Page 11 of Welcome to the Table
“You will never be me, nigga,” he told me, and my head whipped around. “Athena can’t protect you for your entire life. You gon’ get in the trenches.”
I looked at him with evil eyes before I walked over and grabbed his throat, pushing him against the wall.
“I been living in the trenches since I learned you were my fucking daddy.”
We switched positions, and he had me hemmed against the wall. His thumb applied pressure to the front of my neck, and I felt faint.
Click click.
“Get yo’ fucking hands off my son before I kill you, Melph. I don’t play with you like that. You may be big in the streets, but I’m the big dawg in this house.” She cocked her gun, and Melphfroze. His hand dropped from my neck, and she pushed him out of the way and grabbed me into her arms.
“Fuck that nigga. You are my son and mine only,” she whispered in my ear before letting me go.
I always wondered what Athena meant by that, but I never questioned her, and that’s when my resentment and borderline hatred started with Melph. I respected him as a father, but that’s as far as it went. My parents made sure I graduated from Xavier University, but it was my decision to pledge Kappa Alpha Psi. I wanted a brotherhood outside of the life we led, and that was my opportunity. That’s how I met my nigga Hollygrove. He was one of my line brothers. Of course, we were locked in for life.
Calliope was a loner. He would always rather be by himself, and I respected that, but when it was time to put in work, he made his presence known. In some ways, Hollygrove kept me out of a lot of shit, and that’s why he became my right-hand man. He kept a nigga from acting off impulse. I wanted to move out of the city to expand our businesses, but Melph was against it. That nigga wanted to be able to get to and control everything, and that’s where we always bumped heads. I wanted to do shit my way, but he always had another plan that I didn’t follow. If you gave me a job, let me do the shit my way.
At one point, they thought I had ADHD, but Athena realized that I was just active for my age. She didn’t believe in therapy and shit because she could handle the way I did shit and would always be there to help me when other people didn’t understand me. My mother protected me from shit that Melph knew would fuck me up. Calliope did too and took the brunt of the frontline shit because he was more of the calm one. Shit, in my mind, I was a normal kid, just a few loose screws in my head, and I didn’t give a fuck what Melph said as long as my mother loved me.
I had mad respect for my father, but sometimes I felt like he didn’t fuck with me like he did with Calliope. That didn’t makeme love him any less, but it made me dislike my father even more. The only person who knew that was my mother, and she would always say, “Yo’ father loves all three of y’all evenly, but I just gotta love you a little harder.” And I took that for what it was because she always did. Outside of my brother, I knew my mother would always have my back, right or wrong, and I fucked with it.
“I knew this nigga was on some bullshit. I shouldn’t have answered the fucking phone.” I looked at Hollygrove as I drove through Frenchman to get to the Blue Nile club.
It was broad daylight, and this nigga had me going to the club to collect money. This was one of the many clubs that we owned with an underground gambling ring. I have witnessed a lot of bitches and niggas lose their lives behind money. Cars, homes, you name it, they lost it in this gambling shit. Millionaires have gambled their companies and lost, left with nothing but the clothes on their backs, requesting a fucking Lyft to get to their destination. Shit was sad, but life was a gamble.
“Nigga, that’s typical Melph. He knew what the fuck was going on today but called to distract you, but this shit ain’t gon’ take long. In and out, and if there is a bad bitch in the room, please don’t get sidetracked. No witnesses, nigga.” He chuckled a bit. He knew me too well.
My weakness was a fine, thick bitch with a plump ass and big titties. A cute face to match would bring a nigga to his knees, and I loved an older seasoned woman to turn my black ass out.
“I can’t make no promises, nigga, but I can try.” I slid him the blunt to finish it off as I parked directly in front of the club.
It was eerily quiet because Frenchman wasn’t poppin’ until nightfall, so it was empty except for the stores getting ready for the night. I hopped out of my black-on-black 2024 Jaguar F-Type with Hollygrove. We were dressed in all black. I would change before I met with my brother. We walked in the door,and I winked, tossed a knot of money at the bartender, and watched as she slid it into her bra strap. She winked at me with a smile and continued whatever she was doing behind the counter. She knew what it meant. No explanation needed. I saw Hollygrove shaking his head from side to side, and I shrugged.
“I couldn’t help myself. Plus, I need her to keep her fucking mouth closed.” I kept walking.
“Nigga, y’all own this fucking club. She knows the fucking drill when you walk in this bitch” he rebutted, and it was my turn to shake my head.
“Nigga, you already know this is Melph’s fucking club, and I don’t trust no fucking body. Yeah, she knows the drill, but that ain’t gon’ stop her dick suckers from running.” We both laughed as we made it to the basement.
The shit was so fucking small I almost hit my fucking head on the ceiling. I ducked and made my way down the steps with him close behind. We moved smoothly down each step so the nigga wouldn’t hear us. Smooth criminals like Michael Jackson. Athena always said that.
When we got to the bottom of the stairs, I scoped out the scene. This big back ass nigga didn’t even have security with him. His back was to us. If he were a smart man, he would have felt us coming, but he didn’t. He had four fine bitches surrounding him, and Hollygrove shook his head because he already knew what the fuck I was thinking. Even the bitches didn’t look up. They were so busy looking at what this nigga was doing that they didn’t notice us.
The room was dimly lit, but there was a lamp hanging above his head. He was dropping stacks of money into a money counter, and the bitches looked on with wide eyes. I nodded to Hollygrove to grab the rope because we were about to hog tie this nigga for playing with the family money, and I had shit to do. This was not part of my fucking day, so he was about to feelmy wrath. He crept over there and grabbed the rope as I shook my head because this nigga really wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings. I found it funny. He didn’t know shit that was going on around him.
I noticed the two duffel bags on the floor and figured they were filled with money. The females around him didn’t know they were about to meet their maker, just as this nigga was, but that was a them problem. Smoke escaped my ears; I hated a thieving ass nigga. If you knew you had a debt to be paid, why not fucking pay it? I despised a nigga who thought he could lie his way out of shit. But little did he know, he was about to die his way out of a lot of shit. I felt my pocket, and just as I thought, I had my ballistic knife with me. I slaughtered shit; fuck a gun. I didn’t even know how to shoot guns. I didn’t like them. I was in love with knives and blades.
My fascination with knives started when I was ten. Not just any food cutting knives, but the shit that could slice yo’ shit to the bone just by looking at it too hard. I used to help my mother in the kitchen, prepping the food for her to cook, and she would be surprised by how precise my technique was. She thought it was cute until I got to high school, and a nigga thought I was scary and called himself bullying me because of how I looked. I was tall for my age with skin the color of charcoal and sea green eyes. While most probably thought the shit was cute, this one nigga would talk shit every day.
I let the shit go on for about a week before I told Athena. She made me promise not to tell my father because he would light the fucking school up and hunt for the nigga’s parents and light their asses up. She whispered in my ear, “The next time that nigga tell you something, handle yo business,” and she slid me the most beautiful pocketknife I had ever laid eyes on. It was black with my name engraved in red on it. I held it in the palm of my hand, and she closed it. I looked at her.
“A mother knows her son. That’s all the weapon you need. It’ll get the fucking job done if that lil nigga fucks with you again.” And just like that, she was back to humming her song and cooking the food. The shit was crazy. She turned and winked at me and continued singing some shit that I couldn’t understand.
The next day at school, that big nigga came fucking with me while I was in the bathroom. In one swift motion, I slit that nigga from ear to ear and watched him fall his big ass to the ground in slow motion. I squatted to where he was and watched the nigga bleed out. I grabbed his shirt to wipe the fucking blood off my knife and walked out of the bathroom to my class.
I walked straight to the teacher’s desk and whispered, “I just killed the bully in the bathroom.” She damn near fell out of the chair trying to get up to get assistance.
Long story short, nothing happened because my father had everybody in his fucking pocket, and I went home with a suspension. ’Til this day, I don’t know what the fuck happened, but it was never talked about again, and they switched my school.
