Playing for keeps

Chapter I

"You gotta flick that wrist,Tae!" Martae rolls her eyes as she shot the ball at the basket. Her brother was trying to teach her better ball control but he always was a bad teacher.

"What you think I'm doing,Benny?" Martae says looking at him angrily. She puts the ball down against her hip and looks into the sky,her brother,Benjamin,smacked his lips at her before snatching the basketball out of her hand.

She watched as he bounced the ball between his legs at a rapid pace before shooting the ball,"That's how you do it." The swish of the net echoed through the empty court

"Gimme it." Martae says grabbing at the ball,Benny hold it over his head as she jumps to grab it. Benny laughs at his sister's attempt to grab the ball from him as a bearded man enters the court.

"Aye Benny!"

The pair looked in the direction of Benny's name being called and froze. Benny rolled his eyes before handing Martae the basketball.

"Hold on right quick. I got some business to handle." Martae swallows the ball in her throat as she watches him walk away

"I thought he said he wasn't going to handle anything while we were playing." Martae thought bitterly.

Benny and the bearded man were talking away from her but she could see the anger in his disposition from there. They exchanged a handshake before Benny joins her back on the court.

"Why you muggin like that?" Benny says while elbowing Martae.

"Because I thought we agreed no business when it's our time?" Martae asks.

Benjamin smacks his lips before shooting the ball and watching it go through the net. "I know what I said but sometimes business has a tendency of crossing over into the personal. Don't even trip,you know that I'll keep that shit away from you."

**

The wind blew harder as Benny pulled the windbreaker tighter around his body. It was warm earlier in the day but now it was almost 40 degrees, Cleveland weather had a habit of being unpredictable. He stared at the address written in the messages in his cellphone and back at the house in front of him before knocking. He could hear the loud voices of men behind the door before it swung open to show a man in his mid-20's holding a pistol.

"Fuck you want,lil nigga?" The man says while pointing the gun at his chest. Benny swallows before speaking.

"I'm Benny.....I'm here for Tez?" He tried his best to sound unafraid but his voice wavered just a little. The man chuckled slightly before putting the gun into the back of his jeans.

"Tez in the back. Take yo shoes off before walking in my house,lil nigga."

The loud music bounced off the walls in the small room making the people rock back and forth to the beat. There were women rolling weed in the middle of the room and chatting,one turned around and smiled at Benny before winking. He nodded his head at her before being pulled closer by the man that was talking to him earlier.

"Worst thing you can do is be worried about a bitch when you handling business."

His chest grew warm and his stomach dropped so hard he felt like he would vomit so instead of speaking he just nodded his head in agreement. The pair went into another room where he finally saw Tez sitting at his desk smoking a cigarette. Benny sat down on the couch behind him and waited for Tez to speak.

"So you made your decision?" Tez says while blowing the foul smelling smoke into the room.

"I don't know, Tez. When you asked me to move this dog I was down because you know after momma died we ain't have much of anything but killing niggas? I'm not a killer." Tez stood up from his chair and stretched.