Deceitful | Book 3

| T H I R T Y - F O U R |

MARTRAY

"I love you."

My life flashed before my eyes. It was like, I was seeing myself through childhood, all the way through adulthood.

I saw all the shit that I'd done wrong. How I hurt the people that I loved the most in the past. How hurt Cheri was when she first found out that I was cheating. How hurt Tereny was when she realized that I wasn't trying to leave my wife behind. How the females in the past—each and every one of them were hurt by me.

I'm thinking when they say your life flashes before your eyes, you'd be seeing the good. I'm only seeing the bad shit that I've done. And it had then hit me that I was living in my last days and I was still fucking up.

I'm going to hell.

POP!

There was a sharp pain in my left shoulder. I grabbed for it as I fell to the hard wooden floor. It felt like I was about to fall through that bitch. I knew my ass wasn't that heavy to make the fucking floor shake like that.

Looking up, I realized that it wasn't just me who'd hit the fucking floor. My heart dropped down to my mothafuckin toes as I laid there, watching my cousin leaking from his chest. Dead to the world.

Just seeing him lay there lifeless, I wanted to shed a tear.

Although he was foul and did some grimy shit, he was still my family and I had love for him—even though he was trying to kill my ass. I still loved him. No homo.

Struggling to see who in the fuck shot him, I shut my eyes for a moment, hearing the hard and heavy footsteps of someone coming into the room.

Whoever they were, they kicked me over onto my back. And when I looked up at them, the color drained from my face.

There she was. Standing over me as if she was contemplating on whether she wanted to shoot me or not. And this was her only chance to. Hell, I would for all the shit that I'd done to her.

"How the fuck you find me?" I asked her, feeling the pain in my shoulder subside just a little bit.

"A birdie." She chimed in her tiny and playful voice as a smile ran across her face. She was still holding that damn 38. in my face like she was proud that she was aiming it at me.

"What fucking birdie?" For a nigga bleeding and shit from a gun wound, my questions didn't stop flowing.

"Okay, since you ask." She rolled her eyes and pulled the gun away from me. "I had a tracker put on your phone a few years back. And I guess I never took  it off. I'm glad I didn't, though. Or your ass would've been grass just then."

She brushed her bleached blonde hair back from her face and looked over at Paci's lifeless body.

"That's some fucked up shit. Your own cousin trying to kill you. But for what?" She walked over to him and kicked him, I guess to be extra sure he was dead. "I told you from the beginning that it was something off about his ass. Now, do you believe me?"

Cheri knelt down next to Paci and started digging in the man's pant pocket. I looked at her as if she'd lost her damn mind.

"What made you come here?" I asked her, finally sitting up, adding pressure to the wound.

"Because..." She pulled a wad of cash from out of Paci's pocket, along with his iPhone 6. "My daddy told me that you called him, worried about Tereny. I came up here to help look for her, too. That is...until Bruce called daddy and told him that Tereny's in the hospital and safe." She brushed her face off and stood to her feet, putting the cash in her bra.