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“With all that being said, I lose, but I don’t lose often. I know what I’m doing. It’s a science to gambling, and I feel like I’ve mastered it. I have a whole team under me. Men that do their homework. They look at the numbers, pay attention to the players that have injuries, the whole nine. Once they get that back to me, that’s when I form a ticket. The people that I have working for me, I’ll hand them the same ticket,” he finished.

“What’s the catch though? You not just going to hand a nigga over a winning ticket like that and not expect anything in return, so what is it?” I wanted to know. When I asked that, he smiled, took a sip of his drink and nodded his head.

“I wouldn’t call it a catch. I would call it business. The way I do business is if your ticket hits, I’m owed 20%” he told me, and I laughed right in his face.

“Nigga, twenty percent of what?” I asked, just for clarification.

“Twenty percent of your profit. You ask that as if you’re surprised. What are you surprised about? If this does come off as a surprise to you, you can go on my Instagram and just buy a ticket like everyone else. I sell those kinds of tickets all the time. When Ced reached out, he reached out about joining my team, and that’s different. Once you become a part of my team, you get the kind of ticket that I don’t sell on social media. I give you bigger plays. Plays that remain within my circle. If those hit, I get 20%. That’s how I do business here” his voice was calm as he explained this to me. I wasn’t fuckin with it though.

“I am surprised. I didn’t know that this was the way you did business. I didn’t know it was different ways to get a ticket. I’ve paid niggas for picks before in the past. I don’t have anything against that. I’m not giving a nigga twenty percent of my earnings though. That’s the part I’m not fuckin with,” I snapped.

Ced was hitting me on my leg, and I know that was his way of telling me to chill out. The fact that Ced wasn’t on the same time as I was on proved to me that he knew this already. Maybe this was only new news for me.

“You don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to do. No one is forcing you to do business with me and give me twenty percent. I just don’t see how you could ever think that someone will do the kind of work that I do for free. Maybe you missed the part where I said that my picks are guaranteed picks. I hardly lose. I’m going to put you and Ced in a position to make a million dollars a few times a week. The twenty percent that you give me, you can make it right back by putting in your own pick. I only take twenty percent on picks that I give you,” he replied.

When he said it like that, I was able to calm down some. Naturally, I just took it as this nigga was trying to hustle me. I never had to split my money, and I wasn’t trying to start.

Once he saw that I calmed down some, he scooted up in his chair, just to be closer to Ced and I.

“Nobody is trying to take your money. I’m just in the business to make money together. I told you that I have an entire team beneath me. A lot of studying goes into my picks. You can’t expect to get rich off a pick that I give you and believe that I shouldn’t get a cut. All I ask for is twenty,” he went on.

That’s when I turned my head to look at Ced. I could see the money in his eyes. He was thirsty for this shit. If we needed to sign a contract and Preston put it in front of us right now, I’m sure Ced would sign it without reading over shit.

I thought about all the money that I could possibly be making by fuckin with these white boys. I thought about the way I would be able to flex even harder on these niggas in Miami. I could purchase more whips. Buy more jewelry. I could up the score by a lot. Like Ced told me, I had a baby on the way, and a baby mama that I was more than likely going to have to take care of once she stopped working. I didn’t want to be able to feel the dent in my pocket once I had to take care of Joy. Thinking about all of that, I guess giving Preston twenty percent didn’t sound too bad after all. Since that was the case, I reached out my hand, shaking his. He smiled, shook my hand for a few seconds, and then did the same thing to Ced.

In seconds, his smile dropped. He looked at us with a serious look on his face, prepared to say this final thing.

“We have ourselves a deal. Before we go back up, and party, I just want to leave you two with something. Don’t ever look at me as just some white boy that knows how to hit parlays. I’m just nice. Don’t confuse me being nice to me being soft. I’m sure you two don’t play about your money. We have that in common because I don’t play about mine, either. I meant what I said about my twenty percent. I don’t care if my cut is only $200, I still want it,” he looked us in our eyes as he said this.

That nice, friendly white boy he’s been portraying for the past thirty minutes had quickly gone out of the window.

“Don’t take what I’m saying as a threat. I don’t make threats. Promises only. I will come looking for you about my twenty percent. Cool?” he asked.

“Man, we good. You’ll get your twenty percent,” Ced replied first.

“Yeah. Nobody going to run off on your money,” I replied.

That’s when he smiled, stuck his hand out again for us to shake it. We did that, and he grabbed his glass. We grabbed ours and headed back to the party.

I wasn’t worried about that little threat from this white boy. That shit didn’t scare me. I’ll beat his skinny ass up with my bare hands. He could make those little threats to the next person, and they might get a little scared, but that didn’t work on me. As long as he gave me winning picks, and I started making the kind of money that he was making, he didn’t have to worry about me running off with his money. At least… I shouldn’t.

CHAPTER 10

DEJA MCCOY

Iwas at my mom’s house. Nari was taking a shower, so I decided to go up front with the baby. Originally, I was going to stay in Nari’s room and wait for her to finish showering, but I wanted to soak some time up with my nephew for a little bit. He was out front with my mom. Hopefully, she wouldn’t start up her bullshit when I went out front to grab him from her.

I wasn’t in the best of moods today. I don’t know. Just one of those days where I woke up aggravated as fuck. I’ve been aggravated all day, actually. This past weekend, I officially moved out of my apartment. My important things, I took them with me to Wolf’s place. He had way more than enough closet space for me to add my things. As for my furniture, I went ahead and got my own storage unit, so I could keep the things in there. I didn’t want to just get rid of it because my furniture was pricy. I also didn’t mind paying the bill at the storage unit because I no longer paid rent, or any other household bills. My car is paid off. I also pay my car insurance 6 months in advance, so the only bills that I was currently footing was my phone bill, health insurance, and other little stuff like that. Since I no longer have large bills, I’ll gladly pay that $200 storage bill until I found out what I was going to do with my furniture.

Dealing with that over the weekend was a headache, and then I woke up trending this morning on social media. I guess news got out that I was no longer dealing with Hitta. Him and Obsession were spotted out last night and her baby bump was clear as day. Living in Miami, there were all kinds of blog pages, so all the blogs posted the two of them out last night, and from there, people have been coming up with their own theories on what they believed happened between me and Hitta.

For the most part, the things they were saying were true. Mostly everyone was saying that he had a baby on me, and that’s why we were no longer dealing with each other. I wasn’t in the business to clear up any rumors, so I allowed them to believe whatever they wanted. Once they moved on from that, people threw in their two cents about Wolf and I. All that gossiping annoyed the hell out of me, and I’ve been in a funk about it all day.

I made my way out to the front of my mom’s house, and I could hear her running her mouth on the phone. From where I stood, I saw her cradling her cellphone in the crook of her neck, as she stirred around whatever was in the pot. Nico was in the kitchen with her. He was sitting in his highchair, playing around with a toy. The second his little head turned in my direction, and he saw me, he instantly started crying.

My mom turned, so that she could look and see who was coming in the kitchen. She saw me, stared at me for a few sends, and then focused her attention on her grandson.

“Boy, hush with all that. You haven’t fussed in the past thirty minutes that you’ve been down here with me,” she said to him.