My heart raced as I stared down at my seven-year-old son’s blood-soaked shirt. As his last breath left his body, so did my spirit. I slowly lifted my hand to stroke his little face, and a piercing pain stung my heart. I knew that he was dead. The limpness of his body told me so. But still I refused to believe any different. Warm tears rolled down my cheeks, seeping into my skin. “I can’t leave him.”
“Fah! Fah! Let’s go, man! The hook is on the way! This joint is going to be crawling in a minute, dawg!” I heard my cousin G yell.
His voice shattered off the warehouse walls but hit my ears like a whisper. I couldn’t move. I felt my lips moving, but I heard nothing. “My son, man. My son, G.” I knew I was saying it over and over.
Thirty-six hours earlier
I dropped my wife, Jaz, and my daughter, Kaeerah, off at the airport. They were headed out to Cali to go visit Tasha. I then scooped up my son’s uncle, Wali. I needed him to get the skinny on this nigga, Steele, before my fam from up Jersey arrived. I didn’t think I would have to pull my gats back out of retirement because I had considered that chapter of my life closed. But this bitch of a baby mother of mines, Oni, along with her scandalous, crooked-ass, wannabe-gangsta brothers, fucked with the wrong nigga and he in turn fucked with me. Now I had to send for backup.
Oni and her brothers had robbed Steele’s people of their coke, meth and a shitload of cash. In retaliation, since Oni and Steele had been fuckin’ off and on, this nigga did the unthinkable, he snatched up Lil’ Faheem . . . my only son. My seed. So, since I had nothing to do with the caper, my plan was simple: Give Steele his shit back, and get my son; I made Oni and her brothers cough up the bricks and about three hundred grand. They knew if they didn’t it would be over for them.
When my fam from up north touched down, I spent a couple of hours filling them in on what all had gone down and what was about to go down. We were holdin’ and ready to get to what used to be one of Atlanta’s hot spots, an old club called The Mix, which was off of Candler Road. At one point in time it was the place to be.
I looked over at my cousins G and Snell and said, “Our main objective is my son’s safety. All I want to do is get him outta there. I ain’t got no beef with these niggas. So none of that we go in shootin’ ask questions later bullshit.” It sounded good being said, I was just praying that’s how it would go down.
“C’mon, nigga. You know we got you, Fah. That’s why you got us down here,” my cousin G said with his usual air of cockiness. “Once little man is out the way, then if them niggas look wrong, I’ma push them melons back. Real talk.”
I checked my gat one last time. “Time to roll.” I had G riding shotgun, Snell and Wali’s punk ass was in the back. The only reason I allowed the nigga to roll was because Steele wouldn’t meet with us unless at least one of them muthafuckas who stole from him was present. Me personally? I wanted all of Oni’s brothers to come, because I had planned to dead them all. And this would have been the perfect time and place to do it. But for now, Wali would have to do. Today would be his last day breathing.
After about twenty minutes, we pulled into the parking lot. “This it?” G sounded disappointed. I don’t know what he was expecting. “This shit look abandoned.”
“It’s closed down. Them niggas just use it as a hang out spot and a place to conduct business.” Wali told us.
I pulled around the back of the club. Wali had already told me that if something went down, there were only two exits. One in the front and one in the back. So I decided to park in the back, while hoping that my gut instinct was right. I pulled up next to a black Suburban, the only car there. I assumed that our guests were already inside. I deaded the engine. We got out and met at the trunk of my ride, looking