Tenikka stopped at the corner and looked at her younger, naïve sister. “How much do you want to know?”
“Like I told you that night, I wanna know everything.”
“Okay, so let’s start there. Club Garage, the club you and Destiny was at that night.”
“What about it?”
“Club Garage is owned by a lowlife named Bruce Lloyd. He’s a street soldier for Baby Chris Arcus. He runs a crew for his captain, Jackie Washington.”
“Wait, I know her,” Barbara said. “I met her at my cousin’s wedding. She’s nice.”
“They’re all members of a criminal organization called The Family.”
“What does any of that have to do with me?” Barbara asked as Tenikka parked the car.
Tenikka looked at Barbara and took a deep breath. “That family was started by our father and Mike Black,” she said and before Barbara had a chance to even think about what she had just heard her sister say, Tenikka said, “Come on,” and got out of the car. Barbara got out of the car and hurried to catch up with her sister.
Daddy and Uncle Mike?
They were the two men she admired most. The idea that they were gangsters was almost unfathomable, but then again, in so many ways, it was.
“Where are you going?” she asked, still trying to wrap her head around it.
“This is one of Doc’s gambling houses,” Tenikka said.
“Doc?” Barbara asked in shock. She hadn’t just met Doc at Malia’s wedding; she had known him all her life.
When Tenikka walked in the joint, Barbara was a little scared, and it wasn’t just because she was going to a gambling house, but because of the two big ugly men on the door. They just said, what’s up Butta, and let them in. Barbara followed her in laughing.
“What you laughing at, the gruesome twosome?”
“No … well, yeah, kinda. But I just think it’s funny that everybody calls you Butta,” Barbara said as she looked around the smoke-filled room that was full of people gambling and drinking.
“I told you that was the name I used when I danced, right?”
“Right,” Barbara laughed and pointed. “Because of that gigantic ass you gotta carry around.”
Tenikka smiled. “You ain’t too much better.” She looked at Barbara and laughed a little. They were just about the same height, Barbara may have been a shade or two darker, but if you looked closely, you could see it.
“We’re our father’s daughters. Only real difference between us is that I got my mother’s ass and you got your mother’s titties,” she said, and Barbara laughed, but she had to admit that Tenikka was right.
While they were there, Tenikka told Barbara a few of the stories that she’d heard. “I grew up hearing about Mike Black and Bobby Ray, not knowing that he was my father.”
Barbara listened to what was being told to her in absolute awe, because she had no idea. But now that she knew the truth and was thinking about it, there were things about her life that once made no sense, that now made perfect sense. Like why her mother, who never went anywhere other than the grocery store, needed a driver, and why Treshaun lived in the house.
Because he’s not a driver, he’s our bodyguard.
She thought back to the night her father almost died. The way Pills was acting when he came and found her and the lame story that nobody could get straight, about him getting shot by muggers.
And then there was her Uncle Mike, her father’s best friend. This explained why he wasn’t at the hospital when she got there. Uncle Mike was out looking for the people that did it.
And there was another thing.
Barbara had always wondered why Aunt Shy coming back from the dead was no big deal to anybody.
Like that happens all the time.
There was a part of Barbara that was mad that it had been kept from her, and especially the lies she was told to protect The Family’s secret.