Page 107 of Kissed By the Trillest Thug 2
The reality of the secret that my mother was keeping all my life stung like a muthafucka. I knew better now. He wasn’t being kind, he was being a father. A father who couldn’t claim me. A bitter laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
“Ain’t that some shit.”
The pump clicked, pulling me out of my feelings. I removed the nozzle from my tank but didn’t get back into my car right away. Instead, I leaned against the driver’s door and looked out across the parking lot. The day Trigga came over and told me the truth, my mama had walked through that apartment door a couple hours later.
I let her have it. I asked her why she’d lied to me when I was a little boy and why the fuck, she lied to me again when I was a grown-ass man and asked her the same question. She cried. She apologized. She said she thought she was protecting me. Her logic behind it didn’t make any damn sense. Protecting me from what? The truth? Knowing I had a father? Knowing Ihad a brother? The whole shit was stupid. The only thing that made sense was that everybody around me had spent my whole life making decisions they never gave me a chance to make for myself.
First my father. Then my mother. Then Trigga. Everybody knew and had time to sit with it but me. I was the last to fucking know. I climbed back into my Camry and shut the door, but I didn’t put it in drive. Instead, I sat there staring through the windshield. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. All this time I’d been beating myself up, wondering what I could’ve done differently between Trigga and me. After this truth came out, I wondered if I shouldn’t have been angry and reached out to him more.
When I thought about this shit with Ryan, I didn’t have to wonder anymore. Trigga knew we shared the same blood and knew that I was out here dealing with Ryan by myself, and he still looked me in my face and told me that he couldn’t do anything to help me. The funniest shit of all is that Ryan wants to know where the bricks came from, and I could give up Maliah’s daddy, but I was trying to stay solid here. This whole experience showed me a lot. And maybe Trigga never fucked with me the way I thought he did. Maybe I was the only one calling him brother all of these years because if the situation was flipped and if I found out he was my blood and somebody was after him, there wouldn’t have been a conversation to have.
I would’ve stood beside him. No questions asked. Instead, he stood beside the nigga who shot him. The nigga that was the only thing standing in between me and getting the feds off my ass. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. The more I replayed that conversation in my apartment, the more I realized that he wasn’t choosing peace. He was choosing them. He was choosing what was best for him, and I had to get with the program and do the same. My jaw clenched.
“If you ain’t with me…”
The words slipped out before I could stop them. I never finished the sentence. I didn’t have to. My phone started vibrating in the cup holder. I looked down at the screen.
Ryan
I let it ring twice. By the third ring, I snatched it up and answered.
“What?”
Ryan chuckled on the other end.
“That’s one hell of a way to answer the phone.”
“What do you want?”
This muthafucka was becoming the bane of my existence.
“I got a simple question.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“Then ask it.”
“You ever plan on introducing me to the man you got those bricks from?”
My grip tightened around the steering wheel.
“I told you before, I don’t know him like that.”
“I don’t believe you,” he laughed.
“I really don’t give a damn what you believe.”
The laughter disappeared.
“Well, here’s what I do believe,” his voice dropped an octave, “I believe that you could get me in the same room with him if you really wanted to. I’m giving you until the end of next week. And Giovani, if I don’t have an introduction by then, we got a problem.”
I stared through the windshield at the traffic passing by.
“Are you threatening me?”
My nose was flaring.
“I’m giving you an opportunity.”
