Moth to a Flame (14 page)

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Authors: Ashley Antoinette

BOOK: Moth to a Flame
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Mizan’ s nostrils flared when he saw Raven conversing with Ethic. Everything in him wanted to get out of the car and snatch her out of her Gucci pumps, but he remained inside his vehicle, seething.
“Fuck the nigga touching her face for?” he asked aloud as he felt a streak of jealousy pulse through him. He knew that Raven was vulnerable right now because of the fight they had gotten into before she had left home, and the fact that Ethic was so close to his girl bothered Mizan. He noticed the intimate way she looked at Ethic. Everything about her interaction with him seemed intimate.
Bitch is too fucking friendly with this nigga,
he thought bitterly. Mizan sensed the respect and humility that Raven had for Ethic, which only made him angrier. He knew that she did not hold him in such high regard.
When they began to walk around the block, Mizan’s finger began to itch. He wanted to detonate the bomb so badly that he was biting his inner cheek in anticipation. Ethic had disrespected him one too many times.
Dude is way too close to my bitch,
Mizan thought as a silent rage pulsed through him. He watched on, his heart beating a mile a minute. He was waiting for the perfect opportunity to push the button that would make Ethic extinct.
 
 
“I’m going back to Missouri, ” Ethic said.
“What?” Raven exclaimed. She stopped walking and turned toward him in shock.
“I thought you should know.” He went into his jacket pocket and pulled out a white envelope. “There is twenty thousand and a number where you can reach me,” he explained. “I know things may get tough for you now that your pops is gone, but if you ever need me, don’ t hesitate to call.
“Why are you leaving?” She tucked the envelope inside her purse.
“Because it’ s time for me to go. ” I have business back home that I need to tend to.”
“What about your business here? ”
“Your father was my only business in Flint. I don’t have anything keeping me here and there is too much going down right now. It wasn’t a coincidence that the cops were waiting at your father’ s house when he got home. Benny had hundred and twenty bricks of cocaine sitting in his safe. The cops only found one. That tells me that this entire thing was a setup, and whoever has those bricks are plotting a takeover. Every nigga who was affiliated with your father is a target. They’re being knocked off one by one. I’m not the type to get caught up in the crossfire.”
“And what about the people you are leaving behind? Are we supposed to just get caught up in the crossfire? My father was grooming you. He chose you to take his spot,” Raven objected heatedly. She had already lost enough, and although Ethic was fairly new in her life, she refused to watch him walk out of it. His temperament and swagger were was a mirror images of her father’s. “You can’ t leave.”
Ethic chuckled as he massaged the bridge of his nose. The more he got to know Raven, the less he thought of her. Everything in her world was so black and white. Good or bad. There was no in-between with her. She thought she was so knowledgeable about the hood, but in actuality she didn’ t know anything. She was green to the game, and chicks like her would lead to a hustler’s downfall; she was their worst nightmare. A wifey with beauty but no brains. “This ain’t a movie, Raven. This shit here is real life and you don’ t know anything about the streets. I haven’ t been groomed by a nigga in a long time. Little boys are groomed and I’m a grown man. I didn’ t work for your father. I worked
with
him and there is a difference. I don’t owe your pops anything more than what I’ve already given.”
“What about me?” Raven asked.
“You have a nigga that should be taking care of you. That’s his job and if he ain’t doing that, then you have my number,” Ethic reassured her.
Raven nodded and began to choke up. “It just seems like my entire world is changing,” she said glumly. She thought about the baby growing inside of her, and of Nikki lying up in a hospital, then of her father’s death. Everything had gotten so complicated in her life. She had experienced more pain in the past few months then she ever had in her time on this earth.
“You made it change, ma,” Ethic replied. “When you’re ready to change it back, you know how to find me,” he said as he turned to leave.
She watched him walk away. Everything from his posture to his stride spelled power and honor. He was so much like her father that it was scary. As she felt the ache from the bruises on her face she knew that she deserved more. She wanted a man like Ethic ... like her father. A man who would never hurt her. “Ethic!” she called out just before he reached his limo.
He turned toward her to see what she wanted.
“What do I have to do?” she asked.
“What?”
“To be with you ... What do I have to do?” she asked with tears in her eyes. “Just tell me what I have to do and I’ll do it.”
Ethic sighed because he was fully aware of Raven’s attraction to him. Her heart was young and so was her mind, which was why Mizan was able to manipulate her so easily. Ethic knew she wanted something she wasn’t ready to handle. He stretched out his hand and she grabbed it, allowing him to pull her near. He put his hands on the sides of her face and stared her in the eyes.
The intensity between their gazes made Raven’s heart melt. “I’ll do anything for you, Ethic. Just tell me who I have to be to get you to like me.” Her voice was almost pleading, childlike as her tears graced his hands. She was pouring her premature heart out to him. Every other time she had attempted to come at him she was on that fly-girl, slick-mouth, princess of the streets–type stuff, but this time was completely different. She was open. She was letting him see how sincere her attraction for him really was. It didn’t take a teenage girl much to know when she was in love, and ever since the first time she saw Ethic she had been smitten. Ethic was the man she wanted, but Mizan was the man she could actually have. Mizan was simply her heart’s substitute.
Ethic shook his head at the dilemma that faced him. “That right there is why I can’t fuck with you, Raven. You don’t even know who you are yet. You’re seventeen, ma. Don’t be so eager to do grown-up things,”he replied. “You’re moving too fast.” He stepped to the side and motioned for her to get inside of the awaiting car. “I’ll take you home.”
Mizan hit the steering wheel in pure rage as he watched Raven get into the limo with Ethic. He was steaming. He could feel his body temperature rise as he watched the black Lincoln pull away. “Stupid bitch,” he mumbled. He knew that he could not finish the job with Raven in harm’s way. He contemplated pressing the button anyway. He reasoned with himself that Raven could be replaced, but he knew that she could not. She had managed to secure a small piece of his loyalty and it was enough to stop him from sending the car up in smoke. He pulled out his phone and dialed her number immediately. Envy filled his heart. Raven belonged to him and Ethic was to close for comfort. He followed the luxury car as it pulled away from the church. He was not willing to let Ethic slip through the cracks. Ethic was a problem and Mizan had every intention of getting rid of him ... one way or another.
 
 
Raven sent Mizan to voice mail as she rode in the back of the limo with Ethic. She leaned against him comfortably as he held her tightly, but she knew that there was nothing romantic about his embrace. Ethic did what he did for her out of duty; as a tribute to her father. But still she cherished every second and stored every single detail of him in her memory, even down to the scent of his Issey Miyake cologne. He stroked her hair and they rode in silence until they pulled up to her house. She closed her eyes and sat still, wishing that she did not have to get out of the car, but when she felt Ethic move to exit she knew that the moment had passed. Reality was a cold, hard smack in the face.
She followed him out of the car and stood in front of him. Her vision was cloudy and she shook her head and waved her hands in front of her face. “Aghh, I can’t stop,” she yelled softly in embarrassment, referring to her tears.
“I didn’t ask you to, Ethic replied. He pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her waist. “You take care of yourself, Raven.”
Raven gave him a weak smile and nodded. “You too,” she replied. She watched him walk back to the limo, and as he pulled away she stood in the middle of her street. She wished that her life was a fairy tale and that the man she loved would turn around to sweep her off her feet, but she wasn’t that type of princess. The daughter of a street king never got her prince.
Just as the limo reached the corner, Raven turned to see her mother and sister coming out of the house. Justine held her arms out for her oldest daughter. She recognized the signs of heartbreak on her face, but before Raven could take a step in her mother’s direction, a loud explosion rang in her ears. The deafening sound seemed to shake the entire block.
She turned to the direction it had come from and her heart fell out of her chest. “No!” she screamed as she ran toward the burning limousine at the end of the street. She ran full speed toward the blaze as she watched the fire consume the car. She could hear her mother and sister screaming her name in the background, but she ignored them as her feet moved forward, carrying her as fast as they could toward the wreckage.
The front of the car was in pieces all over the road and the back was burning quickly. She knew that at any moment the fire would reach the gas tank. She reached for the door, causing the skin on her hand to burn excruciatingly.
“Aghhhh!” she screamed in pain. She removed her jacket and used it to block her hand from the simmering metal door handle. She could still feel the heat and it took everything in her not to let it go. Finally she snatched the door open and saw Ethic lying on the limo floor, unconscious. “Ethic!” she yelled. She could barely see through all the smoke. She felt hands pulling at her, trying to get her away from the car.
“No! Please help him!” she yelled as she turned to see a firefighter dragging her to safety. “I have to get to him!”
Paramedics and fire trucks surrounded the scene and immediately went to work putting out the blaze. They pulled Ethic’s body from the car as Raven was rushed into an ambulance and whisked off to the hospital.
Chapter Eleven
 
Raven closed her worried eyes as she lay back in the hospital bed. Ethic had been rushed into surgery as soon as he entered the hospital and she had not heard anything since. Second degree burns covered her hand, causing her great pain, but it was nothing compared to what she knew Ethic was going through.
“Have you heard anything yet, Mommy?” Raven asked.
Justine held a sleeping Morgan in her arms as she regretfully shook her head at Raven’s question. “Ethic will be okay, Raven. Your father went twenty years in the game without ever getting involved in a war. Violence has never been this close to us. Now that he’s gone, it is knocking at the front door,” Justine stated in disbelief.
A knock at the door interrupted their conversation, and a young black woman came in. Her white lab coat, tired eyes, and hanging stethoscope let Raven know that she was a doctor. The girl could not have been a day older than twenty-five. Most black girls her age were wifed up or seeking a baller to get out of the hood, but the young lady before her was degreed up and making a way for herself. Raven knew that the doctor before her was the ideal daughter to someone. She was the perfect example of who Benjamin and Justine had hoped Raven would someday become. Raven lowered her eyes self-consciously, feeling as if she had let her parents down. In her city there were no doctors or lawyers to look up to. The role models of Flint’s youth were dope boys and the women who loved them. According to that scale she was successful. She had been snagged by Mizan, and although he had not been a part of her father’s prestigious street organization, he was still knee-deep in the game, which gave her bragging rights all her own. It was a dire mentality, but it was life.
Raven rolled her eyes at the doctor, letting the young woman know where she stood before any words were ever exchanged.
“Hello, Raven, I’m Dr. Daniels and I’m an OBGYN. Your blood work indicates that you are pregnant. Were you aware of this?” she asked.
“Yeah, I know,” Raven replied shortly.
“Well, I would like to do an ultrasound and get you started on prenatal vitamins. It’s important that we nourish the baby early,” the doctor answered.
Raven agreed, and as she allowed the doctor to place her feet in the stirrups her legs began to shake. She gripped the metal siding on the bed and held on to it for dear life. Her body tensed as the doctor inserted two gloved fingers into her vagina. “What are you doing?” Raven asked.
“I’m examining your cervix to make sure it is healthy. Just relax,” she coached.
Raven took a deep breath and closed her eyes to calm herself. She felt a cold gel on her stomach.
“Open your eyes and look at your baby,” Dr. Daniels instructed.
A steady rhythm resembling the sound of running water filled the room, and Raven turned her head to look at the monitor. She had no idea what she was looking at. The screen was filled with a black background and white shadows all over it, but the one thing she was sure of was the pulsing dot in the middle. The steady throb that could be heard throughout the room was her baby’s heartbeat. She smiled in disbelief at the miracle that was happening inside of her, and for the first time since her father passed, she felt happiness. “Is it a boy or girl?” she asked with stars in her eyes. Justine lay Morgan down in the chair, then stood to be by Raven’s side.
The doctor removed the gel from her stomach, printed an ultrasound photo for Raven to take, and stood up. “It’s too early to tell, but we will know soon. Now, Raven, your blood work also detected traces of cocaine in your system.”
“Cocaine? Raven!” Justine uttered as she looked at her daughter with a broken heart.
“It’s not like that, ma. I don’t use it all the time. I just tried it once,” Raven lied, but Justine knew her daughter all too well.
“Your drug use is detrimental to your health and the baby’ s health, Dr. Daniels stated. “If you care about this child, it is imperative that you discontinue all use of any type of narcotic.”
Raven smacked her lips. “Didn’t I just say I don’t use drugs? It was a mistake. One time ... that’s it!” she said, feeling as if she was being judged by the successful young black woman.
The doctor nodded unsurely and changed the subject. “I’m going to write you a prescription for the vitamins and give you a moment alone. Congratulations,” she said with a friendly smile. She then turned to Justine. “There are two gentlemen here for you. They would like to speak with you.”
Raven sat up and began to dress. She looked curiously in her mother’ s direction as she exited the room. Hopping up from the hospital bed, she inched over to the door and peeked outside the glass pane.
It did not take much to see that the gentlemen talking to her mother were cops. She cracked the door so that she could hear what was going on.
“Justine Atkins, we would like to ask you a few questions about the business dealings of your husband, Benjamin Atkins,” the taller man.
“I just buried my husband today and my daughter was involved in an accident. I’m not up for answering anybody’ s questions,” Justine replied.
“Mrs. Atkins, I’m going to be straight with you,” the man said as he leaned into Justine. “Your husband was being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I have a warrant for your arrest.”
“My arrest!” Justine exclaimed.
“For aiding and abetting a criminal enterprise, drug trafficking, and tax evasion. Now, we know that you were just spending your husband’ s money, but we have to get somebody. It’s not going to be him for obvious reasons and it doesn’t have to be you. All you have to do is cooperate and tell us who was supplying your husband,” the agent said.
Justine did not reply, and both federal agents could see the defiance on her face. Just like every inner-city youth, she had been bred with a “fuck the police” attitude. They were determined to get her to crack. The men had their backs to Raven, but her mother faced her. When their eyes met, Raven saw an emotion in her mother that she had never seen before: fear. No words needed to be spoken between them for Raven to get the message her mother was trying to send. They were in trouble. When her father died, their entire lives had been thrown out of balance.
When the cops inspected the house, they had found a secret room that Benjamin had built beneath his basement floor. It was not in the original floor plan of the home, so Benjamin never expected anyone other than himself and his family to ever be able to locate the room. After tearing the house up from top to bottom, they finally located it and hit the jackpot. Inside it, they found records of every drug transaction Benjamin had ever made, including the minor role that his wife had played in his operation by counting up his profits for him over the years. Benjamin was detailed down to the very last gram of cocaine in his possession. They also recovered income tax returns that had been doctored by a C.P.A. stating that Benjamin was making a modest income of $50,000 annually. It was obvious that the lifestyle the kingpin was living could not be maintained on that amount, so they hit him with underreported income to the Internal Revenue Service. The room was so incriminating that if the notorious Benny Atkins had ever gone to trial he would have surely lost. He was meticulous in keeping track of how much money he was making and had thought he had kept the information hidden well, but when the feds are on a hunt they are relentless until they find what they are looking for. The only thing he left out was the name of his connect, and the feds wanted that name, even if it meant bulldozing Justine to get it.
Justine nodded her head and said, “I will tell you gentlemen everything you want to know. Please give me a minute to check on my daughters. Then we can go have coffee in the cafeteria so that I can answer your questions.”
The men stepped to the side so that Justine could reenter the hospital room.
“Mommy, what’s going on?” Raven whispered frantically. Justine backed her daughter into the room and held on to her forearms desperately.
“Listen to me, Raven. I need you right now, sweetie. When you see me and those men get on the elevator you take your little sister and get out of here. Take the stairs and get as far away from this hospital as you can. They’re going to arrest me and when that happens they will try to throw you and Morgan into the system. I grew up fending for myself, Raven. I grew up in the gutter around people who didn’t care about me. All I had was myself and I don’t want that for my daughters. I want you two to always be there for one another. To always have one another ‘cuz at the end of the day family is all that matters. You two can’t be separated. That cannot happen, Raven. You hear me? You take Morgan and get out of here. Take care of her, baby. You both are my angels. Your father and I never meant for things to end like this, but it’s up to you now, Raven. You have to make sure that the two of you stay together,” she said seriously as a ball of emotion stuck in her throat.
“Mommy, no ... You can’t go to jail,” Raven replied. “Just tell them what they want to know!”
“I can’t, Rae. The game does not work like that. There’s more to being a hustler’s wife than spending the money. The queen falls right next to the king. It’s my time to fall, but I need you to take care of your sister. You will be eighteen soon and then they won’t be able to touch you. Until then, hide, do everything you can to stop them from placing you both in the system. I’m going to let them think that I’m cooperating, but as soon as they find out I’m not, they will come looking for you.” Justine stated.
Raven tried to absorb everything her mother was saying, but it was all too much. Her head spun as she was besieged with her mother’s instructions. Justine rushed over to her youngest daughter and shook her out of her sleep. “Morgan, wake up, baby. Mommy’s got to go away for a while, but Raven’s going to take care of you. I need you to listen to your sister at all times, okay? Respect her and love her. The two of you are all you have,” she signed. With every word she expressed, her heart tore in half. The shine of fresh sentiment glistened in her eyes as she thought of all of the things that had led up to this moment. All of the foreign cars, big faces, designer clothes, and exotic trips were not worth the heartache she felt. Being the dope man’s wife was not worth the consequence of being separated from her most prized possessions: Raven and Morgan.
Morgan wiped her sleepy eyes and yawned, oblivious to what was about to go down. “Okay, Mommy, I will,” she signed. Justine hugged her daughters tightly, and Raven’s chest swelled with unrelenting burden. It felt like they were saying good-bye, as if they would never see each other again.
“I love you both,” Justine said. A kiss on the cheek was her final good-bye to her children before she walked out of the room.
Raven grabbed Morgan’s hand and led her to the door. When she saw her mother step into the elevator with the agents, she eased out of the room. She jogged to the door that led to the stair well.
“Come on, Morgan, we have to get out of here,” she signed urgently as they descended the steps. The burn on her hand began to throb, but she didn’t have time to pay attention to the pain.
“Wait, Rae, what is going on?”she replied, moving her hands swiftly as she refused to move. Little Morgan wanted an explanation and Raven knew that she would have to tell her something so that thay could both get out of there.
“Mommy is in trouble ... we have to get out of here. If we don’t they are going to try to take us, too,” she informed her. “Now let’s go!” Raven grabbed her sister’s hand and took off down the stairs. Morgan chased after her sister, following her down the twelve flights of stairs. Morgan’s tiny feet couldn’t keep up with Raven. “Come here, stank,”Raven said as she picked her sister up and carried her down the rest of the stairs. Finally she reached the bottom floor and walked out of the hospital with her sister crying on her shoulders. She froze in shock and her heart broke when she saw her mother being escorted out of the hospital in handcuffs. Justine’s head hung low on her chest and she was hunched over, her long hair hanging in her face.
“Raven, there’s Mommy!” Morgan signed frantically and began to take off in Justine’s direction, but Raven quickly grabbed her sister and picked her up, dragging her the other way. It took everything in her to keep moving. They walked six blocks before she stopped to call a cab.
“Where are we going?” Morgan signed in frustration, then folded her arms across her chest.
Raven sighed, knowing that Morgan wanted answers. She could only imagine how confused and lost her little sister felt. She had to remind herself to be patient. “We’re going home. I need to get some stuff from the house,”Raven signed. “Don’t worry, Morgan. I’m gon’take care of everything.”
The cab carried them to the suburbs. When they pulled into their neighborhood, they saw police cars everywhere.
“Don’t stop, drive by that house slowly,”Raven instructed as she slumped down in her seat and observed the government agents going in and out of the house. Everything was being seized from televisions to vehicles; nothing was accessible anymore. Raven watched in dismay as they hoisted her Lexus up onto a flatbed tow truck. All the things that her father had worked hard to provide were now being stripped away. She had the twenty thousand that Ethic had given her, but she was a minor. She would not be able to do anything on her own until she turned eighteen, and four weeks was a long time to be out on the street. She thought of calling Mizan and going back to his place, but she was still angry with him for hitting her. With his temper she never knew when he would fly off the handle, and she did not want to put her sister in the middle of their drama.

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