Page 1 of A Kingpin's Weakness
CHAPTER 1
Stormi
The ringingand vibrating grew louder as I realized it was not a part of my dream. My cellphone was really going off. I’d maybe been asleep for a couple of hours, but I knew damn well it wasn’t morning. The sun hadn’t kissed my body good morning yet. The stars and moon were still dancing the night away like they had nowhere else to be.
“Hello,” I said in a sexy unattractive voice. Don’t ask how that works, it just does.
I had just wrestled my cellphone out from under the dozen pillows I kept on the left side of the bed. No man slept over there, so I kept that side warm with snacks and bad decisions disguised as throw pillows. Depending on the night, there might be an open bag of hot Cheetos too.
“Stormi! It’s RJ.”
I blinked at the ceiling. “RJ. I swear somebody better be dead. I was just about to say I do to Lance Gross.” I could still feel the echo of his lips on my neck in that dream. Lawd Dreams were so disrespectful.
Silence. That was the first red flag. Normally, RJ would’ve jumped all over that Lance Gross comment with something slick. A joke, a laugh, a girl get outta here. But tonight, nothing.
“RJ, what’s wrong?”
I sat up, brushing my bonnet back like I was trying to see though the phone. I felt that heaviness in my chest, that low, gnawing weight that told me before I even had proof that something was wrong. After 25 years of friendship, RJ being silent something wasn’t right.
“Get on the next flight home.”
That was it. No context, no build up, just five words that sucked the oxygen right out of my chest. My heart was pounding. I hadn’t felt that place as home in years, but RJ’s voice had me sprinting back like it was my safe haven.
His voice wasn’t loud, but it was firm. Sharp like he didn’t want to say more because if he did, it would break him. Or would it break me?
“I got you; whatever you need.”
I was already out of bed, grabbing my iPad with shaky fingers and pulling up flights. First one out, didn’t matter the price… that credit bill would be a problem for another day. I had bigger fish to fry tonight.
There was a pause on the line and then he said it.
“It’s Noah.” And just like that my heart fell to the bottom of my stomach.
Noah had just turned seventeen, and you couldn’t tell him he wasn’t a grown ass man now. Talking crazy like he had life all figured out. He was still my baby; always would be.
He was the baby I helped deliver on the cold bathroom floor when I was only thirteen, screaming louder than my mother while she bit down on a towel and told me to shut the hell up. There was no ambulance, no doctor, no help; just me shakingand barefoot, catching a newborn in my hands while my mother cursed me out like I had done this to her.
I remember those nights waking up 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. like I didn’t have school in the morning; like I wasn’t a child myself. I’d warm up bottles, change diapers, and rock him until my arms went numb. Because if I didn’t do it who was? Not Jo. Please.
Jo made it clear she wasn’t waking up for any damn baby. Even if it was hers. She didn’t want him. Hell, she didn’t want me.
The minute Noah’s father walked out while she was pregnant, she was detached. She’d cut the cord emotionally before he was even born. After she did her 48 hours in the hospital, she wrapped that thing up and was back in the streets before Noah knew what lullabies were.
“Tell me something, RJ.” My voice cracked, even though I wanted to sound firm.
“I’m telling you to get on a flight and come home. Your brother needs you. Call me when you land, I got to get back to work.”
And just like that, the short conversation between me and my best friend was over.
Work?
RJ was a trauma nurse in the ER. Not just any hospital.Thehospital. The only one in our part of town that handled emergencies like the ones I never wanted to face. And if RJ was there right now, calling me from work, saying my brother needed me… My heart dropped like it knew something before my brain could catch on.
That meant Noah was there in that hospital somewhere under those blinding lights hooked to those machines that beep like clocks counting down. And RJ, who had never lost his cool, not even when Jo overdosed when we were kids, sounded like he was holding back tears.
I thought about my baby brother. Noah. Always so ready to grow up; too ready, honestly. He wanted to grab the world with both hands, just not the same way I did.
When I turned eighteen, I bolted. Graduated, packed up, and didn’t look back. College, career, new zip code, new life. That was my way of surviving. Leaving.
