Page 74 of Rah
“You weren’t answering your phone, and you took the money.” I looked at him, hoping that he was about to give me the right answers that wouldn’t make me regret letting my guard down with him. “How did you know about it? Did Rah send you here?”
Fabe’s eyes suddenly filled with reluctance as he sighed. “Yeah. He sent me here because he knew that you would answer for me. He wanted his money back–”
“Is that why you took it? Did you take it back to him?” I asked reluctantly.
Fabe kissed his teeth. “Fuck no. I took it just in case he figured out where you were and showed up before I got back. I knew that he wouldn’t kill you before he got his money back. It’s in that duffle bag.”
“Do you know how he got it?”
Fabe nodded his head slowly. “Yeah...I know. He told me because he is so thirsty to find this money, and he knew he could only get to you through me. I’m disgusted with that nigga. I kept my cool in the moment ‘cause I didn’t know what he might do. Carlos was like a brother to him. How the fuck do you snakesomebody like that? He said he did it because Carlos would have killed Moses over the money Moses owes him. But Carlos wasn’t about to kill Moses over some lost weight. Rah did that shit for his own reasons, and he’s trying to spin the story to make himself look like the victim. That’s what snakes do.”
I sighed heavily. “You should probably leave. If he would kill his own best friend, he would kill his brother for keeping him from that much money.”
“Fuck, Rah,” Fabe spat with a sneer. “I called to tell him that I couldn’t find you, but he didn’t answer. He is so busy chasing a dollar that he won’t be smart enough to figure out that I lied.” Then Fabe scoffed angrily. “I’m done with him, Aaliyah. Family or not, once you cross a line like that, there ain’t no coming back.”
SOLAE
As Kahlani took the bottle of bleach from me, she asked, “What the hell happened to Essence? You kept saying Rah didn’t care. What happened to her? What didn’t he care about?”
“She...” I couldn’t even say it. The words burned my throat like rubbing alcohol. “She...Oh God...” I began to sob. “When DCFS took her to that home, some boy raped her.”
Kahlani heaved, “Oh God–”
Just then, faint moans could be heard behind us, and we lost it!
“Oh shit!” I cursed in a frightened whisper as Kahlani and I jumped out of our skin.
Clutching my chest with a shaky hand, I reluctantly looked over to where Rah was lying.
“Did you hear that?” I asked Kahlani in a panicked murmur.
Her eyes were wide with fear as she stared at Rah’s body. “Yeah,” barely left her voice above a whisper.
We stood there like frozen zombies, staring at him with bulging eyes.
Then, it happened again. “Mmmm...”
“Fuck!” I squealed as I jumped and held on to Kahlani’s arm. “He’s alive! Shit!”
Kahlani told me, “Calm down,” despite me feeling her shivering just as much as I was.
I couldn’t be calm. How was I supposed to be fucking calm? I had completely spazzed and stabbed this son of a bitch three times. It felt good feeling the knife pierce his thick skin. It felt good seeing him cringe with pain. I loved seeing the same hurt in his eyes that he inflicted on me and my children.
But when his body hit that floor, my heart stopped beating, knowing that I had just made sure I would never see my kids again. After what Essence had gone through, I had put her right back in the hands of the state because they would surely take my kids away from me when I was in prison for murder.
As I stood there frozen, not knowing what the hell to do next, Kahlani rushed out of my grasp towards a drawer. She quickly swung it open and then slammed it shut. She did the next drawer the same way, and another, and another, until she found what she was looking for.
My heart sank when she pulled out a butcher knife.
“No, Kahlani!” I ran towards her, taking the knife out of her hand.
“We have to kill him,” she insisted.
She tried to take the knife from me, but I snatched it away and put it behind my back. “No!”
“You’re going to get in trouble if he lives to tell about this shit.”
“I don’t care.” I had given up. Tears were streaming down my face. At that moment, I had no energy left to give. I had allowed Rah to send me down a destructive path yet again. All I had wanted was to talk to him, to tell him how his evil gameshad led to our child being raped and possibly scarred for the rest of her life. But when that son of a bitch was so evil and heartless that he blamed me, I couldn’t take his arrogance anymore. I grabbed the first thing in my reach and just started to swing. I wanted to hurt him...bad. I wanted him to feel pain.
