P rince sat in the stiff wooden chair totally numb. The tailored Armani suit he had been so proud of when he dropped two grand on it now felt like a straitjacket. He spared a glance at his lawyer who was going over his notes with a worried expression on his face. The young black man had fought the good fight, but in the end it would be in God’s hands.
He tried to keep from looking over his shoulder, but he couldn’t help it. There was no sign of Sticks, which didn’t surprise him. For killing a police officer they were surely going to give him the needle, if he even survived being captured. The police had dragged the river but never found a body. Everyone thought Sticks was dead, but Stone said otherwise. Sticks was his twin, and he would know better than anyone else if he was gone. Prince hoped that Stone was right and wished his friend well wherever fate carried him.
Marisol sat two rows behind him, with Mommy at her side looking every bit of the concerned grandmother. It was hard to believe that she was the embodiment of death, cloaked in kindness. This was the first time he had seen Mommy since his incarceration, but Marisol had been there every day for the seven weeks the trial had gone on. She tried to stay strong for her man, but he could tell that the ordeal was breaking her down. Cano had sent word through her that he would be taken care of, but Prince didn’t want to be taken care of; he wanted to be free.
Keisha sat in the last row, quietly sobbing. She had raised the most hell when the bulls hit, even managing to get herself tossed into jail for obstruction of justice. She had always been a down bitch, and he respected her for it.
Assembled in the courtroom were many faces. Some were friends, but most were people from the neighborhood that just came to be nosey. No matter their motive the sheer number would look good on his part in the eyes of the jury, at least that was what his lawyer had told him. The way the trial seemed to be going, he seriously doubted it at that point.
Lined up to his left were his longtime friends, Daddy-O and Stone. Daddy-O’s face was solemn. His dress shirt was pinned up at the shoulder covering the stump where his left arm used to be. It was just one more debt that he owed Diego that he’d never be able to collect on. Stone smirked at a doodling he had done on his legal pad. Prince wasn’t sure if he didn’t understand the charges they were facing or just didn’t care. Knowing Stone, it was probably the latter. He had long ago resigned himself to the fact that he was born into the game and would die in it.
Prince wanted to break down every time he thought how his run as a boss had ended. To see men that you had grown to love like family take the stand and try to snatch your life to save their own was a feeling that he wouldn’t wish on anyone. No man above the team was the vow that they had all taken, but in the end only a few kept to it. To the rest, they were just words. They had laughed, cried, smoked weed, and got pussy together, but when the time came to stand like men they laid down like bitches. These men had been like his brothers, but that was before the money came into the picture.