Page 11 of Back in Blood

Being that I was holding a woman captive in my home, the police were the last visitors that I wanted at my house, but Robin wasn’t going to make me do shit. She had almost blown my high. I got in my car and backed out of the driveway. I planned to stop by each of my businesses, and then I was going to sit outside of Sintonio’s crib and see if his bitch ass was home. I didn’t want to deviate from my plan, but if the urges I had to just let Lisa go didn’t dissipate, it was going to be another thing for me to stress about. She’d seen my face, she knew who I was, and where I lived. Letting her go and killing Sintonio would be beyond stupid. Anger had me snatching her up without a care in the world, but her tears and the bombshells she dropped had thrown me for a loop.

She was going through enough, and the fact that I even cared irritated me. She was right about one thing. What Sintonio did wasn’t her fault and if her son did survive, how fair would it be for him to have to be raised by her parents?

“Shit!” I hit the steering wheel. I had messed up. I didn’t even want to give the weed and alcohol credit for clouding my judgement. It was bitterness and rage. Losing Caprice had me not thinking straight.

I spent about four hours working. Every fifteen minutes or so, I checked the cameras in my mancave, and Lisa was behaving. She alternated between sleeping and sitting with her back against the headboard and her knees drawn. There were times she’d place one hand on her belly, and I could see her shoulders moving up and down as she cried. I couldn’t just kill her and get it over with because she was still pregnant. It was either get rid of her ASAP or let her go. I just couldn’t see myself letting her go.

When I was done with work, it was dark, so I sat outside of Sintonio’s home. His Dodge Ram was in the driveway, and there was a light on in the living room. I sat and watched the house for about ten minutes before he walked out to his truck. Sintonio didn’t look like a man that had a missing, pregnant fiancée. He was dressed like he was going out for a night on the town, and that shit pissed me off. I literally saw red. My daughter was no more, and his lady was missing. Meanwhile, that fuck nigga acted as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

I followed him, and when he pulled up at a bar, my trigger finger literally twitched. I doubted he was drinking his pain away. When I wanted to drown my sorrows in a bottle, I didn’t give a damn how I looked. I didn’t get fly to go out and drink the pain away. I watched Sintonio walk inside the bar. I had no way of knowing if he knew who I was or not. There was no telling how he would react if he saw me, but I needed to see him up close and personal. I needed to see if the nigga was suffering, or if he was truly the piece of shit that I thought he was. I checked the cameras and saw Lisa in her usual position on her side. I stared at her for a little longer than I should have before locking my phone and shoving it in my pocket.

There was a nice size crowd in the establishment, but it wasn’t too packed. I found an empty seat at the end of the bar. Sintonio was a few people down from me. Patiently, I waitedfor the bartender to get to me, and I ordered a double shot of whiskey. A slight buzz remained from the blunt that I’d smoked, but I wouldn’t consider myself high. I knew the alcohol would boost it, however, and I’d feel it a little more. After taking a few sips of my drink, I looked over and saw that Sintonio was engaged in conversation with a female. I couldn’t see his face, but she was smiling and talking, and I chuckled angrily. The nigga was really a waste of space. He didn’t even deserve to be breathing. I took another sip as I watched her giggle and flirt shamelessly with his lame ass.

I finished my drink and ordered another. Being in the same space with Sintonio while I was under the influence wasn’t the smartest idea because the urge to drag him off the bar stool and beat him senseless had me bouncing my leg anxiously. I had seen what I needed to see. He didn’t give a damn about Lisa and his unborn child. She’d barely been missing for forty-eight hours, and he was already out in a public setting with the next bitch all up in his face. He really had no shame. Killing her might not make him feel any kind of way, and that was sad as hell. People like Sintonio and Robin deserved one another. When drink number two was done, I paid my tab and left a tip. Easing off the stool, I walked right by Sintonio’s hoe ass and out to my car.

These days, I kept a blunt rolled, so I grabbed it from my ashtray and sparked it before pushing the button to start my car engine. I smoked the entire way home and by the time I pulled up in the driveway, I was damn near seeing double. Inside, I took another shot of alcohol and made a sandwich to take Lisa. After grabbing a few water bottles and some fruit, I went toward my man cave. I placed the food on the bed and the water bottles on the table beside the bed. She didn’t say anything, but I could feel her gaze on me. I was going to leave her uncuffed. At that point,I didn’t even know what the hell I was doing with Lisa or what I had planned for her.

The next morning, I woke up with a headache. That was one thing that I didn’t miss about drinking. I knew my limits, but I didn’t care enough to stop before it got too far. I was spiraling, and I knew it. The sad part was that I didn’t care. I checked the cameras, and Lisa was laying on her side. I took a shower, brushed my teeth, and then downed a bottle of water before making her some oatmeal and toast. Scowling, I realized that I was about to give her the last of the fruit, and that meant I’d have to go to the grocery store or at least order groceries.

When I entered my mancave, Lisa didn’t budge. She was staring straight ahead with dried tears on her face. I set the tray on the table and turned to walk out of the room, but something stopped me. I turned back towards Lisa, and she wasn’t moving. She was barely even blinking. Of course, she was somewhere she didn’t want to be, and she was probably scared and unsure of what was going to happen. I couldn’t front, she was handling the shit like a G.

“He usually moves a lot when I’m asleep. I haven’t felt him move in a while.” Her tone was robotic and void of emotion. “Usually when I press my stomach, he moves. He’s gone. I know he is. You got what you wanted. A baby for a baby.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” I growled. “I’m not that nigga. I’d never harm a child.”

“Whatever,” she kissed her teeth. “Go ahead and kill me. You’d be doing me a favor. There isn’t shit in this cruel ass world that I want to keep going for.” She was dead serious, and I hated the way my gut twisted from her words.

She was suffering, and her nigga was somewhere fucking off. I didn’t know Lisa from a can of paint, but I wanted to believe she didn’t deserve that. “I know a doctor. I can get him to come by and check you out,” I sighed.

G was a hood doctor, and he’d seen some shit. He got paid so much for tending to street niggas and not contacting the police, that he only had to work at the office part-time. He’d patched up countless gunshot wounds and even gave side chicks abortions, but I wasn’t so sure about him coming to see about a woman whose face had been plastered all over the news.

Lisa’s gaze lifted. She thought her son was gone, but I saw the hope in her eyes when I mentioned the doctor. “I’ll call him. Eat.”

I walked out of the room and locked the door. Losing Caprice had damn near turned me into the devil himself, but there was just some shit that I couldn’t do. That baby for a baby line threw me for a loop because that was never what I wanted. I called G, and he told me he could come by in an hour and a half. He needed to get some equipment from his office. He charged a pretty penny for house calls, but I wasn’t broke. The fact that my child was no longer around to eventually receive the money that I’d been saving for her since she was born was like a knife to my gut.

I changed my life and tried to do everything right for that little girl. I wanted her to be a privileged, spoiled daddy’s girl that could call me for anything no matter if she was five or fifty. I’d been robbed of watching her grow up. I needed to smoke. Anger was seeping into my pores and changing my entire mood. It wasn’t like I woke up in the best mood, but it could for damn sure get worse. I sat on the porch and smoked then went back inside and ate some cereal. I handled some business via telephone calls and emails until G rang my doorbell.

I gave him a brief rundown on the situation. “I know I don’t have to tell you that what you see here stays here.”

“Of course,” he waved my comment off. “I’ve seen it all, and I ask no questions.”

I didn’t want to tell on myself just in case, he hadn’t seen the news. “There’s a shorty here that can’t go to the hospital right now. As I said on the phone, she’s pregnant and due in like three weeks. Her child was diagnosed with a rare chromosomal disorder, and she hasn’t felt him move. She thinks he’s gone.”

G gave a curt nod. “Of course, I had no way to transport an ultrasound machine here, but I do have a doppler machine, so I can check for a heartbeat. I also have a transducer that can be used to monitor the baby.”

I didn’t know what the hell a transducer was, but it really wasn’t important. As long as he knew what he was doing that was all that mattered. I lead G to my man cave where Lisa was uncuffed. “This is Doctor G,” I stated gruffly.

Lisa gave him a skeptical once over. G placed his bag on the bed and asked Lisa a few questions. I almost stepped out of the room to give them some privacy until it dawned on me that this was a hostage situation. I was holding Lisa against her will. I doubted G would do anything about it if she told him, but I still didn’t need him in my business like that. He’d seen a lot of shit and had always kept his mouth shut but that damn sure didn’t mean that I trusted him. I stepped back and let him do his thing.

Lisa was a stranger that didn’t mean shit to me but when G tried for a good ten minutes to locate her son’s heartbeat, I found myself holding my breath until I couldn’t hold it any longer. When he gave her a solemn head shake, the gut-wrenching sob that pushed from her throat made my insides twist. My eyes briefly closed as she wailed. I felt her pain. I felt it too fuckin’ much. G allowed her time to cry, and then he made her awarethat he could induce her labor. Stepping forward, I decided to speak.

“G, can you give us a minute?”

“Sure.”

He stepped out of the room, and I sat on the bed. “I’ll take you to the hospital. You don’t have to give birth to your son here. I’m sorry.” The words flowed out of my mouth with damn near no effort from me. I didn’t want to console her or be compassionate, but it came as naturally to me as breathing.

Lisa buried her face in my chest and sobbed until tears of my own surfaced. She clenched my shirt in her hands and while she cried for her child, I cried for mine. I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her tight. I wasn’t sure how much time passed, but I didn’t let her go until her body stopped quaking. She sighed and wiped her tears.

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