by Kiki Swinson
“Later on tonight.”
“So, you’re gonna give him sixty-seven thousand five hundred dollars later on tonight when you see us?”
“Yes, I am. But I’m gonna need another phone number from you, because I tried to call that other phone, but it doesn’t work anymore.
“That’s because I threw it away.”
“Don’t worry. I’m going to take him out right now so he can get another one. But you still have the same number, right?” I asked the guy.
“No. I got a new phone, too.”
“Well, give me your number, and I’ll put it in my cell phone. And when he gets the phone, he will call you from it,” I instructed.
“A’ight, sounds good,” he said, and then he gave me his new phone number. After I stored it in my cell phone, Aiden and he shook hands, and then Aiden let him out of the apartment.
Once he was gone, Aiden looked at me and said, “What do you think about that nigga?”
“What do you mean?” I wondered aloud.
“Something just ain’t right about him. Every time he’s around us, he starts shaking and shit!”
“Wouldn’t you be if you had to stand around someone like you? Aiden, you’re intimidating. I mean, look at how you grabbed the poor man by his neck and started fucking choking him. I thought you were going to clean him,” I joked.
“Well, thank God you were here, because I didn’t.” Aiden smiled. “Let’s go.”
“Okay,” I replied as I gathered my handbag and the keys to the truck.
CHAPTER 9
NINE MORE LIVES
It seemed like everything was happening so fast. Ava took me by another corner store so I could get another throwaway phone. And right after I got it, I activated it, and then I called Winston’s cousin so he could have the number when he was ready to give me the money and the list of names.
While Ava and I waited for him to call we decided to stop by the Jamaican Restaurant off Military Highway in Norfolk. She and I ordered our food and waited for the waitress to bring it back to us. As the time passed, Ava and I noticed how packed the restaurant was getting. I started getting paranoid and made her aware of it. “Doesn’t it seem like as soon as we got here, now everybody is trying to come in here?”
Ava took a look around. “Yeah, I guess it kind of does,” she replied with a shrug.
“Well, have you noticed how everyone that comes through that door stares right at us?”
“That’s because we’re sitting near the door.”
“Well, then tell me why that nigga standing in line to order his food with the blue polo shirt keep looking over here at us?” I pressed the issue.
Ava turned her attention toward the guy I pointed out to her. When she finally got a chance to see who I was talking about, the guy had turned his head. She still got a good look at him. “Wait, that guy looks like the guy that stays in the apartment next to the one we’re in,” she said.
“Well, you’re probably right, because I caught him looking at you a few times. And I wanted to say something to him, but I didn’t want to cause a scene, so I kept my mouth closed.”
Ava continued to stare at the guy, hoping she could get a better look at him. While she tried to make that happen, the waitress brought our food to the table. “Here you guys go,” she said as she placed both plates of food in front of us. “Enjoy!” she continued.
“Thank you. We will,” Ava told the lady after she took her eyes off the guy in the blue polo shirt.
“This looks so good,” I mentioned.
“Yeah, it does,” she agreed as she periodically looked over to where the guy was standing.
“Why the fuck do you keep looking at him? Fuck that nigga and enjoy your food!” I told her.
“But what if that is the guy that lives in the same building? I don’t want him going back to Nashad and tell him he saw me and you together. For all I know, that guy could be thinking that you and I are boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“So what? Let him think it. It ain’t like you’re gonna marry the dude anyway. Don’t ever let another nigga dictate how you supposed to live your life. I’m the only nigga you need to worry about. I’m your blood, so I ain’t gonna let any man upset you or come between that bond we have. You understand?” I spat. I was getting tired of her acting all paranoid like she can’t walk around and do what the fuck she wants to do. That shit ain’t going down while I’m around. Fuck that!
When Ava finally got a chance at a better look at the guy in the blue polo shirt, she saw that it wasn’t the person she thought he was. But that didn’t matter to me either way. I say fuck everybody and the boat they came in on.
CHAPTER 10
MORE MONEY—MORE MONEY
Aiden made it perfectly clear that he didn’t give a fuck whether that guy was Nashad’s neighbor or not. But I cared, because I liked Nashad. Nashad was good to me. He let me in his home when I had nowhere to go. So it was hard for me not to care if someone saw me and reported back to him that they saw me with another man. Was I wrong for feeling this way? And was I wrong for not taking that stance with my brother? That’s an argument I refused to have with my brother so I was going to leave well enough alone.
After sitting in that restaurant for an hour, Winston’s cousin finally called Aiden back. “So where we gonna meet?” I heard Aiden ask him.
I couldn’t hear what the other guy said, but after Aiden hung up with the guy he looked at me and said, “He’s gonna meet us here in the next thirty minutes.”
“Cool,” I said. While Aiden and I waited for this guy to show up, we started chatting about the possibility of him dating an attractive young lady, but he shot it down as soon as I opened my mouth. “I can’t think about hooking up with a chick right now. Family is the most important thing to me right now. You’re my priority. And I won’t let a chick come between us.”
After he shot down the idea of him dating a woman, we started talking about things he had to go through while he was in prison this last time. He gave me the brutal details of him beating up guys that either stole from him or disrespected him. As much as I wanted to know what happened to Aiden, I was relieved when Winston’s cousin called back and told us he was outside the restaurant.
I turned around and looked at the glass door of the restaurant. “Are you gonna go outside and talk to him?” I asked Aiden when I turned back around to face him.
“Yeah,” Aiden continued as he stood up from the chair.
“Want me to go with you?” I asked him.
“Yeah, come on. Because as soon as he gives me the money we gon’ hop in the truck and leave.”
“A’ight,” I said and stood up. Before I walked away from the table I threw forty dollars near my plate of food.
“Think that’s gonna be enough?” he asked me.
“Yeah, that’s more than enough,” I told him and walked away from the table. He followed suit.
When we got outside we noticed that the sun had set. It wasn’t that dark out and the moon was definitely peeping through the clouds. “Did he say where he was parked?” I asked him while I scanned the entire parking lot.
“Nah, just look for either one of his cars.”
Moments later, a set of headlights blinked on and off. Aiden and I both looked in that direction. “There he is,” I said as I pointed at a row of cars about fifty yards away from us. “Do you think he wants us to walk over there to him?”
“I don’t know, but come on,” Aiden instructed.
Aiden stepped off the curb and headed in the direction the guy was parked. I followed right in his footsteps. While we proceeded in that direction, I scanned the parking lot again just to make sure that no one was sitting off to the sidelines. Now I may be wrong, but there was something about this guy that just didn’t sit well with me. Every time Aiden and I got around with him, he started getting all jumpy and shit. I didn’t like him. I decided to let Aiden know that after he did this job for him, that’s it. No more.
Aiden r
eached the car before I did. When he approached him, he went straight into talk mode. This time Winston instructed Aiden to get in the car with him. “Why does he have to get in the car now? He didn’t have to do it before,” I blurted out.
“Calm down, baby girl, this job is different. We need to have a more in-depth conversation,” Aiden said.
“Yeah, it’s okay. And it ain’t gonna take nothing but a couple of minutes,” the guy said.
I looked at this nigga with a side-eye. “Don’t try no funny shit!” I warned him.
Immediately after Aiden got into the car with that guy, I walked over to the truck and hopped inside of it. I figured by me getting into the truck and starting up the ignition, Aiden and I would have a better chance of getting away if something wrong went down. I refused to let my brother get bamboozled by the crooked-ass niggas out here in these streets. Not on my watch!
It took Aiden exactly five minutes to iron out the details with that guy. I was happy to see him get out of the car. To prevent him from having to walk across the parking lot, I put the truck into drive and met him halfway. “Is everything good?”
He smiled at me while he closed the passenger-side door. “Yes, it is,” he told me and dropped a manila envelope on my lap. I swear it looked like a freaking brick.
I picked up the stack of money from my lap and looked at it while I steered the SUV out of the parking lot. “So, this is sixty-seven thousand five hundred dollars?” I asked him, while I tried wrapping my mind around the fact that I was holding that much money in my hands at one time.
“Yes, it is. And it’s all yours,” Aiden said.
I threw my foot on the brake. The truck stopped suddenly, rocking back and forth.
“Girl, what the hell is wrong with you?” Aiden shouted. I knew I’d scared him because it was written all over his face.
“Big brother, you’re giving me all of this money?” I needed clarity.
“Fuck, yeah! I mean, what am I going to do with it?”
“You could do a lot with it. You could buy yourself a car and get a place to stay.”
“Nah, I’m good. I’ll let you handle all of that. Now, can we go?” he asked.
While he explained to me how I could do more with the money than he could, I looked in his eyes and saw a man who really loved me. It might seem weird to someone else, but Aiden had treated me more like a wife than a sister—minus the intimacy part. I mean, what else could I say?
After going over everything in my head, I finally pressed my foot back on the accelerator and headed back to the apartment. Aiden and I needed to go over a solid plan to get rid of those nine lives that Winston’s cousin had ordered. I was almost sure that our lives would be in jeopardy if we fucked it up; especially with the kind of money we were being paid to do these hits.
“Aiden, we’re in the big leagues now!” I said with excitement as I cruised down the boulevard that led back to the apartment.
CHAPTER 11
LAYING OUT THE PLAN
“Okay, check it out. Here are the pictures of the niggas I gotta put on their back,” I started off saying, while I showed Ava two group pictures that were posted on Facebook of all nine guys.
“Looks like these niggas took these pictures at VA Live nightclub,” Ava commented as she studied both photos. “Wait, I know these niggas,” she continued.
Hearing her say that she knew these niggas was like music to my ears. This was a great thing, because I could use that factor to my advantage. “You know all of them?” I asked her.
“Yeah, I know every last one of them,” she assured me. “This is Nu-Nu,” she said, pointing to the guy wearing a brown Gucci jacket. “This is Monty,” she said, pointing to the guy wearing all black. “This is Eric,” she said, pointing to the guy wearing a red polo shirt and blue jeans. Ava went through everyone in the picture and named them. She even gave me some history about these niggas, too. According to her, seven out of the nine guys were related by way of brother or cousins. The other two guys were best friends to the guys. Ava also said that those niggas were always together so it would be virtually impossible to murder them one by one. She said they hustled on the blocks together, they hung out in the trap houses together, and they went out to nightclubs and strip clubs together. But she did give me something to work with when she told me that she and the guy Nu-Nu had dated for a couple of months. That meant she knew where that nigga laid his head, where his favorite spots were, how often he carried a pistol, and his vulnerabilities.
“This job they gave us isn’t going to be as easy as it was to kill that white man. It’s not going to be hard, either. But keep in mind that we may run into a few bumps in the road. And when that happens, we’re gonna need a plan B,” she said.
Out of the blue her cell phone rang. I’d been with her since I got out of jail and I’d never heard her cell phone ring, so to hear it now shocked me. I watched her give me a blank stare.
“Give me a second,” she said and stood up from the table. Her cell phone was stuffed down in her front pants pocket so when she pulled it out, she looked at the caller ID and then she walked out of the kitchen. Now I can’t lie, I was pretty pissed off that she’d walk out of the kitchen to answer her cell phone. Shit! She and I were family. Who and what is she trying to hide from me?
I sat at the kitchen table and waited for her return. But while I waited, I sat there quietly hoping to hear her conversation with whomever she was talking to. But that didn’t work, because after I heard her close a door down the hall, I knew she went into the bedroom. I can’t front. That shit made me mad! I mean, what the fuck she could be talking about that she doesn’t want me to hear? I am the only person in the world who would lay their life down for hers, so to have this bullshit happen was like a slap in the face.
After sitting there for a little over one minute, I figured that she could only be talking to that nigga that was letting her stay in this house. And the reason why she left the kitchen was because she didn’t want the guy to know that I was in his house. “Oh, but he’s going to know today,” I huffed and shot up from my chair. I stormed out of the kitchen and stormed down the hallway.
When I reached the bedroom door, I grabbed the doorknob and pushed it open. The power behind my strength forced the door to hit the wall behind it. BOOM!
“What the fuck you do that for? You scared the shit out of me!” she yelled after she turned around, stumbling.
“What the fuck were you doing?”
“I was looking at myself in the mirror,” she replied as she turned back around to face the mirror that was attached to the dresser.
“Not that. Who called you on your cell phone?” I pressed the issue.
“It wasn’t nobody special.”
“Ava, don’t play games with me. I know you were talking to that nigga that lives in this apartment.”
Ava stopped rearranging her hair in the mirror and turned back around to face me. “Aiden, does it really matter who I was talking to?” she asked me.
“You damn right it matters, because I don’t want no lame-ass nigga getting all in your ears telling you shit that you wanna hear and then that shit comes between me and you. You know all these niggas out here ain’t shit. All they wanna do is fuck you and leave you. And the ones that decide to keep you around longer will use and cheat on you.”
“You don’t think I know that?” she came back at me. “I’ve been out here on these streets by myself while you were in jail. I’ve run through niggas and used them like they do to other chicks. I’m hipped to the game, Aiden, so don’t come at me like I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Tell me why you had to leave the kitchen and come all the way back here in the bedroom to talk to him? Are you trying to hide something from me?” I wanted to know.
Ava stood there for a moment without saying another word. She acted as if she was trying to think of something to say, and that pissed me off. I stormed toward her and got in her face. “Answer my question Ava,” I screame
d at her.
She looked up at me and said, “Why do you have to get in my face?”
“Just answer my question,” I roared.
At that point, she pushed me back. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she spat, then she stormed out of the bedroom.
I stomped behind her and grabbed her by the arm midway down the hallway. I twirled her around to face me. She tried to break loose.
“Get off me, Aiden,” she said.
But my grip was tight. “Tell me the fucking truth and then I’ll let you go.”
“What do you want me to say?” She resisted a little more.
“I want the truth,” I told her. I wasn’t backing down.
Once again she stood there like she was trying to debate what she wanted to tell me, and again this made me even more angry. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Just fucking tell me already,” I yelled as I shook her a few times.
“Stop, Aiden, you hurting me.” She resisted more, trying to pry my hands away from her. But my strength was too much for her.
“Just tell me and I’ll let you go.”
“Okay, fuck it! I have a lot of feelings for this guy. And I left the kitchen because I didn’t want you to hear the way I talk to him, and I didn’t want him to know that you were here. Now are you satisfied?” she yelled back, and then she finally broke free of my hands. I watched her as she walked away from me; it happened in slow motion. In my mind and heart it felt as if she was literally walking out of my life.
I stood there in complete silence as I mulled over every word she had just uttered, and with every word it felt like she was stabbing me in my heart. I swear I couldn’t believe that she told me that she had feelings for this new nigga that was in her life. This had never happened before. Ava never loved anyone else but me. And now, to know that I had to share her heart with another nigga killed me inside. I mean, what if he fucked around and won her over and took all of her heart? How would I ever be able to cope knowing that I might lose her indefinitely? I couldn’t let that shit happen to me. No way.
