Money Is King: The Complete Series

by Nicety

  “Nothing. Me and your grandson were just having a little talk.” I said as I lifted his head up from his chin with my finger.

  “CJ. CJ, baby what’s wrong honey?” My momma asked coddling him for the umpteenth time.

  He shook his head to say nothing without speaking. It took for him to give her an answer before she decided to back off the whole situation and take her ass on somewhere. That irked the shit out of me. As if I couldn’t be irked enough today that shit sent me into livid mode. CJ lowered his head back down like he could not stand to look me in my face. I didn’t appreciate the fact that he defied me but listened to everybody else. A stranger could come up and say something and he would listen to them before he obeyed me. That was straight bullshit.

  “CJ, how come every time I tell you something or ask you to do something this is what I get? It’s very disrespectful son and I’m not going to tolerate it.” I said as he walked around me plopping down on the bed.

  He didn’t speak. He just picked up his game controller and hit the power button on the TV. The look on his face was still angry and confused but he said nothing. His lips didn’t even quiver at the very least. But I wasn’t done with him. Normally, I would have let the shit go but I was tired of being ignored. He was supposed to be the one person that I had that did whatever I told him to do. He was supposed to be the one person on my team and since I birthed him that was supposed to be an added bonus because he had all of my character traits.

  “Answer me, boy. Don’t just sit there on that game.” I said placing my hands on my hips so he knew that I was dead serious.

  “I don’t have anything to say.” CJ replied solemnly.

  “What the fuck you mean you ain’t got nothing to say? I asked you a question. Why do you feel the need to disrespect me?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yes you are. If you feel like the only way to be a man is follow what your dad taught you then you’re not doing that by disrespecting me. Didn’t he tell you that not listening to your momma was wrong?” I asked shoving the game controller out of his hand and onto the floor.

  “Momma, I’m not disrespecting you. Just leave me alone.” He replied silently so his grandma couldn’t hear him.

  “What did you say to me? How dare you tell me to leave you alone? Boy you are only ten years old. You’re not too old to get your ass whooped. I brought you in this world and I can take you out.” I snarled trying to keep my voice low as well.

  To my surprise, my momma hadn’t even attempted to come in the room and find out what was happening. It seemed like she had finally taken a damn hint. Bad part about was that when I needed back up, I couldn’t get it. My momma was never one to allow a kid to disrespect his parent so I knew for a fact she would back me up on this but she just would not come back into the room for shit. It’s like I couldn’t win for losing.

  CJ just sat there staring at the screen watching the game play itself. He was on strike, refusing to say one word to me and even though I didn’t care whether he was mad or not I still wanted him to speak to me when he was spoken to. I couldn’t believe I was letting this little boy command my attention like this when I had niggas before that couldn’t get me like that. He knew what he was doing and I guess he thought because he was my son he knew all the right buttons to push in order to make me give up.

  “You will not disrespect me, CJ. I am your mother and you will treat me as such. Do you understand me?” I asked lowering the aggressiveness in my tone.

  “Hmm.”

  “Did you hear me? Yes or no?” I asked him again leaning into his face invading his space.

  “Yeah. Dang.” He responded with a hint of attitude in his voice.

  “Boy, cut that damn game off and go sit in the kitchen with a book or something. You’re not about to worry me with you attitude and shit. Gone!” I yelled becoming frustrated with what to do.

  “Ha ha. All apart of being a mother.” My momma yelled from the kitchen.

  All that time, she had been standing there just listening to see how I was going to handle the situation. I should have known her minding her own business would have been too much like right. She lived to make my life a living hell and it wouldn’t be hell if she didn’t have her nose in it three hundred and sixty five days of the year, in her mind. CJ got up from the bed, kicked his shoes off so hard that they left a dirty mark on the wall then pressed the power button on the TV so roughly that he almost knocked the thirty inch screen off the small black barely sturdy Walmart wooden stand.

  “Uh, boy do you seriously think I’m gonna let you leave this room with that kind of attitude?” I asked putting my hand up to block the door.

  “Man, leave me alone, man.”

  “Boy who are you talking to like that?”

  “You! Leave me alone!” CJ screamed loudly in my face as I grabbed his arm. “I hate you! Leave me alone! I wish you weren’t my momma! I wish grandma was my momma! I hate you!”

  Over and over again he kept screaming and hollering that bullshit. The more he hollered it the tighter my grasp became around his frail arm. He kept tugging and pulling for me to let him go but I wouldn’t. With his other arm he reached up and pushed me in my stomach roughly trying to get me up off of him. I slapped him across his cheek sending him to the floor hard and easily. He lay there as if I was the one to hurt his feelings first. Initially I kneeled down to check on him and apologize for hitting him in his face but when he tried to get away, scooting back from me, as if I had the plague or some shit. I just lost it. I grabbed his collar pulling him back towards me and began chocking his neck, pressing hard where his Adams apple would be. My hands seemed to have supersonic strength wanting to squeeze the very life out of his fragile body, as it shook and trembled in the process. He would learn his lesson today. Don't fuck with me. Nobody fucks with me and gets away with it.

  I could see his face turn red, struggling to breath. His life seemed to be waning and for some reason I began to feel better. I was happy that he was suffering to some extent. Now he would know how I felt being disrespected by him all those times. He reached up and with all of his might stuck me in my face with his little fist breaking my concentration on the grip of his neck. It was the only thing that saved him. I grabbed my jaw cuffing the throbbing pain surprised that his little punch packed that much power behind it. He kicked his feet on the carpet struggling to get out from under my space as I leaned back against the bed, done with him.

  “You think you’re a man now? Huh?” I smiled breathing heavily from the ordeal. “Did your little dick get hard, feeling good to hit your fucking momma?”

  “Leave me alone!” He tried to scream but his voice cracked heavily unable to fully shout it out.

  Silence filled the room. I could hear the faint sound of footsteps but I couldn’t tell if they were coming or going away from us. His eyes were watery and his lip was for sure quivering now. He wanted to cry. I saw it in his face. But again, he wouldn’t allow the tears to fall. Even now realizing he was that close to death, he still wouldn’t cry. I admired that about him, even though I knew he didn’t get that shit from me.

  “Mink! What the hell are you doing in here? CJ. What’s wrong baby?”

  Chapter 9— Lasha

  “So…are you going to tell me who you really are or do I have to call you out on it?” Yolo spoke sitting back in his chair with his hands in a diamond shape up to his face.

  “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.” I lied stuffing my hands in the back pocket of my skintight jeans.

  “Oh yeah? I think you do though.” He stood walking around to the back of me sniffing my hair in a weird fashion.

  He stood there just barely grazing his body against the back of mine. I wanted to turn around and snap his neck in two then drop his body leaving it where it stood. The very thought of him made my skin crawl. I wanted to vomit in my mouth and spit the contents right on him. His deep voice began to laugh in my left ear annoying the shit out of me as I moved m
y head letting him know that in my motion.

  “What’s your deal?” I asked choking my lip up in the air.

  “You don’t even know who you’re talking to? Do you?” He asked walking back around to face me with the silliest ass smirk on his.

  “I know exactly who you are. You’re the very same Yolo who owns the club out there in the suburbs, the one Cesar works for, and the one married the woman laying in this very bed.” My lips excreted the words too smart.

  “You think you’re funny?”

  “You have no idea just how funny I can be.” I sneered licking my lips as if they had just tasted the victory of his blood.

  “Who are your parents, Lasha? Are you really going to stand there and play dumb like a nigga don’t know who you are?”

  I refused to answer. I just stood there diverting my eyes to Flava’s bed wondering if I had just saw what I think I just saw. Something over there moved. But I didn’t want to make light of it until I knew for sure. It would be a shame for me to assume something like that if all I was seeing was dust move from my line of sight. Though it seemed all too real, still I kept my mouth shut. He, on the other hand, seemed to be waiting for me to answer his trap question.

  “What do you want me to say to you? That I know that you’re not the man you portray to everybody to be. Okay, yeah, I know you’re a fraud and that you lied, cheated, stole, and killed, to get everything you have today.”

  “Hmm. I bet you have no idea what happened to your brother…Drake.”

  It hit home and from the dropped expression on my face, I’m sure he knew it. Never let the enemy see you sweat. Well I was sweating about a ton of bullets on the inside and on the outside my hand was itching. I wished I had a loaded .357 that I could insert into his filthy fucking mouth and pull the trigger three times. Once, for my mother, the second time for my brother, and the third time for stealing half of my father’s businesses away from him.

  “You killed him.” I said softly gritting my teeth. “You killed him because you were jealous of my father trying to step in a big man’s shoes. You could never get over the fact that you were just some low level Mexican hit man and you needed more. You took all of his files with his connects and turned them against him, had him negotiating with them for his life.”

  “Your father should have remained in business with the fucking Colombians in Miami and this shit would have never went down in the first place!” He roared walking back to me standing nose to nose. “I had everything set up. I had everything put together. But your father…your father had to fuck things up.”

  “My father was a great man—“

  “Your father was an asshole who believed that the world was his. He didn’t care about you or your mother or anyone else! All he gives a damn about was himself and his money. That’s it.” Yolo wiped the spit from his mouth, controlling his anger as the nurses walked by to make sure there was nothing wrong inside. “If he hadn’t have turned down that major deal with the Colombians, we would still be in business to this day.”

  “They were not good people.”

  “Awe wake up baby girl. Nobody in this game is good people. Not even me. But I guess you already know that…huh?”

  He was the reason my poppa’s empire was slowly falling. A man who vowed to protect him and be loyal to him at whatever cost, betrayed him for the greed and love of money. He was a peasant, a sack of scum and I felt no sympathy for him. He was reaping what he had sown right here in this very room. Flava’s incident was nothing more than karma coming to bite him in the ass. I knew it and deep down , he knew it too. My breathing slowed sending my adrenaline back down a notch at least for the moment. There was nothing I could do in this public arena but I knew once he stepped outside of this muthafucka, his soul was mine.

  “You know, I don’t feel anything for you but pity. I pity you. You will never know what true loyalty feels like ever again.” I said walking over to Flava’s bedside shaking my head at her misfortune. “And it’s because of you she is suffering to the fullest right now.”

  “What did you just say to me?”

  “Oh I’m sure you know. She’s paying for all of your mistakes.” I replied.

  “Are you trying to tell me that you had something to do with what happened to her?” His fist balled up trying to remain calm.

  “I’m saying, you should watch who you fuck the next time you get greedy.”

  “You little bitch. Do you know what I will do to you?” He paused. “I bet you don’t know what I did to your mother just before I cut her up like a fish.”

  “You weren’t there. The man that killed my mother shot himself in our yard.”

  “Awe is that what daddy told you? Naw baby girl. They never found the nigga that cut your momma up. How do you think one nigga gained access to your daddy’s mansion without being noticed on camera or by any of the guards? That’s professional work right there baby.” His laugh made me what to just choke the shit out of him.

  “You killed my mother.”

  “Personally, baby. It was too easy, like taking candy from a baby easy.” He continued to laugh. “And just before I sliced her sexy dark skin, I stuck my finger so far up her ass. Mmm, mmm, mmm. Felt just like heaven.”

  “You sick son of a bitch.” I snarled wishing I could rip his still beating heart out of his ugly chest.

  “It’s okay baby. There’s enough of me to go around. That will be nothing compared to what I have in store for you.” He claimed licking his revolting lips. “You did say that thang was unscathed didn’t you?”

  “What makes you think I would even let you get close enough to taste this shit?” I retorted.

  Before he could answer there was a soft coughing in the room. We looked at each other wondering if it was either he or I and when we discovered it wasn’t we looked at the door for a nurse or doctor entering the room. There was none. It’s sad to say that the last place we looked was over at Flava. Her eyes were squinted but blinking and the tube going down her mouth restricted her passage way and probably felt weird which resulted in her light coughing.

  “Oh God! Baby you’re okay! I’m so….so” Yolo babbled as she struggled to raise her hand.

  “I’m gonna go get the doctor.” I said rushing out the door to flag down the nearest person in white.

  Yolo looked up at me as if I was using this as my time to run. Little did he know, I was far from wanting to run. He had just disclosed information me that not even my poppa may have known. There was no way in hell I was letting him off that easily. A white coated doctor finally caught wind of my erratic hand waving and came to my aid. He walked in the room pulling her chart from the cubby outside of the door with him taking a gander at it before he went to her. He checked her vitals then excused himself heading back out the door.

  “Looks like you’re going to be okay, honey.” I said holding her other hand discovering how shaken she was.

  She couldn’t speak but it seemed like she had so much to say from the look in her bloodshot eyes. She wasn’t even looking at Yolo despite his so-called worshipping of her at her bedside. It was as if she had heard everything she needed to hear and was done with him. I had always heard that people in a coma could hear everything around them even though they wee unconscious. I believe she heard what kind of person her husband really was and instantly knew he was the bastard I already knew he portrayed.

  Flava tapped my hand as another doctor entered the room checking all of her machines and then moving in to check her eyes and the tubes in her mouth. He went to the counter with her file to write something down before putting away his pen and coming back towards the bed. I stood there in anticipation of what he was going to say but it seemed like he was stalling as he checked her IV bag.

  “We are not out of the clear. I just want to make sure that everything is truly good before I make any conclusions on her diagnosis.” The doctor said as he turned to Yolo and I.

  “What…what the fuck does that mean doc?” Yolo asked anxiously
.

  “It means its touch and go at this point. Many of my patients have come out of their comas for a brief second only to slip right back in them and never return. We want to make sure Flava is out of the woods before we give that guarantee. But her vitals look like they are stabilizing. We just need to keep a close watch on her for the next couple of days.” The doctor answered sternly a bit distraught by Yolo’s demeanor.

  “So can you remove the tube so she can talk?” I asked knowing I had to hear what she was trying to communicate to me.

  “Uh, no. I don’t recommend that at this time. She’s not strong enough to release the breathing machine at this time especially so soon after the surgery I believe we might be able to in a few days if she’s not in so much pain that we need to heavily sedate her.” The doctor answered.