Page 22 of Down With the King of the South 2

I was in the middle of cursing his stupid ass out through a text message, when the car behind me had blown the horn, telling me to make the light. I never looked up; I just went. It was one of those things that could have been easily avoided had I been paying attention, but it was too late. As I made the left turn get on the other side of the street, the cars that were coming straight from the other way were already inches away from my car. I saw my life flash before my eyes before the crash even happened.

I got a look at one specific driver, and that was a woman driving a ram truck and her eyes matched exactly what I felt, which was scared shit less. Although I couldn’t hear her scream, I felt it. My hand touched the bottom of my stomach as I held onto my baby, thinking that I was protecting him. I didn’t care if I didn’t make it. It was my baby that I cared about.

On the other hand, by the way this car flipped, turned, and slid across the road, it would be by the grace of God if the paint on the cars even made it out.

Dino Graham

“Nigga, I ain’t playing with you either! If you don’t see another car parked outside Shae’s house, then just go! I don’t need you scaring her ass like that. She already not picking up the phone for me, so I already know that if you go over there alone, she’s going to think I put you up to it, and I can’t have her hating me forever. I know how you are, Dino. I’ll kill behind my baby mama. If it’s not another car, move around then, nigga.” Trip was on the other end of the phone, giving out orders like his ass was still the king of this shit.

I respected Trip, so I listened without any interruptions just to add onto his ego and let him believe that he was running some shit. Trip and I went way back. I’m talking days when he and I were so fuckin’ broke that we had to steal quarter juices. Just like him, I was an only child with a mama who treated me like she wished that she would have swallowed my ass instead. We were two bad ass niggas from Miami who really didn’t fear shit, and our main goal in life was to stack some fuckin’ paper so we could stop being broke all our fuckin’ lives.

I knew that Trip was a real nigga in the first grade when I met him and he was beating a nigga’s face in at the playground with a piece of the brick wall that I was still not sure how he even managed to get a hold of it. Little nigga was bad just like me and didn’t give a fuck about shit. We broke into homes together, robbed nearby convenience stores, sold dope, and just about every other illegal thing that could have gotten our black asses killed or locked up years ago.

In our teenage years, we even started a whole fuckin’ gang that we were still repping to this fuckin’ day. Truth be told, I just knew that I would be the one to get a life sentence before Trip. When Trip got with Shae, I’ll admit that he wasn’t as wild as he used to be. For example, instead of wanting to break into a nigga’s house five times out of the week, he’d opt to do it maybe twice. Shae and Vonte changed him. I noticed the way he would turn down certain deeds because he would be thinking about his little family and how his actions could possibly take him away from them. I didn’t have a bitch, neither did I have any children, so I still played Russian Roulette with my life.

When I lost Trip to the system, I swear I lost a part of myself too. I was so close with this nigga that I felt like I was doing that sentence with him. I know a lot of niggas who could be sitting in that cell instead of Trip. Hell, even my ass could be doing that time instead of him. I can vouch for the nigga and say that the bad shit he was doing in the streets when he was free was just his way of providing for his family. That nigga was trying to put his baby mama through college, so he had to grind.

“I hear you, nigga! I should go in there and scare her ass for the fuck of it. She talks too much shit, with her black ass,” I joked and took a pull from the blunt that I was smoking on.

Trip had a gorgeous ass baby mama, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to raise my hand a few times and slap her in her fuckin’ mouth. Out of respect for her being my man’s baby mama, I didn’t touch her, but she talked too much shit for me. She’d always been that way too. As kids, she would always talk to me and the other niggas that Trip hung around crazy because she t

hought that we were no good for him when in reality, none of us were good for each other. Shit, Trip was the leader of the fuckin’ gang, but she was too blind to even see all of that.

If I had to trade places with Trip on anything, it would be me having Shae. Since I knew I couldn’t have shorty, then I wanted a girl like her. She talked shit, but that crazy bitch loved the fuck out of her man. Ten years, and shorty was still holding him down. Mannn, I wanted some shit like that. Then again, I wasn’t even sure if she was holding him down like that because ever since I told him about her being hugged up with Miami, the streets had been talking. They say that’s his bitch now. He was a famous ass nigga, so they were gracing the blogs like they were the Jay & Bey of Miami.

You couldn’t be from Miami and not know that Shae was forbidden fruit. The fact that the silly nigga knew that shit, yet he was still pursuing her was the reason he would have to pay with his life. I hoped it was tonight too. I hadn’t killed a nigga in months. I would love for him to be the one to take me out of retirement. Plus, I owed that nigga a bullet to the brain after the way he talked to me like I was a bum on the streets after Vonte’s funeral. I hoped I caught him knee deep in the pussy too. That was always the best way to kill a nigga.

“Dino, I swear I ain’t playing with you, man. If she’s there alone, my son is not there to protect her. It ain’t her who I want dead. It’s that nigga! Shae always used to leave a spare key somewhere around the house. Check under the mat, mailboxes, even the flowerpot. If not, we hood niggas, so we know how to play with a lock. In and out. Make the shit dirty. Oh yeah, and one last thing…”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“If she begs you not to take that nigga’s life, take hers right after you take his because that means she loves that nigga!” he said.

I could hear the coldness in his voice. If the shoe were on the other foot, I would have been the same way about my bitch. Jashae had to have some good pussy. I would never ask because I had watched the way he stomped a nigga out when we were like seventeen years old after he asked because she had him in the store buying her pads. Niggas weren’t doing shit like that for no bitch.

One thing about Trip, he wouldn’t dare tell another soul what Jashae’s pussy was hitting on, but that shit had to have been good. He wanted too many niggas dead if they ever tried to fuck with her, so it had to be. I chopped it up with him on the phone for about another five minutes or so, and then we hung up.

It was a little after ten at night when I pulled away from the projects that I grew up in, which were the same projects that I still lived in. I had money, but I wasn’t rich. I could move out of this motha fucka if I wanted to, but for what? I loved it there.

I knew where Shae lived, so I made my way to her home. She moved out of the hood first chance she got, so it took me a little while to get to her house. Pulling up, the first thing I noticed was that it was just her Lexus parked in the driveway. I thought about Trip telling me to leave if I didn’t see another car parked in the driveway. What if that nigga was hiding his car in her garage?

As soon as that thought entered my mind, it quickly left. Miami didn’t give me vibes that he was the type of nigga who had to hide his car. I didn’t care for the nigga, but I also knew that he wasn’t scary. Trip told me not to fuck with his girl, but I just wanted to make sure because you just never really knew. I didn’t park my car in her driveway, let alone on the sidewalk in front of her house. It was guest parking on the next block, so that’s where I parked it.

I made sure I had my gun tucked in my side, and I walked the dark streets. On this side of town, I didn’t have to worry about a nigga running up behind me and trying to jack me. I could walk these streets with no type of protection and still feel protected. When I made it in front of Shae’s house, I checked every possible place where I felt like she would hide a key, but I couldn’t find any. I had to resort to my old ways and pick with the lock.

It took me damn near ten minutes to finally get the doorknob to jiggle and to make my way inside her crib. There had to be a God because I prayed she didn’t have an alarm that would go off, and she didn’t. That’s when I looked up and saw that there was an alarm, but she just didn’t have it set. Shorty had mentally and physically moved out of the hood for good because she didn’t even think that she was supposed to set alarms around this bitch.

I had my gun in my hand, and it was crazy because the first picture that I saw on the wall was of Vonte. It was his senior picture that he’d taken at the beginning of the school year. I remember because he’d given me one, and I had it at home. Only time I got to see Vonte was if I decided to go to a game because Shae did everything in her power to keep that nigga from around us. The picture of him on the wall was one of him where he wasn’t even smiling. Call me crazy, but I felt like the nigga was telling me to leave his mama alone, but I kept right on walking further into the house.

This was my first time there, so I had to guess which room belonged to her. It smelled good as fuck in that house, though. Like cinnamon mixed with vanilla or some sweet shit like that.

There was a bedroom downstairs with the door cracked but only by a little bit. The nightlight in the room gave away that it was a bedroom. I gently kicked the door open with my foot and praised God that it didn’t make that squeaky sound. From where I stood, I could see that Shae was in bed alone. Everything was telling me to just leave now and leave her the fuck alone, just like Trip had warned me to, but when would I ever get this close to shorty again? I wanted to take advantage of the situation, so I walked further into the room.

She had to have been a freak because she slept naked. The sheets were resting right at the crack of her ass while she laid on her stomach in a peaceful ass sleep. A pretty bitch who didn’t even snore. I liked her better when her mouth was closed. It was so obvious that Miami wasn’t in this bitch, yet here I still was. I walked a little closer and I’m not even sure what was on the side of her bed, but I ended up tripping over it. My big ass almost fell, but I caught my balance. She stirred in her sleep.

“Miami? Baby, is that you?” she called out.

I ducked and hoped that she wouldn’t see me. I heard her moving around on the bed. She was Trip’s bitch, so I didn’t know if shorty had a gun ready to blast me, so instead of hiding like a bitch, I pulled my shit out. The lamp on the side of her bed came on, and my gun came into view.

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