A Thug's Wife (Full Length Novel) (19 page)

             
“You know I live with my mama and it’s like ten minutes from the hood. Before then we used to live in the projects for a very long time.”

             
“Yea, I lived in the projects most of life too. Ain’t nothing to be ashamed of babe. Some people just end of being a product of their environment with no way out.”

             
“What?” Cherie asked confused.  “Ok, whatever.”

             
Cherie climbed into bed next to Marco and laid her head onto his chest.
Okay Marco, I’m giving you two weeks to show me something or I’m out.

Chapter 18: Social Media Can Get You Killed

“Let me have a Corona no salt and then bring us some of dat’ chips and salsa for an appetizer,” Hova’s accent was dripping as he glanced over the menu. The waiter nodded his head and walked away leaving Hova and Samantha alone.

             
“Baby, I got some good news to tell you,” Samantha said as she looked up from her menu to Hova.

             
“What’s that?”

             
“I got the call back from the social worker last night. They’re gonna let me adopt Davina. They said that my mama will not contest the adoption and in a couple of weeks she’ll be able to come and live with us.

I’m so fuckin’ excited right now. That’s why I was like let’s go to Applebee’s tonight. I wanted to surprise you. Naomi and Tim
might be joining us.”

             
“Dat’s what’s up. Mon I ain’t seen her lil’ ass since she was like two years old. Did they finally let yuh see her?”

             
“No, but I will be able to see her sometime next week. Gotta wait on the judge to sign off on the paperwork,” Samantha said with a smile.

She looked down at her menu barely
able to contain the joy that she was feeling. She grew up in a single parent home that was run by her alcoholic mother, Carolyn. Samantha didn’t know how she was able to come out so well considering she was constantly abused and neglected by her mama.

She met Hova when she was sixteen, and he was twenty years old. He lived right above them in the projects in the Rupert Circle Housing Projects back before they tore them down. The two of them hit it off immediately and started dating, but not as much as
Samantha wanted being she was underage.

Hova left the hood quickly after he started hustling, but made sure he came back for Samantha when she was eighteen. She had a
hard life up until he rescued her from her shitty ass life. Her story was your typical dope-boy saves ghetto princess story, but it wasn’t no fairy tale.

             
Her and Hova had been married for ten years and didn’t have any kids together. Not that they didn’t want any, but over the years Samantha had been busy finishing pharmacy school. She’d just graduated a little over a year ago and since then she’d been working like crazy and fighting the system to get custody of her little sister Davina. She’d been trying since Davina was born six years ago, but with her having little to no income and of course Hova being a dope boy, it just wasn’t happening.

             
Not only that, the court kept seeing in favor of her alcoholic mother, saying they didn’t see a reason to take a child from its mother without proper cause. It wasn’t until Davina was four years old that she, unfortunately, burned her arm on the kitchen stove that the system finally figured that maybe Carolyn was neglectful and wasn’t fit to be a parent.

So for the past two years, Davina has been in a foster home
living with strangers and only allowed supervised visits with Carolyn. The court denied Samantha any visitation a long time ago and she or Hova hadn’t seen Davina since she was two, but the wait was finally over.

             
Finishing school had been the most important thing she had ever done in her life. Not just for her, but for her little sister, as well. There was no way she was going to let Davina grow up the way that she had. She was glad that she was no longer in her mother’s care, but she didn’t want her in the system either. She knew that Davina was more than likely worse off there and was happy that she finally won the fight to have her. She couldn’t wait to bring her home and give her the love and attention she deserved.

             
“Damn, I can’t wait tuh see little mama. I know she done got big as hell,” Hova chuckled as he watched the joy that glittered in his wife’s honey brown eyes. Her peanut butter skin was glowing, and her cheeks were rosy from the excitement.

He loved seeing her smiling the way that she was. Hova would do anything to make that
a permanent feeling in her life. Samantha was his everything and then some. She had been the true definition of ride of die in his life. She had rode it out with him through all his magical times and even more during the times that he had been down and out.

She was a pure ghetto girl by heart, but she was smart as hell. Samantha could easily carry their family if she ever had to, but Hova would never allow it. She’d just started working as a pharmacist and was making a little over eighty-thousand dollars
a year, but Hova told her to keep every little bit that she’d made. He wanted her to put it away and save it for a rainy day, if there ever was one.

“But, when are we gonna have us a little one? Nigga ain’t getting younger and shit I really do want a litt
le Hova Jr..”

             
Samantha sucked her teeth and looked back at her menu. It wasn’t like Hova didn’t already have kids. He actually had four little ones out there by three different women; all had been conceived in the ten years that Samanta and Hova had been together.

He had three girls and one son, all ranging in age seven to three. Many times Samantha thought about leaving Hova, but he was all that she knew. Being that she’d gotten married at a very young age, she had never been with another man. She was sc
ared to walk down that path, start over with someone new for them to up and do her the same way.

She always figured that it was best to stick it out with her one true love, hoping that one day it would get better. One day Hova would finally be with her an
d her only and stop having all these babies with these other women. 

             
“Yea I know what yuh thinking but yuh know how I am Sam. One of these days I will settle down and be a faithful man and when I settle down it’s gonna be with yuh. You’ve always had my heart and can’t nobody else take dat away from yuh. Yuh knew how I was when we met, so I don’t see why yuh get so upset about dis shit. I didn’t give Lamar my name, and it wasn’t even an option,” Hova said to Samantha seeing she was upset about him bringing up the subject of having kids.

             
It was true though. Hova told Samantha before they’d gotten married that he loved women and that he couldn’t see himself settling for one woman anytime soon. Samantha didn’t care at the time. She was young, and she was in love. All she wanted was Hova and to carry the man’s last name, to be his wife, something that them other bitches would never have. Yes, it was painful knowing that she wasn’t enough for him, but she knew what she was getting into, but it wasn’t the other women that bothered her the most.

The fact that Hova was out sleeping with these women unprotected and making babies with them is what really got under her skin. That she couldn’t get over. He could fuck whom he wanted to fuck ‘cause she knew he would alw
ays come home to her, but they were getting from Hova what should have been reserved for her and her only. She wanted to have Hova’s kids, but every time she thought about having sex with him without a rubber she thought about all his kids and it made her sick to her stomach.

             
“I would like to have kids with my wife though. It’s not like I didn’t ask yuh years before Imani and Precious came.” The waitress came and sat their drinks down on the table and then they quickly gave their food orders and handed him the menus. Samantha waited until the waiter walked away before responding to Hova’s insult.

             
“Oh, fuck you, Hova. Don’t blame me for wanting to do something with my life. Penalize me for going to school and doing something to guarantee you and I will always be good. Don’t you ever throw that shit in my face again,” Samantha hissed. She flipped her twenty-six inch Brazilian weave to the back and snatched her drink from the table.

             
Hova held his hands up letting Samantha know that he wasn’t going to argue with her. His mouth curved into a smile, and he placed his lips to his bottle of Corona, taking a sip of it before sitting the bottle down on the table.

             
Just as Hova went to apologize to Samantha his phone lit up and vibrated against the wooden table. There were several messages that rolled in back to back. He grabbed the phone and went to cut it off when one of the messages in his preview screen caught his attention. His forehead wrinkled, and his pulse rate began to race hoping that it wasn’t saying what he thought it was. He slid the bar across the bottom of the phone and entered in his four digit passcode.

             
He pressed down on the text message icon and went to the message that came from Jazz:
They out to get u.
Found out dis fuck nigga been playing me. These niggas plotting on u. Heard him telling somebody over the phone dat they was gon hit u hard.

             
He didn’t understand the message at all. He went to pull up his keyboard so that he could send Jazz a reply to explain just what in the fuck she was talking about:
What the fuck u talm bout? Who played u?
Send.

             
Seconds later, Jazz’s reply rolled through:
Fuck nigga named Mo. He work for Sym. I been fucking him fo da past few weeks. He been tryna get info out me. I gave him nothing but I heard him on da phone telling somebody they was gon hit u hard tonite. He thought I was sleep but I heard his bitch ass.

             
Hova replied:
So you fuckin wit da enemy. Fuck u mean u ain’t tell him shit. Bitch I’m a murk ur ass when I see u hoe. Believe dat shit.
Send.

             
Hova stared as his screen intently waiting on Jazz’s reply, but one never came through. He grunted and shook his head as he left the message box to see what his other messages were talking about. Sweat began to form at his brows and his heart felt as if it dropped to the pit of his stomach as he read the message that came from one of his boys:
NIGGA GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE. THEY COMING AT U RIGHT NOW. JUST FOUND OUT BRUH.

             
Hova jumped up from the table, knocking the Corona over and reaching out for Samantha’s hand, but it was too late. A punch came at the side of his head knocking him back into his seat. Samantha jumped up, but hurriedly sat back down when a pistol was pointed into her face.

             
Marco chuckled, “You leaving so soon?”

             
Hova looked around and then up at Marco, who had his face tucked back in a hoodie, but he could still tell it was him. He shook his head ‘cause he had never done anything wrong to Marco. They were from the same hood; they weren’t friends, but as far as he knew they didn’t have any beef with each other.

Hova knew what Marco did for a living, and he respected it. He figured as long as he didn’t fuck with Marco then Marco wouldn’t fuck with him. Hov
a was so lost. His nostrils flared as he watched the worry that was planted on his wife’s face. She hadn’t done a damn thing, and Marco was out of line for this shit.

             
“Wat deh fuck is dis’ Marco?” Hova’s accent was thick. It always got deeper and harder for others to understand him when he was pissed.

             
“You been fuckin’ with muthafuckas that you ain’t got no business fuckin’ with. Having niggas ol’ ladies shot down in the drive-way and shit, what kind of shit is that?”

             
Hova sighed as he figured out what this was about. Marco was working for Sym. Had he known that Sym was smart enough to pick up a ruthless nigga like Marco, he would’ve been put Marco on the payroll.

He knew all about Marco’s get-up, and it was nothing funny about the way he got down. The
fact that Marco was standing in a crowded restaurant with a gun to Samantha’s face proved how looney he was. A nigga had to be crazy to get in Marco’s way. Lately Marco had been quiet, and Hova hadn’t heard much about him putting anyone down, but he knew it wouldn’t last long. He just never thought he would be the one on the other side of Marco’s trigger finger though.

             
“I don’t know what yuh talkin’ bout. Look, git dat’ gun out my lady’s face mon’,” Hova said trying to reason with Marco. “How much yuh want?”

             
Again Marco chuckled and then pulled the trigger.

             
POW!

             
Hova flinched and jumped up from his seat. His entire body shook as he looked over at Samantha. She was still alive and unharmed. Marco was fucking with him. Hova was in a tough situation, and he was naked. Samantha made him promise to leave his heat in the car, and he had done just that. Bad choice.