Page 8 of The Coldest: Stay Dangerous Part 2

But there’s a reason I don’t really bring my niggas to Belize. Ain’t no reason to have a crossover episode, and Nutty doesn’t need any bright ideas.

We pass the boutique resort my family built and runs and travel down the road to where my family resides. While Nan was slumming it in Kenton, she sent every penny she could back home, and she wasn’t the only one. Her siblings did the same thing, and now we all live by the beach. At least, most of the elders do. The young wild niggas still go back and forth to the States.

My villa is closest to the resort, since Nan is the most hands on with it, though it’s still half a mile down the beach.

Usually, when I come home, I breathe easier. But this stay is unlike any other stay, and I can’t bring myself to relax.

“Need help?” Reno asks as he shifts the car into park.

“Yeah. Keep Nan ‘nem busy while I get her settled.”

He nods and turns off the whip as I throw my duffel on my back and start gathering Snow in my arms. She’s dead weight, still, and if I didn’t know any better, and heard her snores, I’d swear she was dead.

Reno skips ahead of me, yelling in Spanish for Nan, while I turn right immediately and walk through two hallways to my special guest wing.

The wing I had designed for if I ever follow through on my plans to kill Pooh.

I bypass the sitting room and enter the bedroom. One of my cousins is a carpenter, so all the furniture is handmade from locally sourced wood. Sheets a brilliant white. Reinforced and treated windows and sliding doors that lead to the beach directly.

It’s fun to dump Snow onto the California king bed and go into the bathroom to get a first aid kit. Most of her cuts have scabbed over, so I just apply ointment to her bald head and face, as well as that track mark on her arm.

Satisfied that she’ll live, I put it away, then chain her to the specially made metal chain deadbolted to the wall beside the bed. It’s long enough for her to go to the bathroom, and even the sitting room.

I wanted to outfit her neck, but I let her make it, and chain her ankle instead.

The only mercy she’ll get from me.

She’ll be out for a few more hours, so I feel comfortable locking her inside, then locking up her wing, so I can update the house.

When I turn, Nan is already there, narrowing her eyes at me, playing with her locs.

“Hit me!” Reno yells from the front of the house. I’m sure Nan went upside his head a few times, and he needs to ice it.

“¿Quién está ahí, Ricky?” she hisses, shifting her eyes behind me.

I smirk. She’d never admit it, but my aunt Aree getting killed fucked her up for years. She was no better than Ma, staying cooped up in her room, or hanging with Ty-Ty’s Granny, reminiscing on simpler times. I thought Fredo dying would be her last straw, but these last few years, Nan has become a spring chicken. I missed this side of her, even if the reasons behind it are so bullshit.

“No one, Nan. You cooked?”

“You know I fucking cooked, Ricky. Now, don’t lie to me again. Who the hell is chained up in that room?!” she says in Spanish.

All she does is speak in Spanish now. Like she renounced everything from Kenton.

“It’s a girl. Haze’s sister.”

Her face balls up as she stops fingering her locs.

“She off that shit. I’m helping her get clean,” I say, answering her unspoken question.

But that’s not enough for Nan.

“Ricky–”

“You’re not to help her. You’re not to intervene. You do, and you know what I’m on.” I take a step into her space so she knows I mean business.

Her eyes stretch before she bares her teeth at me. It’s almost comical, since she maybe comes to the middle of my stomach, but she still tries to come off menacing.

“Cabrón,” she spits, before turning and stalking off, her locs slapping against me.