I Gave Him My Heart

by Krystal Armstead

  Aunt Toni was admitted to a mental institution and of course discharged from the Air Force. She stayed in the mental institution for a few years until we agreed to take care of her. Nina agreed to be her guardian. By this time, we’d graduated with our Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from ECU and opened up our tattoo shop, that Nina called Tatted Up, and our bar, Shots. Outside of the money that the both of us had been saving all of our lives to get away from our mothers, we had racked up enough money from our businesses to pay for Nina’s aunt to be taken care of by nurses and home health aides around the clock. Aunt Toni had completely lost it after she saw her husband raping me in her kitchen. She wasn’t the same after that point. She was a different person every time we saw her, medication or not. Most of the time, Nina was the only person she recognized. She loved Nina like her own. No amount of crazy could take that away from her. You couldn’t tell that woman that Nina wasn’t her daughter.

  I occupied my thoughts with helping my cousin, Nina, fulfill her dreams. She grew tired of going to college after she finished her four years. I took a short break but planned on going back to get my master’s after I helped my cousin stabilize her brand. We were both hurt. And we both hid an enormous amount of pain. I partied hard; Nina worked hard. Shit, there wasn’t a party that I didn’t attend. I brought in clients from all over the East Coast to my cousin’s shop. Nina was the best tattoo artist around, black or white. And our whole crew was bad. Nina went out with us every now and then, and you should have seen the attention we got. When your whole team looked like an assorted box of chocolates, bruh, it’s love.

  Over the years, I didn’t have time for men. I tried having serious relationships, which only ended in heartbreak, so I gave the fuck up. If the nigga wasn’t already married, he had a crazy ex that wouldn’t leave him alone. If the nigga wasn’t using me to get a glimpse at my cousin, he was fuckin’ with bitches who worked at my bar. If the nigga wasn’t obsessed with me just because I was light skinned with light eyes, then he was comparing me to his redbone ex who was fuckin’ all of his friends. I was tired of fuckin’ with the lame niggas that I always seemed to attract. I just knew there was no such thing as true love. That was until I ran into Santiago Dominguez and his crew.

  Chapter Three

  My nigga, Saint

  Present Day

  When I tell you that Santiago Dominguez was the most laidback, sexy, rich muthafucka you could ever meet, I mean that shit. Oh my goodness, and everyone that he rolled with was just as suave as he was. His crew called themselves the Scorpions. They were on the scene for a minute, but it wasn’t until I decided to visit Saints, Santiago’s club in Raleigh, that I ran into that sexy muthafucka and his crew. I met this nigga and his crew in January of 2015 and had been around that fool ever since.

  Saint never really cared too much for me as far as sexual attraction was concerned. Said I reminded him too much of his baby’s mother. That he didn’t have time to deal with redbone bitches. I didn’t take offense to that because I had my eye on his nigga, Stephen, any fuckin’ way. Stephen Bandores really liked me, but I never let myself like him. Don’t think it was easy ignoring this boy’s feelings because it really wasn’t. But every time I thought about loving him, I couldn’t. I wanted to flirt with him, but then I’d always think about what happened with Bobbie, or with Nina’s uncle, or with Niq. I wanted to show up to Stephen’s crib with no panties on, but then I’d think about Nina’s uncle raping me on Aunt Toni’s dinner table. I think I slept with everyone around Stephen just so he could get the point, and he still didn’t give a damn.

  I hung out with the Scorpions just about every night. Nina would hate to see me come in the shop drunk and late every morning. She’d hate to hear the words, “Girl, I was out with Saint and his niggas last night!” It was my fault that Nina hooked up with Saint in the first place. He was the coolest muthafucka I knew. Not to mention, he was a go-getter. That boy worked hard in everything he did and always took pride in his appearance. He was Dominican and proud. My cousin was hurt and needed a fix, so I fixed her up with the nigga. It wasn’t long before we found out why her heart tried to ignore him for so long. Saint took my boo out on a date, put that dick in her stomach, and then took her to a concert. And guess whose concert it was? That nigga, Ricque’s concert. Turned out, Saint and Ricque were brothers.

  It seemed like the shit just kept getting worse. During this exact same time, my mother decided that she wanted to pay us a visit. I hadn’t seen my mom since I was fuckin’ eighteen. I was excited to see and hear from her until she explained to me why she was coming. Mama was sick. She was dying of kidney failure, and there was nothing more the doctors could do for her. She had all types of nervous conditions from her diabetes. Not only did my mama only show up because she was dying, but she’d brought Aunt Rayna and London with her. As soon as Nina saw her daughter standing before her, she damn near lost it. Turned out, Nina had no idea that my mama was raising her daughter. And London was just months away from turning seventeen-years-old.

  There Nina was, mind blown and heart broken. She was forced to face the daughter who she’d given up at the age of fifteen. And then she was forced to face Ricque, the man who had no idea she had his child. Saint played dirty, knowing that Nina had lost touch with Ricque. He sought revenge after Ricque’s mother had his family killed. He knew Ricque’s mother was after Nina because she and his first-born were to inherit her deceased husband’s legacy. Though Saint fell head-over-heels in love with Nina, his initial intentions were to get close to Nina to bring Ricque’s mother closer to him, so he could go in for the kill. During the war between Ricque’s and Saint’s family, we lost a lot. During that time, my mother passed away. I refused to go to her funeral. I was so angry with her. She had kept too many secrets from us. Finding out that Nina was my sister, and not just my cousin, hurt me to my soul. Turned out, our step-grandfather had raped both my mother and Aunt Rayna. There was no wonder why Nina and I felt such a deep connection. We were more than cousins. She was my sister. We were connected to each other. It was like I couldn’t live without her, and she couldn’t live without me.

  While Nina, Ricque, and London were in Cali, attending Mama’s funeral, Ricque’s mother, Eva, murdered Aunt Toni and one of her nurses. Eva even had the nerve to send Aunt Toni’s head to Aunt Rayna’s front door the night of Mama’s funeral. We also lost Stephen. Saint lost the woman who helped raise him, Miss Abril. Then, we lost Ernesto. Not to mention, all of Ricque’s and Saint’s siblings. I was shot up during the process and ended up in the hospital for a few weeks. I’d never forget Nina’s phone call, telling me that Saint finally got to Ricque’s mother. That the crazy muthafucka cut her head off. And then, we lost London. Nina didn’t get a good month with her sixteen-year-old daughter when she passed away from heart failure. Nina and I moved to the Dominican Republic and left our shop and our bar in Goldsboro with a few of our girls. The road to recovery was a bumpy one, but we were riding it together.

  ***

  “Aye! Ridin’ round with that Nina!” Keisha sang in her Cash Out voice, twerking her way through the front doors of Mi Tinta on November 3rd, 2015, the day of Nina’s bridal party.

  Nina was turnt, happy to see her girls after not seeing them for six months.

  “Ridin’ with a ho’ named Keisha, smokin’ on Keisha!” Nina spit back, throwing her arms around the friend she missed so much. “Hey, bish!”

  I smiled, watching my sista-cousin greeting our girls who walked through the door of the shop. We’d closed up shop early that afternoon to throw my boo her party. She was tying the muthafuckin’ knot with Ricque, and I couldn’t have been more happy for her. She was beginning to mend her relationship with her mother. She was rekindling her lost relationship with Ricque. Her shop was flourishing. Her shop in Goldsboro, which she left to Yandi, was doing great, racking in the stacks like it was when we ran it ourselves. Her bar, which we left with Janet, was doing amazing as well. I knew she was still hurtin
g from losing London and from how everything went down with Saint, but she still wore that beautiful smile on her face.

  “Where is the muthafuckin’ food?” Peanut came through the door, arm in arm with Brittanie.

  Nina and I looked at one another before we started squealing. I hadn’t seen them since I was eighteen, and Nina hadn’t seen them since she was fifteen. They hadn’t changed a bit, still skinny and loud as ever.

  “Oh my goodness!” I hugged my girls tightly around their necks. “How are y’all?”

  “We’re doing better now that we finally caught up with you two celebrities!” Brittanie rolled her eyes, platinum blonde, wavy hair glowing under the shop lights.

  I looked over her shoulder to see two of the prettiest brown-skinned teenaged girls you could ever see. Peanut didn’t have to tell me that they were her teenaged daughters, Chloe and Zoe. They looked just like someone squished her and Niq’ together.

  Zoe, the one with the Monroe piercing over her lip, handed me a wrapped plate of brownies. She grinned at me. “Hey, Aunt Kourtney!” She hugged me around my neck. The girl was taller than me, tall and slim. Could’ve been a model.

  “Hey, boo!” I hesitated before hugging her back. “Peanut, your daughters are beautiful! I know you have these girls modeling!” I handed the plate of brownies to Pretty, who looked down at the plate like she was about to fuck the brownies up by herself.

  Nina snatched the plate from Pretty, already knowing her intentions. Nina grinned at Peanut and Brittanie before they threw their arms around her. “Hey, skinnies!” She hugged them with her free arm, looking down at the plate. “Well, I guess one of y’all finally learned to cook. Kourtney, do you remember Peanut’s famous mac-n-cheese?”

  I laughed out loud. “Yes, girl! That shit used to taste like moldy shower curtains!”

  Our girls cracked up around us.

  Peanut rolled her eyes, still sensitive as hell. All the shit she talked and she had the nerve to be sensitive. “Well, my husband, Tyson, never complains about it, bitch, so I could give a fuck about what y’all haters say.”

  I glanced at Nina before looking back at Peanut. I knew those two would eventually get back together. I knew that muthafucka would end up marrying that bitch.

  “Well, as long as your dog will eat it, I guess that’s all that matters.” I mumbled to myself, but I’m sure the bitch heard me.

  “What did you say?” Peanut scoffed.

  “Hey, ladies,” Nina intercepted, laughing the conversation off, “Peanut, Brittanie, where is Justine?”

  Justine was my cousin on my father’s side, the man who I thought was my father anyway.

  “Oh, she couldn’t make it. Her son is in the hospital.” Brittanie sighed, checking out our girls who worked at the shop.

  “These are my girls from Goldsboro—meet Keisha, Tierra, Nancy, Janet, Tatyana, Pretty, Lailah, Crystal, Yandi, and Trina. Pretty, Nancy, and Lailah moved here with us and work here with us in Punta Cana. And these are my new employees, Sasha, Zhane, Chelsea, Lexi, Daniella, and Squeak.” Nina introduced our new crew to our old crew. “Some of Ricque’s cousins should be here in a minute. My mama is running late, and so are Ricque’s aunt and foster mother. I want to wait for them to start eating.”

  I looked down at my watch. I was supposed to be meeting Saint in a few minutes to pick up a painting that he’d gotten for me that Nina would love to hang in her living room. She’d been an art fanatic for as long as I could remember. There was this picture drawn by Timothy Knoxberry that hung in Nina’s shop back in Goldsboro. It was drawn by the artist when the boy was just eight-years-old, some eighteen years ago. Saint said he knew the guy and could get him to draw a picture of Nina from a photo that Saint still had of her in his cell phone.

  “Nina, I gotta run to the store to get some more liquor because y’all didn’t even buy enough. You know these hoes like to drink.” I tried to hurry out of the shop before Nina could stop me.

  “Tell Saint I said hi,” Nina called out to me, just as I put my hand on the latch to push the door open.

  Everyone but Peanut and Brittanie giggled. They seemed lost, when even Peanut’s daughters understood the joke. Everyone in the country knew about the shit that went down between Ricque’s family. The shit was all over the news. The media was even at the funeral when we laid Ricque and Saint’s siblings to rest. I’d been kicking it with Saint and his crew from the jump. Everywhere I went with the nigga, cameras were flashing. I should have known from jump by that conniving smile of his, let alone his celebrity connections, that he was related to Ricque’s ass. The fact that he called Nina “Little Nina” when everyone knew that was Ricque’s nickname for her when we were teenagers should have rung a bell, but it didn’t at the time.

  I turned around, rolling my eyes at everyone who was laughing at Nina’s insinuation.

  I shook my head at all of them, looking at the sly grin on Nina’s face. “And the messiness begins.” I sighed.

  “Awe, y’all make such a cute couple.” Yandi teased.

  “You know what?” I stuck my middle finger up at all of them. “It ain’t even like that. Y’all know that’s Nina’s boo.”

  Nina rolled her eyes at me as she went over and sat on the stool behind the counter.

  “Kourtney, y’all do spend an awful lot of time together.” Pretty cosigned with the rest of them.

  “And y’all spend an ‘awful lot of time’ minding my muthafuckin’ business. Whatever I have going on with Saint is my muthafuckin’ business.” I stood at the door, arms folded. “I’ve been kicking it with that nigga for the longest. That nigga is like a brutha to me. Shit, he might as well be—his brutha is my got-damn brutha-in-law. And even if he wasn’t, what I look like fuckin’ around with him when the scent of Nina’s pussy is still on his dick? Y’all know Nina still has that nigga pussy whipped!”

  All our employees, from home and away, burst out laughing, though I was dead serious.

  I hadn’t seen Nina blush that hard in so long.

  “Oh my goodness, we’ve missed a lot.” Brittanie sighed.

  “Apparently.” Peanut shook her head. “The smell of Nina’s pussy is on whose dick? Saint? Ricque’s brother?”

  “Ummm.” Nina could barely talk. “Don’t forget the Roscato, okay?”

  I nodded, pursing my lips. “Yeah, I thought you’d change that smart remark you just made.” I turned around, walking out the door to our shop.

  They weren’t lying; I did spend a lot of time with Saint. He was smart. He was a businessman. And I was a flirt. I helped reel in a lot of clients for him. I would go on business dinners with a few cocaine distributors that Saint did business with. Not to mention, I put my marketing and public relations degrees to good use; I was Saint’s press rep for the hotels that he owned in Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, the Dominican Republic, Florida, Texas, and Louisiana. When I moved to Punta Cana with Nina, I withdrew from East Carolina University (better known as ECU). I wanted to re-enroll in college, ya know, pursue my Master’s degree again. I could draw just as good as my cousin, but I never wanted to take away from her shine. While living in Punta Cana, I finally decided to do something with my art skills. I got my tattoo license. I started drawing on my free time. I was really good. I started selling paintings online and started receiving recognition from some art buyers. Saint was my hook-up. Saint was everybody’s hook up. Everyone wanted to count him out because they always assumed that he had an ulterior motive, but I didn’t. I knew his heart. He was one hundred percent genuine, nothing fake about him. I sped down the street in my steel blue BMW, on my way to meet Saint at one of his clubs, Escorpión.Just like Ricque, there was so much about Saint’s past that he hid from the public eye. I remembered watching Ricque celebrate his birthday on television as a teenager. The entire world thought his birthday was in October, that the nigga was a Scorpio. And Saint kept the same image. Nina thought Saint was lying about his birthday, too, and was confused out of her mind when he said his birthday wa
s in July. Turned out, the “scorpion” was a symbol of the strength of the crew that Saint organized years ago. Santiago even had Nina tat a scorpion on his shoulder a few months earlier. She had no idea that it symbolized Saint’s crew’s motto, “Protect yourself at all times.”

  I walked into Escorpión that evening, walking right past security. Saint had some fine-ass, chocolate security guards. I didn’t know their names; I just called one Mocha and the other Latte. They let me into the club, a slight grin growing across Mocha’s face as he held the door open for me. We’d had a quickie or two on a few occasions, so whenever he saw me, he’d hope I’d give his ass a rerun, or at least a preview.

  I walked into the club to see Saint behind the bar, cleaning, polishing, dusting and shit, like he didn’t have workers who could do the shit for him. He was behind the counter in a white t-shirt and gray sweats, something you’d never see the nigga in out in public. I didn’t know the muthafucka owned anything that costs less than $500. The fact that he was cleaning and letting his employees sit around, drinking and chillin’, said a lot about him. It said that he wasn’t too proud to get his hands dirty every once in a while.

  I watched him polish a glass and sit it down on the counter. Every piece of silverware, glassware, napkin, and piece of furniture had a scorpion on it.

  “Boy, did you know that Nina thought that you lied to her about your birthday?” I laughed out loud, walking up to the bar.

  Saint made a face, picking up another glass, polishing it.