“You don’t know my father. He would rather hang himself on a fishing hook and be thrown to the sharks than to see me grow up and have a boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend?” Mario smiled slyly down at Tiara.
“W-well, you know what I mean,” she said.
“Yeah, I do,” Mario said and kissed her again. “It means we are officially together now. Nobody can stop this, not even your father.”
The bell that signaled them being almost tardy sounded, and all of the students surrounding them began to put a pep in their steps.
“I better get going too,” she said to Mario biting his lip sexily. “I’ll see you at lunch?”
“I have to leave early today,” Mario told her. “But I will call you tonight, and we can talk more about tomorrow night, OK?”
“OK.”
* * *
“You sure this is the house, bro?”
Mario looked in the backseat at his friend Demetrius and nodded his head.
“Yea. This is the house.”
“A’ight, let’s get it then.”
Four young men, including Mario, sat in his car a few houses down from their mark. The other three were Demetrius, Lee, and Rex. They all wore black hoodies and jeans. Word on the street was the side bitch of a big-time hustler had moved into a block not too far away from theirs. She was the type of chick that ran her mouth too much. She had bragged to the wrong person about the fact that her boo dropped all of his money off at her house until he could find a way to clean it. The person she told happened to be Demetrius’s girlfriend.
“Thank God for beauty salons,” Demetrius grinned and pulled down the mask on his face.
The boys in the car all followed suit. Lee’s dreads hung out of his mask, which was a good thing because he and Rex were the same body build. Now Mario would be able to tell them apart. They made sure their guns were loaded and that their safeties were off before they got out of the car ducking down.
Cloaked by the darkness of the night, the boys made their way effortlessly to the house. Mario hoped there was at least fifty stacks in the home so that way he would be able to sit on it for a while. After his uncle was killed, things had been tight in his house. His aunt Jay deserved so much. She took him in without question when his mother dropped him off with nothing but a diaper on. He owed her his life, literally, and every day, it seemed that she got another wrinkle on her beautiful face from all the stress she was under. Lately, he’d been using the skills that his uncle had taught him to break and enter homes. He was just doing what he had to do to survive.
The game plan was always the same. Demetrius would kick down the door, and the rest of them would plow through the door waving their guns until they got what they came for. Usually, they got in and out without anybody getting hurt, but that night would prove to be completely different. Demetrius had been scoping out the house, and he said that there would be nobody home at the time of the break-in. When they reached the door, Mario nodded his head at Demetrius, giving the silent order to kick the door down.
Boom!
“Go!”
They all ran through the open door with their guns in front of their bodies. The door led right into the living room of the two-story house. The lights were all off on the lower level.
“Grab anything that looks valuable,” Mario instructed. “But look for the money first.”
They all split up. He and Demetrius went upstairs while the other two, Lee and Rex, stayed on the lower level. Upstairs were two bedrooms.
“If I were a dumb bitch, where would I put a boatload of money?” Demetrius asked out loud, making Mario laugh.
“The master bedroom,” they answered in unison.
They ran to the master bedroom at the end of the hall and began to ransack it. Demetrius checked under the bed and pulled all of the drawers out of the dressers while Mario hit the closet. He opened all of her shoe boxes and moved all of her clothes to the side.
“Man! It ain’t in here. Let’s check the basement.”
Just when Mario was about to agree and turn to step out of the walk-in closet, a black bag in the corner of the overhead shelf caught his eyes. With his heart beating quickly, he reached up and grabbed the short straps on the bag.
“Bro!” Mario called out when he opened the bag.
“What, nigga? I’m about to go check the other room.”
“You might not have to.” Mario stepped out of the closet with a grin on his face.
He held up a stack of hundred-dollar bills.
“Hell, yeah!” Demetrius cheered and peeked into the bag. “That looks like way more than fifty Gs.”
“On God!”
“It’s lit! Now, let’s get them other two niggas and get the fuck up outta here!”
Mario flicked off the light in the room, following after Demetrius when he heard something that made his blood run cold.
“Yo, what the fuck, Tesha!”
It was a voice that Mario didn’t recognize, but he knew that Tesha was the owner of the house they were in.
“Oh my God, Ro!” a woman’s voice screamed. “Somebody broke into my house!”
Mario stepped quietly to the corner of the wall where the staircase started. He slowly peered around it and down the steps. Still standing in the doorway was a big buff man and a petite woman. He was glaring at her like he wanted to kill her.
“Bitch, fuck yo’ house. Where the fuck is my money?”
“R-Ro! I didn’t, I swear I didn’t set this up!”
Mario watched Ro backhand her so hard her head jerked to the side.
“Bitch, I said, where is my money?”
“I-it’s in my room. In the closet!”
Ro pulled out two pistols from his waist and started toward the stairs. Mario ducked back around the corner and looked at Demetrius.
“Shit!”
