The report of the slap bounced off every wall, echoing in the corridor. “Don’t ever forget one arm still works,” Gunna said as she rushed him.

Hamma jumped into action, pulling Gunna away from Nikia. Trap trapped Ms. Kesha who was swinging on Gunna, defending her daughter.

Gunna yelled, “Bitch, you gone learn how to fuckin’ bite ya tongue when you talking to me. And tell ya bitch ass dad, too.”

Hospital security arrived and tried to calm the situation.

“Pussy, you done did it. Tell Lamar, if he wakes the fuck back up, that he can have that busted bitch. I don’t need him. I’m a daddy’s girl.”

“Busted,” Amilli said, smirking, “look at me, bitch.” She spun three hundred sixty degrees.

“Tell ya pop to strap the fuck up,” Hamma said at Nikia’s back.

“He should’ve strapped up to have prevented her from being born,” Amilli added.

CHAPTER 43

Two weeks later, Lamar had been home for a couple of days and still had no clue who shot him. Due to the severity of the head graze, he suffered short-term memory loss. The only thing that he recalled from the night that he was hit was someone running off and leaving him to die. When he first awakened, he barely remembered his first and last name, let alone who may have shot him. Every time he tried to put the pieces to the puzzle together, a migraine forced him to stop thinking.

Amilli tried helping him recall by going through his cell phone call log. His last cellphone call was from Gunna, but he had no idea what he had said that had him out of the Sofitel Hotel and in Southwest. He didn’t even remember taking his daughter to Nikia before he went there and couldn’t imagine the damage he would have caused had he left Celebrity with Amilli.

DAYS LATER AS AMILLI drove Lamar’s Porsche through the inner city traffic from a doctor’s appointment, something came back to him.

“Awww, shit, aye, Amilli, take me to my crib up Northeast,” he commanded her in an uneasy voice.

On the ride up to Northeast Philadelphia, she finally filled Lamar in on the episode at the hospital between Nikia and Gunna. At first, Lamar was angry with Gunna for putting his hands on his daughter’s mother, but once Amilli told Lamar about Nikia’s remark before leaving the hospital, he lost it.

“Oh, aight, then. So the bitch said, ‘fuck me,’ huh?”

“Baby, calm down. I told you she was no good. I don’t just talk just ‘cause I got these juicy lips and wet mouth,” Amilli said attractively, winking an eye at Lamar, hoping to calm him down.

A few more minutes of talking and driving, they pulled up in front of Lamar’s Frankford Avenue stash spot.

“Hold up, I’ll be a couple of minutes,” he said, climbing out of the car.

He let himself in his place and to his surprise found everything out of place. Pictures were snatched down from the walls. The sofa and love seat were flipped upside down and slashed exposing its stuffing. A lot of holes decorated the walls.

Lamar darted straight for the kitchen and checked his hiding spot underneath the refrigerator, for the money that he had neatly hidden under the tiled floor. After moving the refrigerator to the side, he pulled up a few pieces of the tile and saw that his money was still there.

“Rookies,” he said under his breath, before going to search his other spots.

He pulled a decoy air conditioner from the living room window and opened it up. He found that his money was there, too. Afterwards, Lamar bolted next door through the back door to where he’d left his last shipment of cocaine. Inside the basement, Lamar turned on the light and from a short distance, saw the picture on the wall that hid a safe behind it on the floor. He hurried to open the safe, and his heart dropped to his nut-sack. He’d been robbed. Inside of the safe was a set of keys and a note. He grabbed the note and read it:

I DON’T GET MAD, I GET EVEN. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN. YOU CAN HAVE THE JERSEY HOUSE, THE CAR, AND THAT BITCH, AMILLI. THE DRUGS WILL DO. SEE YOU IN TRAFFIC, BUT I DOUBT IT.

DADDY’S GIRL, NIKIA

CHAPTER 44

Accepting that Nikia had robbed him, Lamar attempted to call her phone but she had it disconnected. Lamar instructed Amilli to take him to his home in Princeton, New Jersey. He found that Nikia had destroyed that home, too, and bleached all of his clothing and furniture. She had even torched his Q45 he’d bought for her. At this point, no one could stop him from killing her, not even Celebrity. He found his money stash and tossed the cash into trash bags, before throwing them into the car’s trunk.

On the ride back to Philadelphia, Lamar called a team meeting because things were out of control: Nikia took drugs, money, destroyed assets, and she had to die. Lamar took the trash bags full of money to Amilli’s apartment until he found a safe place for them.

Driving to the apartment to meet the crew, he called Oz to put him up on what was going on. He informed him that he would pay him out of his own pocket for the missing drugs. Lamar’s ticket came to a little over four hundred thousand, but Oz asked him to only cough up half. Customer loyalty discount, Oz had called it.

Twenty minutes later, Lamar was in the trap house and explained to his crew what he had discovered in Northeast and New Jersey.

“Damn, Chop. That bitch outta pocket. You better thank Allah that Amilli had the Porsche ‘cause the jawn woulda went up in flames, too,” Hamma said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Playing with the safety on his new gun, Lamar said, “Shorty, really gots to die. The bitch played with my paper. We’re not doing any more unnecessary shooting. It’s interfering with our paper, and that’s our main focus. It’s plain and simple, we get the drop, and then we lay shit the fuck out. I know this bitch-nigga, Slam, been taking the baby to daycare every day for the past few days.” He had caught Trap, Hamma’s, and Gunna’s undivided attention.

Since Gunna had been at the hospital to support him and gave him a new gun, Lamar had welcomed him back to the squad.

“Aight, so I’ma slide up on him as soon as he comes out from dropping ya daughter off,” suggested Hamma.

“Naw, Ham, I ain’t got no daughter,” Lamar said, slamming a fist on the table. “Slide up on him with the baby. Fuck that! I don’t want any ties with Nikia. She ran off with that work and sided with her father that ain’t never been there. Her father and daughter gettin’ killed gonna hurt her more than anything else I do.”

“So you want us to kill ya daughter?” Gunna said. “Man, you must be crazy.”

“I don’t have a fuckin’ daughter,” barked Lamar.

“Well, aight, then, the old nigga, Roc Wilda, been hanging with Slam, so I am assuming that he has to go?”

“You assume right,” Lamar said, smirking.

Trap replied. “Good, he’s gon’ be easy. I got the drop on his job.”

“It’s time to get real. Them niggas may try to blitz, and if they do, we gotta be on point,” Lamar said as the men got ready to disperse.

“We ready,” Trap insisted.

CHAPTER 45

Smoking Backwoods filled with sour diesel and haze, Hamma, Trap, and Gunna sat on the block chilling, waiting for Lamar’s command to move. They sat on the front lawn of their building having a good time cracking jokes and enjoying life. They didn’t even peep the car that coasted down the block at a slow creeping pace. The car reached a building away, and Hamma rushed off for cover with a duffle bag across his shoulder, storing an AK-47. The weed had him paranoid.