Hood Don't Love You (HDLY#1)

The proposition

Tamel Richards, street alias Melodrama, looked at the grown man in front of him crying like a little baby. He hated the sight but he was used to it especially when he knew the reason. No one wanted to die or get hurt. People try everything to avoid it. Pain is never pleasurable if done by the wrong person for the wrong reasons.

“So what should I do?” Tamel asked the sniveling man who was knelt down on a plastic tarp. “You fucking stole. I’ve been supplying you for months and then I hear you stole.”

The man continued to weep. He knew why he was kneeling down on a tarp. He knew why Tamel was standing over him brandishing a nine millimeter pistol. He had fucked up. He knew that. He thought no one would know, he thought no one would tell. He had been a good worker for Tamel over the past years but he felt short changed so he took it upon himself to keep a little for himself. He assumed it would be no harm, no foul. Now he was staring up at the guy that would take his life in a second and wouldn’t hesitate. All the man could now was beg for his life.

“P…please…don’t….I….I” the man said between sobs. “My faaam…family. My daughter…”

“Oh yeah I remember your fine ass daughter,” Tamel recalled. “Bitch was fronting, not wanting to give me no pussy.”

“She…she…just got accepted to college and…and…” the man was trying to find words to explain his deceit.

Tamel looked at the other two men in the room, his sentries, Bull and Rock.

“You hear this shit,” Tamel laughed. “This whole time I’ve been supporting the Negro College fund and I didn’t even know it. Oh shit, I’m a regular Bill Cosby in this bitch.”

“I…I…don’t…don’t…”the man was having a hard time communicating as the tears poured down his face. “I don’t want to die.”

Tamel scratched his head with the muzzle of the gun he was holding.

“What should I do?” Tamel repeated. “I mean I gave you business. I set you up and my reward is skimming from me.”

The man just shook his head with more sobbing.

“Now law dictates that I handle this the street way,” Tamel declared. ‘But you said you did it for you daughter, right?”

The man nodded yes.

“That bitch still a virgin, right?” Tamel inquired.

“She only eighteen,” the man replied.

Tamel raised his gun up and struck the man across the face with the butt end of the weapon.

‘I didn’t ask you that,” Tamel said. “I asked if her coochie ever been tapped?”

The man held his nose that was now bleeding.

“Well?” Tamel waited. “That hoe’s coochie still tight or what?”

“Yes, yes,” the man finally replied.

“Good, good,” Tamel smiled. “You didn’t try for a piece, my gee?”

“She’s my daughter,” the man stated holding his nose and looking at Tamel in disgust for a second.

“I just was asking you a question,” Tamel said. “And wipe that look off your face before this bullet replaces it for you.  You think you're so smug. You're the one with dried up snot in your nose. I should just dead you on principle.  But I’m feeling hospitable. What college did she get accepted to?”

“Spelman,” the man replied. “In…in Atlanta.”

Tamel smiled wider and gestured for Rock to pick up the man from the floor.