Page 40 of ‘Til I Say When

On wobbly legs I ambled to my vehicle trying my best not to throw up.

I’d never be able to scrub what I’d witnessed from my mind.

I knew it would haunt me for the rest of my life, but Devin didn’t care.

He didn’t care what kind of trauma or scars he left a person with.

All he knew was money, power, and respect.

The perils of being a kingpin’s daughter.

I didn’t like the fact that I had to pay money for a suite when I only did hair part-time but because of who my father was, I refused to do hair at my home.

People simply couldn’t be trusted, and I didn’t need anyone telling their boyfriends, brothers, cousins, etc.

where the daughter of Devin Jennings lived.

Even if I didn’t live all flashy, I didn’t doubt that someone would still run up in my house to see what they could get their hands on.

Since I had to pay suite rent, I couldn’t undercharge myself too much, but I also had to compete with the other braiders in the area.

I was good at what I did, so my clients didn’t mind paying $350 for small knotless braids.

Especially when there were other braiders charging $600 for the same style.

None of my prices were over $400 or under $150.

So, I could typically braid four to six heads a week and see enough money to make a difference in my life.

Braiding hair when I wasn’t working at the bank often cut into my time with Kiwi, and I hated that shit.

Those were the times that I second guessed myself the most. If I just took my father’s money, I could work less and spend more time with my baby.

But I also wanted her to see that despite how much money her grandfather had, her mother still worked hard and made a way for us.

Kiwi was out of school break, so Nana, my father’s mother had taken Kiwi with her to visit her sister in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina which was two hours away from where we lived in Diamond Cove, North Carolina.

Since my baby was gone, I was doing something I rarely did.

I was braiding hair on a weeknight. The teen sitting in my chair, played on her high school’s basketball team, and she just wanted some straight back cornrows.

That didn’t take me long at all, but I had come to the shop right after getting off from the bank, so I was tired.

There was no way I was cooking, so I stopped and got something to eat on my way home.

Glancing at the clock on my dashboard, I sighed when I realized that I had less than three hours before my bedtime, so I could wake up and do my workday all over again.

The decision that I made not to freely spend my father’s blood money wasn’t an easy one.

At least twice a week I thought about how much easier life would be if I let my father buy me a house and pay off my car.

Then, I could quit my job at the bank, do hair full-time, and create my own schedule so I could spend more time with my child.

But as soon as the thought entered my mind, events of the past would begin to play in my mind like a movie.

The most recent memory was of him beheading Lonzo.

It had only been three days since my father murdered Kiwi’s father.

Even though he wasn’t in my child’s life and I never planned on him being, the act that I witnessed still made me feel some kind of way.

I couldn’t even begin to fathom how many people my father may have murdered during his reign in the streets.

To take lives so callously and still walk around every day as normal and nonchalant as he did was scary.

My father was a literal psychopath. After he chopped Lonzo’s head off, he probably went home and had dinner with my mother like nothing had happened.

My stomach churned as I pulled into my driveway.

A murder was something that I never wanted to or even thought I would witness.

Maybe my father thought he was making me happy or avenging my rape by doing what he did in front of me, but I didn’t appreciate it.

I never needed to know how he chose to handle Lonzo.

I knew I’d be getting home late, so I left the light on in my living room.

I got word from Marlo when I first moved in my house that my father had spoke to all the hustlers within a twenty-mile radius of my home and let them know that me and my daughter were off limits.

Of course, he didn’t directly give them my address, but he made it known that shorty with the red hair was good in any hood, protected, and better not ever be touched.

Obviously, someone had gone against the grain.

My heart dropped when I stepped over the threshold of my home and saw my living room in disarray.

The 62’ inch television that had been mounted on my wall was gone.

My eyes darted around the space. The door wasn’t damaged, and the windows in the living room weren’t broken.

I wasn’t quite sure the burglar or burglars got in my house, but I wasn’t going to investigate.

I had no clue if they were still in the house.

With trembling fingers, I unlocked my cell phone and dialed 9-1-1.

My father was as gangsta as they came, but I was raised in the suburbs.

Witnessing crimes and walking in on burglaries wasn’t my thing.

I stepped back onto the porch while I talked with the dispatcher.

I was so glad that Kiwi wasn’t with me. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that she would have been terrified.

The things that had been taken didn’t matter because they could all be replaced.

Just knowing that someone had broken into my home and violated me and my daughter’s things was terrifying and infuriating.

I hated bum ass niggas that refused to work for what they wanted.

It took the police less than ten minutes to come, but it felt like a lifetime. One of the officers was a dark-skinned black man, and the other was a red-haired white guy. The moment the black officer laid eyes on me, recognition set in on his face.

“You’re Devin’s daughter, right?”

Even the police knew my father and unfortunately, I had no way of knowing if this was a cop on my father’s payroll or one that had a hardon for taking him down.

“Yes,” I mumbled not in the mood to answer irrelevant questions. My father and who he was had nothing to do with the break-in.

The officers searched my house and discovered that whoever broke in gained entry by kicking in the back door.

I knew that I couldn’t sleep in my own bed that night, and that made tears sting my eyes.

I didn’t care about the television that was missing out of my bedroom, the Louis Vuitton purse, or my MacBook.

I was pissed about my child’s things that had been taken.

Jewelry, her camera, several pairs of shoes, her television, and her iMac.

A person had to be a real low life to steal from a child.

It was obvious by the décor in Kiwi’s room that she was a child.

The officers stayed with me while I packed an overnight bag. Inside my car, I had to do the one thing that I hated to have to do and that was call my father.