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Chapter Seventeen

DUTCH THORNE

“Hoe ass nigga, what’s good?” my voice was cold, as I stood at the cemetery, looking down at the headstone, that was custom for Knox.

Just like any other headstone though, his name was carved in stone, along with his birthdate, and his death date.

The custom part came in with the images of him that were on the headstone.

Knox has been gone for over thirty years, and before Solace lost her fuckin mind, she sent the nigga away in style, and the custom headstone was evidence of that.

I played a big part of the funeral arrangements too, along with helping with the funding even though money wasn’t a problem for Solace, when it came to burying her husband.

That was just my way of blending in, and I didn’t need any fingers pointing back to me, or anyone growing suspicious, feeling like I might have had something to do with this shit.

I did though. I just didn’t want the streets to figure that shit out.

Knox had been my nigga for years. Him and I met when we were in the first grade.

Just like me, he came from nothing. He was raised in a single parent household, just as me.

His mama gave a fuck about him though. Everybody called Knox’s mom mama Goldie.

Goldie wasn’t her name, but I remember learning that she was given the nickname Goldie because as a kid, they said that her caramel-colored skin reminded them of something shiny, and glamorous, so growing up, all the kids would just call her mama Goldie.

She loved the fuck out of Knox, and would bust her ass, working all kinds of jobs, just to keep a roof over her, and her sons head, clothes on their backs, and food in their stomachs.

My mama wasn’t shit like that. She truly didn’t give a fuck about me.

I was seven years old, being left alone in the house by myself.

She didn’t care if a nigga ate, or if somebody came into that apartment, broke in, and killed my ass.

We grew up in the slums, where so much violent activity went on, so that alone should have been the main reason why she was home with me, making sure that nobody ran in that bitch, but that wasn’t the case at all.

She was always outside, on the run, following behind different niggas.

Even though Knox and I had two completely different mothers, with different traits, him, and I went through the same struggle of just wanting more out of life.

More out of life was just us wanting money, so that we didn’t have to go on for the rest of our lives struggling.

When you’re from Miami, growing up in the hood, most times, you’re going to see a lot of crime, and illegal activity going on, but the main one out of all of that is drug dealing.

Knox and I were from the same hood, and that hood had a lot of drug activity going on.

We grew up, watching niggas standing in the stairway, making serves.

We would see the head nigga in charge that was running the drug business, pull up to the hood, pushing an expensive whip, with a bad bitch in the passenger seat, as he would just pass by, making sure that his boys were posted up, doing what they were supposed to be doing.

That shit inspired us. We wanted that. Shit, we craved to have it.

We were only in the 5 th grade when we made a promise that we were going to jump headfirst into that business together, and we were going to make sure that we both ate.

By the time me and Knox turned sixteen years old, we were corner boys for this nigga named Lion.

Lion was a ruthless nigga, that didn’t give a fuck about anybody but himself.

He was cutthroat, and he didn’t spare anybody.

The first story that I heard about him was how he was dealing with some chick, and she went out to the club with her homegirls, and it had gotten back to him that a nigga at the club was all in his girls face, talking to her, and he killed both of them.

He did that shit execution style, cutting off both their heads.

Lion wasn’t the kind of person that you wanted to cross.

Me and Knox were both scared to move weight for him, but we knew young niggas like us that were a part of his organization, and they were eating.

I’m talking, coming to school with all the latest shoes, jewelry was on point, and flexing in class, showing off their bank roll.

We wanted a part of that shit, so we were quickly put on.

We barely were moving weight for Lion for a year when somebody popped his ass.

Lion was too reckless of a person, and he had too many people that hated him, so it wasn’t surprising to any of us when we learned about him getting killed.

He wasn’t the kind of man that ran his business, having a right-hand man or no shit like that, so when he died, it wasn’t like there was someone to step up, and take his spot.

Niggas was running around, scrambling, trying to figure out what the fuck we were going to do to make money.

In the meantime, though, me, and Knox started working at a hotel, cleaning up rooms, and shit.

We knew that it wasn’t something that we wanted to do long term.

Just a little something to put some money in our pockets.

We were now at our senior year of high school, and we were still working at the hotel.

Knox would go into the job more than I would because most nights, I would either call out, or I just wouldn’t come in at all.

I just wasn’t the kind of nigga to be down on my hands, and knees, cleaning fuckin hotel rooms. Knox was hungry for money, hungry to help his mama out, and tired of seeing her struggle to pay bills, so even though I knew that it wasn’t something that he wanted to do, he would show up every night for that job, and on the weekends, when we didn’t have school, he was at that hotel, slaving pretty much all day too.

So, one night while Knox was at the hotel working, a nigga named Prime pulled up.

Prime was the next big thing out of Miami after the killing of Lion.

It’s like after Lion’s organization faded, that’s when Prime was able to creep into the shadows, and it wasn’t long before he started running shit in Miami.

At the time, me and Knox didn’t know shit about Prime.

It wasn’t because he was some lame ass nigga, and that his crew wasn’t making money for real.

Hell, in fact, it was the opposite. Prime was a lowkey, quite kind of dude.

His money wasn’t loud. You wouldn’t look at him and think that he had money because he didn’t wear his money.

See, growing up, I affiliated a nigga having money on the sole bases of the kind of car that they drove, the house he lived in, and how many diamonds were in his chain.

I remember the night Knox hit me, telling me about Prime.

He said Prime approached him in a plain white shirt, with denim jeans on.

When Prime met Knox at the hotel, he liked to say that he saw something in Knox that he saw in himself.

He saw a young boy that was out here, trying to make some money by any means.

It wasn’t long until he had pulled Knox over to the side, wanting to know a little bit about him.

Knox gave him an opportunity to make real money, but of course Knox told Prime that he wasn’t going to take the offer unless he could bring me on, and that’s how I ended up in the picture, working for Prime too.

Prime was a cool ass dude. He didn’t have all those fuckin rules, and shit like Lion did.

Even though he was laid back though, that didn’t mean that the nigga was soft, and it didn’t mean that you could just walk all over him.

Oh nah. He would get active too. During our time of working for him, we watched him with our own two eyes pop a few men for getting out of line and not being loyal to the game.

We moved weight for Prime for a year. In that year, he was getting closer, and closer to Knox.

Don’t get me wrong, I was close with Prime too, but I was only close with him on a business level.

Prime would sit me down and teach me the game.

That was all our relationship was though.

This nigga didn’t know shit about my background, my family, none of that shit, but when it came to Knox, it’s like he wanted to know him on a deeper level.

I became a little salty about that, but I never spoke on it.

Prime saw something in Knox, where he said that he knew he could be the biggest thing to come out of Miami, so he fronted him bricks, told him that he wanted to see how he would move it.

That’s when Knox rounded up me, and other niggas that we were cool with, and we had that shit broken down, cooked up, packed up, and served on the street, and we got back to Prime in under a week with all of it gone.

Prime saw the way that we could move, and I remember him looking Knox in his eyes, telling him that he didn’t need him and that if he stayed working for him, he was doing himself a disservice.

Prime gave Knox the playbook. We were eighteen, and he took us to Mexico, where we met with his plug, that had quickly become our plug.