Best Laid Plans: a Hood Misfits Novel by Brick

Author:Brick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Urban Books
Published: 2017-12-11T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Antonio

A harsh splash of a chilly sensation washed over me as if I had ice water thrown on me. I was taken aback. I was stunned. I was hurt and I wanted to kill. As I stood looking at a woman who lied to me by omission, all the old angst between us flooded back. I watched her without feeling, an empty void growing bigger every minute. In my mind, I heard my father’s voice, quoting his favorite military strategist, Machiavelli: “‘For among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible; which is one of those disgraceful things which a prince must guard against.’”

That quote played over and over as I stared into Kenya’s eyes. I heard her explaining that it happened while I was overseas working for the military with Doctors Without Borders. Heard her say that she was still frightened to tell me anything when I came home, and all I could think was that she had lied to me and her actions could have put our daughter at risk back then. Jewel visited her mother often and Lu could have easily targeted baby girl to get back at Kenya. The nigga had been touched in the head like that. I was genuinely pissed.

My life was not my own. No matter how hard I had fought to keep clear of my father, his shadow always reached me once it stopped reaching for my mother. Lu, my older brother, had come for the mother of my child. He had almost killed her for his own twisted bullshit and she kept that shit from me. Kenya was a liar. She was a manipulator. She was a risk.

A slap against my chest barely drew my attention. Had Kenya not appeared in my face screaming at me, I thought that I would have stayed where I was, in a catatonic rage, for hours.

“Tone,” she screamed, tears running down her face. “Tone, breathe. You’re scaring me. Baby, your nails are cutting into your palms and they are bleeding. Antonio.”

In a daze, I glanced down at my fisted hands then back up toward Kenya. To my ears, my voice was a cold monotone, devoid of everything as I mentally went over what she told me and started putting the pieces together during that time when we were trying to work it out, again for the hundredth time.

“When I came back from doing a Doctors tour, you told me that you wanted nothing to do with me anymore. Said it was foolish to try to work this out. Told me the fire at the DA’s office was the writing on the wall that we just couldn’t work it out,” I muttered.

“I was scared. I needed to get away from Atlanta and if that meant dropping you, I had to do that for my mental state. And I had to be able to heal without you asking questions,” Kenya explained. “I didn’t know you were an Orlando and I was scared of what could happen to you and Jewel.

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