Where it all began...
This excerpt is slightly edited & subject to changes. Copyright © 2021 BriAnn Danae
Prologue
Kansas City, Missouri 2004
“We let the doves do it for us. We don’t cry tears.” – Jeezy
Gina knew all good things didn’t last forever. She’d heard the saying one too many times to count in her life. But if things weren’t bad, why couldn’t the good things last? Why did the good have to die young? Why was she sitting on the front pew of the childhood church she grew up in, mourning the loss of her husband and kid’s father? She didn’t have the answer to any of those questions.
A heaviness coated her frame as Pastor Jenkins preached about the lifestyle Duke Priest lived. The three hundred-plus group of people who packed out the church knew the real. Yes, Duke was loving, a man of God, and a stand-up guy in the community. He was the kind of man who you couldn’t help but be thankful to know—an OG in the hood and a Legend in the streets. Well respected wherever he went, it came as a shock when the news of his death hit the streets. People were in disbelief and shed tears as if he were their family. He was.
He was also one of the biggest drug dealers to push work in the streets of Kansas City. Duke had touched so much money in his short thirty-four-year-old life, it was sickening. His workers had workers. He knew the game and made a killing off of it to survive and provide. Duke ruined families as well. Addiction was the habit he kept feeding to those hungry. If they had the money, Duke saw no reason why they couldn’t depend on him to support their habits. So, while the majority of the people were there to celebrate his life, some were there with smirks on their faces, glad that he was gone.
Knowing this, Gina tried her best to keep her tired, bloodshot red eyes straight ahead. It’d only been eight days since his death, and she’d only cried for two of them. Not because she wasn’t hurting, but because business as usual still had to get handled. From the day they met, Gina learned the ropes of Duke’s operation and could run it just as smoothly, if not better, than Duke could. Workers still had to get paid, drops still needed to be made, fiends wanted to get served, and money still needed to be counted. A day off and mothafuckas would think shit was sweet.
Plus, her motherly duties didn’t stop even though she wanted to crawl into their California King bed and shut the world off. In his absence, Duke left behind three sons. There was no way Gina could give up on them. Not now, not ever.
Glancing to her left where Krypt, her oldest at fifteen, was sitting beside her, she studied his face. A replica of his father with rich, dark umber skin and a crisp line-up, there wasn’t a place he couldn’t go where someone wasn’t telling him, “Boy, you look just like your daddy.” Pain siphoned through Gina’s heart, remembering the day she found out she was pregnant.
“Ma,” a timid seventeen-year-old Gina called out to her mama.
Ginette looked away from General Hospital as it went to a commercial break and glanced her child’s way. “What you want, girl? Why you home some early?”
“I wasn’t feeling good.”
“Oh, no you don’t. You and your sister stay trying to pull a fast one on me. You taking your tail to school tomorrow. I don’t care if I have to dope you up with meds all evening.”
Gina gulped, knowing no type of medicine or remedy would work. “Um, it’s not like a cold or anything.”
“Well, what the hell is it, Regina?” She questioned, staring at her with intensity.
When Gina rapidly blinked as tears gathered in her eyes, Ginette felt it in her spirit what would be the next words from her mouth.
“I-I’m pregnant, ma. I swear I wasn’t trying to get knocked-up on purpose,” Gina explained.
Taking a minute to take in what’d she’d just said, Ginette’s eyes closed. She surely thought Gina would break the cycle of becoming a teenage mother. She’d become one herself, and prayed that Gina didn’t do the same. She knew no matter how hard she asked God to steer her child in the opposite direction, Gina had to live her own life and grown from her own lessons. It just hurt that her baby girl was standing here delivering this news by herself. Ginette peeled her eyes open and Gina saw the hurt all through them.
“Are you ready for a baby?”
Gina shrugged. “No. But I’m not getting rid of it.”
Her decision was firm. Set in stone. There’d be no talks of abortion or adoption spewing from her lips.
“Okay. So how do you plan on taking care of this baby at seventeen? Who’s the daddy?”
“He’s actually outside on the porch.”
Ginette’s brow raised. “On my porch? He didn’t have the decency to come in here and face me like a man?”
She stood to her feet, but before she could go to the door, Gina beat her to it. She didn’t need her mama cursing Duke out even though she knew that’d happen outside or inside her home.
“I’ll get him.”
“You better. Coming in here telling me you’re pregnant and he has his ass right outside,” Ginette fussed.
Pushing the screen door open, Duke was waiting with a grin on his face. “What she say?”
“Come in and meet her,” Gina sighed.
Walking up on her with his crisp fade and leather jacket on, Duke kissed her cheek. “Relax, baby. There ain’t nothing she can do now. I got you and my seed for life.”
Gina believed him. Every word he’d ever told her, she accepted as nothing less than the truth. Duke had made due on his word, birthing two more sons with her, making her his wife, and providing the type of lifestyle Gina didn’t know came with so much turmoil and grief. As she stared at her oldest, Gina knew Duke’s death would hit him harder than his brothers.
Krypt sat with a cold expression on his face, while anger danced in his eyes. He was hurt as fuck behind the death of his father. His thirst to avenge it was stronger though. Feeling his mother’s eyes on him, Krypt wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
“We gon’ be good, ma. I promise.”
Gina nodded, praying he was right. To the right of her sat Kavalli, her baby. The baby of the bunch. At ten, he understood that his father would no longer be with them, but he had a million and one questions, and rightfully so. Trying to explain how someone who’d been in his life from the day he took his first breath would no longer be was tough. Thankfully, Gina had a strong support system because Kavalli was the inquisitive child who wouldn’t let up.
Beside him was Khrome. The middle child. The one Gina had almost lost while in labor. Khrome was a fighter though. And now at age twelve had his first heartbreak. He wiped at the tears on his face and sniffled. Out of all the brothers, he was the most sensitive. There was nothing wrong with that, and Gina knew she’d have to really keep an eye out on him. Khrome was a daddy’s boy to the fullest. Unlike Kavalli who asked questions, Khrome kept his to himself. He was a thinker and hadn’t quite wrapped his mind around everything yet, but he figured the time would come.
As the service came to an end, the three brothers stood by one another near the family limo. Krypt had his eyes on every person speaking to his mama. He could tell right away the fake love from the real.
“Pops didn’t even like half these mothafuckas,” Krypt grumbled.
Khrome nodded, already knowing. One of Duke’s infamous lines he told them was ‘Believe half of what a mothafucka says. Watch how they move. People always show their true colors when shit gets tough.’ Krypt knew for a fact people had only come out to see if it was true. Had someone really killed Duke Priest? The head honcho? All these fake smiles and condolences would be over with the minute after his casket was placed in the ground.
“How you know?” Kavalli asked, watching their aunt Kimmy, Gina’s sister walk over to them.
“Cause’ I just do.” That was Krypt’s answer.
“But how though? We don’t know who he was all friends with.”
Kavalli wasn’t letting up.
“Everybody ain’t your friend. You know that. Remember that boy from your class who you said tried to fight you because you wouldn’t give your seat up on the bus?” Krypt questioned.
A mean scowl covered Kavalli’s handsome face. “Yeah. We not friends no more.”
“Y’all never were, and neither are any of these people out here friends of our Pops. He had associates.”
Kavalli knew what that word meant, so his questions came to a cease. Krypt hadn’t told him not one lie though. As the weeks, months, and years went by, those same people who vowed to be there for them were nowhere to be found.
Gina didn’t fault them though. She pushed many away, cut a lot of mothafuckas off, and tightened up the crew of niggas in their circle. Her last sixteen years had been spent with one man. She cherished those moments and was so grateful they shared three kids to continue on his legacy.
From the day after he was laid to rest, Gina ran his operation with the help of Stevo, Duke’s righthand. Every waking day she tended to her kids and the streets. She didn’t have to, but was loyal to the soil, and would be sick if everything Duke worked so hard for turned to dust. Duke was smart with his money. He had trust funds for all his kids, money saved, investments in place, and residual income that Gina could comfortably live off of for a while until she was ready to just travel and relax, or work again. That time had finally come.
On Krypt’s nineteenth birthday, Gina handed everything over to him. He’d played the back for four years, soaking up the game, how it was run and was now running shit. While he wanted his brothers to stay focused on school, Krypt knew that before or once they graduated, he was bringing them in. When Duke was killed, it shook their lives up. They took some time to adjust to what was now their new normal without him, and still had the streets on lock. No matter how the streets evolved, who didn’t like the plays they made, or who tried taking their spot… the Priest brothers weren’t moving. They’d made a name for themselves, was standing on all ten behind it, and promised that The Real would Always Prevail.
