Bonded by Blood Read online

  Gwen swallowed without spilling a drop. From on her haunches she smiled up at him.

  “You wanna take it to the bedroom?” she asked, looking at him like she was just getting started.

  “We can do dat,” agreed B-Man, passing her the lit woo-woo.

  Before they could take what they had started to the bedroom, the doorbell chimed.

  “Now who da fuck is that?” B-Man complained, heading to the door, dick swinging.

  He looked through the peephole and saw Khalil and Q. Rushing back to the bedroom where Gwen had already gone, he hurried her to spray air-freshener in the kitchen to cover up the unmistakable smell left by the woo-woos they had smoked. While she did that, B-Man righted himself.

  The doorbell chimed several more times while Gwen sprayed pine-scented air freshener throughout the apartment. When she was done, Gwen went into the bathroom to brush her teeth and fix herself up.

  “What it do, shawdy?” Khalil greeted B-Man, giving him dap and inviting himself into the apartment.

  B-Man dapped Q next. “What the business is?”

  “Where your girl at?” Q answered with a question of his own.

  “She in the back. Why?”

  “Send her to the grocery store or somewhere,” Q replied. “We got some serious shit to talk to you about.”

  Wrinkling up his, nose Q added, “Damn, shawdy, smell like you been cooking work up in this bitch.”

  “Yeah, I just whipped up two ounces I gotta serve to this nigga Bed-Stuy be fuckin’ wit,” B-Man lied smoothly.

  Khalil and Q sat down on the living room couch while B-Man went to tell Gwen to bounce for a minute. Khalil took in the décor of the small two-bedroom apartment, automatically comparing its modest size and furnishings to the laced spot where Q rested his head with his fly wifey. Khalil could see where at least part of B-Man’s envy came from.

  When Gwen accompanied B-Man back into the living room fifteen minutes later, Khalil’s first thought was, Lil’ Mama about forty-years old, ain’t she? She must be a ride-or-die chic for B-Man to have her as his wifey, cause she definitely ain’t show off material.

  “Hey, Quantavious,” Gwen spoke to Q.

  “What’s up,” he replied. Then B-Man introduced Khalil to his girl.

  Gwen had changed into a blue, pink, and white jogging suit, a pair of white and pink lady Air Max; a platinum link chain that B-Man had jacked for her last year hung around her neck, and her hair had been quickly pulled back into a ponytail. The jogging suit that just three months ago fit her ass like cellophane wrapped around a basketball, now hung off her ass as if she was sagging G-style.

  To Khalil, both B-Man and his girl looked blazed, but he assumed they’d been burnin’ weed.

  Gwen dug the keys to her Honda Civic out of her faux Gucci purse, then told B-Man she was going over to her mama’s for a while.

  “Call me when you’re finished handling your business,” she said while fussing with her ponytail.

  “I’ll hit you up in a couple of hours,” B-Man replied.

  “Bye, Khalil, and welcome home. Bye Q,” Gwen said turning to head out the door.

  As Gwen left, Q was thinking: B-Man’s bitch look bad!

  “So whud da business?” B-Man asked as soon as the front door closed. He sat down in a recliner that was across from where his brothers sat on the couch, produced a bag of dro, and tossed it to Q to twist one up.

  “Man, you ain’t gon’ believe this shit,” Khalil began and then he let Q tell his own story.

  Q was reluctant to spit it because he knew that B-Man was gonna be quick to judge and criticize. He expected B-Man to ridicule him for not emptying out Fazio’s stash and not leaving Fazio with his cap peeled back. With several stops and starts, Q told B-Man the business.

  “Why you ain’t take all that shit, shawdy?” B-Man’s words damn near echoed Khalil’s.

  “I just didn’t wanna leave him fucked up like that.”

  He knew that if Khalil had’t been able to feel his reasoning, there was no chance B-Man would. Q knew without a doubt that if B-Man had been in his shoes that night, Fazio would already be eulogized and buried.

  “Damn, shawdy,” B-Man interrupted Q’s thoughts, “you been sittin’ on all that shit for two months and ain’t told me nothin’? Ain’t broke bread on nothing? You playing the game raw, ain’t you?” B-Man grabbed the dro off the cocktail table and rolled a blunt.

  “I was just waiting on Khalil to get home.”

  “Oh, you can’t trust me?” B-Man asked confrontationally, licking the sticky brown blunt as he waited to hear Q’s lame reply.

  “Dead that. What’s done is done. Now what we gon’ do?” interjected Khalil.

  “Where the shit at?” asked B-Man.

  “I got it put up,” Q answered, short on details.

  “You got all that shit at yo crib?”

  “Hell naw! What, you think I’m stupid?”

  “Shid, shawdy I don’t know! You could’ve struck for major weight and all of Fazio’s trap and you didn’t! That was stupid as fuck,” B-Man spoke with uncut candor.

  “Neva mind where I got it stashed, nigga—that’s my BI. I wasn’t gon’ tell yo ass shit. Thank Khalil for you knowing about it,” Q shot back.

  “See you’s a selfish mafucka!” B-Man was up out of the recliner. Q stood up from the couch. They were nose to nose, like two pitbulls ready to lock jaws. B-Man pushed Q in the chest, causing him to stumble back onto the couch, damn near in Khalil’s lap.

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  “Back up out my grill,” B-Man said.

  Q bounced up on his feet like a jack-in-the-box. He charged B-Man, going for his knees. His quick rush caught B-Man off guard. Before B-Man could spread his legs and drop his weight down on Q’s back to keep him from scooping him off the floor, Q had him off his feet and together they crashed down on the coffee table, splintering it into smithereens.

  Khalil watched calmly as his brothers wrestled in the small living room, tearing it up. As long as they tussled, and no punches were thrown, he decided he wouldn’t intervene. That had been the code right after Black Girl died and they finished raising themselves. There were times when the brothers had bumped heads. Usually it was B-Man and Q, or Khalil and B-Man after Khalil had come to Q’s defense when B-Man tried to straight strong-arm their little brother.

  Because of B-Man’s unbridled fury and powerful punch, when they were younger Q hadn’t been too quick to squabble with him. Like all bullies, B-Man thrived on shit like that. Any sign of weakness, and he was all over a nigga. But he wasn’t quick to press Khalil after his big brother had split his head with a chair.

  They’d fought earlier that day and B-Man was getting the best of Khalil. Later, B-Man was blowing trees, through with it. The chair came crashing down over his head with the force of a brick. B-Man still had the zipper in the back of his head as a reminder.

  Khalil had put him in the hospital and then was the first to visit him. He hadn’t apologized, though. He’d simply said, “Look, shawdy, I love you, bruh. That shit can’t happen no more. We bonded by blood.”

  After that shit, Khalil, B-Man and Q made a pact not to ever do bodily harm to one another. If they were squabbling, it was cool to wrestle, but punches or anything more violated the pact, which had been sealed by, “I put it on Black Girl.”

  Now, as B-Man and Q tussled all over B-Man’s living room, breaking lamps, furniture, nicknacks, and anything else in their path, Khalil watched closely to see if either of them would violate the pact. If a punch was thrown it would tell Khalil that the riff between his brothers was stronger than their bond.

  Khalil was pleasantly surprised to see Q holding his own. He knew that until Q earned B-Man’s respect, B-Man would continue stepping to him on that gorilla shit. In prison Khalil had seen many boar hog-ass niggas trying to run the boo on mafuckaz. You had to show those type of fools that you would go to war with ‘em whenever, wherever.

  B-Man was gaining a little
advantage over Q as Khalil broke up the tussle.

  “Nigga, what!” Q boasted. “You can’t get with this!”

  “Khalil saved ya soft ass,” B-Man said, flexing pecs that bulged through the wifebeater he had on.

  For the next hour the brothers said little; the three of them burned dro and chilled out, letting shit calm down. B-Man wanted a woo-woo, but didn’t want to expose his indulgence. He settled for the dro, but the high was diminished in comparison to the way the woo-woos had made him feel earlier. Finally, B-Man went over to Q and held out a fist to him.

  “It’s all love, shawdy,” he said.

  “Is it?” Q asked, unsure, still he touched fists.

  “To the grave, lil’ bruh,” B-Man swore. “For real, though, fool you shoulda wiped Fazio out!”

  “Yep,” agreed Khalil. “Cause now we gotta worry ‘bout his connect finding out it was Q who touched him, then having the `eses knock lil’ bruh’s head off.”

  “It ain’t too late,” B-Man reminded them as he moved around the living room uprighting overturned furniture, examining broken lamps and other shit. “Gwen gon’ cuss our ass out.”

  “Tell her I got her,” Q said.

  The brothers sat amongst the broken furniture and discussed the moves they’d make in wake of the stolen fortune Q was sitting on. Q’s suggestions carried the most weight since he was the one who was holding the shit, and it was he who’d be the first to catch a hollow point if Fazio ever found out.

  They decided that, for now, Fazio wouldn’t get his head knocked off, but only because Q forbade it. Khalil and B-Man wanted to do him. They gave each other a conspiratorial look: We gon’ dead that nigga, Fazio, if shit gets lukewarm. Fuck waiting on it to get hot.

  The plan was Q would step up his game, requesting twenty bricks instead of the usual five or ten. In theory, this would give Q more opportunity to move some of the stolen kilos along with the new consignment.

  Q would drop hints to Fazio that Khalil was plugged in with an out-of-town connect, which would justify the new shit Khalil needed, being fresh home from prison. Later, after they had stacked money other than the stolen dough, Khalil would make a decent size purchase from Fazio, further justifying his come-up.

  B-Man would have to step up his hustle and keep it thorough, no excuses. He’d still scout out licks. Once Khalil built up his stable, his hos could put him up on sweet licks for B-Man to pull off. B-Man was good with all that, but he wasn’t feelin’ the way Q planned to split up what he’d stolen from Fazio.

  “I’ma give both of y’all ten bricks apiece and fifty stacks,” Q said. It was all good with Khalil, he hadn’t expected his brother to split it evenly.

  Crab-ass nigga! Always gotta end up wit’ more than erbody else! He gon’ have fifty-nine of dem things left, plus one hundred fifty stacks! Ain’t dat a bitch! B-Man silently fumed. What really pissed him off, though, was that Q wasn’t giving him all his shit at once.

  “I’ma give you twenty-five stacks and two of them thangs off the jump. Then I’ll give you the rest of the bricks two at a time, every month. You’ll get the other twenty-five stacks in six months,” Q explained.

  “Nigga, you ain’t gotta ration shit out to me! Either gimme the shit or don’t!” B-Man said with disdain.

  “Real talk, bruh,” explained Q. “If I give you all that shit at once, you gon’ ball till we all fall. Fuck that, I ain’t getting’ murked over your carelessness. End of discussion.”

  “End of discussion? Nigga, I ain’t yo bitch!” B-Man huffed.

  Trying to squash the dissention Khalil said, “That’s smart thinking, shawdy. Hit me with mine the same way. Better safe than sorry.”

  “Whateva,”B-Man said. If that nigga wasn’t fam, I’d put my burner to his head and jack him for all that shit.

  “Don’t tell that nigga Bed-Stuy shit about this. This family BI. Real talk,” Q warned.

  He didn’t trust Bed-Stuy because he had heard that he bodied his best friend for a big eight of hard and ten stacks up in New York before moving south.

  “Scary-ass nigga, I ain’t gon’ tell nobody shit,” B-Man promised.

  Khalil was stretched out across the bed at Sinnamon’s crib. After Q dropped him back off at honey’s crib, Khalil had showered, changed clothes, and drove Sinnamon to work in her orange-sherbet colored Yukon. He’d let her out at the front door of Teaser’s to go get those tricks money and bring it home to Daddy. Then he’d gone back to Sinnamon’s townhouse to relax; it had been a helluva day.

  After waking up from a short rest, Khalil checked the bedside clock! Seeing that it was half past ten p.m., he decided to call Rayne.

  “Hey Baby Love. How you doing?” crooned Khalil when she answered her cell phone.

  Rayne’s heart fluttered inside her chest. She was so happy to hear from him she wanted to scream. Then she recalled that he had broken his promise to call her yesterday.

  “Hello Khalil. I’m doing fine, and you?” Her tone hid her excitement.

  “Better now that your sweet voice is in my ear. But you don’t sound too happy to hear from me.”

  “What happened to you calling me yesterday?”

  “My bad, but you know how it is . . . first day home and my brothers gave me a welcome home party and kept me tied up, then today I got caught up in some other shit,” Khalil explained.

  “Mmm hmmm!” replied Rayne. “The other stuff you got caught up in wouldn’t be no other female’s thighs would it?”

  “I’m not gonna even justify that with a response,” said Khalil, otherwise he would have to lie.

  “I heard about the little parking lot show.”

  “Did you?” he laughed.

  “Yep, everybody was talking about it today at work,” she reported without sounding jealous.

  “Let ‘em talk. They don’t have shit else to do. As long as you know I was just shining on those lames. Just like when I tongued you in the dorm before I left.”

  “Don’t remind me! The captain called me into his office today to question me about it. Of course I denied it and acted insulted that such a rumor would be connected to me,” laughed Rayne.

  “That’s right, Baby Love, never admit anything.”

  Rayne asked if he was enjoying his freedom. Khalil told her that there was nothing sweeter but the smell of her perfume.

  “I’m going to have to watch you because you know exactly what to say to make me blush,” she confessed.

  They talked for an hour and Khalil had Rayne dreaming of blue skies and eternal sunny days when they finally ended the call.

  Whew! A nigga ain’t been home, but two days and already shit is about to jump off, Khalil thought as he browsed around Sinnamon’s crib checking things out. Let me see if this bitch got anything up in here that could get a nigga cased up, anything some fool might run up in here after. Cool, everything looks legit. Now I can really relax. Shit is crazy. Already got me a ho; my lil’ bruh sittin’ on hood riches, and Baby Love will be coming up to the city to spend a weekend with me soon.

  Mexicans were gunnin’ for the Jones boys night and day. Everywhere Khalil turned Mexicans were bustin’ guns at him; even brothas in the hood were trying to knock his head off and collect the blood money that Fazio had out on Khalil’s head. He and B-Man had dumped on a Trans Am full of `eses just yesterday. Q was missing, and Khalil feared that his baby bruh might be dead. Fuck! Here come two muthafuckas with choppers . . .

  The ringing of the cordless phone on the nightstand awoke Khalil from the dream just when he was about to wet some shit up. Even in his sleep he wasn’t letting muthafuckas put him in no body bag.

  “Hello?” he answered, glancing at the bedside clock. It was two o’clock in the morning, not yet time to pick up Sinnamon.

  “Baby, uh . . . I got this guy who wants me to go home with him for the rest of the night and maybe spend tomorrow with him, too. He’s a big spender, baby. What—”

  “Stop!” Khalil cut her off putting his hand up as if Sin
namon could see the gesture. “What did you just call me?”

  “Huh?” she asked, confused by Khalil’s question.

  “Did you just call me ‘baby’?”

  “Uh . . . yeah,” she stuttered.

  “Check this, and file it in your memory so you won’t allow your tongue to violate again. Baby, honey, sugah . . . those are pet names for tricks.”

  “Okay, daddy,” Sinnamon agreed. “I’m sorry.”

  “You good, shawdy. Now, how much money this nigga spending? He better be spending real good to keep you with him overnight and all day tomorrow, too.”

  “Yeah, daddy, his money is official, he plays for the Hawks.”

  “That’s all good and shit, but we ain’t accepting no shopping spree or VIP tickets to none of that nigga’s basketball games. Make sure you let him know up front that it’s gonna cost him a couple stacks.”

  Sinnnamon listened dutifully, muttering her understanding. Last night they had talked and she already understood what was expected of her.

  “I’ll see you in a day or two, daddy. Don’t worry, I’ma come home with a purse full of that NBA dough,” she promised.

  “All right. Get that money, shawdy.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Q pulled up in Thomasville Heights in his Ford Explorer, fresh out the shop with a new cotton-candy green paint job and brand new twenty-four inch Blades. Riding shotgun with his lil’ bruh was B-Man.

  Several months had passed since they’d tussled in B-Man’s living room. Q had broke his brothers off as promised, plus he had upped his consignment from Fazio to twenty bricks and had been showing B-Man love. Q didn’t realize it, but he’d made the wisest move of his young life when he’d changed the wrappings on the stolen bricks he’d put in the streets. He hadn’t known of the small Virgin Mary stamp on the inside of the original wrappers, he’d changed them just as a precaution against the bricks being identified by the color of their wrappers. It had been four and a half months since he’d touched Fazio’s stash, and he was beginning to relax.