Page 24 of Sugar Baby
His jaw clenched as he stood again and began to pace. “I can’t, Sugar Baby. I have to at least try and fix this myself first.”
“God, sometimes you are far too stubbornly independent for your own damn good!” I yelled. “You took a month trying to figure shit out with Cash and look how that played out! Are you really willing to risk that with someone like Sko? He crossed his own brother for six figures. Do you really think he’s going to have mercy on y’all?”
“Look, I know, okay? Just give me at least a day to see if Rapheal planned well enough to have this covered up. If the streets start talking, I promise I will tell everyone. I give you my word, Baby. I promise.”
All I could do was shake my head as I stood to leave. Ifelt like I was literally between a rock and a hard place. If I spoke too soon, that might do more harm than good. If I didn’t speak soon enough, my cousin could be seriously hurt or killed. Ugh. This was one time I hated how much Tyreek trusted me, because I honestly didn’t know what the fuck to do.
Chapter
Fourteen
CASH
It had been a bloody three days. I was in a dark place mentally and decided it was best for me to stay away from Sugar. Even though we didn’t meet under the softest circumstances, all she knew about that side of me was through rumors and reputation. I wasn’t ready for her to meet this version of me just yet. As much as I was looking forward to taking her out on our first real date, I canceled it. My energy was off, and she deserved better than a hardened, distracted version of me.
For the past three days, my team had been working to figure out who had the balls to steal from me. To teach my team a lesson, I personally ended the lives of everyone on my team who let them niggas get away with half of my product. I didn’t care that they’d been put to sleep. Before that even happened, they should have ran through the truck or sent enough shots out to make them stand down. Now, everyone else knew to protect what belonged to me as if their lives depended on it, because technically, it did.
When I made it to the warehouse, the solemn look on Rhakeem’s face concerned me. He’d called and told me they found the men responsible for stealing from the truck and a few of my enforcers had already started handling it. I hadn’t asked them to, but I felt like they were trying to prove their loyalty. These types of situations I preferred to handle myself.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as we shook hands.
“I need to tell you something before you go inside.” I remained silent so he’d continue. “We got them in there, and we’ve finally gotten the truth. It’s worse than I could have imagined.”
“How so?”
“It’s a good thing you handled Rapheal because he set this shit up.”
“Word?” Any man could be disloyal, but I took pride in taking care of my team well enough for them to always be loyal to me. So to hear that one of my own men were involved in the setup pissed me off even more.
“Word,” Rhakeem confirmed. “He told Nuke to drive the load that day. Since he already knew the route, he pulled up with three of his homies. Nuke and Ivan were outnumbered and distracted, which was how things got out of hand. Rapheal had his little brother and two of his friends on the robbery too.” He paused, cupped his hands in the center of him, and looked toward the closed door—as if he could see what was inside through it. “He told the youngins they were robbing Sko, not you. Rell, his brother, knew what was going on and was with it. His friends didn’t. One of them even tried to leave before it went down, but they pulled a gun on him and made him help.”
“Damn. How young we talking?”
“Seventeen and eighteen.”
“And Tremaine and Elijah touched them?” I roared, pushing him to the side to walk into the warehouse, but he stepped in front of me and stopped my movements.
“Yeah. And it’s bad, Cash. I can’t even lie. That’s not the worst part though.”
With a scoff and shake of my head, I walked around him. “Then what is?”
“One of the youngins . . . it’s Baby’s lil cousin.” That piece of information stopped my movements. “He’s the one that tried to leave but they made him stay. For what it’s worth, he wanted no parts of the shit.”
Cursing under my breath, I damn near jogged toward the center of the warehouse to see what damage Tremaine and Elijah had done.
All three of the young hoodlums were tied up to chairs, bloody and bruised. Any time a young nigga eighteen or younger tried to take from me, he was beaten with a belt like back in the day, then taken to his elders, where more arrangements were made. Not once had I ever given a grown ass man permission to hit a child in their face, regardless of what they’d done. My blood felt like it was literally boiling and warming my body as I looked at their busted lips and black eyes. To Tremaine and Elijah’s credit, I could tell by the bruises that they didn’t hit them with all of their power, but they shouldn’t have hit them at all.
“Did I authorize this?” I confirmed, tilting Tyreek’s head to get a closer look at him. When neither Tremaine nor Elijah spoke, I looked back at them. “You motherfuckas can’t hear now?”
“No, boss man,” Tremaine said. “I decided to take the initiative to show you that we’re loyal. That you can trust us to take care of business.”
“By beating up some kids? Cut ’em the fuck loose.”
As soon as Elijah had cut them all loose, I pulled my Glock and sent bullets into his and Tremaine’s feet, hands, and sides. “Irun this shit,” I growled, hovering over them as they rolled on the floor in pain. “You don’t do shit I don’t tell you to do, and you for damn sure don’t put your hands on no fucking kids. Both of y’all are on probation until I say otherwise, and you better hope I don’t send bullets between your eyes.”
Locking eyes with Rhakeem, I told him, “Get the boys home and have Doc patch these dumb asses on the floor up,” as I grabbed Tyreek’s arm and shoved him forward so he could walk in front of me.
“On it,” Rhakeem consented.
