“Yeah, but I’m trying to rip on something. Bring me ya jawn ‘cause I’m going to his mom’s or Nikia’s mom’s crib to get this nigga.”

“Fallback, I’ll be down there in fifteen minutes,” Lamar said, ending the call. He started texting Nikia, as he told Amilli, “I gotta go take care of something.” He looked down at his watch. “You gotta be to work in an hour, so go change, head in and call me after you lock the unit down.”

“OK, what about the baby?”

“I’m about to drop her at her mother’s,” he said, signing the check. The bill was $75.40 and he tipped the waiter $75.40, billing the total $150.80 to the room. “I’mm take your car. You take the Panamera to work.”

“OK, please be careful,” she said, kissing him on the lips.

CHAPTER 41

Lamar pushed Amilli’s Chevrolet Malibu through the deserted streets without stopping at any traffic lights. The smell of Slam’s dead body grew stronger in his nostrils, the closer that he got to Bartram Village. As he drove he continued to brood about what he and Amilli had discussed. He was digging her ghost. The only thing that stopped him from walking all the way out on Nikia was the fact that the grass was not always greener. Well, that and despite her nagging, he loved her. Love for her was like a cancer, there was no cure.

He finally reached the block, hopped out of the car, and approached Gunna who stood on the corner alone.

Where the fuck are the police if they lit up the block?

The police had to be lurking if shots were fired.

“Where the nigga at, dog?” Lamar asked, huffing like an animal.

“They around the corner on the nigga Slam’s mom block,” Gunna said.

Lamar parked the car in a nearby spot and then they walked a block over towards where Slam’s mother lived for the last forty years.

“Man, you sure they out here,” Lamar asked, taking his gun off his hip. He didn’t see anyone outside.

“They right in the middle of the block. Let me get the strap. These niggas chopped on me, so I wanna be the one to kill these faggots.”

Lamar respected that wish and passed his .40 off as he stood on the corner and waited. He turned his head for a split second as a stray cat made noise in a nearby trash can. Before he turned back around, he saw a flash out the corner of his eye, followed by a thunderous boom. Lamar instantly fell to the ground, watching a pair of feet jogging away. The pain that soared through his head mixed with the blood that surrounded him, Lamar knew that his life had come to an abrupt end.

CHAPTER 42

The next morning, Gunna and Slam met outside a Metro PCS store at the Sixty-ninth Street SEPTA terminal. They had to meet far away from Bartram Village to avoid detection.

Slam shook Gunna’s hand and said, “Damn, young’n, you really ‘bout ya work, huh?”

“As soon as I told him that you clapped at me, he rushed over to the block. He may be mad at me—“

“Even more so now.”

“—But he not gone let shit happen to me. I know that for a fact. Plus, he’s geekin’ to get you. That wasn’t even my best work, but I got his ass good, though.”

“The nigga laid there for like twenty minutes before the law came. He kept begging the medics to not let him die, before passing out,” Slam said, chuckling. “He should’ve never crossed me.”

“Well, you told him that you weren't to be fucked with.”

“Now, I have to explain this shit to my daughter somehow.”

“Explain what to ya daughter?”

Slam told Gunna that Lamar’s baby’s mother is his daughter. He filled him in on their run-in the other day. They sat in the Q45 that Lamar had leased for Nikia, smoking a Backwood and doing lines of coke through a hundred dollar bill. Gunna fitted with a wire. Surprise! Murder-for-hire.

“Damn, so Nikia, ya daughter, huh?” Gunna asked as if he hadn't known.

“Shit crazy ain’t it? It took everything for me not to kill him right then and there in front of her and my granddaughter,” admitted Slam, punching the steering wheel.

“Well, you’re her pop so she’ll get over it. He doing her dirty anyways, and I got proof. He fucks with this CO bitch named, Amilli. Mattafact, she was on when Crook stabbed you up at CFCF.”

“Wait,” Slam said, “that means that she was in on the hit?”

Gunna nodded, and then, did another line.

“Well, I guess I have another fifteen grand to make her disappear.”

“You do,” Gunna said. And you got another murder-for-hire charge, Pops.

ALL RELEVANT PARTIES waited patiently in the hospital room, hoping that Lamar made it out of surgery alive. When Lamar didn’t return Amilli’s calls by the time she left work at six a.m., she became worried sick and sensed that something was wrong. She called Lamar’s phone back over and over for an hour, and she called some police districts and county jails. Then, hospitals, before she found out that he was shot and undergoing an emergency surgery. Amilli’s eyes filled with tears as she raced to the hospital in the Panamera. She was at the hospital before anyone else.

WHEN LAMAR GOT TO THE hospital, the physician assistant had contacted Nikia’s mother, who was listed as his emergency contact from previous hospital visits. Nikia cried the entire way to the hospital because she had a great feeling that her father was the one who had pulled the trigger. She was caught in between the two and there was nothing that she could do to stop them and their teams from murdering each other.

Nikia and her mother arrived only to find Hamma, Trap, Gunna, and an unknown woman standing around the doctor. The same doctor that had treated Gunna a year earlier.

“Who are you?” Nikia snapped, mean-mugging Amilli.

“Amilli, and you must be Nikia?” Amilli replied sarcastically, shifting her concealed properly licensed-to-carry weapon beneath her blazer for all to see. Her CO position had its perks. She smiled, condescendingly.

“I am, but, to you, it’s Lamar’s baby’s mother. His wife. Why are you even here?” questioned Nikia in an envious tone.

“Well, I have his Porsche,” she replied, dangling the key in the air, “since he left me to rush somewhere in my car.” She shrugged.

“You’s a dizzy bitch. He paid for my car, so...”

Amilli was about to respond when Gunna intervened. “Nikia you dis-re-spect-ful coming down here worried and why she’s here and my man in there under the knife fightin’.” Gunna was acting again because he needed Amilli to think that he was on her side to get close to her to kill her.

“As far as I am concerned, she doesn't belong here. My dad just told me not to even come here ‘cause he heard that Lamar was fuckin’ this bitch.” She then turned her attention to Gunna, and said, “And you need to mind ya fuckin’ business, you dead arm, pussy.”