As she took her next step, Gaia pivoted backward and slid onto the floor between the man's legs. As he reached for her, the gun slipped onto the floor and she grabbed it. She sprinted for the nearest door because her life depended on it only to run face first into somebody.
She attempted to stumble backward but the person caught her by her elbows. Gaia struggled to get away fiercely but was stopped by a statement and voice she hadn't heard in years.
"What the hell? Gaia Alena Carter?!"
"Daddy ?"
*********
Gaia never thought she'd be happy to say those words she hadn't uttered in years. He had left her and her mother like they meant nothing to him. As if they were throws and he had another family tucked away that would replace them instantly.
And that's just about what happened.. He didn't move on immediately it waited three months and then the streets told her that she was replaced. Her father who swore to love her forever had a new princess and she was star of his eye. The expensive private school Gaia was snatched out of was now hers. The family who told her she would never be replaced was now hers.
Nothing hurt more than watching your mother grieve the love of her life and grieving your first love at the same time. No other man has ever gotten close enough to her to hurt her but it never mattered because her "daddy" broke her heart first.
My father broke my heart before another could ever love me..
A free tear broke the defense of closed eyes, sliding those her cinnamon brown cheeks faster than she catch it. Emotionally Gaia was neither here or there. She couldn't tell anxiety from fear, grief from anger or sorrow from doubt.
Her mind was in shambles but that wasn't the biggest problem for a girl like her. It was her troubled heart that had played the pivotal part in weighing her down like anchor to ship.
Stuck..
That's how Gaia felt and the man who helped create her was the cause of it.
"Lena" he called as if she was still a ten year old kid and he hadn't picked a new wife and kid up to erase her and her mother's memory for the house her mother designed from the ground up. There had always been the old wives tell of niggas getting bread with the woman loved him fiercely but the second he came up with some real money, he left.
Niggas aint shit didn't even begin to fit Gianni Andres Carter.
"Lena, baby girl" he started again but Gaia continued to ignore him. She chose to focus on the office she sat in. Not much had changed,He was still creature of habit. The same heavy oak desk she used to do her homework on while he worked on business deals and cocaine runs was the center piece of the room. The bookcase that went from wall behind him was still there, she'd organized it herself. She was seven and while the bookcase went from floor to high ceiling she was the one calling the shots as her father and Uncle Blu listened to the instructions of the missing front tooth kid like she was God. That same day, Gaia learned the power of being charge and how to control the energy of the room. He had taught her and Uncle Blu had took to get ice cream after.
As she continued to ignore her father's pleading eyes and calls, Gaia rose to her feet and her feet took her to the book shelf were she'd tucked her favorite book at the time right beside his. It was comical to have the Art of War and Bear in The Big Blue House: Let's Find Treasure. As if nothing had changed the books lie side by side.
Gaia laughed, full on and completely impulsively.
"Your favorite book and mine; still there hanging on." for the first time since he took her from the warehouse and to her childhood home Gaia looked at him. Time had done the old man well, his skin was still smooth. His eyes still vibrant and mirroring hers. Freckles still lingering along the bridge of his nose and apples of his cheeks just like her only his was darker.
"It's not my favorite anymore."
"Then what is?" Her father locked eyes with her pointedly and rubbed his chin in contest making Gaia roll her eyes internally because she wouldn't dare give him the satisfaction of making her back down She wasn't little Lena who followed his every word anymore.
"If you cared like really cared like your pretending to do right now then you would know." Gaia spoke softly but seriously grabbing both of the books off the shelf. With both books in hand, her focus shifted and so did his. His eyes left her because he was embarrassed or some other bullshit emotion Gaia couldn't pretend to think was real.
The books were thrown at his head before she could blink. They landed with a loud thud but not before hitting the side of his head.
His head snapped toward her with fire in his eyes and Gaia shrugged. How could he scare her when she was raised to be fearless and unforgiving?
The door burst open and in came a gang of people: her Uncle Blu, Ya-ya, and two other women she didn't know.
"What happened?" left all of their mouths in rhythm as they looked left to right at Big Gee and Little Gee.
"Some shit that should've been done." Gaia stated and walked toward the door they came in.
"Gee?"
"What?!" both the father and daughter responded in sync.
Blue, her father's best friend, her personal big teddy bear grabbed her arm gently before Gaia could bolt out of the room and leave this place behind. "please let me go, Blu." Gaia pleaded with him.
"You know I can't do that, Gee. Your father wants to talk to you."
"He went ten years without talking to me, he can go another ten years." Gaia snapped and yanked her arm away from his grasp violently. She was tired and personally she wanted to go home and cry in peace.
"Little girl, your father wants to talk to you and instead of being respectful in his house granting his wish. You assault him, who raised you?" the one of the other woman finally spoke up and gained Gaia's attention. From first glance she was older, probably in her fifties and it showed around her eyes. Although she was aging around her eyes, everything else was flawless. Her makeup look was simple but seamless, dressed in Chanel from head to toe, with a short pixie cut that went well with her angled face shape.
She was the secondary cause of her and her mothers heartbreak.
"Bitch-"
"Maria, watch your fucking mouth!" Her father voice boomed from the corner of the room cutting Gaia off. The veins in his neck were extended and everyone in a fifty feet range could feel the anger rolling off of his body.
"Baby-"
"get the fuck out"
"Wait daddy, she was" the other woman finally found her voice.
"Both of you get out!!" he yelled again startling the targets of the assault as they timidly backed their selves toward the door. The moment the woman known as Maria got in range, she moved closer ready to attack. "GiGi don't do it. You're better than this. Your mother raised you better than this" Sonya touched her shoulder softly causing enough of a distraction to let Maria slide out of the room untouched.
"We'll give you two your privacy." Sonya said exiting the room with Blu following.
"You throw like a girl" Her father stood in front of her wearing a sly smirk.
"You act like a bitch" and that knocked it clean off.
"Who the hell do you think you talking you? I brought you into this world and.."
"And you what?! You'll take me out? Please by all means. Do it. Let's go." Gaia cried and went for the draw behind the desk that always housed the loaded 0.38. She grabbed the gun as he rushed to grab her with wide eyes. When the gun was in hand, she slammed it on the desk. "Do it, my life has been threatened more times in the last 48 hours than my whole life; put me out of my misery. Come on, send me to the only person who loved me."
"Your mother's not dead!"
"But her spirit is." Gaia wiped the tears from her eyes but they were falling faster than she could wipe. "but you didn't know that, huh?"She pushed at his chest aggressively. "You wouldn't know whether she was dead or alive because you left us to rot. You used to say your purpose on this earth was to protect me and mama. But you cast us out into the world defenseless. No money, no car, no house. No nothing, we left those fucking gates outside with the clothes on our backs and you never looked back."
"The King of Emerald City, the biggest drug dealer this portion of the state had ever seen but his first born is struggling to keep the lights on and pay the people to keep the machine on that's keeping her mother's body alive. So one day soon your little girl is gonna have to choose whether to have a roof over her head or lose the one person that never left her?"
"Baby girl" he started but Gaia raised her hand signalling him to stop before he even tried.
"I'm not your baby girl anymore. I stopped being her when you let us leave this place and you brought Maria and the new princess in. I hope they were worth a lifetime of heartbreak you caused me. Have a nice day, daddy. See ya in another ten years."
With her hanging statement, Gaia went for the door and her father didn't stop her.
He never did and that's what hurt the most...
"Bl-u ca-" as she struggled to get the words out through the pain in her chest and emotion threatening to swallow her whole, Blu grabbed his arms around her and walked her out of her childhood home and the place that housed her haunting memories.
They moved in silence through the house and into the car. No one bothered to send a sympathetic look her way until she spotted him on the way out of the garage. The mystery man who started this all. As always like a moth to a flame, her eyes were drawn to his.
In his irises were a sea of trouble and misery in which she knew too well and with a head nod as if he was telling her to pick her head up he mouthed to her through the tint that was impossible to see through but somehow he knew she was there.
"I'm sorry, pray to God for a better tomorrow brown eyes.."