Promise Kept, page 13
“This ain’t the time for that, Sin. You gonna chase this bag or that bitch?” Unique questioned.
Reluctantly, Sin returned to his seat. Unique was right. They were at Dirty Wine with a purpose that night. He tried to stay focused on the task at hand, but he couldn’t help but wonder what the hell had just gone down with Promise.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
moments prior
Long after Christian had gone, his presence could still be felt throughout the entire club, but especially in Inferno’s section. Donna had been replaced by two more strippers, and the drinks continued to flow, but it was obvious that the vibe had changed. There was a nervous energy that hadn’t been there previously. Promise could feel it acutely, and she could tell from their body language that the others did too.
Moochie had lost interest in Keisha, settling instead to brood over the bottle of champagne clutched in her large mitt. Trap was a little more at ease. With Donna gone, Keisha was now the object of his affection. He showered her with bills while whispering sweet nothings into her ear. He tried to appear not to have been rattled by the confrontation, but Promise peeped how he kept casting glances over his shoulder anytime someone passed too close to their section. It was like he was expecting Christian to come back to continue their conversation and wanted to see him coming. Promise hadn’t been in Christian’s presence for more than five or six minutes, but it was enough time for her to agree with the sentiment. He certainly wasn’t a man you wanted sneaking up on you.
Inferno seemed the least concerned, which was understandable. Stranger and more intense things happened whenever he showed up somewhere. The fact that this incident hadn’t played out in violence was nothing short of a miracle, considering that chaos and, at least, a beatdown always seemed to follow the young rapper anywhere he went. His partner Finesse was a different case. The standoff between Trap and Christian had made him uncomfortable. Promise could tell because of the way he kept glancing at his watch as if he had someplace else that he needed to be. Promise would’ve been lying if she said that she felt anything close to fear coming from him. It was more like the energy in the room was now off, and he was anxious to get away from it. She couldn’t say that she blamed him because she was feeling the same thing. In fact, she decided to take that as her cue to leave and get back to Sin.
“So, listen . . . if you guys are cool for right now, I’m going to clear some of these empties and go check on my other tables,” Promise announced. She began gathering empty water bottles and discarded drinking glasses from the table, tossed them into a bin, and tried to make her exit.
“Hold on, baby. Where you rushing off to? Larry said you girls would be with us for the night.” Trap blocked her path with his arm. He already had Keisha on lock, but apparently one girl wasn’t enough for him.
“I ain’t a part of that package,” she told him and forcefully moved his arm so she could pass, but he grabbed her by the wrist.
“Don’t act like that, lil miss. I ain’t hard up for bread. Stop playing with me and put a number on it, so the real games can begin,” Trap said suggestively.
“She said she’s good. I’m all the woman you’ll need for the night, Daddy.” Keisha tried to draw Trap’s attention from Promise, who was clearly uncomfortable.
“I got deep pockets and a big appetite,” Trap told Keisha before turning his attention back to Promise. “C’mon, shorty. Name your price and I got you.” He fanned a bunch of bills in front of her.
Promise looked from the bills to Trap’s smirking face. “One lesson my mother taught me before she passed was all money ain’t good money.” She snatched her arm away and spun. It was then that she got into her third accident of the night. “Fuck,” she cursed while bending to pick up the empty bottles and glasses that had fallen. Thankfully they were all empty and none of them had broken. As she was cleaning up her mess, she noticed the feet of the man she had bumped. He was wearing a pair of crisp construction Timberlands, untied, laces running free. She wasn’t sure why but something about them rang familiar. Her eyes traveled up the black jeans, over the black sweater, and landed on the medallion swinging from his neck. It was a gaudy Rottweiler head covered in black diamonds with two rubies where the eyes should be. Promise felt her mouth go dry and she had to force herself to finish the visual journey that she had started. When she looked into the face of the man she bumped into, she suddenly found that she could no longer breathe.
He was tall. Not as tall as Odell, but well above average height. He had broad shoulders that suggested he worked out or, at least, had at some point in his life. The slight belly peeking through his sweater said that he no longer hit the gym as often as he once had. A well-kept black beard covered most of his face, and his eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses. Promise didn’t have to see the eyes to know that they were boring into her, undressing her.
As he continued to eye-fuck Promise, she could feel the burger that she had eaten earlier shift in her stomach as it threatened to free itself through her mouth. “No,” she let out a weak gasp. There were few people who could connect the dots of her old life to her new one, and he was one of them.
“Damn it, girl! Why is it that, every time I turn around, you seem to be on your ass!” Larry barked. Promise didn’t know where he had come from, nor did she care. She couldn’t pull her eyes away from Don B.
“Take it easy, old-timer. This isn’t the first time a bitch has fallen out in my presence, and it won’t be the last. The Don can be somewhat overwhelming,” Don B. boasted. He extended a hand to Promise in order to help her back to her feet, but she was frozen. All she could do was stare. “What is she? Retarded or something?” he asked Larry.
“Up, gal.” Odell took Promise by her arm and pulled her to her feet as if she weighed next to nothing. He could see the embarrassment plastered across her face and wanted to spare her a bit of dignity. “You okay?”
Promise nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Her mouth had gone completely dry, and her tongue felt like a sandbag. She dared glance at Don B. and found him staring at her quizzically from behind those sunglasses.
“Damn it, gal. This klutz shit with you is getting old!” Larry barked.
“Larry, I didn’t mean to . . . I’m sorry, but—” Promise began, but Larry cut her off.
“You always sorry. Shit, you can’t dance for shit, you spill one out of every three drink orders before they get to the tables, and you ain’t fucking. You don’t belong here!” Larry went in on her. It was obvious that the girl was experiencing some type of episode, but he was too busy trying to show out for the rappers to notice. Even if he had, it was doubtful that Larry would’ve cared.
Promise was finally able to pull her eyes away from Don B. and turned to Larry. He was still screaming at her as if she was a child, but his voice had faded to white noise. The only thing she heard clearly was his statement about her not belonging there. Once again, she was being rejected by a man she had come to depend on. That was the last straw for her. “You know, what? You’re absolutely right, Larry. I don’t belong here.” She tossed the few empty bottles she had collected back onto the floor. This time, one of them did break, causing Larry to jump back from the spray of glass. “Fuck them bottles, fuck this raggedy-ass club, and mother-fuck you, Larry. I quit!” she announced before storming off.
“You janky bitch! Don’t bring your ass back here begging for no job because I ain’t got shit for you! You’re done here!” Larry called after her. It was more for show than anything else because anyone who had witnessed what just happened knew that Promise’s time at Dirty Wine had come to an end. “My apologies, gentlemen. You know how it can be sometimes to break in these new bitches. They all want the money, but ain’t got the patience to let me build them into stars.”
“No apologies necessary, old head.” Don B. was addressing Larry, but looking over the sea of strippers lingering at the fringes of the VIP rope hoping to get chosen. He plucked one from the crowd, gave her the once over, and sent her back. “Something that I learned a while back, stars aren’t made,”—he plucked another girl from the crowd, younger and more to his liking—“they’re born.”
“Fuck was that about? With the bottle girl?” his manager, Tone, asked. He was a brown-skinned man of medium build. He had a preppy look about him, with his pale gray blazer, blue jeans, and white Nike Airs. Tone had been stopped at the front door by a broad he used to fuck while Don B. went ahead, so he only arrived at the table after the incident. All he had to go on was seeing the girl flee and knowing his friend’s reputation.
“Fuck if I know,” Don B. said honestly. He flipped through his mental Rolodex trying to place her but couldn’t right away. “I definitely feel like I’ve seen shorty before. You don’t forget an ass like that, especially on a white girl.”
Promise moved with half the speed and all the grace of a fawn who was just learning to use its legs. It was all she could do to get her feet to cooperate with the rest of her body and keep her balance while she made it to the dressing room. Her ankles were twisting this way and that, threatening to dump her on her face. She cursed herself for not snatching the heels off earlier, but that would’ve taken time. Time in which Don B. might’ve had a chance to remember where they’d met before. She needed to put some distance between herself, Dirty Wine, and the demons of her past.
When she passed Sin’s table, it was like a blur. She heard him call her name but didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop. If she had, she would’ve likely given Sin all that anger she had bottled up for Larry, sprinkled in with her own self-hating shit, and he didn’t deserve that. The game they were playing with each other needed to be one of emotional stability. At least, on her part, and she wasn’t quite there at the moment. To make matters worse, she knew that she had been doing Bozo shit all night. From the spilled drinks to her daddy issues manifesting themselves in public, no sporting nigga in their right mind would’ve taken her seriously. And if they did, she would’ve had to question their judgment because she knew, for a fact, that night she had presented herself as the hot mess that she was.
For once in her life, her luck held, and she had crossed the threshold of the dressing room before she finally lost her balance. Clutching the wall kept her from hitting the ground, but her tender ankles had had enough of the heels. Sitting on one of the benches, she snatched the shoes off and tossed them into the trashcan. Now, free of the cheap plastic, Promise managed to hobble to her locker. It took her two attempts to get the combination right. She snatched the flimsy locker door open, spilling her small makeup bag onto the floor. She ignored the brushes and CVS lipsticks and dug out her cell phone and the sweats she had worn to work that night. She hit the last number she’d called. Actually, it was the only number she’d called, outside of the Chinese restaurant, since she had gotten the phone. It only took two rings before someone picked up on the other end.
“Yo,” a low voice came over the phone as Promise was pulling her sweatpants on. In the background, you could hear the “Land O’ Lakes” joint by Conway the Machine and Busta Rhymes knocking in the background.
“It’s me,” Promise said into the phone.
“Like I didn’t know that. What’s goodie?” the gruff voice questioned from the other end.
Promise slipped into her Air Max and was pulling her sweatshirt over her head when she replied, “I need a solid.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“So, you think homie is solid?” Cal asked once he and Asher were back in the car.
“Atilla?” Asher thought on it before answering. “I haven’t seen him in a minute, but you know he’s always been crew, even if not officially. We grew up with the dude.”
“Yeah, but like you said, you haven’t seen him in a while. Time changes a man. Especially prison time,” Cal pointed out.
“I don’t disagree, which is why I wanna keep him close for a little while. Feel him out, you know?”
“You trying to bring him in?” Cal asked suspiciously. He and Asher had always kept a tight circle, but it got even tighter once Asher was promoted.
“To this?” Asher motioned toward the city. “Nah, these little niggas already on edge with all the new faces hanging around lately and adding one more to the mix probably ain’t gonna help to ease the tension. I got something else in mind for homie.”
“You better be careful with that one. Handling Atilla is like playing with a loaded gun,” Cal warned.
“And that’s exactly why I want him close. I got love for him because we got history, but me keeping him on is as good as having my own personal attack dog. He’s young, hungry, and fiercely loyal.”
“Which is also what makes this such a bad idea. How do you think he’d react if he finds out what you did to Ab?” Cal questioned.
“You mean what we did to Ab,” Asher corrected him.
The story Asher had given Atilla about Ab having overdosed in Atlantic City was true, but it was also incomplete. After B-Stone was killed, Ab, as his second in command, inherited his position. Ab proved to be a competent enough leader, though a reluctant one. He and B-Stone had been in the streets for years, but while B-Stone embraced the gangster lifestyle, Ab had begun to shy away from it, even prior to B-Stone’s death. Ab was more focused on getting his music management company off the ground than building a drug empire. He had been trying for years to get B-Stone to see his vision, but Stone was in too deep, with no interest in getting out. He loved the streets so much that he didn’t mind dying in them, and he did. However, Ab had different ideas.
Not long after, Asher found himself playing the position that Ab had only recently vacated, an ambitious young man with his own vision of the future. Ab was the boss, but Asher was the one in the trenches with the soldiers. Between trying to break into the music business and keeping the operation up and running, Ab was a man trying to dance between two worlds, and their business on the street was beginning to suffer because of it.
Asher was the one charged with taking care of the day-to-day operations, from keeping their workers supplied with drugs to settling disputes when they arose. Asher was tapped into the streets in a way that Ab hadn’t been in years. This allowed him to see the playing field from a different angle, but so long as his OG kept a leash around the young superstar’s neck, he would remain powerless to make the necessary adjustments to ensure that their business didn’t get swallowed up by the competition. The only way Asher would ever be able to do what he felt in his heart was best for his gang was to cut the tether. And so, he did.
To Asher’s credit, he had tried diplomacy in the beginning. Ab obviously had little to no interest in sitting at the head of a drug gang or the work that would go into making sure that it flourished. Empowering Asher while Ab played in the background but was still the boss in name would’ve given both what they really wanted. But Ab’s ego wouldn’t allow it. He was too worried about how it would look to let one of his young boys steer the boat, that it would be seen as a weak move, or him not being able to handle what B-Stone had left behind. He would’ve rather continued sitting on the throne until it rotted out from under him or was snatched, instead of doing what was right for the gang. This didn’t carry a lot of positive favor with the homies who saw what was going on. Ab had broken one of the cardinal rules of gangbanging when he put his self-esteem before the needs of the organization.
The way Asher saw it was that either he or one of the other lieutenants would give Ab what was waiting for him and take over, and Asher wasn’t too enthusiastic about serving another general. It was his time, and everyone knew it. It was then that Asher started to plant the seeds of an uprising.
Toppling Ab would require a slightly different set of circumstances than the ones that had taken B-Stone out. Stone was a man with one speed and one intent: conquer as quickly as possible. It was easy to steer a dude like him into some bullshit that he might not survive. There might’ve been speculation about Asher’s involvement with B-Stone’s murder. He wanted him dead . . . no, he needed him dead for the sake of his own life and that of his mother’s. Someone was hanging a cartoon anvil over Asher’s head and threatening to cut the rope and Daffy Duck his ass if B-Stone didn’t eat dirt first. Thankfully, before Asher could even begin to wrap his mind around the task, someone had beat him to it. The universe had thrown him a lifeline with someone else killing B-Stone before he was forced to, but there would be no such blessings when it came to Ab.
Much like with B-Stone, it had been Ab’s one-track mind that opened him up to Asher’s treachery. Because Asher was his little homie, Ab would often boast about the things he had going on just to impress him. Little did he know, his one-time protégé used this information to find kinks in his armor. Ab’s proudest accomplishment was his management company. He would go on and on about how he had legit shit popping beyond what was going on in the hood. He started thinking that he was Dame Dash and started drilling his ideals into Asher. He challenged him to boss up but denied him the resources he needed to really make a move. Unbeknownst to Ab, his bragging and treating Asher like a lil nigga had the same effect as letting a domesticated pitbull taste blood for the first time. Everything you taught them flew out the window and their base natures took over. They wanted more.
By the time Asher began laying his trap for Ab, he had already started broadening his view beyond Essex County. One thing he learned was that “what one man won’t do, another man will.” Whereas Ab kept his investments close and only fed Asher enough to keep him alive, his new silent partner opened him up to something different. He introduced Asher to cities like Miami and Los Angeles, where the real action happened. Asher found himself moving in circles of people with real money, and he wanted to be a part of that life. Asher was still the low man on the pole, riding his partner’s coattails, but he knew how to work a room. He might not have cut into the larger Hollywood connects, but he managed to establish great relationships with their assistants and entourages. One such relationship had opened the door that Asher would walk Ab through where he would meet his end.
