Wifey 4 Life (14 page)

My uncle’s face turned red. “Where is Breon now?”

“Upstairs,” Kasey said.

“Tell ’im to come downstairs, but make sure you tell ’im to leave
his kids upstairs.”

Kasey ran upstairs and returned with Breon several minutes later.
Breon looked like he wasn’t in the mood for idle chitchat. “What’s up?” he asked.

“Dré just told me your son snuck downstairs and saw Kira tied
up, so now I’m gonna have to switch shit up and take her out of here.”

“You ain’t gotta take her out of here,” Breon said.

“Why he don’t?” Dré asked.

“Because my son ain’t gon’ say shit!”

“Breon, we can’t take that chance,” Dré said.

“So what the fuck you gon’ do then?”

My uncle turned to look at Dré, who seemed to have all the answers.
Dré stood there with a puzzled expression.

“How are we gonna get her out of here without anybody seeing
her?” Lanier asked. “Because we aren’t gonna be able to take her out the front door.”

“We gon’ have to knock her out cold, wrap her up in a blanket,
and take her out through the back,” Dré said.

“Everything you said sounded good up to the part where we take
her through the back,” my uncle said. “How the hell are we going to get her in the
trunk of the car, when there’s no driveway that leads from the front of the house
to the back?”

Everyone in the room fell silent.

“Fuck it! We gon’ have to take her out the front door,” Dré said.

“We can’t take her out of here tied up with fucking tape across her mouth,” Lanier
said.

“I know that. We gon’ have to let her walk out of here like she
walked in here, but this time we gon’ have to stick a burner in her back and let
her know that if she opens her fucking mouth, we gon’ put a hot one in her.”

“That shit ain’t gon’ work!” Breon said. “You think she gives
a fuck if one of us got a fucking burner in her back to shoot her if she opened
her mouth? Man, wake the fuck up and smell the coffee. Look at what she’s going
through in here with us. You think she ain’t gonna take the chance to scream for
help if somebody was around?”

“He’s right,” Kasey said.

“I don’t give a fuck who’s right or wrong,” Lanier said. “The
fact of the matter is, the plan I had set up is now fucked up because of your son,
Breon. And now I’m forced to figure out some other shit.”

Breon said, “Yo, for real, homeboy, you can say what the fuck
you wanna say, but my thing is this. If you’d handled your business with her first
before leaving here to go get rid of some fucking hot-ass TVs, we wouldn’t be going
through this shit!”

Lanier gritted his teeth. “Nigga, what I do ain’t none of your
motherfucking business! So you need to watch what the fuck you say out your motherfucking
mouth.”

Breon took two steps toward Lanier. I knew Breon was trying to
intimidate him. He stood at least three inches taller than him, and he was every
bit of forty-five pounds heavier. Standing next to each other, my uncle looked like
P. Diddy, and Breon looked like Rick Ross.

“Nah, nigga, you need to watch what the fuck comes out your mouth!”

Kasey and Dré both looked at each other, but before either one
of them could say anything, Lanier reached his hand underneath the back of his shirt
and pulled out a pistol. My eyes grew huge.

Dré got between them before he raised it and got a chance to
point it toward Breon. “Yo, y’all need to go ahead with this bullshit, ’cause this
ain’t gon’ solve a damn thing.”

“Nigga, I know you ain’t pulled your pistol out on me!” Breon
tried to push Dré out of the way.

Kasey looked like she wanted to run, but she stood there with
a dumbfounded expression and said nothing.

Again I wished I wasn’t tied up, because this would have been
the perfect opportunity to escape. With all the commotion going on, they wouldn’t
have noticed that I was gone. But since I was strapped down and stuck smack-dab
in the middle of this crap, I just sat there and prayed that if any bullets were
shot off, I wouldn’t get hit.

Between the pushing and the shoving, Lanier managed to keep
his gun pointed toward the floor. I didn’t think he had any intentions of pulling
the trigger. He just wanted to prove to Breon that he wasn’t afraid of him.

Breon ended up leaving the room, but before he stormed out, he
looked at my uncle and said, “You’re a lucky nigga!”

“Nah, nigga, you’re the lucky one!” Lanier yelled back. Once
he heard Breon walking back upstairs, he stuck his gun back under his shirt.

Kasey sighed heavily and took a seat back on the sofa.

Dré stood in front of my uncle with his hands pressed against
his chest. “Come on, dog,” he said. “Leave that shit alone. It ain’t even worth
it.”

“Help me untie her,” Lanier told Dré. “Whatcha gon’ do?” Dré
asked.

“I’m gonna take her out of here.”

“How you gon’ get her to the car?”

“I’m gonna back my car up on the grass alongside the house as
far as my car will let me, and you gon’ bring her out the back.”

Kasey asked. “You sure that’s gon’ work?”

“It’s gonna have to,” my uncle told her.

It didn’t take them long to untie me. My legs were so numb, I
couldn’t stand up without their help. A few seconds after I stood with the help
of Dré and my uncle standing on each side of me, I heard three sets of footsteps
marching down the staircase. I immediately knew it was Breon and his children coming
downstairs.

Dré looked at Kasey. “Go see what the fuck he’s doing.”

Kasey ran to the entrance of the hallway. I heard her ask Breon
what he was about to do.

“I’m getting my motherfucking kids out of here before they witness
me do some damage around this motherfucker!”

“You taking them home?” she asked.

“Nah, I’m taking them up the block to their aunt’s house.” Kasey
looked back at Dré.

“A’ight,” Dré replied. “Let ’im go on out the door, so the kids
won’t see homegirl,” I heard the front door open and close before Kasey could even
give Dré’s instructions to Breon. Now that the kids were gone, Dré and my uncle
moved quickly toward the hallway.

When they got me into the hallway, Lanier told Kasey to grab
my purse off the table, hang it around my neck, and then switch places with him.
Then he added, “Help Dré take her outside, while I get my car and back it up to
the side of the house.”

Kasey did as he told her, and as soon as he walked out the front
door, they made a right into the kitchen and escorted me to the back door. Even
though my legs weren’t tied up, my wrists were still tied together, and my mouth
was still duct-taped, so I didn’t see any possibility of escaping.

O
n my way through the kitchen, I got a chance to see the clock
on the wall, and I saw that it was a few minutes after nine o’clock. There were
no lights on in the back of the house, so it was totally dark outside and spooky-looking.

Kasey asked Dré, “You think we should turn on the back porch
light?”

“Hell, nah, because somebody from the house on the other side
of the fence might see us dragging her to the car with fucking tape all over her
mouth. So let’s just take her down the back stairs and wait for L.L. to walk around
the side to meet us.”

Kasey sighed. “Yeah, a’ight.”

It didn’t take my uncle long to back up his car on the grass
beside the old, wretched-ass house. A couple seconds later, I heard a car door slam,
and then I heard someone coming toward us.

“Hey, where y’all at?” Lanier asked in a low whisper.

Dré spoke up. “We’re standing at the bottom of the stairs.”

“I can’t see you, so walk toward the corner of the house.”

“A’ight.”

Dré and Kasey stepped forward, and then they yanked me to get
me to the corner of the house. When we got to the edge of the house, we saw my uncle’s
brake lights as he backed up his car. After he put his car in park, he jumped out
of the driver’s seat to help them load me into his car. I had no idea if he planned
to put me in the backseat or stuff me in the trunk, but I was soon to find out.

“Come on, bring her to the car,” he told them.

“A’ight, we coming.” Dré began to drag me through the grass once
more.

“Are we gonna put her in the trunk or what?” Kasey asked. “Yeah.
Give me a minute to press the trunk button.”

My heart sank into the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to be
thrown in the back of a trunk. I wasn’t some load of trash for him to dump into
the nearest dumpster. I was precious cargo, and someone needed to recognize that.

Kasey and Dré escorted me to the back of my uncle’s car. They
stood there patiently and waited for him to hit the button to unlock the trunk.

“What’s the holdup?” Dré asked.

“I can’t see the fucking button.”

“Ain’t it right there underneath your steering wheel?”

“That’s where I’m feeling.”

While he searched for the button that controlled the trunk, I
looked toward the sky and prayed to God that someone would come by and help me escape.
I promised Him that I would turn my life over to Him if He allowed me to get out
of this rut. I knew I couldn’t do it by myself, so if He’d just send someone to
my rescue, I would forever be in His debt.

Before I ended my prayer, my attention was diverted by a loud
gunshot, which scared the hell out of me. When I looked in the direction where that
single shot came, I saw the silhouette of someone running toward us.

The bullet shattered the windshield of my uncle’s car and penetrated
one of the front seats. Lanier immediately took cover and dove to the ground, and
Kasey and Dré released my arms and ran back into the house, leaving me standing
there all alone. Without thinking twice, I ducked down behind the back of the car.

“Don’t hide now, motherfucker! Get back up!” I heard the gunman
roar.

My uncle didn’t respond. I assumed he knew it was Breon, because
I knew it was him the moment he spoke.

My uncle returned fire, letting off four rounds. It sounded like
a cannon, but I couldn’t tell if Breon got hit or dove down to the ground. I couldn’t
see shit. I did hear my uncle crawling, and it sounded like he was coming around
the other side of the car where I was. I was sure he didn’t know Dré and Kasey had
left me out here all alone. It was too dark for him to see anything. Shit, I could
barely see what was around me, but my ears were working overtime. The closer he
came to me, the farther I moved in the opposite direction.

While I squatted and crab-walked, I managed to get away from
the car and get back to the back of the house. When I looked up at the back door,
I saw it was closed. I figured Dré or Kasey must have closed it immediately after
they ran into the house.

While I moved around the back of the house, I heard more shots
being fired. It sounded like the Fourth of July. The way I saw it, Breon wanted
to see some bloodshed, and he wasn’t going to stop until he got what he wanted.

He yelled, “Whatcha hiding for? You bitch-ass nigga!”

But my uncle still wouldn’t respond. I couldn’t tell if he had
been hit, because I was too far away to hear any movement.

By this time I had reached the other side of the house. There
was another old house that was at least sixty feet away. All the lights in that
rundown shack were off, but I noticed a little bit of movement behind the curtains
of one of the downstairs windows. You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know
that someone was in there trying to see who was doing the shooting. I started to
approach the window to get that person’s attention, but I decided against it when
I realized that nobody was going to open their door after they’d heard gunshots.
Every human being knew that was a no-no, so I kept moving.

Instead of heading toward the front of the house, I stayed in
the back and moved from one backyard to the next. I thought I heard my uncle running
behind me at one point, but when I ducked down behind a tall garbage can and waited
a few minutes, I realized that it was just a stray cat. I let out a big sigh of
relief.

After I sat there for a few moments, I noticed that all the gunshots
had stopped. I couldn’t tell who got shot or what was the outcome of it all, because
I didn’t stick around to see. My main concern was to get Kira to a safe place. So
I stood and ran until I couldn’t run anymore.

When I got to the last house on the block, I rushed across the
street to the next block and dipped down into the alley behind a row of houses.
The alley was dark and narrow, but I didn’t care. This was my only way of escape,
so I took it.

Not once did I look back. I figured that if those motherfuckers
were looking for me, they were searching around the house, or maybe the neighbor’s
backyard. I knew they wouldn’t think that I’d gotten very far, but I showed them.

 
I
knew I ran every bit of one mile to another neighborhood
called Young’s Park before I ran out of breath. I knew if my uncle or any one of
the others was looking for me, they wouldn’t have come looking over in this
neighborhood. I thanked God that I had on some flat ballet shoes, because I wouldn’t
have made it this far in three- or four-inch heels.

As I got deeper into this neighborhood, I started seeing more
streetlights. It was the projects, for Christ’s sake, so everybody and their mother
was standing outside. I did have a few enemies out here from my past. Ricky had
fucked a couple chicks out here, so they hated my guts after he broke it off with
them. I definitely didn’t want any of them to see me tied up like this, so I dipped
back around a black Dodge Magnum and ran up Virginia Beach Boulevard toward downtown
Norfolk.

As I was ducking behind cars, I saw a car like my uncle’s traveling
in my direction. I quickly ducked behind a black Range Rover.

Suddenly the passenger window of the Rover rolled down, and a
guy asked, “You a’ight?”