Down With the King of the South 2

by Diamond Johnson

  I was driving my mom’s car, and her tints were pretty dark. Helping him out a little, I rolled down the passenger window since he was standing closer to that side. When he saw that it was me, I noticed the scowl that I felt he permanently had on his face grew harder as he walked over to me.

  Even his walk was sexy. The way he had a little sag in the white jeans that he was wearing, and I could see his brown Louis Vuitton belt, and the way the white Louis Vuitton hoodie fit him had my young ass wishing that I was a little bit older, so I could have him.

  “Fuck is you doing here? You lost or something?” he asked, getting right to the point.

  The way he hated me; you would have thought that Vonte was his child. Over the years, Vonte had told me how close he and Miami were. He let it be known that prior to Miami moving back down here, their relationship had faded a little bit, and that was only because of the busy schedule that they both had. From what Vonte told me, though, Miami would tell text and call him just to check up on him and see if he needed anything. Vonte was so closed in when it came to his feelings, but I knew that he loved Miami. Actually witnessing Miami go hard for the ones he loved, I could see why Vonte loved him.

  “I wanted to talk to her. Is she inside?” I asked.

  He could tell how nervous I was from the way my voice shook as I talked. He put fear in my heart. His whole demeanor was enough for me to hightail it away from her home, but I needed to do this.

  “Yo, shorty, you did enough! Ain’t shit to talk to her about. Wanna know why I’m over here so early in the damn morning?” he asked, walking a little closer to the car. I didn’t answer him. If anything, I just stayed quiet and waited for him to let me know why. “There’s a family that’ll be here in a few minutes, and in about another month, they going to give birth to their first child. Shae said that she saw the mother in the grocery store a few days ago, and after finding out that the family was going through some financial issues, she decided to give everything in that nursery to them. The same nursery that she thought her grandchild would spend some of his days in.

  “When it’s two o’clock in the fuckin’ morning, and my girl is in the room, the bathroom, or the kitchen crying because her son is no longer here or because she will no longer have a piece of him, which was supposed to be your child, you won’t be nowhere to be found. It’ll be me trying to get her to calm down for hours at a time, so nah, you can’t see her. You played a role in her hurt. As her nigga, I won’t allow people who hurt my woman to be in proximity to her, so go on. It ain’t shit here for you!” he spat.

  For about thirty seconds, I didn’t move. I just sat in my car, trying to see if I should try him or not by getting out of the car and going to the front door. After all, I was pregnant, and who the hell was going to harm a pregnant chick?

  “I’m crazy, shorty. Crazy about what’s mine. You and this Corolla better raise the fuck up out of here,” he spat.

  The crazed look in his eyes had me putting the car back in drive and moving away from in front of her home. I felt my eyes become a little misty because I’d driven all the way down there basically for nothing. I was back on the main road, and all of a sudden, my phone started to ring. It was on the passenger seat, and I looked over, only to see that it was Reggie calling.

  I ignored his call because it’s been almost a fuckin’ month, and now, all of a sudden, his ass wanted to call and check up on me. As I approached a red light, my phone went off again, but it was letting me know that I had a text message. Curiosity had gotten the best of me, so I looked at the message that was sent to my phone. It was Reggie texting me in bold letters, telling me to call him, and in parenthesis, he said that it was important. It wasn’t important. That was just his narcissistic ways coming out and him thinking that he could say something like that to me, and I was supposed to be so stupid and actually call.

  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.

  I stood there, mesmerized by the prettiest set of chocolate titties that I’d ever seen in my fuckin’ life. Yet, she sat there, looking down the barrel of the gun from a 6’6”, 295-pound nigga. I knew she had to have been scared shitless. If she had a gun and I didn’t have one, I would have been dead seconds ago because just like a nigga, I was letting the sight of some pussy blind me.

  “What the fuck! Why the fuck are you in here? I’m calling the police,” she yelled and tried to reach for her cellphone that was on the nightstand next to her, but I rushed her and slapped it out of her hand.

  I tackled her little ass, throwing her down on her back while I stayed on top of her. I could smell her fear. She was naked, exposing her entire body for me. Her shit was nice. Her body looked nothing like one that had birthed a child. She was perfect, man. She looked up at me with eyes that screamed her fear and anger. I could see why Trip would be ready to kill a whole fuckin’ village over her ass.

  “Where the fuck that nigga at?” I questioned.

  “You’re fuckin’ sick! Trip made you do this? You’re looking for a nigga who has absolutely nothing to do with you! If I never thought that you wanted to suck Trip’s dick, I definitely think so now—”

  Pow!

  I punched her right in her fuckin’ mouth. Swear I tried to knock out a few teeth when I did it. She screamed, and her hands immediately went for her mouth where I’d just punched her. She kicked, screamed, and cried, trying to fight her way off me, but I wasn’t letting up.

  “That’s what Trip should have done to your ass a long fuckin’ time ago! Miami got every
fuckin’ thing to do with me. Trip can’t handle that nigga because he’s behind those fuckin’ walls, and me, being my brother’s keeper, I gotta handle the shit for him. Ima ask you again, where that nigga at?”

  She was still crying and holding her mouth, which was leaking like a flood. I had decked her ass good.

  “Bitch, you don’t hear me talking to you?” I asked, pulling her by her hair and making her sit up in the bed.

  This was what Trip meant earlier on the phone when he mentioned that he knew what type of nigga I was. It was no secret that I was the type of nigga to stomp a bitch out. I mean, I didn’t go around looking for bitches to put my hands on, but if one ever tried me, I made it my duty to knock their asses out and put them right back into their fuckin’ place.

  “Get the fuck off me! Get off meeee!” she screamed and kicked her legs.

  She fucked around and kicked me in my balls. On instinct, I swung the gun and started pistol whipping her ass with it. Never mind the pain that I was in because I was beating this bitch’s ass. I fucked her up all around this bedroom, and she fought back. Everything in my head was telling me to shoot this bitch, but I knew that Trip would have me killed. That is, if he didn’t have me killed for putting my hands on her.

  “Police! Put your hands in the air!” I heard from behind me.

  Like a nigga who got caught with his dick out, I shoved her ass into the wall, dropped the gun, and stood up. Like that bitch was fuckin’ royalty, the cops rushed to her aid, whereas the other cops in the room came over and slammed my black ass down. I swear them crackas were kneeing me in my back and everything as they placed the handcuffs on me.

  All the while, I heard Shae off in the distance crying like I shot her stupid ass. When they stood me up, I was able to look at her, and there was so much blood on her face that she looked unrecognizable. Walking out of the bedroom, my eyes landed on another picture of Vonte. This time, it was a picture of him when he was maybe four or five years old. Just like the one from downstairs, he was mugging on this picture. It’s like he was showing me that he saw what I’d done.