A Gangsta's Son Read Free Page B

the house first: 1248 S. Troy Street. There were two girls sitting on the porch steps rolling blunts and laughing. An older man in jeans and a t-shirt was setting up a barbecue grill in the vacant lot next to the house; while a woman who looked to be about the same age was filling a cooler with beers and sodas.
    “Pull over and park right up here,” James said. He reclined in the passenger’s seat and slid a thirty-round magazine into his 9mm Ruger. His coffee-black face was calmer than usual—the calm before the storm. “Whatever happens, don’t leave me out here, a’ight?”
    “Boy ain’t nobody gon leave you.” Cresha parked the SUV one house down from Michael T. Love Jr.’s address and then killed the engine. She held her Samsung Galaxy 3 in one hand and the Illinois State ID in the other, studying them both. “Yup, the address matches the one on this ID, and the ID looks brand new.” She eyed the man at the barbecue grill through her side-view mirror. “That nigga standin’ by the house kinda looks like the nigga in this picture, must be some kin to ‘im.”
    “Tell me how many faces you see on this block,” James said, cocking his heavy black gun.
    Far behind them on the corner to their left, Cresha counted five teenage thugs and three adults. Drug-dealers, she assumed, out serving their product to the early morning addicts. A small group of young girls were playing a game of hopscotch on the sidewalk behind the Tahoe, and a brown-skin teenage boy on a bike had just appeared at the corner of Roosevelt and Troy.
    “Too many people, James. Too many eyes. We should leave and come back later.”
    “Nuh-uh.” He sat up and peered out at 1248 South Troy Street, then sank back down in his seat and said, “Drive around to the alley behind the house. We ain’t leavin’ without that money.”

~Chapter 8~
    “What’s in those duffle bags?” Shay asked.
    I glanced over at her and grinned. We were climbing the stairs in the house where Kisha lived on 16 th and Millard, and I was having a hard time keeping my eyes off Shay’s smooth brown thighs.
    “Smells like Kush,” she muttered, returning my stare.
    I ignored her and dialed Kisha’s number on my smartphone as we continued to ascend the black-carpeted staircase. Both Kisha and Shay were from the same northwest Indiana city—in fact, it had been Shay who’d introduced me to Kisha on December 28 th of last year—but I was still worried about how Kisha would take to me showing up with Shay. Kisha was the most jealous girlfriend I’d ever had, and I didn’t feel like arguing; not now, anyway.
    Kisha answered on the fourth ring.
    “Come open the door,” I said into the phone, while my eyes wandered back to Shay’s luscious thighs.
    “Nigga, why the fuck didn’t you answer the phone when I called you earlier?” Kisha snapped.
    I shook my head. “Just open the muhfuckin door.”
    Seconds later, Kisha unlocked and opened the door. Tall, chocolate, and slender, she looked like the Kisha character from the movie Belly. She wore a see-through white Hello Kitty shirt over a tight-fitting pair of matching sweat pants, and her hands were already planted on her hips.
    She squinted at Shay for half a second, then shifted her accusatory glare back to me as she stepped back to let us in.
    “Make yourself at home, Shay,” Kisha mumbled vacantly, her eyes burning a hole in the side of my head. “Lil Mike, getcho ass to the bedroom. We need to have a long talk.”
    Grinning pleasantly, I headed to her bedroom and immediately dropped the duffle bags onto the foot of her bed. She slammed the door shut and crossed her arms over her chest, scowling at me. I knew why she was mad: she thought I had ignored her phone call because I’d been cheating with Shay, a notion that made no sense at all since Kisha was bisexual and would have gladly welcomed Shay into our bed.
    “It’s not what you think,” I said grabbing the $2 ,500 from my pants pocket.
    Her crabby