Rozalyn 6: The Finale

by Shan

I took Jahkim inside of the warehouse and straight to the back of the last room that wasn’t currently under construction. Melo’s ass was standing in the corner playing the fucking video game with some muthafuckin’ headphones on that he didn’t even hear us come in. I pulled out the heater and pumped two rounds into the flat screen.

  His big ass jumped and went for his piece, but halted when he turned around and saw that it was me. He threw the headphones to the floor and knew that he was trouble. I motioned for him to go outside and gave him a look that let him know that I would handle his ass later.

  Once Melo was gone, I leaned against the wall, fired up a cigarette, and watched Jahkim remove his kufi followed by his suit jacket, then rolled up his sleeves. He got down on his knees, said a quick little prayer, and then got back up. I didn’t know what this nigga was about to do, but it was interesting to see how he was gonna handle the situation.

  “Pops,” Jaheim’s head raised. He looked over at me with a grimace on his face and then back at his father, Jahkim.

  Yesterday after Black and Big Ace snatched up Jaheim after he left Rozalyn’s house, I had them bring him here and for them to take turns watching him. I was in the middle of my meeting with Jahkim and couldn’t get here until after we were done.

  During our sit down, Jahkim explained how he wanted me to give his son a chance to do business with me. Jahkim was trying to stay under the radar being that he’d just gotten out of prison not too long ago. His sons had already been overseeing things for him while he had been locked up and since he had been out he only did things from a distance. I was cool on that and had agreed to meet up with his son and told him to call his son up and have him meet us being that he was still in Miami. Jahkim said that he hadn’t been able to get in contact with him in over three hours.

  He went on and on to talk about how Jaheim, his son, to my surprise was a good man and how if he kept his head on straight he could be a legend in the streets. I was beyond shocked hearing that he was Jaheim’s father. Jahkim was in fact a huge deal where he was from and had made a name for himself even while he was locked up. He still had niggas on the outside working for him and handing out orders to muthafuckas like he wasn’t serving time.

  I had a lot of respect for dude, and needed him to get down badly. He was the only connection that I had to the Muslim community and to a lot of people’s surprise; they had a great deal of influence in the streets all over the world. I needed them to continue to make stride and they needed me. But now, I didn’t know where this would leave our business relationship.

  I had his son tied down to a chair, beaten, starved, and just all the way fucked up. My plan was to come back here and finish him off, but there was no way that I could after what I had learned, and that shit was slowly eating away at me. I couldn’t get the images of him fucking Rozalyn out of my head and each time I thought about it, it slowly ate away making me feel like less than a man for not doing right by her.

  “You’re lucky that I got in contact with this man! I asked you to come down here and do one simple thing, but instead you come down here disrespecting him by fuckin’ his wife!”

  WHAM!

  “Shit,” I mumbled after Jahkim punched Jaheim across the face. I guess I didn’t have to touch him after all even though revenge would’ve been so sweet. I had two fucking bullets with his name on it. He was lucky that Black and Big Ace had a hard time catching up to him a few days ago or otherwise he would’ve already been dead and his daddy wouldn’t have been able to save him.

  After thinking about the shit overnight, I waited until the meeting of the heads to let Jahkim know that I had Jaheim being held here. I could see the fire in his eyes and knew that if he could’ve killed me on looks alone, I would’ve been a dead man. But once I told him my reasoning behind it and how disrespected I felt, he immediately softened and that fire had turned into pure anger for his son.

  He understood how precious a man’s wife was to him and thanked me for not going through with killing Jaheim. He promised me he would take care of his Jaheim and made sure that he would never want to stick his dick elsewhere for a long while. I guess that would have to do for me. For now.

  I text Melo and told him to bring the car around. I left out of the room leaving Jahkim and Jaheim behind. Once I made it outside, Big Ace and Black were posted up against the truck passing a blunt back and forth.

  “Crazy shit bruh,” Black said to me.

  “Hell yea. That nigga lucky as fuck. I was for sure on my way here last night after I met with that nigga Jahkim. I wanted that nigga’s blood so bad that I could taste it.”

  Black and Big Ace laughed. Black passed me the blunt they had in rotation and I hit it a few times before Melo pulled up in the Escalade.

  “Make sure they get to where they need to go when they’re done,” I said to them. “I need to go holla at my wife.”

  “Do you need me to go with you?” Black asked.

  I shot Black a death stare before hopping in the back seat of the Escalade. Black had grown to love Rozalyn like a little sister and I understood that because I had grown to love his chick as well, but I was sick of him jumping in our shit. I guess he felt like he needed to protect Rozalyn from me and I guess with the way I was feeling right now, maybe he did.

  I truly wanted to hurt Rozalyn, but Jahkim had laid some jewels on me that saved her hoe ass life. Once he told me; Whoever bears arms against us is not one of us, and whoever cheats us is not one of us and to apply it to my life in business and my life in marriage. After letting it marinate for a while, it made a whole lot of sense to me. I had to think about how I felt knowing that Rozalyn slept with Jaheim and then imagine her feeling ten times worse being I had done it to her repeatedly even creating babies out the situation.

  Jahkim had even mentioned to me that if I couldn’t be loyal to my wife that I would always have a bunch of disloyal niggas around me because muthafuckas would feel that I didn’t value loyalty when I couldn’t even show it at home. I never thought about shit that way and was starting to wonder was that the reason I could never build a foolproof team.

  Now that I had this cartel behind me I had to be careful and think things all the way through. I didn’t want to build all of this to have some hoe ass nigga or bitch cause it to come crumbling down. If starting at home was what I needed to do to ensure that my shit was airtight then I was gonna get on that today.

  19: Tamar

  3 months later…

  It had been 3 months and I had been on the go nonstop and was continuing to build the UNC up and each day it became stronger and stronger. To be just twenty-seven years old, I had come a long way in life and the only thing I regretted was not growing up and doing things differently a long time ago. Maybe then I would’ve had my day-one niggas here to enjoy everything that had come my way. Even that nigga Brandon.

  Looking back on how things had all gone down between us, I had to say I was at fault for a lot of the shit that happened. Him feeling the need to betray me, sleeping with Rozalyn, and killing Keylan, and all the other bullshit he had done wasn’t entirely his fault. I was partially to blame too. He was my brother even though it hadn’t been through blood and I should’ve did my best to take care of him and hold him up so that he never felt the need to take the actions that he had.

  Over the past few months, I had been dealing with Jahkim a lot more than I had ever expected and he had been working with me on building the UNC with people that I could trust. He had a group of men that stayed loyal to him for over half of his life and had I not had them murdered, he would’ve still had them holding him down. I felt bad for the shit I had done to him, but yet he had forgiven me and acted as if it never happened. He would always tell me that I had reminded him of himself when he was younger just as much as his sons did.

  I was grateful for the relationship I had developed with him. Maybe because I still longed for that father-son relationship that I could never have with my own father. Jahkim treated me as if I was his own an
d I appreciated him for that. I would always be indebted to him. He didn’t know how in such a short amount of time, he had completely changed my life and my way of thinking. I had thought that I had it all together, but the moment I had met him, I realized that I still had a lot of shit to work on especially if I wanted to be respected and continue to have longevity in the dope game.

  “Aye, where you at?” I asked as I walked into Rozalyn’s house.

  After I had left Jahkim and Jaheim at the warehouse, I was able to get Rozalyn to sit down and talk to me and we had sat back for over two hours talking about what we wanted to do with each other. She claimed that she had only wanted to be friends, but I didn’t want to give my baby up, but I knew that if the love had been real between us, and if it was meant to be then, we would find our way back to it.

  I had finally given her permission to go ahead and get out there and date, but I wasn’t a complete fool. I made sure I pulled out all the stops so that she wouldn’t even want to do anything and as far as I knew she hadn’t. I would send her flowers every day, place cards on the windshield of her car, send people over to cater to her once a week, and I even had purchased her a brand new Maserati. She wanted a house, but I made up a reason why she had to wait. I wasn’t going to get her a house until all of us were moving in together.

  I had treated Rozalyn like a queen over the past few months, but kept it at friendship level like she wanted. It was cool though cause in that time I was able to fix a lot of shit that I had messed up. Finally got to give her that apology that I owed her. And got her to talk to me about what had gone down at Latoya’s house and how she had been dealing with it. We had never been able to discuss it and I didn’t realize she had been going through so much afterwards.

  “I’m in the kitchen!” Rozalyn called out.

  I followed the sound of voice and found her standing over the stove and stirring a steaming pot of food. I ran my eyes over my body and shook my head. It had been a minute since I had been up in that and each time I saw her, I found it harder and harder to resist her. She had gained a few pounds and that shit had her looking right. But I had to remember she was on this friendship shit and keep my distance.

  “Damn, what you up in here burning?”

  Rozalyn laughed. “I ain’t burning nothing nigga. Made you one of your faves. Jambalaya, shrimp, smoked sausage, and some dirty rice. Did you grab the cornbread like I asked?”

  I walked over to her and sat the bag that I had on the counter. I wrapped my arms around her waist and kissed her on the neck. She smelled good. I had received a text from her this morning saying she wanted me to meet her here so that we could talk, but the way she was standing in the middle of the kitchen smelling like fresh melons and rocking a pair of shorts that had her ass cheeks falling out had me tempted to try my luck.

  “You look good,” I told her as I stepped back and eyed her ass.

  “Thank you and you do too, as usual. Fire up that blunt and I’m about to throw this cornbread in the oven and then we can talk about what I called you over here for.”

  “Already.”

  I grabbed the blunt from off the kitchen counter and then made my way into Rozalyn’s living room. I turned the TV onto Sports Center and then flopped down on the sofa. After a few minutes, Rozalyn came and muted the television and sat a couple of seats over from me. I fired up the weed and turned into my seat so that I could look at her.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “How is Keysha doing?”

  I ruffled my brow as I hit the weed and slowly blew out the smoke. I didn’t know if this was a trick question or if she genuinely cared about how Keysha was doing or not. She had never asked about her before, so I didn’t know where this conversation was about to lead to.

  “She cool. How are you?” I asked trying to change the subject.

  “I’m good, Tamar. I just figured that since we were working on building a stronger friendship, I thought that I would call you over here to tell you that I was sorry for the way that I had been acting over the past year. I had been sitting over here doing a lot of thinking and I realized that I could’ve handled certain situations a lot differently. Although you were wrong as shit for putting those cameras up in here, I wanted to say sorry for what you had to see. I can only imagine how it made you feel and I know that if the tables had been turned, it would’ve killed me to see you in that position with someone else. I should’ve said that a long time ago.”

  “It’s cool. I’m over that now,” I lied. That shit still fucked with me from time to time.

  “I didn’t know that Jaheim was working with you like that. Not when I first met him anyway.”

  “He wasn’t. He didn’t start until after the two of you hooked up so it’s not a big deal. I ain’t mad about that shit no more. Besides a nigga can’t really fault you for moving on though ma, I told you that a couple of months ago. I was being a selfish ass nigga like I always have been and the shit I put you through would’ve been pushed the average chick away years ago. I didn’t appreciate your worth and that was fucked up.”

  “Wow,” Rozalyn laughed. “I’m still having a hard time getting used to this new you. I guess that’s why it’s taking me so long to come out of this wall I had built up to keep you out. You really are serious about this new you, new look stuff, huh?”

  “Dead ass.”

  “Hmm, well I don’t mean to throw it in your face, but no you didn’t appreciate my worth. I don’t feel like you ever have.”

  “You didn’t appreciate it either. You can’t expect for a nigga to love and appreciate some shit you don’t appreciate yourself. The first time I ever disrespected you, you came back to me like it was okay. And the second time, the third time, and so on and so on. For years you made it like it was okay for me to do what I was doing to you.”

  “Damn, so it was my fault.”

  “I’m just being straight up with you ma because I do love you. You waited until after we’d been together for eight muthafuckin’ years to tell me that the shit I was doing to you wasn’t okay. Yea, you cried, you even cheated yourself, you threatened to leave me, but you always came back to me. And for that I always knew that I could do whatever I damn well pleased to you and you would always come back around even if it took you a little while.”

  I passed Rozalyn the blunt and she sat back quiet while she thought about what I was telling her. I wasn’t telling her shit that wasn’t true. A man will only do to a woman what they allowed. All of the shit that I done to Rozalyn was never her fault, but she never made me feel like it was mine either. She allowed me to walk all over her and because I had been so childish, I did just that.

  “All I’m saying is, you gotta speak up and stand your ground. If a nigga you fucking with treating you wrong, then don’t stand for that. I don’t give a fuck how many threats I made, how many times I put my hands on you, or made you feel like you had no other choice, you was supposed to leave my ass like you did this last time. You made me see how serious you were and because of that I had to take a look at myself and see that I was wrong.”

  “I never wanted to walk away from you though, Tamar, that’s just it. I loved you too much to ever leave. Even now, I still struggle with the fact that we’re not together. You’re all I know and it still hurts me that I had to leave you.”

  “Come here,” I said holding out my hand.

  Rozalyn looked at me and shook her head no. She reached out to pass me the blunt and I grabbed the blunt from her, then grabbed her hand and pulled her over to me. I sat her down on my lap and ran my hand over her body. I looked up at her and tears fell from her eyes.

  “You still love me though right?”

  “You know I do.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “On some real shit, I’m getting tired of being your friend. I don’t usually wanna make love to my friends as bad as I wanna make love to you right now.”

  Rozalyn laughed and shook her head.

  “Gimme a kiss babe.”<
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  Rozalyn leaned over and kissed my lips. She then pulled back and looked at me before kissing me again. She slid her tongue into my mouth and wrapped her legs around my waist. I reached over and dropped the blunt in the ashtray before pulling her shirt over her head.

  Removing her breast from her bra, I sucked her nipple into my mouth and used my hands to pull her shorts down. She didn’t have on any panties, so I slid my finger into her slit and worked my thumb over her clit.

  “I missed this,” I told her.

  “Me too,” she admitted.

  “Can I have my family back?”

  “What about Keysha?”

  “You know how I am, I’mma take care of my responsibility, but I don’t want her. I haven’t wanted her in a while. She’s just there hoping that one day I’ll love her the way that I love you.”

  “She’s gonna be hurt though, Tamar, and I know how she feels.”

  I nodded my head and picked Rozalyn up off of me. I stood up and pulled some papers out of back pocket. I had brought these with me because I wanted to test Rozalyn to see where her head really was when it came to us. Handing the papers over to Rozalyn, I grabbed the blunt from the ashtray and fired it back up.

  “What’s this?” she asked as she pulled the papers open and looked down at them. I heard her sigh and watched as her hand trembled. “You signed them?”

  “That’s what you wanted me to do, right?”

  “I…I…no. I mean, I did, but I don’t know if I want that anymore. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and I think I need more time to think about this. I don’t know if we should give up just yet. Do you want to get a divorce?”

  “I just asked you could I have my family back and you asked about somebody else.”

  “We never went anywhere. Was just waiting for you to come back to us.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  I got down on my knees and pulled Rozalyn down onto the couch. I pushed her legs open and dipped my head in between them. The moment my tongue connected with her second set of lips, she grabbed my head and tried to push me away. I gripped my arms around her waist, pulled her closer, and held her in place so that she couldn’t go anywhere.