Adored by a Brooklyn Drug Lord 3

by Tya Marie

  Jamel’s face contorted in rage, freezing for a few seconds. Kelsey jumped in front of me, pushing me back toward the entrance. The mask he wore wilted, replaced by a blank expression scarier than anger. The door opened. Quill, Mal, and Morris appeared, Urban and Koi bringing up the rear. Jamel began laughing, the sound making me sick to my stomach.

  “Peace? You want some peace, Bri Bri?” Jamel mocked, backing away from me. “How about you tell your family the sick shit you’ve done behind their backs? Hmm? You can’t have peace unless you come clean.”

  “Jamel,” I cried, holding my stomach as a cramp shot through me. “Please don’t do this right now…”

  “It’s time for you to go,” Quill said, advancing on Jamel.

  He cracked a smile. “Oh, I forgot; you don’t want her to find out you knew either—”

  “Mel,” I hissed. “Stop it!”

  “Find out what?” Kelsey asked.

  “Jamel—”

  “That Briana was the one who set Kelsey up to be raped!”

  A stunned silence fell over the group. Jamel relished in the destruction his words brought. Kelsey turned slowly, her eyes watering as she faced me. My silence confirmed his words.

  “You hated me so much you would pay someone to violate me?” she croaked, shaking her head as she backed away from me.

  The dam broke. I cried like a baby, trying to find the right words to make her stop looking at me like that. “Kelsey, I was in a dark place. I regretted it—”

  “Like you regretted fucking my boyfriend!” she screeched. “Here I was thinking Malone was the monster in the family, but you’re just like him—”

  “No, Kelsey, I’ve changed—”

  “Ain’t shit about you changed, just your circumstances! If there was no Morris, no baby, no second chance on life, you’d still be a miserable project bitch trying to get revenge for her rapist father!”

  Her words stung. “I was angry, Kelsey! I lost everything and I was mad, and hurt, and I wanted you to feel the same way I felt! You walked away untouched!”

  “UNTOUCHED! I was fucking RAPED, Briana! Those men your father gave me to RAPED ME! I couldn’t fuck my boyfriend because I was traumatized, afraid to let anyone in! That is why I left!” Kelsey was shaking, her entire body vibrating as she backed away from me. “You moved into my apartment, broke bread with me, smiled in my fucking face…made me think you had my back!”

  “I do!”

  “You don’t have anyone’s back but your own! I’m fucking done with your sorry ass! C’mon, Quill.”

  Jamel let out a bark of laughter. “You sure you wanna take him with you? Quill knew Bri set you up. He even blackmailed her with it, right, Quill?”

  Quill advanced on Jamel, reaching for the gun on his waist. Kelsey leapt on him, hitting him with combos as she cussed him out. Everyone converged on the couple, attempting to pry Kelsey off of Quill.

  “I could’ve made you happy!” he shouted over the melee. “This could’ve been our baby shower! I would’ve given you a good life, made you happier than that cornball.”

  “So because I didn’t want you, you had to ruin my life?”

  Jamel shook his head. “No. I came to take it.”

  Mal, who was on the outskirts of the fight, heard Jamel’s words, charging at him as the gun rose, firing off a single shot. Time froze. Mal bucked at the bullet tearing through his chest, losing his footing and hitting the ground. My ears rang, plugged from the sounds of my screams. Jamel squeezed the trigger two more times, the first bullet landing somewhere beyond me, and the second firing into the sky as Urban lit him up with the gun he snatched from Quill’s waist. Urban pulled the trigger until there was nothing left. Jamel stood there, half his face missing, leaking blood from the holes in his chest. He touched one, staring at the bright red blood as if it were a foreign object, laughing at his imminent death. His foot lifted as if to walk, and he crumpled to the ground, crashing face first into the pavement. Koi and Quill converged on Mal while Urban ran after Kelsey, who slipped away during the shootout. The entrance door exploded. People filed out to see what was going on.

  “Briana!” I turned at the sound of my mother’s screams, holding my arms out to her. She stepped back in horror. “SOMEBODY CALL 911!”

  Morris came over to see what was wrong, his face paling as his eyes found my stomach. I stared down at my stomach, my knees growing weak at the blood blossoming against my dress. Jamel shot me in the stomach. He shot my baby. A strong kick woke me out of my trance. My baby was suffocating. I lost it, wailing at the realization that I was going to lose another child. Ayanna would have to protect her brother. He was going home.

  14

  Kelsey

  I had to run for my sanity. The night air whipped around me, stinging at my eyes and whipping my hair around me as I raced down the street. My father’s shouts for me to slow down fell on deaf ears; if I stopped running I would start crying, and if I started crying I wouldn’t stop. I could run all night, run home if I had to. Home. Returning to the apartment Quill and I shared would break me. Going to my father’s house would remind me of Bri and I making up. There wasn’t a single place I could go tonight that wouldn’t dredge up some ugly memory. Another gust of wind hit me as I inhaled, giving me a cramp in my side. I slowed down on the next block, stopping at a busy intersection.

  “Kelsey!” My father sidled up next to me, holding his side, staring ahead at the traffic. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

  “I couldn’t stop, Daddy. I needed to get away from her—and him—before I did something stupid.” I took a big gulp of air to keep the tears at bay. “They played me! How could I have been so stupid, so trusting…”

  Daddy slung an arm around my shoulder, drawing me to his chest. I tried to fight my feelings, losing as they poured out onto his chest. He rubbed my hair, soothing me as I screamed, cussed, and cried. I emerged from his hold all cried out, rubbing at my dry eyes, a sob escaping here and there.

  “They fooled me too,” Daddy said, dabbing at my eyes with a handkerchief. “I think you might need to take a vacation. Get your mind right, some fresh air, process this entire fucked up situation. I can take over the business.”

  “I want to go to sleep,” was all I could muster up.

  “Terry can be here in five minutes,” Daddy suggested, pulling out his phone.

  “No,” I said, placing my hand over his phone. “I’ll grab an Uber.”

  “Kelsey, I don’t want you traveling in an Uber at this time of night. I’ll drop you off wherever it is that you want to go,” my father asserted.

  “Daddy, tonight can’t get any worse. Please, let me take a cab. I’ll call you when I get to my hotel.”

  Ten minutes later, I was speeding down First Avenue in the back of an Uber Black, staring at the Manhattan streets whizzing by. My phone was blowing up with calls from Quill, Normani, Nicole, Granny, anyone who noticed my absence. Daddy assured me he would bring everyone up to speed, and if they were calling me they knew what went down. Quill called me again, this time leaving a voicemail. I had nothing to say to him, but I wanted to hear what he had to say.

  “No, I don’t,” I muttered, deleting the voicemail.

  I placed my phone on Do Not Disturb and tried my best to vibe out to the music playing on the radio. DJ Khaled’s “You Stay” picked a convenient time to come on. Quill was my first everything—the man I pictured spending the rest of my life with—now I wasn’t sure where we stood. Questions swirled in my head, the prominent one being where we went from here. The trust issues plaguing our relationship returned except this time, no salve would be able to repair the damage.

  “Kelsey? You’ve arrived at your destination,” the Uber driver said, smiling at me through the rearview mirror.

  No sooner had he spoken was the door opened by a bell boy. I thanked him, hurrying into the Mandarin Oriental. It was my favorite hotel to do business at; most of the front desk staff knew me by name. Today they wore concerned expre
ssions as I approached the front desk to check in, handing me the card key to my suite with no arguments. Faint music emitted from my suite, Neo Soul to be exact. Sliding the card key into the slot, I entered, greeted by Musiq Soulchild and Peace sitting in the lounge area rolling blunts. He stopped mid-roll at my appearance, coming over to get a closer look at me.

  “He put his hands on you?” Peace asked with a contained fire in his eyes.

  I shook my head. “The exact opposite; I found out that he’s a snake ass nigga and I tried to beat his ass.”

  “Kelsey…”

  “I need a shower,” I said, excusing myself to the bathroom, ignoring that burning feeling from impending tears.

  Peace didn’t argue. He knew how to give me my space, and it was appreciated. I drew a bath, humming over the current song playing, keeping myself too busy to cry again. There was nothing to gain from crying.

  “Ahhh,” I sighed as I slipped into the whirlpool bathtub, closing my eyes and zoning out.

  Taking a bath was supposed to ease my mind; however, the quiet bathroom had my mind racing. I completed a mental marathon of my relationship with Quill, trying to think if there was something I missed. He lied to my face for months with no remorse. I expected devious behavior from Briana; her bitterness over Malone was prevalent in the months following Malone’s death. But Quill? He promised to never hurt me.

  “Feeling better?” Peace asked, his eyes raking over the bathrobe I wore.

  I shook my head.

  Peace motioned to the patio chair next to him. “Have a seat. Talk to me.”

  Unlike Arden, Peace’s idea of therapy involved a coffee table of snacks, liquor, and blunts. I poured myself a drink and grabbed a bag of popcorn. Peace took a hit off the blunt perched between his full lips, extending it to me. I shook my head.

  “You sure? It would take some of the edge off,” he suggested.

  I took my drink to the head, pouring another one. “This will too.” I babysat this drink, sipping it every now and then. “Thank you for coming. I needed a shoulder more than an ear.”

  “I’m willing to be whatever you need me to be, Kelsey.” I shook my head, thinking how once upon a time I would be flattered by such words. “Ain’t nothing funny about what I said. Unless there’s a joke you haven’t clued me in on.”

  “Nothing, I’m just thinking of how tired I am of hearing the right words. This isn’t a dig at you by any means.” I paused, attempting to find the right words. “Quill always knows what to say whenever I’m upset, scared, or nervous. I’ve joked with him on occasions that he’s my personal motivational speaker. He doesn’t speak to me; he speaks into me. I know if I talk to him he’ll have a valid explanation for lying to me the way he did, and I’ll take him back.”

  Peace reached over to ash his blunt. I intercepted it, placing it to my lips and taking a pull, coughing as the smoke congested my lungs. He was kind enough to keep his laughter to a minimum. “If it wasn’t deception, his insecurities would’ve ruined your relationship. Look at how he reacted to us having a meeting at the Monkey Bar.”

  Quill catching Peace and I leaving The Monkey Bar was the catalyst for future behavior. A month ago, Peace requested a dinner meeting with me in order to pitch the idea of him expanding his given territory. I obliged, although I made it clear that I wouldn’t be able to stay long. Quill tracked me down, and posted up in front of the hotel, making a scene as Peace walked me to my car. It was the first time I ever saw him behave this way. The police were called, adding to the embarrassment. It was the first time since I had known him that I couldn’t recognize the man I was with. We had squashed that fight two weeks ago, and I thought our relationship troubles were gone, until today.

  “Fuck that nigga.” Peace was on his knees in front of me, his hands on either side of the chair. “He’s a little boy. You might be right, and he might grow up one day, but by then you’ll already be on another level he could never achieve. Why don’t you let a real man take care of you?”

  I sunk in my seat, puffing on the blunt as Peace pried my legs apart. He traced soft kisses up the insides of my thighs, licking and biting, sucking the sensitive skin. The ties to my robe loosened, exposing my naked skin to the chilly air. My nipples hardened as I pinched them, squeezing my breasts the closer Peace grew to my throbbing pussy. The first lick jolted me out of my fantasy. I ashed the blunt and picked up my drink, finishing it in three gulps. Was I doing this?

  “Relax,” he whispered, placing my legs over his shoulders.

  Peace treated my pussy like a peach, eating it with earnest, sucking and slurping on my juices, paying special attention to my sweet center. My high settled in, heightening every spot on my body he trailed his fingers over. He gripped my waist and proceeded to fuck me with that thick tongue of his, pressing on my G-spot with each stroke of his tongue. I grabbed the back of his head, gyrating against his face as he French kissed my pussy, flicking my clit until I came all over his face. He brought his lips to mine, giving me a taste of my juices.

  “Mmmm,” I moaned against his lips, my hand traveling the length of his chest, stopping at the feeling of his hard dick straining against his pants. It jumped as I stroked it through his wool trousers. “Damn.”

  “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Peace replied against mine.

  I thought of Quill, his baggage, his lies, and replied, “Make me forget everything, even if only for tonight.”

  Peace scooped me up in his arms. My chest pressed against his, and I could feel the beating of his heart, steady compared to mine fighting to break free of my chest. As he set me on the bed, nerves kicked in. I still had a chance to walk away before I complicated my relationship with Peace. Our chemistry was instant from the day we met; I was the one who prevented us from indulging. Morris was out of the equation and I was suppressing every thought of Quill that came to mind. There were no more impediments—just the two of us.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Peace said as he undressed, his eyes focused on mine. “You don’t have to make a decision on what this is right after it happens. It could be one night, a weekend, whatever you want it to be.”

  “What do you want it to be?” I countered, pressing my thighs together in anticipation of what he was going to release from his Zegna trousers.

  The bulge I felt on the balcony was half of what Peace was packing. My mouth watered as my eyes drunk in his picture perfect penis, ten inches, the color of dark chocolate, with veins creating a map to paradise. Even sheathed by a condom it was still intimidating. He crept onto the bed, his tatted body brushing against mine at odd places, molding to my body as he hovered over me.

  “I want you,” he answered, flicking a stray strand out of my face, kissing the place it rested.

  Peace entered me with an urgency I didn’t think I would appreciate, delving deep inside of me. His strokes were rhythmic, passionate, the way his hands took possession of my body. I arched my back, pressing my hands into the headboard as Peace held me by the waist, fucking me like he wanted to make a baby. He came first, continuing to stroke as I came shortly after. We lay in bed spent from the fuck session.

  “I’m the first man you fucked other than him?” he asked, pulling me into his arms.

  I nodded. “How’d you know?”

  “Your body was with me, but your heart was elsewhere.” He ran his hands through my hair, reminding me of the way Quill would after we made love. “Regret it?”

  “No,” I lied, shaking my head.

  Peace craned his neck to get a good look at me. “You know I been in this game my entire life, which means I’m good at spotting a lie. Kelsey, you can be real with me.”

  “It was…different. Not bad different, just different,” I said, sitting up. “What do you want me to say? I had a fight with my boyfriend and not even an hour later I’m in bed with another man.”

  “If a fight with your man led you to me, that’s where you wanted to be all along,” Peace countered, taking m
y hand into his. “I wish this would’ve happened under different circumstances, but I don’t regret what happened between us. We’re meant to be; you’re the only one fighting it.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed, laying back down.

  “I’m about to order some room service. You want anything?”

  I thought of Quill, who had been right all along. “No, I’m not hungry.”

  “I’ll order you something anyway.”

  Peace slid out of bed, walking across the room in his naked glory, giving me better view of his tight end. I heard the faint buzzing of my phone across the room. Against my better judgment, I slipped out of bed, rummaging through my jeans for my phone. Another call from Quill, who was one of the few people whose calls came through regardless of my Do Not Disturb setting. Peace was still in the other room on the phone ordering food and beverages. I stepped onto the balcony, picking up as I slid the door shut.

  “Kelsey,” Quill breathed. “Before you hang up, let me explain myself.”

  I leaned against the balcony. “Go ahead.”

  “Where are you? I’d rather explain this in person…”

  I scoffed. “William, you can plead your case now or don’t plead it at all.”

  There was a pregnant pause. “Yes, I knew Briana was the one that set you up, but don’t forget that I warned you to stay away from her.”

  “Like you did when you blackmailed her?”

  “I didn’t have a choice. The Jinetes wanted their territory back and I still had to move weight for Amos. It was either I blackmailed Briana or start a drug war,” he explained. “What would you have done?”