Six Months Later
The death toll from Martin County to St. Lucie County had increased dramatically. There were murders ever night and day between the Martin County niggas and the Haitians in Killa County. The Haitians within Ft. Pierce were at odds, because not only did they have to worry about Real and Shamoney’s force in Martin, but from certain hoods in Ft. Pierce who had mad love for Chyna Man—Johnny.
As the beef cooked up, Black and Pat were both bothered and nervous as hell. Not only were they watching Real and Shamoney take over the streets, but they were also running from Polo’s wrath, which had forced Black out of Miami Gardens in an attempt to capture him. All of Pat’s entourage was killed by Polo except for Big Chub, who had managed to escape the deadly raid when Zo’pound ambushed the entourage at a club in Miami. Pat was also forced to relocate for the benefit of his family’s safety. He was afraid that Shamoney would appear one day with his death sentence, so he moved Gina and his kids into another gorgeous baby mansion further west in Naples.
On the other hand, Shamoney had put up his mansion for $1.5 million, more than what they had paid for it, and sold it in two weeks. They now lived in an even more beautiful mansion on Hutchinson Island in Stuart in Martin County. Down the street from his home, Real and Bellda had their own palace and had become a solid couple in a committed relationship. Real still had no knowledge of Bellda’s relationship with Pat, who she had abruptly stopped seeing and ignored all calls from. She decided to put her focus completely on the man who kept a genuine smile upon her face. Her girl LeLe stayed at her and Real’s place like it was her own.
Lying in bed at the crack of dawn, Bellda emerged from bed, barefoot and nude. She slid into a satin robe and smiled, as she was engulfed in complete gratification and bliss.
In just six months, this nigga has taken over the city and claimed his queen, she thought as she stared at a sleeping Real in their king-sized bed with a plush canopy, silk sheets, and see-through drapes.
I can live like this forever, Bellda thought, tempted to wake Real with her superb head game.
She half-bridled a chuckle when she thought of a conversation she and LeLe had recently had: “Girl, if I was you, I’d keep that nigga’s dick in my mouth. Look how these niggas bow down to him. Shit! He and his brother are gods. And the baby one. What’s his name?”
“Johnny,” Bellda answered.
“Yeah, he’s just as bad as them. Thank God that T-Gutta is one of their disciples,” LeLe exclaimed.
That girl is a mess, Bellda thought as she walked into the unique, spacious kitchen to fix her man a delicious breakfast before she was off to work.
Despite her man’s accessible six figures and desire for her to quit her job, Bellda remained steadfast and continued to work at the nursing home in Port St. Lucie. She had bonded with her elderly patients, and compassionately cared for them. She had worked drudgingly to obtain her CNA license and was still striving to become an RN. Real complemented her daily on her ambition and thoroughly supported her in whatever needs and wants that she had.
Bellda stood with her hands on her hips in the middle of the kitchen as she contemplated what she was going to make Real for breakfast.
“I think bacon, fried eggs, sausage, grits, and some buttered toast would suit him well,” Bellda said to herself.
Maybe LeLe can help me come up with something, and I’ll stop by and give her a plate on my way to work, Bellda thought as she went back into the bedroom to grab her phone.
She saw that Real had stirred in his sleep and had shifted from lying on his back to his side. She quietly grabbed her phone from the nightstand on her side of the bed and walked back into the kitchen to call LeLe. When she booted up her phone, there were innumerable and persistent calls from Pat, like always.
Can’t this nigga get the picture? Bellda thought angrily as she deleted all of his calls. This nigga gonna make me change my number, because one day Real’s gonna catch onto this shit, she realized while calling LeLe.
Bellda still had no clue that she was sleeping with her ex’s invisible enemy. And Pat had no clue that the nigga who had brought wrath on his and Black’s establishment with regulation and slaughter was sleeping with his mistress, Bellda.
“Girl, pick up!” Bellda said impatiently while listening to LeLe’s phone ring.
“Hello,” LeLe breathlessly snatched up the phone.
“Damn, bitch! What’s wrong with you?” Bellda asked.
“Bitch! None of yours. What do you want?” LeLe inquired.
Bellda had quickly put two and two together and concluded that she had stumbled upon the aftermath of her girl getting her morning groove on with T-Gutta.
“Keep on and y’all gone bare more than y’all can spare,” Bellda retorted, getting a chuckle out of LeLe.
“Girl, what do you want?”
“I need some help. What should I cook Real this morning? Help me, and I’ll bring you a plate.”
“Bacon, fried eggs, sausage, cheesy grits, and some good-ass toast,” LeLe fired off before Bellda could finish.
Fat bitch! Bellda thought of her friend.
“That do sound good!” Bellda said.
“Good, then cook it, ’cause, bitch, I’m hungry. All T-Gutta did was fuck me good and haul ass like always.”
“Bitch, that’s you and T-Gutta’s problem!” Bellda said as she hung up the phone hearing LeLe laughing hysterically.
Bellda then began to prepare her man a delicious breakfast to be served in bed while playing Keshia Cole on her iPhone’s Pandora playlist.
* * *
Despite the better scenery, Gina was missing Shamoney to the extreme. They hadn’t communicated since the day Pat had cut him off. Every time she stared into her newborn’s eyes, she saw Shamoney’s striking resemblance. It only took Gina three months to realize that Pat was definitely not the father of Patron Jr. Pat himself was too engrossed in the streets to espy the small giveaway. Patron had Shamoney’s eyes and adorable smile.
Lord, what am I gonna do if Pat questions me for whatever reasons? Gina asked herself while breastfeeding baby Pat.
Looking at her iPhone, she was tempted to call Shamoney and inform him of their creation. But she couldn’t. She loved Pat too much to give away their location. She was aware of their beef, and she knew that Shamoney would kill Pat if he found him anywhere in the world.
Lord, how can two men be a part of me and be at each other’s throats? Gina contemplated.
When Gina saw that Shamoney’s swimsuit model wife was pregnant with twins, she was upset. She desperately wanted to ruin their happiness, since she yearned for happiness from Pat, who had been so busy running from his enemies rather than attending to his family.
I gotta get out of here before I end up in a fucked-up position, with no money and a dead husband, Gina thought of her future.
“I can’t let him kill Pat. Lord, please help me,” Gina cried out, softly wiping away her tears with her free hand.
* * *
“Yo, Kentucky. Check me out. Hit the track with me,” Chucky said to Kentucky, who was about to hop in the long-ass canteen line.
Kentucky looked at the line and then quickly and logically weighed his options.
Fuck it! I’ll catch it when it gets shorter, he thought.
It had been three months since the murder investigation was cleared, and he had been released back to open population on the compound. Within one week of being released, Kentucky had stabbed to death the lookout man from when he killed Jason—Jason’s lookout man.
Kentucky and Chucky were still meeting up every day conversing about getting the fuck away from Martin Correctional.
“What’s good, Chucky?” Kentucky asked as he proceeded to walk the track with Chucky.
Chucky furtively lit up a miniature kush blunt and passed it to Kentucky, who took a pull.
“It’s the new shit, homie. Just hit last night. We have a pound of it,” Chucky informed while holding in the smoke for an intense high, before he exhaled.
“Anything from the work camp?” Kentucky asked as he subsequently took a long pull on the blunt.
He was inquiring about the niggas who copped from him across the street where the low-custody inmates were housed. They were the ones who were permitted to work cleaning detail in the neighborhood, and they were one of the routes used to smuggle drugs into the prison.
“Yeah, they want in on half,” Chucky informed Kentucky.
“Shit, as long as they got the money, then I’ll handle the rest,” Kentucky retorted.
“That’s exactly what I needed to hear. Listen, I don’t know if Real told you or not, but I need you to slow down on locking the compound down,” Chucky told Kentucky, who was stabbing inmates every other week for the smallest things a person could do to tick him off.
Two weeks ago he had stabbed a man to death behind the chow hall for skipping him in line, and for the man calling him a pussy-ass cracker when Kentucky had confronted him. Everyone on the compound knew that Kentucky was no soft white boy and that he was not to be disrespected or underestimated. But the cat was naive.
“Man, I try to chill, but—”
“Listen, Kentucky,” Chucky cut him off and abruptly stopped on the track, “I don’t care how much iron you lay in a muthafucka. Shit, I’m with you. But I only ask this, homie, because our time is approaching real soon,” Chuck concisely explained to Kentucky.
He didn’t need to further elaborate for Kentucky to understand what he was conveying. Kentucky was able to fathom well.
“Is that so?” Kentucky said, passing the roach from the kush blunt to Chucky.
“Soon,” Chucky reminded him, with an impish smirk on his face. “Soon, Kentucky! Like real soon!”
* * *
Johnny was at the 17th Street corner store in Ft. Pierce waiting for Su’Rabbit to come out of the store from macking with a bad-ass redbone bitch. While he was sitting in the driver’s seat engrossed in his iPhone, car brakes came to an abrupt stop, which prompted him to look up. When he did so, he saw the Haitian nigga with a Haitian flag bandana around his face hanging out the passenger window of a money-green Explorer, aiming an AK-47 at his windshield.
Damn it! Johnny thought, ducking on time as the rapid bullets tore out his windshield to his new smoke-gray Tahoe truck on twenty-eight-inch rims.
He was caught slipping and had no clue how to evade the fusillade. Johnny retrieved his MAC-11 from beneath the driver’s seat as the AK-47 continued to remodel his truck.
Chop! Chop! Chop! Chop!
When Johnny saw that the passenger door was getting hit up, he decided to take his chances and evade from the driver’s seat. As he escaped the gunfire, he heard the distinctive sound of Su’Rabbit’s earth-quaking .44 Bulldog.
Su’Rabbit had hit the gunman clean in his forehead, and continued to round off at the fleeing Explorer. The gunman’s body fell from the passenger window and out into the street in the middle of the intersection on Avenue D.
Despite the many witnesses in the daylight, Su’Rabbit ran up the lifeless gunman and pumped more slugs into his body.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
It wasn’t long before Johnny’s bullet-riddled truck had pulled up alongside him.
“Nigga, let’s go!” Johnny screamed, snapping Su’Rabbit out of his killer trance.
Su’ quickly hopped into the truck, and they made it safely away from the scene.
“Nigga, yo’ ass crazy!” Johnny said while laughing as he accelerated through the hood in Ft. Pierce on Avenue I en route to North 29th Street.
“No, nigga! That Zoe was stupid fo’ thinking he was going to end my nigga day today,” Su’ exclaimed with high adrenaline.
“These muthafuckas would never get that lucky, my nigga!” Johnny confidently exclaimed. “Chyna Man too much fo’ these niggas!”