Page 17 of Anything Necessary for Her (Crenshaw Kings #9)

A WEEK AND A HALF LATER . . .

“What’s good?” I slapped hands with Asif as he ambled into the warehouse.

“Everything,” he halfway jested as we chuckled, moseying around the corner and heading to the back room.

“I fuck with it.” I nodded, falling in beside him. “Aye, you know Banks teaches my baby sister’s dance class?” I mentioned nonchalantly, or as nonchalantly as I possibly fucking could as I put the code into the locked room.

“Oh, okay. I know she said some shit about teaching a junior ballet class,” he replied, trailing me into the room. “She just got in the class or some shit?”

“Nah . . . nah, she been in it for a minute.”

“So why you mentioning it now? Something happen?” Asif prodded, and weirdly enough, I got nervous.

I wanted to mention to the nigga that Banks and I had stricken up a friendship, though that felt like an understatement. However, I couldn’t go against Banks’s wishes, nor would it be smart to say some shit like that when we’d ceased all fucking contact at this point.

I’d attempted to shoot a text on some friendly, just checking in shit, but she left a nigga on read.

I didn’t know why I was surprised by the shit though.

I guess a nigga assumed I was special and would be able to access shit other niggas hadn’t been able to.

I quickly realized, though, that no muthafucka got special treatment when it came to Banks, and she was too pretty and too sought after to entertain whatever the fuck I was trying to do.

I couldn’t even say what it was to keep shit a buck.

“Nah, I just forgot until right now since I just remembered I gotta scoop Waverley up.” I moved to the wall to put in the code on the old school combination lock.

Silence permeated the air, making me glance over my shoulder at Asif regarding me in a slightly incredulous manner.

As if tugging himself out of his deep thoughts, he finally quizzed, “How ya other people?”

“The same, unfortunately. My mama still on that fucking bottle day in and day out. Wyatt still causing fucking trouble, being unpredictable and stupid as fuck.” I shook my head while Asif sniggered subtly.

“I been telling you?—”

“Hey, babe, I was going to grab some food, did you want anything? I’m thinking a sub sandwich from somewhere.

I want something fresh.” Gaia had slipped into the room through the cracked door, waving flirtatiously at Asif as she adjusted the length of her too small ass dress.

“I can bring you something back too, Sif, if you’re gonna be here a while. ”

He stared at her for a moment then responded, “You noticed we were in the middle of a conversation?”

Gaia’s giggly demeanor and expression vanished like fucking clockwork.

“My bad.” She looked to me with puppy dog eyes as if I were supposed to take up for her ass, but Asif and I shared the same sentiments.

“I’m good on the food,” I finally said and nodded for her to leave, to which she did in haste.

As soon as I shut the door, Asif said, “Told you, nigga. She walking ’round this bitch like she Mrs. Harris all ’cause she getting fucked.”

“I been meaning to sit her ass down. Shit just been moving too fast with this money shit and then my family.” I huffed, and Asif bobbed his head to say he understood.

“Speaking of . . .” I fully opened the door.

“I gotta find a way to clean this shit. The little investments I been doing around the city ain’t enough.

No wonder you so fucking rich. I ain’t know the money was coming like this,” I half joked, making Asif’s face split into a grin.

“It does. That’s why all y’all niggas was caked up.

You gon’ have to start some shit from scratch, eat up a lot of that money, and then push it through there.

Investments ain’t gon’ work as well, because it’s an already moving machine which means less costs on yo’ end, aka less money that can be cleaned. ”

I nodded, studying the wall of cash I’d had stowed away because it was unclean and therefore unusable.

“I gotta think of some shit. We in LA. Muthafuckas got everything.”

We chuckled subtly before finishing the conversation. By the time I was leaving out with Asif, my burner had begun buzzing in the pocket of my jeans.

I saw the numbers 676 and flipped the top of the phone down in frustration before hopping into my whip.

“Wait! What’s wrong?” Gaia damn near tumbled out of her car and rushed over now that Asif was gone.

“Nothing. Eat yo’ fucking food and get back to work, aight?”

“I’d rather help you, babe?—”

“I’m not yo’ babe, and you not my bitch, Gaia. Get yo’ ass inside and eat yo’ fucking food so you can get back to work, and stop trying to be ride or muthafuckin’ die! It’s never gon’ happen!” I snapped, making her jump back. “Now, ’fore I cancel you and that lunch break!”

“Okay!” She blubbered as if I would give a fuck.

I couldn’t peel out of that dirt parking lot fast enough, speeding down the street and flying onto the freeway to head back toward the city.

By the time I got to my destination all the way in South Central, an hour had passed, but the problem was still the same. Pulling up onto the corner and not giving a fuck that I was on the sidewalk, I hopped out, causing Wyatt’s eyes to bug out of his fucking head.

Before Wyatt could skate off, I snatched him up by his collar, slamming him into the stone wall of the corner liquor store.

“Where you get this shit from?” I questioned, referencing the drugs he called himself slanging seconds ago.

“I ain’t saying shit!” Wyatt barked.

“Either you tell me or I’m gon’ knock you the fuck out,” I promised, bolting my eyes to his so that everywhere his eyeballs bounced, so did mine. I was dead ass serious.

“I—it was Jojo but?—”

“Bring yo’ ass!” I yanked Wyatt toward my car, tugged the door open, and threw his ass in.

Scared out of his fucking mind, he climbed the rest of the way in as I rounded the front of my shit.

“Quit watching and do what the fuck y’all gotta do!” I hollered out to a few of my workers as well as the random muthafuckas watching too closely.

Everyone dispersed, doing what the fuck I had ordered before I hopped into the driver’s seat, reversing then smashing the gas like a madman.

Pulling up to the discreet trap off Slauson and Gramercy, I parked across the yard and hopped out, snapping on Wyatt to come as well.

Entering the house, I located Jojo coming from what I assumed was the bathroom since I heard the toilet bowl still going.

“Everything aight?” another worker, Landon, queried from the kitchen.

“You gave my brother yo’ work?” I asked Jojo, looking down at his bitch ass menacingly. “Who the fuck you think you is, recruiting muthafuckas?” I stepped closer, inhaling and feasting on his fear like a shark did blood.

His jaw dropped then closed before falling open again as his eyes ricocheted between Wyatt and me.

“Swear I didn’t know that was yo’ brother, boss and?—”

Uninterested in hearing whatever the fuck else he had to say, I hauled off and started fucking him up. I didn’t stop until his body laid limply against the hardwood, blood leaking from a source I couldn’t exactly pin down.

“Make sure he don’t dip when he come to if my people don’t get here first,” I instructed Landon, who nodded profusely in agreement.

I ventured back to the car, with Wyatt trailing me, and as soon as we were inside the whip, he questioned sullenly, “Why you won’t just let me work for you at least for the summer?”

“You need to focus on graduating, Wyatt. You not doing what the fuck I’m doing, and that’s final. You already in summer school ’cause you was fucking around during regular semester. Let me catch you skipping class again, and I swear you and Jojo gon’ be fucking twins.”

“When I finish school, then what, Low?”

“Go to college or some shit.”

“I ain’t built for that.” I caught him shaking his head when I glanced over briefly at him.

Sighing, I explained, “Look, I do what I do so you and Waverley can have what the fuck y’all need. I don’t do this shit so you can follow behind a nigga. It’s in fact the opposite. If college ain’t for you, find something that is that won’t land you in prison or the cemetery.”

I knew I looked like a fucking hypocrite, but the fact remained that I was doing what I had to do. Wyatt had no reason to, and I wouldn’t allow his ass even if he did.

“Whatever, man.” He pulled his money out to count it before I snatched it. “Low!”

“This my shit. I’m gon’ do that every time you disobey me.” I pocketed it, making him pout like a little bitch in the passenger seat.

I stopped to get the little muthafucka something to eat, as well as something for our mother before dropping him off. I would’ve waited for Waverley to buy food, but she and Wyatt had contrasting palettes, and therefore, it made no sense to wait, especially when he was claiming to be starving.

I checked the time on my Rolex to see Waverley would be out of class soon, so I made my way over there. The last week and a half, another girl had been teaching the class, and when I inquired about it, she explained that the ladies rotated.

But of course, as I pulled up into the lot, I spotted Banks’s Jeep in the parking lot. Climbing out, I entered the vast dance studio, looking for Waverley and, of course, Banks against my fucking will.

My stomach bottomed out, seeing some nigga in her face, making her laugh. He was clearly the father or maybe brother of one of the little girls here, probably making bullshit conversation in order to get Banks’s attention.

Running my hand down my beard to calm my nerves, I looked away, visually scouring the room to look for my baby sister in the midst of the plethora of kids while trying to ignore Banks putting a hand on that nigga’s bicep before he complimented her.

I couldn’t hear shit they were saying, but I knew Banks’s facial expressions and reactions well enough to tell when she’d been told she was pretty.