Page 83 of Love & Vendettas
“I know, dude. I just needed a minute. Shit be too much for a G sometimes. When it gets like that, you gotta take a knee.Sometimes, even taking a knee won’t help; you gotta climb up into His arms. That’s what I’ve done the last couple of days since we lost him.”
“I know, Dad. It just doesn’t seem right without Uncle G around, hanging in the kitchen, eating up Mama’s food, and then lying to Aunt Pam that he ain’t ate all day.” Zechariah reminisces with a soft chuckle.
My kids were close to Ghalen. He was like an uncle to them, and truthfully, they were closer to him than they are to my siblings. That’s only because we have to keep a distance between us.
“I’m worried about her.”
“I know. Mama said she is too. She went with her to make the funeral arrangements this morning, and Mama had to do everything. She said Aunt Pam couldn’t remember simple things like his birth date. It’s gotta be hard. Makes you not want to get married if loving hurts like that. I see why you ain’t never marry Mama, and as much as I love Marika, I probably won’t ever marry her either. Can’t stand the thought of losing someone like that.”
We stop on the second-floor landing, and I grab my son by the shoulders, turning him toward me.
“Listen here. Maybe I fucked up, and I’ve sent you the wrong message. I didn’t avoid marrying your mama because I was scared to lose her. Hell yeah, I’m scared of losing her and y’all li’l asses too. But whether I marry her or not, one day, one of us is going to lose the other. That’s just a fact.
“I didn’t marry your mama because I never wanted her to get caught up in my shit. When you live a life like I live, if I take on a wife, she’s now attached to me. If anything goes wrong, they're coming after her too. In today’s superficial world, data is not your friend anymore, especially in my situation. The best way to protect her is to be married to her in the spirit, but noton paper. I’ve never not been married to your mama, just not according to society’s rules. You feel me?”
“Yeah, OG. My bad.”
Zechariah reaches his hands out and grips my shoulders.
“I love you, man.”
I pull my son closer and pound him on the back. “I love you too,” I mumble before I kiss the top of his head.
I clench my jaws to hold off the emotions that want to manifest in tears. I ain’t with that shit. We pull apart and head down the rest of the stairs.
“Where’s your uncle?”
“In your office.”
“A’ight. I’ll holler at you later.”
“I’m heading out. Call me if you need me, OG.” I watch my oldest disappear down the long hallway before I turn and head inside my office.
“Hope you don’t mind.” Damascus greets me with an upheld snifter in his hand.
“It’s all good, man. Sorry ‘bout the meeting the other night,” I apologize, walking to my desk and taking a seat.
He tosses the whiskey back and shakes his head. “Nah, it’s all good. As soon as I heard what happened on the police radio, I knew you wouldn’t be coming. I came to you, though.”
“I didn’t see you.”
“I started to come over to you, but I didn’t want to raise any suspicions. So, I stayed at the edge with the other officers.”
“You did well. We should keep shit on the low. We stick to the same plan. We’re safe as long as nobody knows that y’all are my siblings. It’s the only way we keep the power in the city the way that we do. The only way that we can maneuver and run the city the way that we do.”
“Except someone’s trying to cripple your ass from the inside. Trying to bring down this entire empire. You cut off thehead of the snake, and you weaken the rest of the enemy. I kept thinking about shit, and it didn’t make sense. Small attacks to the Fab Five, but major attacks on you. Only someone who knew about the Significant Six could go for the jugular the way they’ve been doing.”
The Significant Six was what our mama had called us back in the day. Everyone wasn’t privy to that information; only those close to us were. When we were separated, I had taken to calling them the Fabulous Five.
“What do you mean?”
“Come on, Z. Someone put Essence back into the running for the race, knowing that if she gets elected mayor, Savannah is out of the DA’s office. Aspen and Denver’s business has come under scrutiny. They were recently audited and fighting against people who wanted to cast aspersions on them about insider trading.”
“Damn, that’s right, I’d forgotten about all that shit with my shit going on.”
“Right. Your hands were tied, trying to make it difficult for you to come to their rescue, but it was just talk. Luckily, no actions have been taken, but talk is all you need to take a hit in the stocks, and their stocks are down. Then you’ve got Cheyenne, who’s encountering blocks on every proposal that she puts before the council lately. Taking the city planner out, the DA and the CEO of the largest construction and real estate companies in the southeast ain’t nothing to sneeze at.”
“Then there’s you,” I say.
