You're All I Need

Two

1996

               "Someone tried to rob the machines last night."

Kai sighed as he looked around one of three of laundry mats that he owned. Two of the machines were beat up where the coin slots were. You could tell someone tried to break into them.

"I think they figured out by the second machine 'dat they couldn't get in and stopped." Yuseth, the middle aged man who Kai had look after the laundry mat on a daily basis. It was a self run laundry mat so Yuseth didn't have to be there all the time but he would come in for a few hours every day. Kai paid him pretty good to do that for the three laundry mats.

Kai rubbed his chin as he checked over the other machines. "It's a good thing I updated the machines when I did then huh?"

"Yup."

Kai shook his head as he handed Yuseth over his weekly check. Yuseth is an ex-con who spent 30 years in prison for murder. It was self defense but the courts didn't believe it. Once he was out, he had managed to rebuild a relationship with his children who now had children of their own. Kai hooking him up with a job that allowed him to afford a decent home helped him out a lot. "I'm gonna have somebody come later on to replace the steel shutters."

Antwan was currently outside on the phone with someone now to come replace the shutters and the security alarm.

"Appreciate it Knox." Yuseth told him as he put the envelope holding the check inside of his book-bag.

Juan, a neighborhood drug dealer, walked inside the laundry mat looking around with a smirk on his face. "I heard somebody tried to break in last night."

Kai nodded for Yuseth to head to the back of the laundry mat so they could talk privately. And so he could get rid of Juan. "What'chu want Juan?"

A chuckle left his mouth as he walked towards Kai, "I was jus' seein' if there's anything I can do that's all. Y'all good?"

"We good. If I needed ya help I woulda asked."

"Now Knox you know you still on this high horse and shit. Deena been tryna connect wit' you for a decade now...and you still actin' like everything above you so we can't help out."

"Deena wants me to flip money and sell her shit out my shops and I don't fuck wit' that. I'm on a high horse because I don't wanna dive in no illegal shit? Fuck outta here Juan."

"I'm jus' sayin'...maybe she can in turn provide some security. Looks like you gon' need it. What if this happens to another spot?"

To him, it sounded like Juan knew something about what happened. And it wasn't too far fetched for Kai to immediately assume that Juan had something to do with it or knew who did it.

"Nigga I'm good and let this be the last time you come around my spots. Tell Deena I don't want no parts in what she got goin' on. And tell her if she sends her people around me again, she gonna see a side of me that she's never seen before."

Hearing Kai's usually calm tone change into a stern one, Antwan quickly ended his call that he was taking outside and and came in. Juan was already slowly backing away from Kai who sounded like his father just now...a man he himself respected. He almost backed into Antwan, who pushed him away just in time.