Lies You Tell (DE)

55.

" Aint seen yo bitch ass in a minute," Dre said, holding a pearled blunt in his left hand, shaking Joseph up with his right.

" Just been layin low wit my shorty," Joseph said, sitting on the polished oak desk.

The smell of premium weed smoke filled Joseph's nose as he entered their office at Icon. A thick cloud of smoke loomed over their heads, collecting under the popcorn ceiling. Joseph had been spending a lot of time at home and with Grace since she'd come home. The shooting had drastically changed his perspective on a lot of things and spending quality time with those he loves the most is one of them.

Your whole life could change in the blink of an eye and he didn't want to take for granted his time spent with her anymore. He was also slowly trying to stray away from the business. Joseph knew it wasn't going to be something that happened over night, nor would he be able to completely wipe his hands from it because he had so much invested in it— but he wanted to get to the point where it didn't interfere with the life he was trying to create.

Unbeknownst to Grace, Joseph made a promise when she was in the hospital that he was going to let this shit go for real now. He carried a lot of guilt for what happened to Grace because it was ultimately his actions that ended up getting her hurt.

Joseph had been living two drastically different lives, it was inevitable that one day they were going to clash and that day resulted in almost losing the love of his life. It was never Joseph's intention to get this deep back into the game. His relationship with the streets was like a toxic love affair. No matter how much he said he was done, he'd always end up right back but that was when he didn't have anything else to live for. Now he does— Grace.

She was all he needed in his life of sin.

He'd also been investing a lot of his time into curating ways to help put back into his community and create new business ventures for himself, legal ones. Their excursion back to Harlem was much needed and relit that burning passion his younger self had to restore the place that made him. With money comes power, and he had a lot of that. If anyone could make a change, it would be him.

He owed a lot of his inspiration to the natural purity and goodness of Graces heart. Her encouragement is what reopened his eyes and motivated him to start putting his money towards a good cause.

" Yea after that sloppy shit you pulled," Dre scoffed.

Joseph jerked his head back. Dre was right. This was the first time anything he'd ever done made it to the news— leaving that striker instead of burning it was a sloppy move but the car has zero ties to him so he wasn't moved. Hundreds of black men are killed every year where they're from so the police don't even bat an eye, but this was an eighty year old elderly woman murdered and then set on fire. That wasn't random, there was passion and reasoning behind it and it caught the attention of the police chief.

The police only make press conferences like that to intimidate their suspects when in all actuality that car was probably their only lead and that led to a dead end itself so they weren't going to get anywhere anyways.

But as for Joseph, he was very unimpressionable.

Usually the people that Joseph kills are so deep into the streets they won't even be missed but Joseph broke his own MO this time.

It was a known rule that women, children, and old folks are off limits in the streets— none are to be harmed but Joseph broke that rule. All bets were off the minute Grace got shot. He meant it when he said everyone was gone feel him. Joseph waved Dres slick comment off not wanting to get too deep into it. Today was the day of the thanksgiving drive at the boys and girls club and he was trying to keep a clear mind for it.