Tokyo was called upon to do all of Apple’s errands, which included bringing Peaches to see her and bringing Apple some groceries and takeout. Peaches and Tokyo hung out in the living room of Touch’s apartment for hours with Apple each day because Apple wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Before Tokyo left, Apple would give her the same spiel.
Apple was emphatic. “My daughter’s life is in your hands. Be fucking careful, and use your head. That bitch Queenie is still out there. She’s lost all her men, so she’s gonna want payback. You, me, IG, Hood, and especially my daughter are targets. Don’t fuck up.”
Tokyo was tired of hearing the same warning, but she would never say so. She convinced her boss she could be trusted and would return the next day.
IG snuck a bottle of Ace of Spades into Hood’s hospital room. His man was laid up recuperating. Hood had gone through nearly fourteen hours of surgery as his surgeons tried to save his arm that ultimately had to be amputated from the elbow. The white bandage was like a magnet that pulled your eyes to his missing limb and made everyone feel uncomfortable. It’s impolite to stare, but it was hard not to.
“What up, Nubs?” IG said, bringing levity to the situation.
“Oh, you got jokes?” Hood smiled and lifted his arms in surrender.
“Always.” IG pulled out the champagne and gave Hood dap. “We celebrating.”
Hood was down for whatever. He needed to get fucked up, considering what he’d been through. “What’s the occasion?”
“We bodied them niggas for you.” IG popped the cork and poured the champagne into two small plastic cups. “We wiped out most of L.E.S., and I personally got Rehab and Lord. Put them niggas right to sleep.”
Hood grinned. “My man.”
“That bitch still out there, though.”
Hood nodded. “She gonna get hers.”
“Apple had me leave three hundred stacks at your crib.”
The large amount of money almost made Hood tear up. Most men bosses would have never blessed him in such a way. Whatever injuries you got during battle were charged to the game.
“This is why I fucks wit’ her. She’s a real one. And, yo, tell her that I spoke to Drac. He gonna handle that for her.”
IG nodded. He’d pass on the message.
37
Yo, shorty, why a nigga gotta keep begging to see you? We was ’posed to been hook up. Another nigga must got your attention.”
“It’s not even like that,” Tokyo tried to explain. “I’m babysitting.”
“Babysitting?” He chuckled. “You can’t be serious. You could be chilling wit’ me and you’d rather be watching someone’s brat? Tell that bitch to watch her own kid. She got you watching her child while she out getting dicked down. That’s foul.”
Tokyo exhaled. She was on the phone with Vance, someone she had been trying to get with for a while. Her allegiance to Apple was interfering with her love life. Apple’s issues were cock-blocking, and right now, she wanted some dick. Vance was highly sought after. Every chick in the hood wanted him and he was checking for her.
“She’s not foul,” Tokyo whined. “It’s a situation, but in a few days I should be able to come and see you. Maybe we can go to the movies?”
“A few ddddays,” he hollered, sounding like Soulja Boy. “You got me fucked up. I ain’t gonna keep chasing you. Lose my number.”
Tokyo panicked. “Wait, hold up. Let me see if I can get a sitter.”
“You ain’t gotta do all that. Text me your address where you at.”
Tokyo thought for a split second. “I can’t.”
“So come to me. You can bring the kid.”
“I can?”
“No doubt. I’ll have some things lined up for her to do when you get here.”
Vance texted his address and asked, “How long before you get here?”
“Forty-five minutes.”
“See you soon, sexy.”
The morning count was complete at Clinton Correctional Facility, and the heavy, iron gates in cellblock B were opened for breakfast. It was seven in the morning, and Corey had woken up with an appetite. The OG exited his cell and stood in line before the corrections officer gave the command to move forward to chow. As the inmates exited an open area, there was a small, congested area that inmates needed to pass through that was out of view from guards. The moment Corey Davis entered, Drac’s muscular forearm wrapped around his neck and pulled. The icepick repeatedly slammed into Corey’s kidney until his body went limp.
Drac handed the weapon off to Bee, who wrapped it in a towel and stuffed it down his pants. The killers went in separate directions, and all other inmates scattered. By the time the corrections officers noticed the body of Corey Davis on the floor, he was dead.
“Peaches, please, hurry up and get dressed,” Tokyo said, as she rushed around beautifying herself for her date.
“I’m trying,” she replied, sitting on the floor tying her shoelaces.
Tokyo ran into the bathroom and gave herself a birdbath; she took a rag and wiped her vagina and under her arms and quickly brushed her teeth. Tokyo ruminated over whether she should wear heels with her catsuit or keep it casual and put on a pair of high top sneakers. She settled on sneakers because she was bringing a child with her on a date.
Tokyo leaned down and said to Peaches at the front door, “We’re not gonna tell your mom where we went okay?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m asking you to keep this our secret.”
Peaches thought for a moment. “I don’t wanna keep it a secret from Mommy.”
Tokyo exhaled. Peaches was a goody-goody. She’d work on swearing her to secrecy later. Tokyo grabbed Peaches’s hand and practically pulled her down the hallway and up the block to where she was parked. They got in, and Tokyo was already peeling out before the little girl had buckled her seatbelt. Tokyo’s Lexus weaved in and out of traffic in a race to make it uptown within a reasonable amount of time when she slammed on her brakes mid-block.
What the fuck was she doing? Suddenly, dread washed over her and she trembled. Horns blared behind her and the drivers cursed their anger as they drove around the stalled vehicle. Tokyo placed her car back in drive, made two right turns, and returned back to Apple’s feeling she had literally dodged a bullet.
While Touch was recuperating, two things happened: Apple found his gun collection and also a frantic, white male came banging on his front door calling out his name. Apple snuck to the door and took a peek, but she didn’t open it the first two times he showed up. But the third time he arrived, she thought it best to stop his visits.
“May I help you?” she asked the surprised gentleman.
“Oh,” he said and took two steps back. “Who are you?”
“I’m Apple, Touch’s girlfriend.”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. Touch hadn’t mentioned he was seeing anyone, but he’d never mentioned a female in all the years Gabriel had known him. Touch was secretive, an introvert. He said, “I’m his stepfather. Is he here?”
“He’s not. He’s in Vegas at a tournament. Did you call him?”
“I’ve been calling him, but he hasn’t answered.”
Apple nodded. “He hasn’t answered for me either; I was starting to feel insecure like he was fucking some bitch.”
Gabriel clutched imaginary pearls. How uncouth was she? “Well, should my son call, please tell him that his father is missing. He hasn’t come home in days. I’ve already gone to the police.”
“Oh my god. Is there anything I can do?”
Gabriel snapped, “You can give him my message.”
Apple nodded and closed the door. “Bitch,” she mumbled. So the dead man was Touch’s father, perhaps? If so, what on earth could have transpired to push father and son to become adversaries and end in murder?
It took some time, but
Touch had eventually gathered his strength. Apple had doted over him for days, feeding him, giving him his medication, and nursing him back to good health. She did this without one question regarding the shit-storm she had walked into. Touch was a grown man, and he knew that he owed her an explanation and didn’t want her to have to beg for it.
“C’mere,” he said.
Apple had just gotten out of the shower and had put on one of his t-shirts. Her hair was freshly washed and conditioned, and she had some personal matters of her own. Her world didn’t stop, and her beefs weren’t placed on pause because her man had gotten stabbed up. Apple still had threats, her sister was still dealing with mental illness, and most importantly, she had a child to raise she had been neglecting. This weighed heavily on her. She tried to compartmentalize her time, but divvying up hours per day still left things overlooked.
“I’m wet,” she protested.
“C’mere,” he repeated and motioned toward one side of the bed.
Apple crawled into his strong arm and snuggled. She kissed the side of his face and waited to hear what she knew he wanted to say.
“Where do I begin?” he asked. He felt Apple shrug under him. “I never lied when I said that I played professional poker. All that’s true. But, I did omit a truth about myself that I’m not particularly proud of. For over a decade, I’ve been a hired gun for an organization. I can’t tell you the name of that organization because, well, they’d kill us.”
Apple nodded. “They saved your life, didn’t they? Was that who you called?”
“You saved my life. Had you not come to my home, I would be dead.”
Apple was intrigued. “They have doctors on staff too, and to do all of this—this equipment, this level of infrastructure—is impressive.”
“Very. They’re all of that but so much more. This agency is not to be fucked with.”
Touch inhaled deeply, and it felt like his stitches would burst. He grimaced from the uncomfortable pain and continued. “The man that was dead . . . that—” Touch choked up. He couldn’t finish his sentence because he sobbed uncontrollably. A deep, guttural wail escaped as he was hit with the realization that his father was dead and he had killed him. Jorge was all that Touch had known, and no matter how mentally fucked up they both were, they needed each other. And now he was gone. Touch felt like an orphan.
Apple held her man in her arms and caressed him until he let it all out. The anguish and pain needed to escape, and she was glad he was releasing it with her.
Finally, she finished his sentence. “That was your father?”
Touch got himself together and needed to explain the logistics. He didn’t want to seem like a monster, a sociopath so heartless that he could not only murder strangers for money but even his own father.
“My pops wasn’t who most people thought he was. On the surface, he was an aging gay man in frail health that had his heart broken by the only woman he loved. Some of that was true, but he was also The Huntsman, the vigilante who started killing before I was born.”
Apple sat straight up in bed like she had gotten struck by a bolt of lightning. This was popcorn-at-a-movie gossip-worthy. “Your father was The Huntsman?”
“He was. I’ve known since I was thirteen,” he explained. “When he came out of retirement, I thought that I could watch him—stop him before he murdered someone else—but he was slick. He was probably watching more of me than I was of him. Anyway, I started reading about that dope, Queen of New York, and suspected that Queenie was behind it. I knew my pops would go after her, so I told him in so many words to let it go.”
Apple shifted in bed because he mentioned her enemy and because he had no clue that it was her dope.
“Did he? Did he promise to leave Queenie alone?”
“Queenie was safe because he figured out what I didn’t know, which was you were pushing that dope. When you told me that you were being followed, I asked him to come over and begged him to not harm you.”
Apple was speechless. She not only looked like a liar—flashbacks of the conversation about income flooded her mind—but, more important, did he just say he murdered his father for her?
“You didn’t—”
His deep, baritone voice was emphatic. “Nah, I could never. That was my pops, I couldn’t kill him over you. He came at me and nearly took me out. I fired my gun reflexively. It was muscle memory, a fight for survival.”
Bullshit, Apple thought. She wanted to believe that he had killed for her just as Nicholas had.
“Gabriel came by.”
The name was painful to hear. How would Touch and Gabriel move on without Jorge? “I’ll handle him. I’ll call him tomorrow and prepare him for the worst. At some point, my father’s body will turn up so we can put him to rest, have a burial.”
“How can you be certain that you’ll get that chance? They could have dumped him in an ocean. Gabriel might not ever get closure.”
Touch shook his head. “I’m certain because Jorge was my father and they know this. He’ll turn up soon, a victim of some sort of robbery.”
Apple fell asleep in Touch’s arms and was awakened in the morning by arm movements and a chant. He was sitting up in bed praying to Allah.
And he was Muslim.
As the sun filtered through the room and landed on the multidimensional man, Apple knew that Touch had touched her heart, differently.
“Call that bitch again,” Queenie demanded.
“I did. Shorty not picking up.”
“Mi thought you said you could get Tokyo over here with Apple’s daughter.”
Vance shrugged. “Something must have happened ’cause I know she’s wanted to hook up for a while now.” Vance licked his lips and gave a cocky grin. He was sitting on his couch with a blunt pinched between his two fingers.
Queenie had sat impatiently in his foul-smelling apartment for the one chance to capture, torture, and murder Apple’s child and her protégé. Most of her men were now dead, and this pretty boy Vance thought she was fucking around.
Bak!
The gunshot to his abdomen caught Vance off guard. The pain exploded throughout his whole body, and his eyes popped open in wonderment. Why would she do this to him? His hands clutched his open wound, and he perspired. The sweat trickled down his forehead, and he puffed air in and out of his mouth dramatically, trying to stay awake. The rise and fall of his cheeks would not resuscitate the young man. The close-range gunshot had done too much damage. He’d lost too much blood, too quickly. Vance’s eyes closed and they would never reopen.
38
Apple softly kissed Touch’s lips and promised she would be back in the morning, but it was time for her to go. She’d put her life on hold for him, and today she would walk out his door and back into reality. Corey Davis was dead, IG was holding down her operation, and they had put out a new stamp of heroin, Bow Down.
“Hold up,” Touch called from his room as she approached the front door. “Come back for a moment.”
Apple exhaled. She had shit to do. But she returned with a broad smile, not showing her underlying annoyance. “What’s up?”
“Sit down,” he asked.
“Touch, why? I got a lot to do today.”
“I know,” he agreed. “Humor me. Sit down.”
Apple sat on the side of his bed and watched as Touch struggled to get up. He clutched his stomach where the knife had gone in and winced. He took slow, deliberate steps to where she was seated and bent down in front of her on one knee. Touch grabbed the white cloth first aid tape and tore off about two inches. He took Apple’s hand into his.
“What are you doin’?”
“Shhhh,” he said. Touch wrapped the tape around Apple’s ring finger and asked, “Apple Evans, will you marry me? I know we haven’t known each other for long, but let’s do life together. I’ll learn from you, and you can learn all
about me. I’ve never given my heart to a woman, and you can have it all, my whole heart in the palm of your hands. I can take care of you. I have savings, and I’ll go legit. I’ll quit the business—anything to make a life with you and Peaches. Just say yes.”
Apple looked deeply into his eyes and then down at her makeshift ring and said, “You gonna have to start spending some money on me, ’cause right now, you’re playing me cheap.”
“You want a million-dollar ring? You got it. Just say yes.”
Apple thought for a moment. She knew what she was feeling, but saying yes right now when they’d both just experienced such trauma wouldn’t be wise.
“I can’t,” she replied.
“You still in love with your ex?”
She searched her feelings and answered honestly. Apple had held onto Nick’s memory long enough. It was time to let him go. “I’m not, and I care deeply for you, but not enough to commit to forever.”
“A’ight,” he said and took the news like a champ. “Once I get better, I’ma make you fall in love. I got some work to do. You motivate me to get better that much quicker.”
Apple leaned in and gave him a passionate kiss. “I think I already love you,” she said and finally left.
The quarter of a million dollars was about two hundred grand more than she needed to pay the landlord. He would have given her access to Queenie’s apartment for fifty thousand, but the additional funds were enough for the sixty-plus-year-old to plan for early retirement. The condo board had strict rules that spare keys be left in the office in case emergencies occur. For years, Queenie refused to give her key until they sent a letter from their attorney. This posh building wasn’t up for Queenie’s shenanigans. Spare keys were needed for plumbing issues, burst pipes, fires, and any other unforeseeable events. The superintendent allowed Apple to go up the block and make a spare key and then he promptly went to bed. He didn’t care at all what the female would do. He knew Queenie was a criminal with her tattooed teardrop that represented murder. She was low class. The whole building despised her. She was mean, rude, and never tipped.
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