"Because the life you have didn't happen by accident." She nodded slowly. I could see something shifting in her expression. Understanding. Perspective maybe. But there was another realization sitting quietly in the back of my mind too. One I wasn't sure I was ready to say out loud yet.
I stared at the house again. The porch creaked under one of Shante's boys running up the steps. And for a second, I saw the girl I used to be. Sitting on those steps. Dreaming about a life that felt bigger than what she had. She thought love would be the answer. That if somebody chose her hard enough, everything else would fall into place. Sitting there now, beside my daughter, I realized something she didn't know yet. You can escape where you come from and still end up lost in what you built after.
JUles
I rushed through traffic across town to meet my brothers this morning. Brake lights stretched across the bridge like a red river, slow and impatient. My hand stayed steady on the wheel. My mind didn’t. I’d found myself caught up with Jade after she sent her location, and I followed it that night. In a way, it gave me a sense of control. Traffic crawled across the bridge heading downtown. Brake lights stretched out in front of me like a red river. I kept one hand on the steering wheel and the other resting near the gear shift, watching the lane next to me inch forward. My mind stayed moving, though. At first, showing up to her spot felt like a strategy. Something calculated. But habits formed fast. And lately, I wasn't sure if what I was doing was strategy or just repetition.
I told myself it was control. I was managing the situation. Keeping her close and quiet was key. As long as I was in her bed, she wasn't in a courtroom. That's how I justified it, because it worked; it didn't have to be clean. In a way, I was keeping her safe, making sure my brothers never found out where she was laying her head at with her child. The whole situation was fucked up. But fucked up situations still required solutions.
Looking in the mirror at myself, I was back to where all this shit started, just for different reasons, I felt. That part bothered me more than I let myself think about. Years ago, the problems in my life came from reckless decisions. Now they came from calculated ones. But the ending always seemed to circle back to the same place. All that mattered was that I believed I had control; I didn't have to question anything else. My house was slowly going back to normal, and this bitch wasn't threatening me with the law every five minutes. At least that's what I kept telling myself.
I pushed the thoughts to the side as I moved through traffic, pulling up at Velvet. The club sat quiet in the daylight. Most people only knew Velvet at night. But during the day, it felt like a different place entirely. I parked and stepped out, straightening my shirt before walking inside.
When I opened the door and entered the building, everybody turned to look at me quietly before Juste continued talking, making the attention shift back to him. That brief moment of silence wasn't unusual. I walked up and stood at the bar where he had pictures and paperwork spread out. The smell of stale liquor and wood polish lingered in the air. My eyes dropped to the pictures first. And my heart skipped a beat for a minute thinking it could have been me and Jade. The thought hit me quick and hard. Because if my brothers ever laid eyes on anything tying me to that woman, things would move differently. But the photos weren't us. That didn't calm me; it just reminded me of how close it could've been.
They were pictures of different niggas who looked Haitian from different angles and locations. Street corners. Parking lots. Gas stations. The pictures had details wrote on them about each one of them. My eyes scanned through them slowly. "These the niggas that hit that lick on ya?" I questioned, glancing up at Enzi. He nodded once.
"If you was on time you woulda heard me say that," Juste said cutting his eyes at me. His tone stayed calm. But the message was there. He didn't like being ignored. "Where the fuck you was at anyway?" He questioned. I didn't answer. Instead, I studied one of the pictures closer. The man standing outside a convenience store with a Baseball hat pulled low.
"When we taking this trip to get this nigga shit back?" I questioned ignoring him completely. Juste leaned back slightly, watching me.
"Nigga soon as we off that bad body bitch that's threatening to talk to a jury about your ass," Noles said looking at me like I was stupid. "You must forgot you got a trial coming up?" I didn't answer that either. Instead, I grabbed one of the photos and turned it sideways, looking closer at the background. A street sign sat just above the man's shoulder read Miami Gardens. I set the photo back down. "Any of these niggas look familiar to you?" I questioned Enzi. He leaned forward slightly, squinting at the pictures spread across the bar like he was looking through memories instead of photographs.
"Nigga you must be deaf or some," Noles said, "You can quit ignoring us acting like we not noticing that shit,"
"Aye, man, you can quit asking questions about this shit," Juste said, pointing at the pictures on the bar. "You not in on this shit." His voice stayed even. But his eyes held mine longer than necessary. "You supposed to be worried bout your trial nigga," Pierre said, leaning back against the bar. "You a lil too calm for me, what you know something we don't?"
I leaned back slightly, crossing my arms. "I'm straight," I said, "I ain’t worried bout that shit." I waved them off like the conversation wasn't worth having. Nobody said anything for a few seconds. Juste studied me again before he turned his attention to Enzi, making a full inventory of everything that he needed to get back. They discussed what he would tell Abdul when he called for an update.
I leaned against the bar while they talked, letting the conversation roll around me like background noise. That was thething about business meetings between men who'd been doing this long enough; half the talking was repetition. Numbers. Routes. Who owed what. Who needed to be reminded. Enzi pulled one of the pictures closer, his long fingers flattening the paper on the bar. "That one was at the port last Tuesday," he said in that thick accent of his. "The truck driver said they had been watching the port for weeks."
Juste nodded slowly. "Means they got somebody feeding them information."
"Or somebody talking too much," I said that hung there. Nobody rushed to respond. Because everybody in that room knew the same thing: leaks in operations like ours never came from strangers.
Juste picked up a pen and wrote something on the edge of the photo before sliding it back toward Enzi. "We'll run the docks again tonight," he said. "Quiet."
"Quiet," Enzi agreed.
"Ima need to know ahead of time when we planning on taking this trip to Miami," Noles said finally, raising both hands like he was surrendering to the conversation. "My wife planning vacations and shit for the next couple of months. I don't want no smoke."
A small grin tugged at the side of Juste's mouth. "I'll let you know." Noles nodded once, satisfied with that answer. He leaned back against the barstool and took a slow sip from the glass in his hand.
"On another note," Pierre said, turning his attention to Enzi now. "Nigga have you decided yet to just get an apartment and come up out that hotel?" He shook his head. "You beenhere going on three months," Pierre continued. "You paying that fancy ass hotel out the ass to stay there."
Enzi didn't look bothered. He leaned his tall frame against the bar like he had all the time in the world. "I told you ain't no need," he said calmly. "I'm not becoming a resident of the swamp. These mosquitoes about to drive a nigga crazy."
Noles smacked his lips. "You from Africa. All them exotic ass bugs and you complaining bout mosquitoes?"
Enzi lifted his drink, shaking his head slowly. "I don't care what you say these some different mosquitoes out here." That made Pierre chuckle under his breath.
"How many of these bucket ass hoes you done let run ya pockets since you been here?" Noles snickered. Enzi looked at him with a calm kind of patience.
"Noles quit fuckin with the man," Juste said without even looking up from the paperwork. Noles shrugged like he didn't care either way.
"You better keep your wife put up," Enzi said suddenly, his tone still smooth. "You know that voodoo shit run in my blood, we just might connect. Matter fact do she got a sister?"
Noles turned his head slow. "Fuck nawl. You want me to up my fie on you?"