Chapter 38: AVERIE - A Street King's Widow
By Jenica J.
I knew something was wrong when Q stopped answering his phone. At first, I didn’t think too much of it. District 12 kept him busy, and there were plenty of times he would disappear for hours because someone needed him. We tried our best not to sit around on the phone with each other all day. Today just felt off. He had sent a text and asked if me and the kids were good. That was around six. I was busy getting off and picking the kids up to even answer. I didn’t answer until an hour later. It was now eight, and I had called him three times. Kaiden had asked twice whether he was coming over because he promised to watch film with him before bed. Every time he asked where Q was, I got annoyed. I was standing in the kitchen putting leftovers away when Kaiden came in with his phone in his hand.
“Q still ain’t called?”
“No, go finish your homework.”
“I already did.”
“Okay, go find something productive to do.”
“He said he was going to watch with me.”
“I know what he said, Kaiden.”
“You mad at him?”
“I’m not mad. I just don’t like when people say they’re going to do something and then disappear without communicating.”
Kaiden shrugged and walked away before his mouth got him in trouble. I picked my phone up and looked at the time. I was not about to be that woman calling a man’s business because he hadn’t responded for a few hours. Q had a life before me. There were things he handled that didn’t require an explanation every thirty minutes. I still felt like something was off. It could’ve been the conversation we had about Weston. The conversation was heavy, and we both noticed there were things about his past that I wasn’t aware of. I placed the leftovers in the refrigerator as the doorbell rang. I looked towards the front. It was almost nine, and I wasn’t expecting anyone but Q this late. I picked up my phone and looked at the camera to see Kyenna.
Kyenna did not randomly pop up at my house. We were better than we had been after Rah died, but we still weren’t the type to pull up unannounced and sit around drinking wine. I opened the door for her anyway. One look at her face made something in my stomach turn.
“Kyenna?”
“Can I come in?”
I stepped aside, and she slowly walked in, carrying her purse close to her side.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Are the kids up?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I need you to go upstairs and tell them to close their doors and not to come down here.”
My heart started beating fast.
“Kyenna, what the fuck happened?”
“Averie, please.”
I could tell by her tone how serious this was. Kyenna had this way of going extremely calm when something serious happened. I had seen it after Rah died. She did it again at the reading of the will. I had no idea what she did when no one was watching, but when eyes were on her. She held herself together well. The more shit around her fell apart, the more controlled she became.
“Have a seat,” I told her as I walked up the stairs to Kaiden’s room.
“Kaiden, can you get Khari and bring her in here with you until I come and get y’all?”
“Why? Did something happen?”
“No, I’m about to talk, and I don’t need y’all in my business.”
“Is it Q?”
“Kaiden! Now!”
He finally listened and went and got his sister. Once they were back in his room, I closed his door and walked back down to the living room.
“What happened?”
Kyenna sat her purse down on the end table. She was making herself comfortable enough to stay for a conversation.
“Can you sit down, Averie?”
“Kyenna, you’re really starting to piss me off.”
“Averie, sit down. Please.”
“Is this about Q?”
Her face didn’t change, but she did shift. If I hadn’t been paying attention, I would’ve missed it. I stopped breathing for a second.
“Where is he?”
“I need to tell you some things first.”
“No! You need to answer the question I just asked you.”
Kyenna crossed her legs and fiddled with her French-manicured nails.
Kyenna!”
“Q was involved in Rah’s murder,” she blurted.
The words didn’t make sense. I had to laugh to stop myself to stop from being upset. It wasn’t shit funny. My brain was rejecting what she had said.
“What?”
“I found old distribution records. Q had money tied into King Distribution through D12. Rah was trying to dismantle parts of the operation before he died, and Q had millions tied into it.”
“What the hell does that have to do with him killing Rah?”
“I didn’t say he pulled the trigger.”
“You just said he was involved in the murder.”
“He was.”
“No…there is no way Q would do anything like that. That’s not him.”
“Averie-”
“I just talked to that man today. He was in this house. You’re not about to walk your ass in here and say some shit like that without explaining yourself.”
“Well, I’m trying to,” Kyenna said.
“Then explain,” I said, flopping on the sofa across from her.
She reached into her purse and pulled out folded copies and placed them on the table between us. I didn’t touch them.
“I don’t give a damn about paperwork right now. Tell me what you know.”
“In short, Q funded routes for King Distribution. Rah was ready to shut the routes down. He pissed a lot of the investors off, so they decided to end Rah’s life. Your boy, Q, had his boys sit on our compound and wait for Rah to get home to ambush him.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“I met with one of the old guards. He remembered the two SUVs before the shooting.”
“You still haven’t proved Q did anything,” I stated.
“I talked to him.”
“You talked to who?”
“I confronted Q today. He admitted his men were there. He said his men blocked the road and fired the first shots at Rah.”
The living room was starting to close in on us. I grabbed the arm of the sofa. This wasn’t real. I had this man around my kids. My heart was beating so fast, it was giving me a headache.
“I’m sorry,” Kyenna said.
“Did he know it was Rah?”
Kyenna’s face balled up. I knew it was a dumb question. My heart just didn’t want it to be true.
“Hell, yeah he knew.”
I covered my mouth. That hurt worse than anything else she had said. I wasn’t stupid. I knew Q wasn’t an innocent man once he said he had a past that he no longer was connected to. He knew exactly whose life was being destroyed. Only to later walk into mine like none of this happened.
“That man was around my kids.”
“I know.”
“He made me fall in love. My kids were falling in love with him,” my voice cracked.
“How long did you know?” I asked, my eyes filled with tears.
“A few days. I wanted proof before I came to you with anything. I knew how happy y’all were. The last thing I wanted to do was come and fuck up your world, and it ended up being nothing.”
“Here you go, keeping shit to yourself again. Just like you did when you found Rah. You should’ve told me the minute his name came up.”
“With what, Averie? I didn’t have anything solid to come to you with at first.”
“Do you hear yourself? You had enough to investigate.”
“And what if I was wrong?”
I laughed bitterly. “If you had been wrong, I would’ve been mad at you. So, fucking what? Instead, I had that man sleeping in my bed. I was at his house. Alone.”
Kyenna didn’t say a word. My anger was valid. We weren’t best friends, but I expected her to protect my kids more than she had.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“He’s dead,” she said.
My heart stopped. It was like I had gone deaf for a minute. There was no way she was sitting here telling me that Q was dead. Now I had more questions, and I didn’t know if I wanted the damn answers, the way she was sitting here like nothing was bothering her.
“Dea…dead?”
“Q is dead,” she said again.
“How?”
Kyenna didn’t answer. Her silence was her answer, and I knew it.
“You killed him?”
“I did,” she said, uncrossing her legs and sitting up.
I reacted before I could think about it. I launched at her, but she had hopped out of the seat before I could get across the table. I was never aggressive, but I was taking loss after loss, and she was always the fucking face connected to it.
“Out of respect for the kids, I’ll let you have that moment. When you come to your senses, you’ll realize what I did had to be done. He admitted to helping set Rah up.”
“And you couldn’t come tell me first?”
“How was I supposed to know the nigga was going to admit anything?”
“Kyenna, you could’ve called immediately after.”
“Averie–”
“Again, you only care about yourself. Raya was right about you. You’re a selfish bitch. I had questions too, Kyenna. You think because Rah was your husband, you're the only person who lost somebody? That was the father of my children. I loved that man before you ever met him. I had ten years of my life with him. And now I find out the man I’ve been laying with helped murder him, and you killed his ass before I could even ask him why.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think about it like that.”
“Exactly! You didn’t fucking think about me at all.”
“Can you bring your voice down? The kids do not need to know about this.”
“Fuck you, Kyenna! Don’t worry about my kids. You thought about what Q did to you. You thought about getting revenge. You didn’t think about the fact that I have been opening my legs to that man. Telling him shit and letting him into the lives of my children. I deserved to look him in his face and ask him why.”
“You’re right. Again, I’m sorry.”
Kyenna didn’t put up a fight. She let me yell without yelling back. I think her being calm is what stopped us from fighting. Had she gotten loud back, there was no telling what would’ve happened. I started crying before I realized the tears were falling. I hated being vulnerable in front of her. Kyenna walked up to me and wrapped her arms around me.
“He loved you. He did tell me that too. All he talked about was you and the kids. I believed him.”
“You said he didn’t shoot Rah, right?”
“Correct.”
“Well, who killed him if it wasn’t his men?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. He died holding the secret in.”
“So you killed the only man who could tell us who finished the job.”
“He was never going to tell me. Q made that very clear. I asked him several times, and he never gave up who it was. Whoever it is, Q was protecting them.”
“Does Shameek know about all this?”
“Grif called him after Q was dead.”
“And how did he act when he arrived?”
“Shit, I don’t know. It was a lot happening. What are you trying to say?”
“Just wanted to know if he was surprised or not.”
“He was pissed that I even handled the situation without him.”
I wasn’t trying to throw the blame on Shameek. I just needed to point the finger at someone. For all I knew, Kyenna could be lying, and she did the shit. I wanted to be alone because now I had to figure out how to tell my kids that Q would never be back.
“You can leave,” I told Kyenna.
She grabbed her purse and walked towards the door and left. I locked the door behind her and stood there with my forehead pressed against it. When I turned around, Kaiden was standing at the bottom of the steps. His face told me he heard everything.
“Why does everybody keep leaving us?” Kaiden’s voice broke down.
All I could do was grab him and let him cry. I had to go through this grieving process with my children all over again. Q left me with two children who had to grieve someone they loved while learning that the same person helped take their father away. It wasn’t until now that I understood exactly why Kyenna had to pull that trigger. I still wasn’t ready to forgive her for doing it. But I understood why it had to be done.