was too late.
Grove and I went to the back door and opened it. There was the rest of Thiago’s body. We dragged it in and pulled it to the freezer. Grove put in the code, and we put the body in. Jaci walked over slow as hell and handed me the head to put in the freezer.
“This shit stays between us until they start looking for the nigga,” I told them, and they agreed.
“Welcome home, Jaci,” I said as we walked out the back and got in the car.
She laughed, but I didn’t find shit funny. She didn’t know what the fuck she had just started.
I wasn’t trying to go against my sister, but I knew about Thiago. He was the quiet brother who didn’t do shit but take orders from his father. Then, a fucking light bulb went off in my head. I looked at Grove as he drove.
“This shit was a fucking setup,” I said.
Grove took his eyes off the road to look at me. “Nigga, what wheels spinning in yo’ head right now? What was a fucking setup?” he asked.
Jaci sat up between the seats to be nosy.
“Just think about it. Melph gets a fucking call that he is on the radar. Nigga, we had the feds in our pockets for years. Then, Melph agrees to go into hiding with the nigga and callsWisdom to take over. That nigga came out of thin air and ain’t did shit since he been here but stay in the house with Athena.” The more I put the fucking pieces together, the more I wanted to kill something. “Now, Fanucci's son is coming out of timbuck-fucking-tu, thinking they can’t just do what the fuck they wanna do. This shit was fake from the fucking beginning, and Melph fell for it,” I told him.
“You think Wisdom had something to do with this?” Jaci asked in a childlike voice. She had snapped out of her trance.
“Don’t start that kiddie shit because that’s your godfather. That nigga ain’t to be trusted either. I just don’t have shit on him yet, but I will get it. It’s a lot that you don’t know, Jaci, and I keep shit that way for a reason,” I told her, and she sat back.
If I didn’t stop her, then her mouth would have started defending his ass, and that would have pissed me off. I saw a strip mall and knew I needed a shirt because my shit was bloody. I looked back at Jaci, and she didn’t have shit on her.
“No splash back, nigga. You are getting sloppy.”
I heard Grove’s low laugh and looked at him. “Man, fuck both of y’all. I was pissed. Pull over at this strip and go to Neiman Marcus and get me a shirt.” I pulled out my Black card and gave it to Jaci.
Big mistake, but I knew she would get me a shirt. She wasn’t buying shit for herself because she didn’t want to shop in the city. She hopped out of the car and went into the store.
I noticed Hollygrove watching her every move as she went in. I cocked my head to the side, giving him a look.
“Nigga, why you looking at my fucking sister like that?” I asked.
“Like what, nigga? I’m just making sure she's straight walking in that bitch, that’s all,” he answered.
I wasn’t buying that shit. I had known this nigga damn near all my fucking life, and he ain’t never looked at a female like thatbefore. We even fucked a few bitches together, but I knew that look when the fuck I saw it, and he wanted her. I decided to fuck with him to see where his brain was.
