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CHAPTER ONE
Raquel
My heart stopped.
It ached. It bled. It broke. Over and over again like a broken record or a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. The longer I stared at him, the more my eyes burned. The only thing I could think to do was open my mouth and let out the loudest scream my lungs and vocal chords would allow. The second I took my eyes off Law, I turned to see Blaze shooting back at Dallas and his brother. Camille and Nevaeh were on their knees screaming and the preacher was laid out behind us with a pool of blood underneath him. His crimson blood seeped onto my dress as I laid there with Law. It was all one big mess, I couldn't tell whose blood was whose. I didn’t even know if the preacher was still breathing or not. I could barely tell if I was breathing, or if it was all one big, bad dream.
There were bullet holes in the wooden pews and a few of the stained glass windows were shattered. My small bouquet was lying on the ground with specks of blood on the flowers. I closed my eyes as a tear slipped out. That wasn't how my wedding was supposed to go. I was supposed to have married the man I loved, but instead he was lying next to me, dead.
“Baby! Baby, please don’t do this! Please wake up! Law! No! You can’t leave me!” I yelled.
I held the sides of his face and looked for any sign of life in his body, but I couldn’t see a thing. My eyes were glazed over with tears and my vision was blurry. I could feel the mascara and eyeliner running down my face and staining my cheeks.
“Please, Law, no! I love you! Please come back to me!” I sobbed as I laid my cheek against his forehead.
His body was still warm, which comforted me, if only for the moment. When the gunshots stopped, everything went dead silent. I looked up at everybody, and they all were looking back at me. I could read the looks on all their faces. Blaze’s was filled with anger. His nostrils flared like an angry dragon, but his eyes were glossy. I knew the moment he blinked, tears would fall out. Nevaeh’s hand was on her stomach as tears flew from her eyes. She scurried to her feet and ran over to Blaze. Law’s mother sat still, clutching her chest and staring at her son laying beside me. Lastly, I looked over at Camille. She was crouched down between two church pews with both of her hands clasped together over her head as if she was in the middle of a tornado drill. I could tell her heart broke for me; the sorrowful looks were almost too much to bear.
“Raquel…” she said, as she slowly stood to her feet.
I threw my hand up to cut her off.
“No. Don’t…please don’t say anything,” I said, barely above a whisper.
I looked back at Law. Time was frozen as I stared at him. I didn’t know how I was even going to stand up. I felt like I was destined to live in the nightmare that my life had turned into from the moment I stepped off the plane in Miami. Only then, I was destined to live with the heartache of losing Law.
“We need to call the police,” Nevaeh said, breaking the silence.
We all stared at her and shook our heads.
“We can’t do that,” his mother said.
“What? Are you serious? Why not! There’s been a murder here! In a church! The police are going to be all over this! If we don't call it in, it'll look like we had something to do with it!”
“C’mon, Nevaeh, let me take you home,” Blaze told her.
“What? What is wrong with all of you? So nobody is going to call 9-1-1? What are you scared of? Huh? You know what, fine, I’ll do it!” she said.
Nevaeh pulled out her cell phone and held it in her shaky hands. She unlocked the phone and tried to dial 9-1-1. Blaze quickly reached over and snatched her phone away.
“Let me get you out of here, okay? I’ll take you home and I’ll come back and clean all this up,” he said, dragging her out of the church.
"Blaze, what the fuck is going on here?" I heard her yell before the doors slammed.
I knew Nevaeh was going to have more questions, and I was glad I didn’t have to be in the car with her when she asked them. As much as I wanted to call the police, I knew telling them that Law Calloway had been murdered wouldn’t do anything but shed unnecessary light on all of us. The truth was, we all needed to stay as far away from the police as possible, whether we liked it or not. I shook my head and threw up my hands. Nothing was going to get accomplished with the three of us standing there. No resolution was going to come out of the fucked up situation we were in. We were all praying for a miracle with empty hearts. I slowly climbed to my feet and walked over to the second pew to grab a suit jacket that someone had left. I gently laid it over Law’s face as I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.
“Take me home,” I told Camille.
Blaze
It seemed like as soon as Nevaeh got in the car, questions started running off her tongue about why no one wanted to call the police, why everyone looked so calm, and what the fuck was really going on with my family.
“What don’t I know?” she asked, as she tightly folded her arms across her chest.
“What are you talkin’ about?”
“What the fuck do you mean what am I talking about? I just saw your fucking brother get murdered in cold fucking blood on his wedding day! His fucking wedding day! What the fuck is going on, Blaze? You need to tell me the truth right now. I’m not leaving this car until you do!”
I blew hot air out of my mouth as I shook my head. Her ass wasn’t going to quit until I gave her some type of information. I didn't know how green she was until that moment. I figured that since I met her in the strip club, she would have known a thing or two about how hood niggas got down, but I was wrong. The only thing that kept replaying in my mind every time she asked something new was the fact that when we first met, she told me that she wanted to go to school to be a lawyer. That didn't say shit to me but that we operated on two opposite sides of the law. For that fact alone, I knew I couldn't tell her too much, even if she was about to be my baby mama.
“Look, I’m sorry you had to witness any of that shit, okay? But shit is more complicated than it seems. I don’t even know how to put it into words that you’ll understand.”
“Try me,” she said, softening her look.
“I know the niggas that did that shit.”
“Don’t you think that’s even more reason to go to the police?” she asked.
“In a perfect world, maybe. But not in my family, aight? We don’t run around lookin’ for the police. They usually come lookin’ for us.”
“So, you’re sayin’ all this to say what?”
“I’m sayin’, ain’t nothin’ the police gon’ do for me and mine but get in the mix of shit and fuck it up more than it already is. I gotta handle this on my own.”
“Wait, handle what exactly? The niggas that came into your brother’s wedding with guns blazing? Nigga, are you dumb or stupid? They just murdered your brother! Your flesh and blood! What makes you think they won’t do the same to you with no questions asked?”
I clenched my teeth and listened to them grind against one another. I really wanted her to drop the whole thing, but I knew better. Hearing her say the words that my brother, my flesh and fuckin’ blood was gone was driving me insane. My adrenaline was still pumping on 1,000, so I hadn’t had the time to process what I’d just witnessed. I could remember a time when I was younger where all I had was Law. Wolfe was too grown to wanna deal with me. Law saved my life when we were just kids, and although I wasn’t a kid anymore, he was still saving my ass up until the moment those Price niggas took him from me.
“Blaze, did you hear me?” she asked, interrupting my thoughts.
“Can you just drop the shit, Heaven?”
“Drop it? No! Blaze, in case you forgot, your baby is growing inside me day by day! Do you wanna be around to meet your child or do you plan on running out and getting yourself killed before it’s even born? Just let me know now!”
“Heaven, just shut the fuck up, aight? Goddamn!” I yelled as I smacked the steering wheel.
I let the baritone in my voice ring out to shut her up. I couldn't stand to even hear her talk anymore. All I wanted her to do was get the fuck out of my car so I could go handle my business.
“You’re tellin’ me to shut the fuck up, really? Really, Blaze?” she said, smacking her lips together.
“I just lost my mothafuckin’ brother back there and all this extra shit you talkin’ ain’t makin’ shit better for either one of us, so yes, Heaven, shut the fuck up and let me process this shit!” I yelled.
Heaven flopped back in the passenger seat and turned her head out of the window. We rode in silence until I heard her sniffing with her back to me. As annoyed as I was with her, I still wanted to know what her problem was. I sighed and licked my lips before I spoke, knowing I was probably going to regret it.
“Heaven...”
She shook her head and wiped her face.
“I know you hear me callin’ your name, girl. Look at me,” I told her.
“What?”
“Why you cryin’, huh? What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I...I feel bad for coming at you like that, like, you’re right, you just lost your brother. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost my sister, and especially the way you did. I don’t know, I feel like a bitch for being so insensitive, but at the same time, I give a fuck about you, Blaze. More importantly, I give a fuck about this baby, our baby. I want you to be here. I don’t want to go through this shit alone. I'm just scared,” she said as she wiped her face with both hands.
I pulled up to the front of her apartment complex and put my car in park before I turned to look at her.
“I get it,” I told her, as I reached out to wipe her tears with my thumb. “Don’t worry about me, Heaven. I’m going to be just fine.”
“Yeah, I’m sure Law told Raquel the same thing and look at what happened to him. Now her whole world is ruined and she's alone,” she said.
I nodded as I processed her comment. She was right. I was sure he told Raquel all the same bullshit that I was telling Heaven, just to keep the peace and keep a smile on her face the best way he knew how. Truth was, with the last name Calloway, we were born with a target on our back. I walked around every day not knowing when I was going to take my last breath because a nigga felt like taking my life. I never knew if I was going to be okay, fine or any of that shit, but it sounded good.
“Look, I gotta get back to my family. Are you gonna be okay?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” I nodded.
“Promise me you’ll call me when you get the chance. Please?”
“I will.”
Heaven unhooked her seatbelt and reached over to hug me. I put the car in park and wrapped my arms around her waist. The sweet smell of her perfume made me stop and close my eyes for a second to just enjoy the moment. I knew when I left her, I'd be forced to deal with the reality of living in a world without my brother by my side. That was a world I wasn't ready to face. I gave her waist a tight squeeze and then tried to pull away. Her body was shaking, and I could tell she didn’t want to let me go.
“C’mon, Heaven. I gotta go. I’ll call you when I can, aight?”
She nodded her head against my shoulder and turned to get out of the car. I watched her walk into her building. Once she was safely inside, I put the car in drive and headed back to the church to tend to my brother.
Law
As soon as Blaze, Nevaeh, Raquel and Camille left the church, I opened my eyes to see my mother still sitting there.
“You can get up, Law. They’re gone now,” she told me.