Page 3 of All The Smoke

K aori Randall.

“Kaori, when are you going to get tired of all of this?” my grandmother asked as we pulled away from the police station.

She had just come to bail me out for what seemed like the millionth time because I had tracked Jamal’s car to another bitch’s house, went over there, fucked the car, him, and the bitch up. She got away while I was beating his ass and called the police so I ended up in jail… again .

“I know, Granny, I’m done this time.”

She scoffed. “You said the same thing last month when I picked you up, girl.”

“I know but…”

“I don’t want to hear it, Kaori Randall. I’m tired of it and I’m tired of spending money to get you out of there for this nonsense.”

“I’ll give you the money back, Granny.”

“Oh, it’s not me that you have to give the money back to.” She chuckled sarcastically. “You know I’ve been done spending my money on you and this foolishness you have yourself involved in.”

“Granny—”

She cut me off. “Just shut the hell up.” She was livid because my grandmother never cursed.

“It is high time for you to grow up, Kaori. You’re twenty-five, smart, beautiful, so talented, I mean, I could go on and on, but it doesn’t matter.

Because of a man you have watered yourself down to some kind of lowlife hussy who cares about nothing but proving what?

That you have the man they want? Jamal has been up to these same shenanigans and antics since you were both nineteen!

” I could see the disappointment all in her eyes.

“You’re not tired of coming home to a house, where you pay all of the bills, full of niggas smoking and eating up all of the food you bought?

To a grown man sitting in front of a TV on a video game that you also bought?

And he has the nerve to cheat on you and have you out here fighting and going to jail? !”

I had been doing a great job holding back my tears until now.

I cried because I didn’t understand how Jamal could do me this way after all I had done for him and also because she was right.

He had been making a straight up fool out of me since the beginning and I allowed it.

But what hurt the most was… he had a fucking baby.

I miscarried one and aborted two of our babies because he “wasn’t ready” but he had a whole newborn I learned about when I got there.

That was really why I acted up. I had been wanting a baby, despite not being married, because I thought that would help our relationship and make him grow up.

He promised me when we got pregnant this time I could keep it.

I saw why he was adamant about us having one now though.

He wanted a way to keep me around forever.

“Go on in there,” she said, jarring me from my thoughts. “Your mother should be waiting for you.”

My head dropped briefly hearing that. I knew what my grandmother said was only the tip of the iceberg.

Isis Randall played no games. My mother wasn’t your typical woman.

She didn’t do the nine to five thing nor was she the housewife type.

She was the kind of woman that got her hands dirtier than any man I knew, ran circles around every hustler too.

She didn’t do her business here though. She moved to Atlanta when I was one, leaving me in Crescent Falls with her mother because she said it was safer and better for me while she built a life there.

I was mad at her when I was younger because I always wanted to be with her, but as I got older I cared less.

When I was finally able to move there with her at fourteen, I declined.

My life was good and I didn’t want to move to a new city and start over. It was cool to visit, just not to live.

After thanking my grandmother one last time, I exited her car slowly.

I made my way past my car—that my mother had obviously picked up because it’d gotten impounded when I popped up on Jamal—and headed up to my place.

If my mother was here then Jamal certainly wasn’t and that was best for us both.

She couldn’t stand him and missed no chances to tell him.

The smell of food hit me as soon as I entered my townhouse so I followed the scent to my kitchen. There was no need in avoiding it.

“Hey, Mama,” I said when I entered. She plated eggs, then added two blueberry muffins before handing it to me and pointing.

“Sit down.”

Releasing a heavy sigh, I headed toward the table with my plate in hand and her in tow. I sat first, followed by her, then she pushed papers in my direction. My brows furrowed as I looked from her to the paperwork.

“What is this?”

“Your new lease agreement.”

I frowned. “What? You own this condo. I don’t have a lease.”

“Right, I own it, not you, so you’re about to start paying me.”

“Paying you? Ma, I don’t work. The money I have literally comes from you.”

She smiled. “Which leads me to my next order of business, you need to get a job, because as of midnight, your account has two thousand dollars in it.”

“Two thousand dollars?!” I exclaimed, quickly pulling my phone out and going to my banking app.

“That’s impossible, I had over twenty…” My words trailed when I saw that not only was my checking account down to two thousand dollars, in fact, but there was nothing in my savings.

Since I was a little girl, my mother gave me money, at least a thousand dollars, and I put half of it up every time. “Mama…”

“I’m so disappointed in you, Kaori.” She shook her head.

“You’ve literally always had the world at your fingertips, the opportunity to do whatever you want and this is what you chose.

” She placed another sheet of paper in front of me that had all of my charges printed on it.

“All for a man. You literally got all the way to your last year in dental school before just dropping out to chase that boy around town.”

I couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down my face as my eyes scanned the paper.

I knew I had the charges, like my grandmother said we had been doing this since we were kids, but actually seeing them and hearing the disappointment in my mother’s voice made it worse.

I got my bachelor’s degree and was a year away from graduating dental school and becoming a dentist, but I dropped out because Jamal wanted me to.

“Mama, please…”

“Please what?” She angled her head to the side. “Because I know you aren’t begging me to continue to take care of your man.”

“I’m not…”

She cut me off. “Because in all forty-five years of my life, that has never fucking happened, baby. As a matter of fact your father is still taking care of us from behind the prison walls.”

My father.

If I didn’t want to hear what my mother was going to have to say, I knew he was going to go off.

He was another one that voiced his disdain for Jamal several times.

The only reason neither of them had done anything to him was because I begged them not to and I had done good with hiding all of our shit up until now.

“Are you really doing this, Mama?” I asked, still in disbelief. She fussed, my granny fussed, and my father would fuss when they told him what I had going on, but none of them had gone this far before.

“You damn right I am,” she scoffed. “Isis Randall doesn’t take care of low life ass niggas, but by taking care of you, that’s exactly what the hell I’m doing.

I didn’t hustle side by side with your father, risking my life and freedom, and build my empire up to take care of any nigga that isn’t named Kadeem Randall.

If you want to run that marathon after a nigga that ain’t chasing shit but the next bitch’s panties, then do that, but you won’t do it on my dime, my mother’s dime, or my husband’s. ”

“Ma…”

“Treva needs a dental assistant.” She cut me off as she stood, referring to her best friend.

“If I were you, and if you had any sense, I would call her and see if you can start right away because if you don’t have my money by the fifth of next month then…

well, you know how your mama is about her money, baby girl. ” She winked, wearing a smile.

My mother played about a lot of things but her money definitely wasn’t one of them.

Not even if I was the one that owed her .

She and my father built one of the largest drug empires known in Atlanta and ran it with an iron fist, even from my father’s prison cell, and neither of them discriminated.

So while I wanted to think she was just talking shit, I knew better.

I would be out on my ass before I could even blink on the sixth if I didn’t pay her.

“Enroll your ass back in dental school too. I paid too much damn money for your college education for you to just throw it away,” she shouted before I heard my door open seconds later.

“Oh and I’m going to assume the busted lip and bruised neck is courtesy of the lil bitch’s ass you whooped because I know a nigga isn’t stupid enough to put his hands on K-Dot and Ice’s daughter,” she finished before I heard the sound of my front door closing.

My hand instantly went to the place I knew Jamal had bruised by grabbing me roughly when I was beating that bitch’s ass.

Compared to how I fucked them up, my injuries were light work.

Out of frustration, I swiped my plate off the table along with the paperwork my mother had left for me.

I was disappointed that I had disappointed my family and allowed things to get to this point.

I was so excited and ambitious about my education when I was a child and even as a teen.

My parents gave me everything I ever wanted.

I really did have the opportunity to do what I wanted to do with my life and I had been fucking up.

Love was one hell of a damn drug.

I met Jamal at a party in Crescent Manor when we were nineteen years old.

One of his cousins was coming home from the feds and I allowed my best friend Morgan, or Mo as I called her most of the time, to drag me there.

I didn’t feel like being there because my father had just gotten locked up about a week before that, but she insisted that I get out of the house for a while, so I conceded.

That was one of the most vulnerable times of my life and Jamal knew that and took advantage.

He was so sweet and loving in the beginning, hell he still was, but he wasn’t the cheater then he was now.

In the beginning it was all about me. He supported me with school and was very attentive to what I liked, wanted, and needed.

My family even loved him, but six months into our relationship I went on vacation with my mother.

While I was gone, Mo sent me pictures and videos a dancer named Vanity posted of her and Jamal.

There was a variety of them, some of them out to eat, in a hotel room together, the clubs.

They were all over Crescent Falls as if he didn’t have a girlfriend at home.

I was furious. So furious that I forced my mother to end our vacation early, came back home, and fucked them both up.

I didn’t talk to him for a while, but eventually he was able to sweet talk his way back in.

Since then, shit had been on a constant loop.

Him cheating and lying, me fucking him and whoever up, him telling me they meant nothing and were just jealously wanting my place in his life, me stupidly listening then taking him back. That was how it always happened.

The ringing of my phone jarred me from my thoughts. I looked down and noticed it was Mo calling so I swiped to answer.

“Hey, bestie.” My voice cracked a little because once again I was about to cry.

“Aw, bestie, I’m about to come over.”

“No.” I sniffled, getting up so I could clean the mess I had made. “I don’t really feel like company right now.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “I can come and just lay with you. We can eat junk and watch our favorite shows together. We don’t have to talk about any of it if you don’t want to.”

“As good as that sounds, friend, I’m still going to decline. My head is killing me so I’m really about to take something to knock me out, shower, crawl in bed and sleep my day away.”

“I want to fight you on it because I don’t want you laying around wallowing, but I know you probably need this time to yourself, but just know I’m only a phone call away.”

“I know. I love you.” I simpered.

Mo was truly my soulmate. Like I really didn’t know where I would be in my life without her.

We had been best friends since birth because our mothers were best friends and had us around the same time and our fathers were homeboys too.

We were all more like family than anything.

She was always there for me and I would forever reciprocate that.

“I love you more. Call me if you need me.”

“I will,” I said with a smile before we hung up.

I finished cleaning my mess, low key pissed because I’d knocked all of my food on the floor and was starving, then threw a pizza in the oven before retreating down the hall to my room to start the shower in my ensuite bathroom.

While the water warmed, I took a Benadryl because I knew it was going to knock me out cold then I showered.

In the shower I cried and cried, still in my feelings from my mother and grandmother.

I promised myself I was going to do better after getting it all out. They deserved better and so did I.

You weren’t going to let me know you were out?

I rolled my eyes as I read the message from Jamal. I had already blocked his main number and now he was texting me from his little trap phone.

You didn’t come get me out so I didn’t have to tell you shit.

I was coming, KK. Your ppl beat me to the punch.

Oh.

I was still very much seething so I had minimal conversation for Jamal. Plus, I wasn’t in the mood to go back and forth with him and hear his lies.

I’m about to come to the house. You there?

I really would hate for Neal to hurt you so I would advise against it.

Neal was my mother’s head of security, who wasn’t at my place anymore but he didn’t have to know it, and my way of letting him know she was in town. He knew my family couldn’t stand him so that was a definite way to keep his ass from in front of my house.

Not being able to come to my own crib is crazy, Kaori.

I didn’t even bother to respond to him. I just blocked his number before putting my phone on do not disturb and going to get my food so I could eat and crash. I had no words or time to deal with Jamal.