Chris's pov
I have so many questions going through my head right now. I just can't seem to choose which question I want to ask first. Their friendship I guess is older then me. This isn't some little thing you keep from us considering how close Anastasia and I are. Hell how close he is with Anastasia and Angel for that matter. No one is leaving this room until we get full details on every bit of this relationship.
I look at Channing ,he just as shocked as I am."You're lying right?" Chann asks. I hope he's lying. But we know our pops serious face too well. Nothing about that is lying. In this moment I wish it was. "Nope." He saying then takes a sip of his liquor, brown of course. He already knew this will be a conversation he didn't want to have. "I met him through another friend of ours ,who was murdered when I was seventeen and he was sixteen I believe. Since then we've been rocking with each other. He was that brother to me, unlike your guys generation loyalty was still alive when I was a youngin'. He made sure I was always straight when I was doing my thing in streets."
How the fuck am I gonna tell Ana this?
Chann chimes in again,"And?" No matter how old we are ,we will always get that 'I'll beat you' look. "Some of the hardest times. He's paid my rent many times and I've made sure his household was good when he was locked up. You know the things you do for your best friends ,no questions asked."
"Alright pop get to the part about him doing that bid. That's what I wanna know about."I say. This isn't no six months Lenny did. He's been in there for damn near ten years. "We were in our mid twenties and Cat was eighteen or nineteen seeing this clown ,who was abusive. I didn't find out towards the end of their relationship when she came to our apartment in Harlem. I could see his hand prints in her neck."Just as my pop said that my aunt walks in. This is all new to us. The only man I ever seen my aunt with our uncle Rick. "Her eye was as dark as that pillow." He points to the black pillow behind Channing. "By then we're just building the company and a lot different things were rolling in all good things. So I went to Lenny and he had two guys ,who handled it." It doesn't take a genius to figure out what he meant. Either the beat the shit out of this guy or killed him. I'm going with beat the shit out of him because Lenny doesn't seem like that type. "We made sure all of her things were outta their place. The next night they went in and handled it." My aunt hates every bit of this conversation. Everyone has something in their past they don't want to talk about and this is hers."The guy was left paralyzed. He didn't say anything until he got in a another relationship years later." Pop looks to my aunt to make sure he's correct. She shakes her head,"I made sure they had a good lawyer but that judge wasn't letting up on that bid. Lenny said he will say he paid them to do it. I kept telling him no I will. No one would be In this situation if it wasn't for me."
That's not what he told Stasi. "He didn't want Anastasia there because we all knew Lenny wasn't leaving that court room. Anastasia was already stressed so I tried my best to keep her busy that day. "It was something about all his past thing catching up with him and there was a warrant I think." I might be wrong.
"That was one charge but they dropped it. We talked about it ,and at this point guilt was eating my ass alive. My best friend is about to do a bid that I should be doing. His word were since we're building this company I need to be the one home. One thing he always told me to do and that was look after his ladies no matter what. I still had eyes and ears to the streets, I always knew where Nita was. I know too many people to not know where she was. As for Anastasia ,you were always had her close. Made sure she got her ass out of The Bronx." When Ana decided she wanted to move out my dad was mad at me for letting her. "What did Nita say about all of this?" I ask.
"She knows Lenny. Obviously she wanted her husband home but he explained to her that I would
make sure things are covered. It did hit her hard."That first year was the hardest on Anastasia. She dealing with her who's pop in prison doing ten years and Anita who started back using. We were finishing high school when Anita almost overdosed. The fear I saw in Anastasia's face was heartbreaking. That led to her having panic attacks.
