Page 4 of Forbidden Love

Trigga, Casper, and my father Raft all came up together. They was like brothers and moved as a unit. Trigga was always quiet and on alert, ready to black out the whole building if Casper shifted the wrong way. The warehouse that we was in wasn’t a regular stash spot. It was a damn fortress, similar to the one my father had over on the East side. Every man inside was someone Casper trusted, except this Houston out of town nigga.

Nobody talked unless Casper looked their way. This was chess, not checkers. Casper never moved his king without lining up his pawns first. The buyer sat across from him at the steel table in the center of the floor, trying to smile his way through the tension. He didn’t know that all his pressing to get a meeting with Casper was nothing but a trap that he set out for himself.

“I’m ready to move heavy shit,” he said, twirling his diamond pinky ring.

“I’m talking real numbers. I just need access. West, East, and South of the border. Niggas in Cali making that shit happen—I mean, you the only nigga that can make that happen,” he uttered.

“Who the fuck told you that shit, nigga?” Trigga stood up straight from leaning against the wall then spat his toothpick out.

Casper looked at his right-hand man and chuckled. Trigga was the only nigga that could speak out of term and made drastic decisions at any given moment.

“I mean, niggas talk. It’s why I caught a flight out to meet the man himself.” His eyes left Trigga’s and went back to Casper’s deadly gaze.

Casper’s gaze made his pussy ass uncomfortable, so he looked at no one in particular.

“What about Raft?” Casper asked flatly.

I shifted in my seat hearing my father’s name mentioned as if he was still here. Then something dawned on me, Casper was still trying to sort through the snakes that was bold enough to come around begging for business when Raft was also a part of the empire. My father ran the Eastside, Trigga never had a desire to take over any side until his brother Casper included him. Everything was split fairly amongst each other; they never had any quarrels about money and percentages.

“I never heard of that nigga.” The Houston nigga shrugged.

Casper didn’t blink. He leaned forward, his hands pressed together like he was preparing to deliver a scripture.

“You asking me to hand you power that most men die for. Before I decide to give you anything…you need to know something.” Casper smiled evilly.

The buyer shifted in his seat and raised his brows.

“What’s that?”

Casper’s lips curled into a warning.

“I don’t shake hands with niggas I plan to bury in the near future,” he gritted.

The air seemed to drop by five degrees. The Houston nigga went pale in the face and nodded his head fast, like the threat was a blessing. I felt something in my chest, that pressure of what I was getting ready to insert myself into. It was nothing but a reminder that this is what men like me was born into. Casper, Raft, and Trigga didn’t just build a business. They built a kingdom.

Men of all walks of life bowed to them because they knew the crowns on their heads was heavy with blood and no remorse. I should have been focused on the conversation. On learning the game down to my bones like Casper and my father always told me, but my mind wouldn’t stop drifting. To my father.

The hole in the ground that they dug up six months ago still was fresh to me. I still could feel the grip that Casper gave my shoulder as I stood there, numb as hell, trying not to let the tears show. Casper didn’t speak that day, neither did Trigga. I didn’t need them to; they understood the silence that I needed while all the other snake ass niggas made their way to my face with fake sympathetic speeches about Raft.

Raft always got careless, and Casper always reminded him of how he should have been moving. My father thought loyalty and money would protect him from bullets. It didn’t, so now his empire was on me. The weight and all the blood shed that Raft caused was now mine.

Casper glanced over his shoulder, eyes landing on me. They were black as coal, steady and unreadable. I could already tell what he was thinking.Pay attention, young nigga; you next.I straightened my back and swallowed down my emotions, because emotions were for bitches to have.

The meeting ended like most of them do. Every one shook hands except Casper and Trigga. Casper watched every movement likehe could smell a set up before it hit the air. He was always the most paranoid one out of the three of them. If Casper thought it, rather it was true or false, he acted out on it. Once the Houston nigga walked out with a big smile on his goofy ass face, the rest of Casper’s men fell back into a small conversation with Trigga.

Casper lit a cigar stuffed with weed and jerked his head toward the back staircase.

“Come on, Sol.” He stood and dusted invisible lint off his black slacks.

“Don’t say shit, just wait for me, nigga.” I turned to Fatz and stood.

“Hurry up, a nigga hungry and ready to go. Feels like I been in church for hours and shit,” Fatz complained.

Casper and I walked up into the private loft above the warehouse. It was considered his sanctuary. I could hear the wind whistle through the steel beams. His thick desk sat in the middle with dusty ass picture frames that he never cleaned. A heavy safe was embedded in the concrete wall behind it; it was closed tighter than a casket. The air smelled like aged wood, fresh powder, and weed smoke.

His office looked just like my father’s, they both had shit set up the same. Raft’s office was down the hall from Casper’s office. He didn’t sit behind his desk, he leaned on it with his cigar tucked in the corner of his mouth.

“You good?” He asked just as the ash from his cigar tumbled to the ground.

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