Hood Don't Love You (HDLY#1)

Chapter nine

Victor Davids knew when he started working for MeloDrama, there would be consequences if he ever crossed the gangster. He just never thought it would cost him his daughter.

Davids had Tamel use his bodega store as a front to sell and move Tamel’s drugs. Tamel had a safe and a stash all set up in Davids’ store. Davids was making good money holding up his bargain but felt he deserved more. Davids felt the dough boys on the corner was making more than him and he was the one making sure the product was safe and moving properly.

Davids felt Tamel owed him. He felt like he was being cheated. Here it was Tamel making all this money using his store, and he wasn’t even getting a quarter percent of that. It was unfair.

Davids was getting older and now his daughter was about to go to college. He tried to keep the other part of his business away from her. Charmaine never asked how her father was able to afford the stuff he did like the car he tried to buy her when she first turn eighteen a couple of weeks ago. Charmaine had an inkling because people talk in the neighborhood. Of course when she first confronted him about the accusations, he denied it. Charmaine never accepted the car though.

Charmaine was a smart girl who knew about the streets but did not want to be a part of it. She heard the name ‘MeloDrama’ or ‘Drama’ in passing or talking to her friends. She didn't want to know any intimate details about the notorious thug gangsta that the whole neighborhood was not only afraid of but was in awe about.

Charmaine seen the hoodlum once or twice on the block but paid him no mind. One day, he even tried talking to her and she quickly dismissed him. Tamel took that dismissal as an insult but decided not to retaliate right away. Any other female would have done that, he would have simply walked over and slapped the hell out of her to remind her who he was. But Charmaine really didn’t know who Tamel was except through reputation. But her father, Victor Davids, knew. He knew all too well and he still felt cheated by the thug kingpin.

So Davids took matters in his own hands. He didn’t think anyone would notice but someone did. Davids thought he was in the clear. Business came and went as usual. Then it didn’t.

The corner workers stopped coming to his store. Then his regular customers that actually shopped there stopped coming. Then one day some guys came and told him that Tamel wanted to speak to him. At the same time, some more men came and went in the back and took out the safe.

When Davids was graveling on the floor in front of Tamel, his store was left opened and ransacked. Everything on the shelf was stripped clean off. The store looked like the whole block came in and left with something. They even took the security television monitors that was nailed down to the wall.

Davids came back to see his whole bodega victimized and destroyed.

Tamel had stopped all flow of money from coming to his business. He couldn’t even pay the vendors for any new items. He also knew that he had just sold his daughter’s soul to the devil.

He didn’t even bother with the store the day he came back from Tamel. He had to speak to his daughter and tell her what a terrible thing he had done. He knew deep in his heart that his daughter loved him but he also knew after this, that love might be broken.

His daughter was right. Davids had sold his daughter out. He was her pimp.

Davids hated to see himself as that but it was true. The whole neighborhood knew it by now. They practically shunned him.