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“Shit. We going to see right now. What took you so long getting here?” Ced wanted to know.

“Joy. Ced, I damn near wanted to slap that bitch tonight. Only reason why I didn’t put my hands on her is because I don’t want that stigma of being a woman beater. I already put my hands on Deja. I didn’t want to have to do the same thing to Joy. I know I tell you this shit every other day, but I gotta leave that bitch alone. Pregnancy making her so fuckin miserable. We beef about the dumbest shit. Just to think that I got years ahead of me to deal with her ass. Fuck! I should have worn a fuckin condom!” I spat, expressing my true feelings to him. Like it was comical, he laughed at me while shaking his head.

“You’ll go down as the dumbest nigga in history. If niggas had a bitch like Deja, they would have been on their P’s and Q’s. You was fuckin the hottest bitch out of Miami. That was enough motivation for you to do right. Not only did you fuck hoes behind her back, but you fucked a hoe that works with her. You gotta take that L my nigga,” Ced told me what just about every nigga has been telling me upon learning that I fumbled Deja.

I didn’t bother responding to him. We walked in silence over to the warehouse. Ced took the initiative to knock on the door. He barely had time to put his hand down before the door opened. There stood a big, black nigga on the inside. He was the kind of nigga that could sit on you and smush you to death. There were marks all over his face, making me wonder if someone might have sliced his ass up in the past, and the marks were the left-over wounds. Preston had the right man at the door because if the plan was to make visitors afraid of him, then it somewhat worked. I damn near felt like I needed to pull my gun out on his ass.

“What ya’ll here for?” his deep ass voiced asked us.

“We’re here to meet with Preston. He hit us earlier, telling us to pull up tonight,” Ced responded for the both of us.

“He’s tied up right now. Wait right here. He’ll be out in a second,” he let us know. He pointed over by the wall. That’s where he was telling us to wait. Ced led the way and I was right behind him.

Whenever I was in unfamiliar territory, I got nervous. My hands were inside my pockets, as I rocked back and forth, taking in what was ahead of me.

The inside of this warehouse made me gain a respect for Preston. Here I am, thinking that I was doing something back at my crib with all those TV screens set up in my living room. The inside of this warehouse put my living room area to shame. He had big TV screens surrounding this bitch. Each screen had on a different game playing. A couple of college football games were on, and one NFL game was on. Basketball was on a couple of the TV’s too. Tonight, a big fight was happening, and that’s where I was going to put majority of my money. This would be me and Ced’s first time putting in a ticket that Preston gave us, so I was curious to see if it was going to hit.

A few of Preston’s men were inside the warehouse. They didn’t verbally speak to us though. They just gave us head nods. You could tell by the intense stare that they had on the television screens that they’d put money on these games. I knew those intense stares from a mile away. That’s typically how I looked when I was watching my ticket, with a lot of money on the line.

“Ahhhhh shit!” we heard someone yell from the back room.

Hearing the scream, both Ced and I turned our heads to look at one another. We didn’t say anything, but we questioned each other with our eyes, wondering what the fuck was going on. In a span of five minutes, we heard that scream release at least ten more times. By the 5th minute, there was silence. No more screaming.

I really was rocking back and forth by this point. Feeling uneasy like a motha fucka, we saw a door open from the back room. Because Ced and I were up front, it was easy for us to look straight ahead. Preston was the one to walk out of the back room. The same back room where the screaming came from. He had a white towel in his hands, using it to wipe off blood. That’s when I turned to look at Ced again. By this point, I think we both knew what the fuck was going on.

I watched as Preston said something to the men that were in the room. As he was speaking to them, he must have felt our eyes on him because he turned to look in our direction. He gave us a quick smile, finished with whatever he was saying to his guys, and then walked over. Before he said anything to us, he stood in front of the big ass security guard at the door.

“The trashman is coming in about fifteen minutes. Let him in,” he said.

Preston had a gangsta side. He was speaking in code. Wasn’t no real trash man coming around these parts at this time of night. Whoever the fuck was in the back screaming, something tells me that he went ahead and killed his ass. Now, he’d hit up a cleanup crew, so that they could dispose of the body.

In this moment, all I could think about was that day on the yacht. I thought about the threat that Preston dished out. He basically told us that he didn’t play with his money. In so many other words, he made it clear that he would kill us over a dollar.

“What’s up? How are ya’ll doing? I see you found the location,” Preston said, walking over to us.

This cracka had blood splatter on his shirt. He couldn’t even reach his hand out to shake ours because there was still some blood on his hands. My eyes went past him, and over to the back room. The same back room that he came out of. Three, husky black men walked out of that same room. They looked like the nigga that was guarding the front door. Big and scary looking.

I watched as they found a spot on the couch and sat down.

“Ay, we ain’t trying to get in your business or nothing like that, but what all you got going on over here? We heard a nigga screaming in the back room. What’s good with that?” I asked. I had to know.

I was already feeling uneasy, but then he had all kinds of niggas coming out of secret doors and shit. From my understanding, he might have just killed someone too. I needed to know what the fuck was going on.

Preston laughed once I asked him that question. He came over, and stood directly in front of Ced and I.

“Oh, that was Benjamin. Really good dude. We’ve been friends for a few years. Made a lot of money together. I gave him a great pick about a month ago. He hit big. I want to say he had a payout of over a million dollars. He owed me twenty percent. He started ducking my calls, ignoring my texts, so I’ve been looking for him for a month straight. We found him tonight. I handled my business,” his response was simple.

Back on the yacht, I thought he threw out that little threat to pump fear in us. I guess he meant business.

He knew that he left us feeling a little uneasy, so he laughed again. He laughed and put his hands on our shoulders. He shook us, to loosen us up some.

“Loosen up you two. You two wouldn’t do that. I just know you won’t. Ced, you have little sisters, correct? A mom that you love dearly, right? And Hitta, you have a baby on the way. You two have people to live for. You wouldn’t put yourself or your loved ones in danger like that, would you?” he asked that shit in a playful way, but I knew he was serious about everything that came out of his mouth.

I would have been ready to kill him if he was any other nigga making idle threats like that. Because I was itching to make money with him, I didn’t let the threat bother me.

Preston led us into the room where the rest of the men were, and we dropped the conversation from there. I’m not going to lie, on the yacht, I had every intention to probably run off on his money. If I hit for a million, that greed wasn’t going to allow me to give him the 20% that was owed. I don’t think I had that mindset anymore. Not because I feared this white boy, but I wasn’t trying to gamble with my life, or the people around me lives. I had a baby mama that got on my fuckin nerves, but I didn’t want shit happening to her. I didn’t want anything happening to my unborn child, either.

These white boys were the last people I wanted to beef with. It’s cocaine and shit laid out on the table. It was all kinds of secret doors in this warehouse too, so you didn’t really know what was ahead of you. I felt like Preston was into shit far deeper than gambling. All I wanted was to get some of his picks, make the same kind of money that he was making, and pay whatever dues that I had to. I hoped Ced had that mindset too.