“Well, it could be Kevin’s crew,” Faheem said. “I think y’all underestimate that lil’ nigga. I mean, think about it. What’s the odds of him showing up with the Don’s daughter? I did some checking and it wasn’t until he got with shorty that he got his weight up. I’m telling y’all, shit not adding up. Y’all need to listen to me.”

“Whoever did it got me all fucked up.” I was in a rage. It brought me back to when I slit my brother’s throat. These muthafuckas came to the wrong nigga’s house. It was fucked up because now I had to constantly look over my shoulder. But once I found out who was responsible, it was going down. I hoped it was Kevin. At least I would be able to get at him easily. Right now, all this uncertainty had me jumpier than a muthafucka.

“First things first, we are getting the fuck up outta this house. Unless you want to be like Ock in the movie Belly, a sitting duck waiting on them muthafuckas and end up dead. So pack your shit. You can’t stay here tonight,” Trae told me.

“Santos! The police are here,” Jake hollered down the basement stairs.

“Tell them I’ll be right up.”

“Where do you wanna go? There’s more than enough room at my house,” Faheem offered. “And your daughter is already there.”

“She’s safer there. But Trae is closer, and I need to make sure Red got her head on straight. At least until we figure something out. Tell my daughter that her dad will catch up with her later.”

“She ain’t thinking about y’all. She got Aisha and Kaeerah. It’s one big ass non-stop pajama party.”

Look at Faheem sounding like a soccer dad! That was who we all were becoming. But trying to remain legit seemed like a dark, fluffy, cloud high up above that we would never reach. Our hands stayed deep into some bullshit. The bullshit with Seven showing up. The bullshit with Don Carlos wanting us to go to China. And more bullshit with Mari opening her own investigation. Now this. We were going into that blind. And now more than ever, I really wanted to keep my nose clean, especially with the new baby on the way. But it didn’t look like it was going to happen for me.

“In the meantime, Bo is going to put feelers out there in the streets. Believe me. We are going to find the muthafuckas who did this,” Faheem assured me.

“I put that on my granddaddy,” Trae vowed, running his hand over his baldhead.