What Da Lick Read? The Triple Cross (25 page)

“Do you see this shit? Out of all the girls in the world, why did you have to pick this one? I know she is beautiful and fine to boot, but damn K.J.”

Koier
let loose on one of her best friends and her employer. All of her sorority sisters wanted K.J, women all over the world wanted him, and he had to fall for this.

K.J. sat there literally foaming at the mouth. His temple jumped from the anger that was boiling inside of him. He went to SandraRose.com and again he was the headline. They had two pictures of her. One was a picture of Loyalty walking hand in hand with a man wearing some sagging jeans, a black
v-neck
t-shirt, and an a Yankees fitted cap. The picture was taken of them coming out of a Louis Vuitton store. She was carrying bags in one hand and holding his hand with the other. The other picture was of her and him; she had bags in one hand and was holding K.J.’s hand with the other. He remembered the picture of them being snapped when they were walking out of the Gucci store. The caption read, “This girl definitely gets what she wants.”

He slammed the laptop closed and pounded on the top of the island. All kind of thoughts were going through his head. Maybe she made the whole accident shit up, because she had to get back to somebody in Atlanta. He opened the computer and decided to search to see if there was a bad accident that her brother could have been involved in. He didn’t know where to search.
Koier
was still on the line not saying anything.

“
Koier
search everywhere you can and see if you can find out if it was a bad car accident in the metro Atlanta area with a young black male involved. Get back to me when you have something.”

He hung up and got up from the island.

__________

Reality lay across
Jaimes
’ bed with one of his tank tops on. She had taken a shower and fell asleep right after it. She didn’t know what kind of medicine they had given her, but it was obviously still in her system because she could barely keep her eyes open.
Jaimes
was in the kitchen cooking breakfast and she was trying so hard to stay awake. She got up, got her purse and pulled out her
iPad
.

She figured that she could just catch on some gossip. She was addicted to all kinds of blogs, self-help, political, spiritual, financial, celebrity and style; she loved them all. She went to
Necole
Bitchie
first because she could get caught up on the celebrities and the fashions they were wearing. As soon as it loaded the first thing she saw was her older sister and K.J. kissing in front of a plane. Reality was used to seeing her sister in the blogs, especially the ones where the bloggers stayed in Atlanta. Loyalty pulled some of the biggest bosses, so she was liable to be seen with a rapper,
a
executive, an athlete or a dope boy. Just as she was about to scroll down to the next article, the title caught her eye ‘Da Golden Boy’s Around the Way Girl’. They had pictures of Loyalty with four different guys, all of different professions. They were making it seem like she was a hoe.

James walked into the room with a plate of food for Reality. He saw the creases in her forehead and the frown on her face as she held her
iPad
in her hands. He sat on the edge of the bed, and leaned back beside her to see what she was reading. He couldn’t make out the words, but he did see the picture of Loyalty.

“Breakfast is served my love” He placed the plate of French toast, turkey bacon, cheese eggs and grits next to her.

Reality put the
iPad
on the nightstand and picked up her plate of food. She leaned over and puckered her lips for
Jaimes
to kiss them. He leaned in and kissed her lips. He got up, went around the bed to the nightstand and picked up her
iPad
.

She didn’t realize how hungry she was until the food was in front of her. She dived into it, shoveling more food in her mouth before she swallowed the last bite. Reality didn’t know if he was a good cook or she was hungry as hell, either way her plate was cleaned in less than five minutes.

“Whew, baby that was too good, now all I need me is a fat blunt of Kush and I will be in La
La
land.”

“You don’t need any Kush; all that medicine is still in your system. Wait a while, you cool without it. Why did they put this bullshit on here about Loyalty?” He said as he read the blog. Now he saw why she was frowning while reading it.

 
“I am about to call her, cause I know she don’t know a thing about this. It’s fucked up because
ain’t
no telling how K.J. is feeling, reading this. They are portraying her as a hoe or something.”

Reality dialed her sister’s number.

__________

Toe-Toe had rushed back to Atlanta, when he heard about
Killa’s
accident. He handled all of his business on the west coast and his packages were in route. The streets talk but you know that Coach K is a boss. His west coast connect didn’t even know that Coach was his people too. He was on the phone trying to find out what happened to his homeboy’s son who was in a car accident. He was frantic until they called him back and let him know that he had survived, but was messed up pretty bad. Then he mentioned that his homeboy’s name was Coach K. Toe-Toe wasn’t even able to concentrate on the meeting anymore. He had planned on negotiating cheaper prices on the pounds of Kush that he had shipped from Cali every two weeks, now he just wanted to get home so that he could make sure that
Killa
was okay. He ended the meeting and got on the next plane back to Atlanta. Now he was walking through the doors of Atlanta Medical Center not knowing what to expect.

He went to the information desk and was told where
Killa
was. Toe-Toe hated the smells and the quietness of hospitals. But he had to see
Killa
for himself. He got off the elevator and went straight to his room. The nurses did not stop him. He didn’t like that. He was going to get somebody up here to secure the room before the day was out. The life
Killa
had lived thus far had made him a lot of enemies. The last thing he needed was for someone to come off the streets and hurt him. Before he even stepped into the room he heard the machines. He shook his head and pushed the door open. It was an older lady at the side of
Killa’s
bed praying. He was about to turn to leave, when she told him to stay.

“Please stay son, he needs us to come together and pray for his healing. Take his other hand.”

“Father God, I come to you as humbly as I know how to ask that you heal this strong young man. Heal him physically and emotionally dear lord, because him surviving the car crash was only the first step in this battle lord. I will not question your will or your way, but I will request dear lord that he makes a full recovery. I love him as if he is my own and you have my daughter waiting in the wings to join you on high, please leave him here. My grandson loves him as a father and I know that you will get us through all the storms, but I don’t want him to experience losing two parents at one time. Heavenly father, I look at my daughter’s body and I believe that her spirit is already with you. Please do not let her death be in vain, use every piece of her that is still able to function to save the lives of others, so that other parents do not have to experience the pain that my heart is feeling. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.”

“Thank you son for praying with me, it is always better when two or more come together. You can never pray too much and when you do not know what to say sometimes simply saying ‘lord have mercy’ is enough. Let me get back upstairs to my Leigh’s room. I will be back down to check on Killian later.” The older lady gave him a hug and Toe-Toe felt a calming feeling rush over him.

He pulled a chair from over by the door and sat down next to
Killa’s
bed. The machines were buzzing as he looked down at him. The left side of his face was bandaged up and his eyes were closed. He had tubes in his nose and three bags of I.V. fluids dripping into his veins. He could see his left foot peeping from under the cover. Toe-Toe couldn’t believe that
Killa
had lost a leg. He couldn’t take his eyes off of the empty space where his right leg was supposed to be.

Tears started to fill his eyes. “Damn
lil
’ bro, I went away for two days and look what happens. I have seen you drive, so I know you drive like a bat out of hell, but you can maneuver a car with the best NASCAR drivers. I’m gonna get to the bottom of it. I promise, because in my gut I know there is more to it. I’m so sorry about your
ol
’ girl. But you
gotta
be strong for her mom and
lil
man. Get better bro, I will be back to check on you. Lord please have mercy on him.” Toe-Toe got up and squeezed his hand and walked out of the door wiping the tears from his face.

Toe-Toe walked to the parking deck with so much on his mind. He took out his BlackBerry to call Nard to tell him everything that was going on. His phone rang and it was Nard.

“
Bruh
, man this shit is fucked up.
Killa
is in real bad shape and you didn’t even call me. His girl is on her deathbed. Nigga why didn’t you call me?”

“I didn’t call you because you were across the country handling business and I needed your head focused. We can’t be taking no losses; I needed all of you there. If I would have told you about the accident, your mind would have been here and your body would have been there. I was looking out for you as well as the entire team. It is too many people that depend on us. We can’t take any missteps.”

“You are right
bruh
, it fucked me up though. Coach K is known nationwide. I’m sitting in the meeting with dude and he start talking about his homeboy son was in an accident in Atlanta, and then he says his name. It messed me up, but I had already got everything straight before I heard it. I will just have to go back out there in a few weeks to
holla
at him about the prices.” Toe-Toe headed to the No Pressure loft in his black on black Z71 Silverado at full speed.

“Well, we will deal with that. But peep this; it is fucked up over here. Somebody set Poke house on fire last night or it exploded or something. Police are everywhere you look. They found two bodies in there, but both of them were burned beyond recognition. I’m staying low, because the streets talk. I don’t know if he told anyone that I was the one that beat his ass about that fake dope. I know that I didn’t have anything to do with the house though. Then you won’t believe this Big
Dawg
is in town, Gigi called me and told me he appeared at the hospital the other night. Man this shit bout to get real ugly round here.”

Nard was worried that it was going to be some fingers pointed at him about Poke.

Loyalty had just got off of the three-way with Reality and Honesty. She was sitting in the den at the big house with her computer on her lap. She couldn’t believe what she had just seen. The blogs were making her seem like a gold digging whore. She didn’t know where they got the information or the pictures. She had tried calling
Khadafi
and he was not answering. She had sent him over a dozen texts ever since Reality had called her. This was just too much for her to bear. The media was dragging her through the mud. Loyalty didn’t want all of this to affect
Khadafi
.

He always told her about how he tried to stay as positive as possible. He needed to keep his head focused on the game because one false move on the field could cost him his career. Loyalty just wanted to hear his voice. Most of the pictures were old and one was even a picture of her and her first cousin. She didn’t have the slightest idea where they could have gotten the nude picture of her from. Reality was gonna check that out, she never took that picture. It was her face
Photoshopped
on someone else’s body.

The fact that when she looked down at her stomach and it was still flat made it hard to believe that she had gotten pregnant the first time that they had sex. She was shocked that a pregnancy could even be detected so soon, but the nurse had explained to her that
hCG
levels in blood can be detected as early as a week after conception. K.J. was now giving her the same treatment that she had given him. She wished she would’ve handled the situation differently.

She picked up her iPhone and sent one last text to him. If he called, she would talk to him, if he didn’t oh well. Loyalty knew that she had bigger stuff to worry about like the life growing in her and most importantly her family. She knew her dad was going to the meeting and Reality would be working on getting the information for her. Loyalty decided to call Honesty and see if she wanted to go back over to the hospital and sit with Killian until he woke up. Her brother didn’t need to wake up in the hospital alone.

__________