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April 6th, 2022
"Somebody real is hard to find, somebody worth all your time. Somebody who can tell you the truth, someone who loves you for you."
The melodic sound of Tink's voice permeated the gas station as Jezebel stood behind the counter, only three hours into her nine hour shift.
Looking down at her phone, she tapped it to look at the time and then sighed.
"It's only 1 a.m. and it's a Wednesday night. There's no reason for us to be open right now." She said to herself, leaning further back into her chair.
Jezebel has been working at Come&Go since she was eight, after her mother finally decided she was done raising her child and dropped her onto her father. Of course she wasn't officially on payroll, but her father kept her at work with him so they could both use the time to get to know each other, which they did.
Already being a single father of two boys, Cassius Harris was doing the damn thing with his gas station/convince store. Flipping his drug money into something that could bring his community some good, was how he chose to switch his life around. Yeah there was already other ones in the community, but none of them were owned by someone who knew the struggles of being black while in Houston, or even America.
He was three years in of owning his own business, when Jezebel walked through the Come&Go doors with only the clothes on her back and a folder filled with papers.
Looking at Jezebel, he immediately knew that she was his child. He couldn't have denied her if he tried, as she had his whole face. She looked more like his junior than his first son, whose actually his junior.
Instead of asking her a million questions, Cassius simply introduced himself as who she was looking for and then introduced her to her brothers, who were in the employee room. He left them to be, as they instantly clicked with each other. Cassius spent a good hour of his shift thinking about how he could have another child and how he didn't know. It wasn't until Jezebel came out to hand him the folder, then ran back to go with her brothers, that he found out.
Jasmine was a one night stand in Dallas, to keep it simple. At that time, Cassius had just broken up with Junior and Carmelo's mom, London, after being together for ten years. Though it was a mutual break up, Cassius allowed himself one heartbroken and drunk night, resulting in him getting Jasmine pregnant.
As he read on, he could feel himself wishing he would've known about Jezebel from the get, go. No child deserved to be around prostitution. He couldn't imagine what Jezebel had seen as she was only a eight year old girl. His mind was racing and he could feel himself heating up, as thoughts of anything happening to her crossed his mind.
Finishing the letter, he found out that Jasmine chose drugs over their daughter. Scrummaging through the folder, he found all of Jezebel's important documents and another letter, stating that Jasmine signed all her rights over to him.
