Page 130 of Rah

Despite Rah’s threats, I wasn’t subjecting my kids to him again. He could take me away from them but even behind bars, I would see to it that he was never around to influence my kids. I had initially trusted that even though he was the worst to me, he had always been a good father. But I was now seeing that his ruthlessness was becoming so chaotic that everybody was falling victim to it.

“Mommy.” Elijah’s tearful voice brought me out of my trance. I looked into his eyes, and his tears broke my heart even more. “Are you really going to go to jail forever?”

I broke down. The tears that I had managed to hold back were now flowing from my eyes nonstop. “I don’t know,” Ianswered honestly.

I didn’t want to lie to them. I didn’t want to set them up for failure. My attorney had told me that Aaliyah’s testimony and Essence’s outburst had helped my case tremendously, and the recording was the break we needed. Rah’s own words had torn the State’s entire theory in half. My attorney said the judge couldn’t ignore the way Rah admitted to lying and couldn’t look past how clear his malice had been. For the first time in weeks, I felt some hope.

But fear came right behind it. I knew trials weren’t won on one piece of evidence. The prosecutor wasn’t going to just fold and go home. She’d already been staring at me like I was prey, waiting for her chance to rip me apart. And that chance was coming. My lawyer didn’t want to call me to testify, but we knew the prosecutor would. And I knew she was going to make sure I looked like the villain Rah had painted me to be.

RAH

Hours later, I was still seething. Sitting at my bar cuffing a double shot of Hennessy, I was thinking of how many ways I could kill Aaliyah.

“Gawd damn,” I cursed while looking at my phone as it started to ring. I shook my head as I saw Felicia’s name flashing back at me.

That broad had been blowing my phone up for two hours. She had to have called me a hundred times. I guessed that she had finally gotten home and realized that all of my things were gone. That morning before court, I had picked up the keys to my new spot and taken all of my belongings over there. I was prepared to sleep on the floor before I forced myself to sleep next to Felicia again.

I ignored the call, put my phone on silent, and went back to plotting against Aaliyah. Ever since I had come up on so much cash, I hadn’t really given the bitch a second thought. But now that she had the nerve to testify against me, I was obsessed with making her pay.

I should have never let her live, after she’d come against me the first time.

“Rah…”

My eyes darted angrily toward the hand on my shoulder. I stared at the female hand with the same fire in my eyes that had been there since I saw Aaliyah come through those courtroom doors as the defense’s witness. My glare had made whoever it was pull their hand away quickly. I looked up and saw a familiar pretty face but couldn’t place her.

“It’s me, Jackie.” When I kept looking at her like I still didn’t know who she was, she said, “I met you here one day with your brother.”

“Ohyeaaaah,” I said as it dawned on me. Then I looked behind her. “Where’s my brother? He’s with you?”

Fabe was still acting real shady. He hadn’t even been in the court that day.

Jackie slightly pouted as she sat on the bar stool next to me. “No, he isn’t here with me. That’s why I came here…”

I instantly got irritated. I recognized the look on Jackie’s face. She was a woman scorned, and I was not about to be in the middle of her and my brother’s toxicity. I had my own shit to deal with. I had no room for managing one of my brother’s hoes.

“He hasn’t been answering my calls,” she went on. “I just wanted to make sure he was okay. I wanna know what’s going on with him that has him treating me so coldly.”

Shit, that made two of us.

“Why isn’t he answering your calls? Y’all broke up?”

She sighed, saying, “We weren’t ever together, to be honest. I found out that he has a girlfriend, and they have a baby.”

“Wait, what?” I chuckled. This chick was talking crazy. Mybrother definitely didn’t have a baby. It was possible that he had a woman that I knew nothing about, but not a baby.

“He has a baby. He cut things off between us after the new year and tried to say that we weren’t meant to be together. But then I showed up at his house one day. I wanted to work things out, and I honestly still do. That’s why I have been calling him. But anyway, when I got to his house this light-skinned chick was sitting on his couch all comfortable and shit, and there was a baby in a bassinet. Why else would he be with a woman with a baby that small, unless it’s his?”

“Stop lying,” I laughed.

“I swear.”

“How did she look?” I needed to know who this woman was because Fabe hadn’t said anything about expecting a baby.

“Light skinned, long weave, real thick, kinda young. She was pretty I guess.” She frowned as she shrugged. “Nose ring.”

I reached for my phone. Jackie watched the scowl that came over my face as I went to Instagram to find Aaliyah’s page. She hadn’t updated it in months, since she had stolen my bread.

I clicked on the most recent picture of her and Junior right after she had had Rah. “Is that her?”