Page 100 of Quasim III: King Inferno

We found out that Anjo was almost five months, and we wouldn’t have known because she carried so small. Her stomach was so small compared to what Capri was toting around with Cherry. Everything with the baby was good, but the doctor wanted her to slow down. She said she wasn’t putting her on bedrest yet, but she would if Blair couldn’t sit down and rest her body.

Christmas had come and gone, and I was thankful for Capri and Blaze, because Elijah enjoyed himself. I wasn’t in the holiday mood and was more concerned about the niggas that did this to me.

We celebrated Cherry turning a year old. When I watched my brother as a father and a husband, that shit made me excited. He was always looking up to me our entire life, and now it was my turn to look up to him. He made that shit look like a breeze, like it was no sweat to be the perfect father and husband.

Yeah, I knew there was no such thing as being the perfect husband or father, but Blaze made that shit look like it. My only prayer was that God continued to bless their union, and mine. I wanted to be nearly perfect when it came to Anjo, Elijah and Izayah.

Recovery was fucking slow, and I was sick of the bitch. I was tired of taking medicine and feeling weak within my body. I couldn’t even fuck my wife because the shit took too much energy for me.

“How you doin’, King?” I saw Forty come into view and realized I had been in my head.

Anjo was resting next to me in the sunroom, as we looked out at the water and the bridge connecting Staten Island to New Jersey.

“Shit… what’s good with you?” We hit the IG shake and he kissed Blair’s head as she slept and then plopped down in the chair across from us.

“How has she been?”

“Tired. Trying to take it easy, but she wanna do everything for everybody.”

He chuckled. “The same reason you fell in love with her… I need her to keep that little one baking and relax. She’s done enough, now she has to rest.”

“Feel you… she hardheaded.” I kissed her head as I watched Elijah play the video game in the living room. “What brings you by? How is shit with you and everything with Mercer?”

He leaned back and chuckled. “Mercer is ready to drop big names now that Lucia killed herself. She was his fall person and with her gone, and them having Thea as a witness, he’s fucked.”

“They gonna let him take the fall before they bring someone else down with him.” I replied and he nodded in agreement.

“Look, I want to know what you wanna do with his mother? She thinks she’s safe in WITSEC.”

“That bitch has to die… I don’t care how the shit is done, but she has to go… she doesn’t get to live and play victim.”

Forty noted what I had said. “I’ll have it handled… everything is good with nephew?”

I looked over at him cheering because he shot a zombie. When he asked for the violent ass game, I let him have it because I wanted to give my boy the world. He suffered enough, and I wanted him to have whatever he wanted.

His pops had the money, so he never had to worry about shit.

“Blair lined up a therapist that Jeffie recommended, and she agreed to see him. Forty, I just want the best for him, feel me?”

“I hear you. Being a parent ain’t for the weak… gotta raise them up to be good people, and that’s a lot of fucking pressure.”

“You don’t want kids?”

“Eventually.”

I kissed my baby’s head a few more times as she snored and drooled on my shirt. “Couldn’t see this for myself.”

“Just because you couldn’t see it, didn’t mean we all didn’t want it to happen for you.”

“Hi, Ms. Zoya!” I heard Elijah greet, and continue playing the game, as Zoya walked out here.

“Hey hey,” she came over to hug me, then Forty, and sat in the empty chair beside him. “Look at how peaceful she looks… she needed this rest.”

“Zoy, what you doing here?”

“Capri told me to come here, she has something to discuss… she and Meer were coming from a doctor’s appointment.”

Blaze already told me that Capri was pregnant. She was still trying to wrap her head around becoming a mother again. “She told me the same thing… said it was important.”

---