Page 37 of This is Law

I played a big part of the funeral arrangements too, along with helping with the funding even though money wasn’t a problem for Solace, when it came to burying her husband. That was just my way of blending in, and I didn’t need any fingers pointing back to me, or anyone growing suspicious, feeling like I might have had something to do with this shit. I did though. I just didn’t want the streets to figure that shit out.

Knox had been my nigga for years. Him and I met when we were in the first grade. Just like me, he came from nothing. He was raised in a single parent household, just as me. His mama gave a fuck about him though. Everybody called Knox’s mom mama Goldie. Goldie wasn’t her name, but I remember learningthat she was given the nickname Goldie because as a kid, they said that her caramel-colored skin reminded them of something shiny, and glamorous, so growing up, all the kids would just call her mama Goldie. She loved the fuck out of Knox, and would bust her ass, working all kinds of jobs, just to keep a roof over her, and her sons head, clothes on their backs, and food in their stomachs. My mama wasn’t shit like that. She truly didn’t give a fuck about me. I was seven years old, being left alone in the house by myself. She didn’t care if a nigga ate, or if somebody came into that apartment, broke in, and killed my ass. We grew up in the slums, where so much violent activity went on, so that alone should have been the main reason why she was home with me, making sure that nobody ran in that bitch, but that wasn’t the case at all. She was always outside, on the run, following behind different niggas.

Even though Knox and I had two completely different mothers, with different traits, him, and I went through the same struggle of just wanting more out of life. More out of life was just us wanting money, so that we didn’t have to go on for the rest of our lives struggling. When you’re from Miami, growing up in the hood, most times, you’re going to see a lot of crime, and illegal activity going on, but the main one out of all of that is drug dealing.

Knox and I were from the same hood, and that hood had a lot of drug activity going on. We grew up, watching niggas standing in the stairway, making serves. We would see the head nigga in charge that was running the drug business, pull up to the hood, pushing an expensive whip, with a bad bitch in the passenger seat, as he would just pass by, making sure that his boys were posted up, doing what they were supposed to be doing. That shit inspired us. We wanted that. Shit, we craved to have it. We were only in the 5thgrade when we made a promise that we weregoing to jump headfirst into that business together, and we were going to make sure that we both ate.

By the time me and Knox turned sixteen years old, we were corner boys for this nigga named Lion. Lion was a ruthless nigga, that didn’t give a fuck about anybody but himself. He was cutthroat, and he didn’t spare anybody. The first story that I heard about him was how he was dealing with some chick, and she went out to the club with her homegirls, and it had gotten back to him that a nigga at the club was all in his girls face, talking to her, and he killed both of them. He did that shit execution style, cutting off both their heads. Lion wasn’t the kind of person that you wanted to cross. Me and Knox were both scared to move weight for him, but we knew young niggas like us that were a part of his organization, and they were eating. I’m talking, coming to school with all the latest shoes, jewelry was on point, and flexing in class, showing off their bank roll. We wanted a part of that shit, so we were quickly put on.

We barely were moving weight for Lion for a year when somebody popped his ass. Lion was too reckless of a person, and he had too many people that hated him, so it wasn’t surprising to any of us when we learned about him getting killed. He wasn’t the kind of man that ran his business, having a right-hand man or no shit like that, so when he died, it wasn’t like there was someone to step up, and take his spot. Niggas was running around, scrambling, trying to figure out what the fuck we were going to do to make money. In the meantime, though, me, and Knox started working at a hotel, cleaning up rooms, and shit. We knew that it wasn’t something that we wanted to do long term. Just a little something to put some money in our pockets.

We were now at our senior year of high school, and we were still working at the hotel. Knox would go into the job more than I would because most nights, I would either call out, or I just wouldn’t come in at all. I just wasn’t the kind of nigga to be downon my hands, and knees, cleaning fuckin hotel rooms. Knox was hungry for money, hungry to help his mama out, and tired of seeing her struggle to pay bills, so even though I knew that it wasn’t something that he wanted to do, he would show up every night for that job, and on the weekends, when we didn’t have school, he was at that hotel, slaving pretty much all day too.

So, one night while Knox was at the hotel working, a nigga named Prime pulled up. Prime was the next big thing out of Miami after the killing of Lion. It’s like after Lion’s organization faded, that’s when Prime was able to creep into the shadows, and it wasn’t long before he started running shit in Miami. At the time, me and Knox didn’t know shit about Prime. It wasn’t because he was some lame ass nigga, and that his crew wasn’t making money for real. Hell, in fact, it was the opposite. Prime was a lowkey, quite kind of dude. His money wasn’t loud. You wouldn’t look at him and think that he had money because he didn’t wear his money. See, growing up, I affiliated a nigga having money on the sole bases of the kind of car that they drove, the house he lived in, and how many diamonds were in his chain. I remember the night Knox hit me, telling me about Prime. He said Prime approached him in a plain white shirt, with denim jeans on.

When Prime met Knox at the hotel, he liked to say that he saw something in Knox that he saw in himself. He saw a young boy that was out here, trying to make some money by any means. It wasn’t long until he had pulled Knox over to the side, wanting to know a little bit about him. Knox gave him an opportunity to make real money, but of course Knox told Prime that he wasn’t going to take the offer unless he could bring me on, and that’s how I ended up in the picture, working for Prime too.

Prime was a cool ass dude. He didn’t have all those fuckin rules, and shit like Lion did. Even though he was laid back though, that didn’t mean that the nigga was soft, and it didn’tmean that you could just walk all over him. Oh nah. He would get active too. During our time of working for him, we watched him with our own two eyes pop a few men for getting out of line and not being loyal to the game.

We moved weight for Prime for a year. In that year, he was getting closer, and closer to Knox. Don’t get me wrong, I was close with Prime too, but I was only close with him on a business level. Prime would sit me down and teach me the game. That was all our relationship was though. This nigga didn’t know shit about my background, my family, none of that shit, but when it came to Knox, it’s like he wanted to know him on a deeper level. I became a little salty about that, but I never spoke on it.

Prime saw something in Knox, where he said that he knew he could be the biggest thing to come out of Miami, so he fronted him bricks, told him that he wanted to see how he would move it. That’s when Knox rounded up me, and other niggas that we were cool with, and we had that shit broken down, cooked up, packed up, and served on the street, and we got back to Prime in under a week with all of it gone. Prime saw the way that we could move, and I remember him looking Knox in his eyes, telling him that he didn’t need him and that if he stayed working for him, he was doing himself a disservice. Prime gave Knox the playbook. We were eighteen, and he took us to Mexico, where we met with his plug, that had quickly become our plug.

Knox had a love in him for the streets, and no lie, that nigga was a better man than me. He had a lot of wisdom. The way he moved around in the drug business, especially for him to be so young, it’s almost like that’s what he was put on this earth for. We were only eighteen years old at the time, and Knox was out here running shit, and I was behind him, running shit with him. Even with me being his right-hand man, I never felt like we were equal though. Everybody looked at Knox as the head nigga in charge. He was the one that was feared and respected. Whenniggas wanted to get put on, they wouldn’t say that they wanted to move bricks for Dutch, and Knox. They would say that they wanted to move bricks for Knox. I already had a little envy of this nigga, starting from the moment when we were just kids. I was jealous of the way his mama loved him. Growing up, I had to witness the way everybody just clung to him, always telling him that he was going to be something special. Even Lion used to tell him that shit, and Lion was the kind of person that wouldn’t say anything nice to anyone. I watched the way Prime took him in, treating him like he was his son, loving him, showing him the game, putting him in rooms that a lot of young niggas weren’t getting put into. I still loved him, but I was beginning to hate the nigga, and my jealousy was growing by the day.

During all this shit, Solace has always been in the picture. The two of them had a deep love for each other, since we were all fourteen years old. Knox didn’t play that shit when it came to Solace. All the boys in our crew would be running through all kinds of hoes, but Knox was pussy whipped when it came to Solace. He would talk about how they were going to get married, have a bunch of kids, and shit like that. Goofy ass nigga did marry her too. They got married when they were only nineteen. Did that shit at the courthouse, and I was his best man. By the time they were twenty- two years old, she had given birth to Sevyn. The hunger that Knox had for the game increased after he had a son.

Just as quickly as that hunger came, and as quickly as shit was happening for us, Mama Goldie died. She died tragically, too. Mama Goldie suffered from epilepsy. She would have seizures. As a kid, Knox used to always tell me that his biggest fear was of her having a seizure while she was driving, and she lost control of her car, and passed away tragically like that. He’s been speaking on that fear for years. When we started making money, Knox was adamant about his mama being chauffeuredaround, but mama Goldie was hardheaded, and she didn’t want that kind of lifestyle. That nigga’s fear came true one afternoon. His mama had a seizure on the highway, losing control of the car, which caused the accident. Knox was just on a high from having his son, and then he lost his mama. I have never seen my nigga that fucked up before. Knox was at a low point. To know Knox is to know that he didn’t drink, or he didn’t do drugs, but when he lost mama Goldie, he started drinking and hitting the blunt. During that time, I just knew that he was going to step down, and pass everything down to me, but he didn’t, and I didn’t want to ask him to because I would come off selfish.

He gave himself two months to mourn, and get himself together, and after that, I never saw that nigga shed another tear. If he did shed tears though, he just wasn’t doing it in front of me. He came back to the business, like nothing had happened, and he was hungrier than ever before. Our plug Pablo that we had in Mexico, Knox put a call with him, wanting to up the drugs that we were getting from him. At first, when he started telling me that he wanted more drugs to get moved throughout the organization, I thought that he was crazy, and even Pablo thought that it might have been too much, but Knox had faith that we could do it, and I swear we did it. We even beat Lion’s record.

After that shit happened, it kind of put our organization on. Everybody wanted to get put on and move weight for Knox. Mind you, Knox was only twenty- two when all of this was happening, so he made history in Miami, being the youngest, yet the biggest drug dealer to come out of Miami.

Nobody was saying that Knox, and his crew distributed all that weight though; motha fuckas were acting like he was the only one that had done that shit. I started moving differently after that. Going out, getting sloppy drunk, making enemies, just a bunch of wild, reckless shit that I started doing over theyears. I was making enemies with the wrong kind of people, so wars were starting, which would have us losing men because they were getting killed. Knox, and I would have our times when we would get into it with each other, but we would always do that shit in private. This one time, I brought the wrong kind of heat to the organization, where we were beefing with another drug organization, that led to one of the biggest wars that we’ve ever had. I swear we lost over twenty men. Knox snapped in the middle of a meeting, where over fifty of our men were inside, and me, and this nigga just started tussling. Knox had hands, and I had hands too, but he’s always been the better fighter. I feel like I was stripped from my manhood that night, getting my ass beat by him in front of everyone.

Because I’ve known Knox for so long, we’ve fought over the years, and we would make up for it. This time, we didn’t make up for it until a week later. The only reason why I made up with this nigga is because I knew that I was going to kill him, but I didn’t want to still be beefing with him, and when the nigga comes up missing, everyone thinks that I did it because we had an ongoing beefing. I made sure that everyone saw when we hugged that shit out, and we brought our beef to an end.

I was plotting. Sevyn was getting ready to turn three, and he was going to take him, and Solace out of the country for his 3rdbirthday. The plan was for them to be gone for two weeks. Even though it was a birthday trip for Sevyn, it was also a getaway from the game, and all the problems that we had going on in Miami. With everything that I was plotting, I didn’t need this nigga to make it back after that trip. The way I went about the shit, shooting that nigga in the back, catching him completely off guard, that wasn’t even the way the shit was supposed to go. I just happened to be riding past his house, mind all over the place, thinking if I really wanted to kill my best friend, andbefore I knew it, I was rolling the window down, and I sent over thirty shots his way.

I know it makes me a monster, but I swear I live with that shit. I’m a man that doesn’t sleep much, and I always have to be on the move, doing something because if not, and if it gets too quiet, I started hearing voices. I started hearing screams. I can’t get the screams from Solace or her mom from our of my head. Solace’s mom, Synclaire, was like a second mother to Knox. She loved him as if he was her child, so she took the death extremely hard. They were fucked up about losing Knox. Solace so much to the point that she’d lost her fuckin mind.

Synclaire ended up taking Sevyn in because Solace no longer had the mental capacity to do it. I just remember when I would go to Synclaire’s house to see Sevyn, and I felt like she would be digging into me, trying to get information from me. Always wanting to know if I’d found out who killed Knox, always wanting to know my whereabouts when the shit happened, and just asking me shit in a way for me to slip up, and tell on myself. Synclaire was a smart woman, and I didn’t want her to catch on, so I knew that it wasn’t long before I was going to have to take her ass out too.

I remember one time I went over to her crib to see her and Sevyn, and she was telling me how she was having trouble sleeping. She said at night that she would have images of Knox in her head, and she was always worried about her daughter. On top of that, she was trying to raise her grandson. I told her that I had the same problem, and how I would take sleeping pills at night. She wanted the pills. I could have done the right thing and given her the actual pills that I would take, but instead, I came back the next day, giving her some shit that I knew for a fact was laced. I got a call later that night, telling me that Synclair had passed away in her sleep. That’s how Sevyn ended up in my care. I raised the fuck out of that little boy. I didn’t know shit aboutbeing a father, but I knew that after all the wrong that I’d done, raising Knox’s kid was the least that I could do.

Sevyn, and I had a perfect father/ son relationship. That lil nigga knew that he could come to me about anything. He had love, and a respect for me, feeling like I couldn’t do any wrong in his eyes. Shit, I don’t think the nigga felt like that anymore though. Ever since that day I pulled up on him at his office, and he questioned me in a way about his father’s killing, it let me know that he might have been on to something. I loved that man like he came from my nuts, but if he put two and two together, and found out that it was me that had killed his pops, I would put that nigga down myself, even though it would cause me more hurt, and pain than it caused me to kill my own best friend.

I hate that I fell for that tactic, where I fucked around and answered a question wrong, knowing that he’d intentionally asked it to me in a way for me to fuck up. Since Sevyn was old enough to ask, he wanted to know the details of his fathers death. He wanted every small detail, even wanting to know where I had been. For years, I’d always told him that I was out of town on business with Darryl. That’s been my story from day one. I let him corner me in, say that I was with Tee, and I agreed to it. He reeled me right into that one, and no lie, he had me sweating, even though I tried to pretend that I wasn’t. The good thing about this is that Darryl was no longer here, so he couldn’t ask him if my story checked out. Tee fucked around, and lost his mind, getting high off our products, so you could find him walking up under a bridge, talking to himself. There was no way that Law could point Knox’s death back to me. At least, I didn’t think there was.

“I think your son might be on to me, man. I just came out here to give you a fair warning. You only got three years to know that nigga, but if Sevyn starts digging up shit, using that brain of his, and if he finds out that I killed you, just get ready to bereacquainted with him,” I spat, looking down at the headstone. The second I said that, a powerful thunder roared, where it felt like the entire earth had shook.

There was a picture on the headstone that held Knox, and Sevyn. I looked down at the picture, as if it was my first time seeing it, and before I walked away, I spat on the headstone, disrespecting the fuck out of that nigga one last time before taking off.

For years, I lived life knowing that I would never get caught for the killing of Knox. There was no way I could have. I had an alibi. A good one too. When I did that shit, niggas didn’t even know that I was in Miami. They were under the impression that I was out of town on business. That alone is why shit never pointed back to me. That, and because niggas just didn’t take me as the kind of person to pop my best friend. They saw us make up after Knox beat my ass. They knew love was there.

As a little boy, Law would look me in my eyes, and there wouldn’t be any fear there, and he would tell me that if he ever found out who killed his pops, he was going to kill them, and he was going to make their death a long, painful one. As a little nigga, he would say some off the wall shit, just knowing how he was going to kill his pops killer. I believed every word that he said, which is why I couldn’t let him find out it was me. I would kill his ass before I gave him the chance to kill me. Mark my words, I’ll have his headstone right next to his fathers, fuckin around with me.

Chapter Eighteen

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