Page 21 of The Mob: Shio Cuppacio
He’d better be glad he wasn’t home because Tuscany had ears like a bat. My sister was crazy about her firstborn but wouldn’t hesitate to get in his ass. He was a good kid, though; he just let that damn game get the best of him.
Turning my eyes from the phone to the white brick building in front of me, I bit down on my bottom lip. “Nah. I ain’t goin’ to the club.”
“You getting up with a girl then?”
Cutting my eyes back at my nephew, I couldn’t help but grin. “What you know ’bout gettin’ up with some girls?”
“Do you see me, Unc? I’m a Payne-Navarro. I can’t keep these girls up out of my face.”
Tossing my head back, I laughed. That little nigga was indeed handsome. He was going to give my sister a run for her money, for sure. He had too many real niggas in his corner who were going to make sure he was a beast. He had already started his coming-of-age quest because I’d been staying with my sister for a little over a month, and he hadn’t shown his face once. Since it was nearing the end of the school year, he’d been planning on spending his time with his big brother, Goal, and his other brother, Gage. Outside of the pictures my sister had around her enormous-ass house, I hadn’t seen my oldest nephew since I’d made it home. The baby, on the other hand, had been glued to my leg if he wasn’t hanging on my sister’s breast with his greedy ass.
“Well, that’s all they better do. Look… You got plenty of times for girls. Right now, they are not worth the trouble they come with.”
Tulsaire toggled his eyes from me to his TV. “Are you saying that because Stella ran off with all your stuff?”
Again, I tossed my head back in laughter. This little nigga was funny without even trying. “Mane… I’m off dat. Unc on to bigger and better. Can’t cry over spilled milk. Obviously, she needed it more dan me.”
“I guess.” He shrugged. “If you need to get back straight, just know your nephew got you!” Tulsaire puffed his chest out.
“The same nephew that’s hounding me ’bout GameStop? Can’t bethatnephew.”
Tulsaire pressed a few more buttons on his controller before standing. He picked up his phone and walked to the opposite side of his bedroom, which looked more like a mini-apartment. It was his room at Goal’s house, and it proved my nephew was spoiled as fuck by everyone. Even my mama was crazy about him. He was her first grandson, and she’d give him the world if he asked. He planned on spending his last two weeks of summer break with her. I was skeptical, though. Even though we’d put our mother up in a nice home, she still lived in Memphis. We’d renovated the house we grew up in, and I was starting to regret that shit because she spent most of her time in the hood at that one than the one in the suburbs. My city was a war zone, and if one of them young niggas tried my nephew, I was painting that whole town red.
When my sister became pregnant with him, it was only then that my mama stepped up and took on her role as a mother. Tuscany had held that responsibility for years, so I support the change in command. She needed to bring her ass on to the Bay because if she wanted Tulsaire to keep visiting, she had to make a choice about living in Memphis. We were past that now.
Tulsaire laid the phone down so that I could see his room ceiling. I was looking at a Maybach roof on my nephew’s bedroom ceiling. I don’t know whose idea that was, but the visual I was seeing went hard. I could hear him pressing buttons before he picked the phone up, and smiled into the camera right before flipping it. In a small safe, there were numerous piles of money to the point that he couldn’t fit anything else in it. There was also what appeared to be a passport that I knew had to have more stamps in than a bitch with nine kids on her welfare case.
“You holding like that, but you hounding me about GameStop. Shit, you got GameStop money.”
Tulsaire closed the safe and then sat back in front of the TV, propping up his phone. With the angle he now had, I could see a Navarro chain resting on top of the muscle shirt he was wearing.
“I’m not trying to spend mine. I want you to spend yours. Ain’t that what uncles are for?”
“Damn, ’Phew. I just got out. You just said yourself the girl done cleaned me out.”
Tulsaire crinkled his nose. “You not mad about that, for real. If you were, you would be in Atlanta looking for her instead of here in the Bay.”
My nephew hadn’t lied. I wasn’t the least bit worried about Stella’s ass. I had more pressing matters at hand. I’d told myself I wasn’t studying these bitches and that I was putting this dick on lockdown, and come to find out, I got to get fucking married if I’m to be in this mob shit. Stella scamming me out of my riches was at the back of my mind. If I brought that shit to the front, I was liable to get pissed, and a pissed Tunan was criminal. I’d told not only my cellie, Leader, but my brothers, too, that I wasn’t going to see a cage no more. I especially wasn’t going behind a bitch, and I meant that. I was staying away from these whores, but I didn’t know how in the hell I was supposed to do that if I had to give one my last name.
“How you like living in my house? What my mama ’nem been doing?” Tulsaire shook me from my thoughts.
“Stop acting like Tuscany Cherman doesn’t call you every day.”
“Facts…” He smiled. That boy was everywhere with everybody because we all wanted to soak up his energy, but he was obsessed with his mama, just like we’d been our whole lives.
“Athena be getting all my money. I ain’t gone have none fucking with her.” I shook my head.
“Fall up off my sister. You sick of eating crab legs yet?”
“Mane, am I?”
Athena and Tulsaire had basically been kidnapped together. Baguette, my sister’s husband, was hustling hard and getting his product from an old head named Gilberto Navarro. Gilberto was a motherfucker, and everyone knew it because his old ass stayed doing fucked up shit. When Baguette no longer wanted to do business with Gilberto and switched over to copping product from Goal, that motherfucker kidnapped Baguette’s daughter, Athena, whom he shared with his first love. Gilberto had already been raising Tulsaire, whom he fathered with my sister on some manipulative shit. Once he stole Athena, he raised them together up until his ass was killed. When they found Athena, they took Tulsaire too. My nephew ain’t been out of our sight since. Goal being Gilberto’s son was crazy to me because that was who Athena’s mama had been fucking with while she was missing. That whole situation was wild as hell. All the bodies we had to drop behind it still made me shake my head. Honestly, that time period was chaotic as hell for everybody, but low-key exhilarating.
Everybody welcomed Athena with open arms, and now, she was even more spoiled than my nephews. I’d come home from jail and gained a whole new niece. Being surrounded by so many kids had me wondering when I would have one myself. But if abitch ran off with my kid like the last one had done my money, it was really going to be lights out.
“On the real, though, Unc. If you need some money, I got you.”
Smiling at my nephew, I couldn’t help but miss that boy badly. He was one of my best friends, which was sad because he was only twelve. “I can assure you, Unc is good, Neph’. You know I’ma get to it regardless.”
