Page 5 of This Is Law 3

Chapter Two

SEVYN ‘LAW’ CRAWFORD

It was after four in the morning, and I was down here in my mancave.

I haven’t been down here to kick it in so long.

Everything in here was the exact same way that I left it over a year ago.

I could tell that this was a spot that Soraya hadn’t stepped foot in, which I wasn’t surprised about because back when we were married, she would respect my rule and wouldn’t come down to my mancave.

I didn’t even allow the kids in here. This was my place where I would come for peace, and quiet.

I took a hot shower, damn near trying to let the water burn my skin off because I wanted all those germs and shit off my body from the time that I had been in the hospital.

I washed my hair while I was inside, too.

Now, here I was sitting down on the couch in just my Ralph Lauren briefs, with a cigar in my hand, that I was using to blow out smoke rings, and my cognac glass was right in front of me, that held Hennessy inside.

I was fucked up mentally right now. The kind of fucked up where I wanted to kill somebody.

My mind would go from Yaya, and I would see visuals of her letting that nigga fuck her, even though she was claiming that she didn’t.

Then, my mind would go to my pops, and I would see images of Dutch shooting him in the back.

I was angry, so as I was sitting here right now, you could probably feel the heat that was radiating from my body.

If it wasn’t for the children that I had, and how I had to sit here, and make every life decision for them, I would have never stepped foot in this house.

Instead, I would have pulled up to the hospital that I knew Dutch was at right now, sitting with his son, and blown his fuckin brains out, not giving a fuck about the life sentence that I was going to receive.

I needed to get justice for my pops, but I couldn’t be sloppy with it because then my kids, and Yaya were going to be the ones to pay for my sloppy actions.

As I was sitting here, smoking from this cigar, and drinking from this drink, the sound of Bootsy Collins voice was crooning through the speakers.

“I rather be with you… yeahh”.

My eyes were closed, and I had my head tossed back a little bit, listening to the music, letting this shit take me away.

The sound of footsteps could be heard outside the door, and that’s when I opened my eyes, and I looked towards the door in my mancave.

I didn’t close the door all the way when I came in because I never expected Yaya to come in. She never did. She respected my rule.

She pushed the door open, and when she did, there was a scared look in her eyes, as if she was scared that I was going to curse her ass out or something.

Seeing her look at me like that, that shit kind of fucked me up because Soraya has never really looked at me like that.

She wasn’t scared of me, but I put her through so much shit tonight, ran up every emotion that she had, tap danced on each of her nerves, so that would explain the look that she was giving me.

I could smell her from here, so I knew that she showered. She smelled like peaches.

The pajamas she wore was a red silk two pieced set.

The top was spaghetti strapped, and it was cropped a little bit, so I could see her flat stomach.

She wasn’t wearing a bra, so her hard nipples were looking me right in the eyes.

Her shorts were short on her, but they weren’t tight.

It was a loose fit. With her arms, and legs being exposed, I could see the shine from here to know that after her shower, she’d applied oil to her body like she would often to.

Her long hair was wet, and it was no longer straighten as it had been at the ball.

Instead, it was back in its curly state.

Cream colored, fur material house shoes were on her feet, that showed off her pretty white toes.

She stood there, eyes on me, not knowing if she wanted to leave, or stay.

“Ummm…. I know you don’t like when I come down here but are you going to come upstairs?” she nervously asked me.

“Come here, Soraya,” my voice held authority to it. I had been wilding all night on her, so it’s almost like she was scared to come over to me because she wouldn’t leave the door frame.

“Just come upstairs, Sevyn,” her voice shook.

“What you think I’m going to do to you?” I asked, and instead of verbally answering my question, she just shrugged her shoulders.

“You think Ima put my hands on you?” I had to ask. She shed tears when I asked her that, scratched at her head, and shrugged her shoulders again.

That’s when I took my final pulls from the cigar, put it out, and I stood up from the couch. I sat the cigar down on a napkin that was on the table in front of me, picked my drink up, downed the rest of it, sat the glass back down, and I walked over to her.

I stood right in front of her, looking down at her, while she looked up at me. From the string of the shorts that she was wearing, I pulled her even closer, so that I could feel her body heat. Her breathing was a little heavy.

“I put my hands on you before?” I asked, and she shook her head no.

“Stop doing that. Verbally answer what I just asked you!” my voice rose just a little bit.

“You never put your hands on me,” she responded.

“So, what would make you think that I’m going to start doing it now?

You slapped me right in my face back in that hospital room, and I didn’t even flinch to make you think that I would put my hands on you.

If I ever ask you again if you think I’m going to put my hands on you, the answer should always be no.

It’s some shit that I feel like you just supposed to know.

You should know that my hands will never touch you in a way to cause you harm, or pain,” I looked down at her.

“I don’t know this version of you right now,” she softly told me.

I had to respect her choice of words because I knew that she was right.

I was out of my body tonight, doing, and saying shit to her that I’ve never done before.

I knew I was tripping when we were in my hospital room, and she picked her phone up, after it made a noise, notifying her that she had a text message, and I was down her throat, questioning her about who it was.

I didn’t even do shit like that. Then, I stooped low, making a comment about the baby that she was carrying, not being mine, when I knew damn well that it was.

I was hurting behind the shit with Dutch, more than I was hurting behind the shit that Yaya had done with Dominic, and I was just trying to make another person feel the hurt that I was feeling, and it was fucked up to make Yaya the butt of it.

I walked away from her, and I went back over to the couch.

I sat on the edge of it, picking my hands up, and I placed them on the sides of my face, keeping my head down, looking at the carpeted floor.

It wasn’t long before Yaya came over joining me.

She sat close to me, and I could feel her eyes on me.

I knew it was nagging at her not knowing what was bothering me.

That’s when I turned to look at her, and her eyes were still on me.

I sighed, shook my head, and just stared her deeply into her eyes, preparing myself for the bomb that I was getting ready to drop on her.

“Dutch killed my pops. I have an audio of him confessing to it,” I told her, and the second I said it, you could almost see the life remove from her eyes.

The years that I’ve spent with Yaya, the deep shit that I’ve expressed to her about wanting to find out who was responsible for murdering my father, just all those things, and for me to finally tell her that I knew who did it, not only could you see the relief in her eyes for me that I finally knew, but you saw the hurt, the anger, and the pain upon finding out who was responsible for doing it.

“Can I hear it?” she asked me after about a minute of taking it in.

Instead of answering her question, I just reached for my phone that was resting on the table in front of us.

I unlocked it, and I went for the message that was sent to me by the dude, Dedrick.

Before I played the audio, I was going to give her a quick disclaimer, so that she could know what to listen out for.

“After that shit went down with me and you at the ball, I went out and sat down in the parking lot. I had my work phone on me, and an unknown number kept calling me. I went ahead and answered it. It was a dude named Dedrick. He told me how he knew my pops, and shit like that, and how his dad is buried just a few headstones away from my pops. He goes out there and records the meetings that he has with his dad because he’s putting together a documentary or some shit like that for him.

He’s into poetry, so he’ll go out there and recite some of the poems that he wrote to his dad.

He told me that he was playing one of the clips back, and in the clip, you could hear some shit in the background that Dutch was saying to my pops.

Dutch was out there the same day that Dedrick went to the gravesite.

What you going to hear Dutch say, it’s not too clear.

You gotta really listen to it. It took me a few times to really make out what he was saying.

I’m not going to tell you what I heard. I want you to keep listening to it until you hear it because I don’t want it to feel like I’m convincing you to hear what I hear,” I let her know, and she nodded.

I went ahead, and I fast forwarded the video, going to 3:52. That was the first important part. Once it was there, I handed the phone to Yaya, telling her to put the phone to her ear, and really pay attention.