10,000 Hours With A Rich Menace (Caselli Family Book 1)

“When the fuck you started driving again?” Corleon asked, as I bent the corners with security flying behind me.

I looked over at him. “Come around more and you would know.”

“Fuck up. I been trying to get shit right in my life… for real, when the fuck this happened?” He looked in the rearview mirror.

“Took Wonder out on a date and decided to drive,” I explained, as I focused on getting to where I needed to be.

“Nigga, you calling her Wonder?” He broke out into laughter, his gun rested on his lap as I bent another corner.

I just knew Duke was back there cursing me out because I was gunning it on them. After that call, and the moment I shared with my baby, I needed to handle business. “Core, that’s mine… I ain’t losing her.”

“Is she being held against her will, Menace?”

“Nah. I told her about her father and that bitch, and she looked hurt that I was giving her an out… said she wanna marry me and give me a seed.”

“Can’t believe Ghost and Rahmeek got you out here about to commit to somebody. Shit, I can’t believe you ‘bout to be family to Geeky before me.”

I looked at him. “You clowning me calling her Wonder, and you run around calling that girl Geeky… how shit with the two of you? I spoke to her the other day, but didn’t give a fuck then.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

He shook his head and looked out the window. “We on speaking terms now. I’ll take that over her ignoring the fuck out of me and acting like we didn’t share nothing.”

“I didn’t know she was slow… sorry, Core.”

Corleon nearly craned his neck to look at me after I asked the question. “The fuck you mean? Skyler smart as shit.”

“Then why the fuck she acting like we can’t handle the situation for her? We know where that nigga be… as easy as,” I did gun motion with my fingers and manically laughed.

Corleon was used to my shit, so it didn’t bother him. “She don’t want my help and I’m trying to respect that. If I step in and handle it, I might lose her for good, Mens.”

“There you go having morals and shit… Wonder already know what it is with her father.” I shrugged.

Raye and Priscilla should have been using their freedom to pick out a plot because they weren’t going to live when I got my hands on them. All they had to do was sit they asses on that farm and work off the debt that they had.

It was never about the money; I was only giving them the grace because that’s what Wonder wanted. She wanted to keep her daddy alive when I was ready to end him.

Nooo, he wanted to plan an escape with the help of Ryan, and now one of my men was in the hospital because he decided to turn a gun on him.

He decided to shoot one of my own and thought I wasn’t going to do him dirty had me laughing to myself. “Think she gonna stick around once you send her pops yonder?”

“I tasted her, Core… slept on her fucking stomach all night. She not going nowhere now. If she wanna leave, she need to be prepared to wake up to me watching her sleep again.”

Corleon waved his hands. “Nigga, we close, but too much fucking information… damn.”

“Just being real with you.”

“What you mean again, Menace? You was watching her when she was sleep?”

“I always watch her when she’s sleep… I sit in her room after she goes to bed and watch her until I’m ready for bed. When she wasn’t fucking with me, I was in there every night.”

My best friend looked at me and shook his head. “You really be on some different shit… I ain’t seen you this invested in a long ass time.”

“She know about that shit, too.”

“You smashing Angelica?”

“Yeah. Said some shit like she groomed me… I wasn’t fucking molested, Core… I fucked Angelica because I wanted that shit, too.”

He remained silent, and didn’t say anything. Looking over at him, I stomped on the brake, causing my security to slam on theirs. We all jerked forward, as I turned to look at him while his hands hit the dashboard.

“Mav-fucking-erick! Why in the fuck would you do some stupid shit like that?”

Traffic behind my security was piling up because they too had to slam on their brakes. “Why the fuck you silent, Bruster?”

“’Cause I ain’t got shit to say.”

“Nah. You always got some shit to say.” Horns blared, and I looked out the rearview mirror and was about to hop out and Corleon beat me to it.

I watched as this nigga bypassed security and went to the car that still had their hand on their horn. Seconds later the horn was quiet, and he came strolling back with keys in his hand. Hopping back into the car, he leaned back. “Now move without your fucking keys, bitch.”

“Why the fuck you quiet?”

Corleon tossed the keys out the window, and I pulled away, hitting the corner with security right on my ass. “’Cause you were fucking groomed. I know we all had a crush on Angelica’s fine ass, and said we would smash, but we were teenagers, Mav… she was in her thirties. The little ass shorts she would wear, and how she would always pay extra attention to you, that shit wasn’t right. Not when you just lost your parents, your life was shifted, and you were confused.”

“I wasn’t fucking confused,” I muttered.

“You were fucking confused, nigga. Overnight you went from having two parents to both of them being murdered, then having to move from the only home you knew into some new shit with this woman who was supposed to protect you. Do you not remember that night?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Nigga, you shut the fuck up!” Corleon yelled back. “Nigga, you walked the entire backyard, counting until you counted every paver back there. Yeah, we didn’t know why you were that way until Angelica recognized it, but don’t forget how fucking stressed and anxious you were. Me, Kora, and Jeffie saw that shit.”

“She ain’t never judge me, Bruster.”

“Yeah, I get that… I told you that you need to stop doing other shit and actually do the therapy. Mens, you got shit with you and hold that shit in because you had to. You carry a lot on your back so Kora, Zoya, and Landon don’t ever have to… you the realest nigga, but even the realest nigga need therapy.”

I sped into the parking lot of the warehouse and looked at him. “Heard you.”

Core cocked his gun back, and I smirked as I hopped out at the front and did a slight skip into the warehouse. Ain’t nothing made me happy like taking someone’s life that didn’t deserve to live. After the call I received, I was going to have a time handling this before getting back to my baby.

Soon as I walked in niggas was already on edge. Ryan was nervous and nodded at me because I told him that we were gonna talk the shit out. “Yo, Ryan, hold this for me.” I pulled my gun from behind me and put three in his head, his body hitting the table he was near, and dropping to the floor. “You his cousin, right?” Corleon asked.

“Ye…Yeah, but I ain⁠—’

“Nah, no problem… hold this down,” Core sent some through his head, and he dropped just as quick as his cousin.

“Oh shit… you got a pussy?”

Young nigga looked at me like I was crazy. “I ain’t got no fucking pussy, Mens.”

I shot him in the leg, and he dropped to the ground and started hollering while blood poured from his leg. “You rolling yo’ eyes like you got one. This shit taking up your time?” I walked closer to him.

“N…Nah,” he winced in pain.

“Then when I’m fucking talking act like you fucking interested… matter fact, all of you sit the fuck down because we about to have story time in this bitch.”

Duke pulled me up a chair while I had these grown ass men on the floor like a reading circle in elementary school. “I can’t breathe!” Homie screamed out while still holding his leg.

Beans lowered the lights, and I used the flashlight from my phone and put it under my face. “Once upon a time there was a big bad wolf, and he found out that the other wolves, who he fed real well by the way, were stealing his… chicken. Now Mr. Wolf made sure there was chicken for everybody. He liked extra lemon pepper on his, but other than that every fucking body got chicken… we following.”

“Chicken, yeah, we hear you, boss,” one replied.

I leaned back in the chair and crossed my legs. A nigga was sitting in this chair like Barack Obama. Now I understood why his ass sat like this during interviews, shit was comfortable as shit.

“The wolf let some new wolves in based on one of his trusted wolves… he told him shit was cool and then those wolves stole from him. The OG wolf acted like he ain’t know shit while Mr. Wolf had to find out who was responsible. He found the person responsible, and she was fine as shit… fucking beautiful, a motor mouth though, but beautiful… she’s beautiful, right?”

“Yeah, she’s real beautiful,” they all said in unison.

I pulled my gun out. “I’ll shoot all your faces off for calling my fucking wife beautiful!” They all stared at me confused as if I hadn’t just asked them. “The end of the day, the OG wolf fucked up and Mr. Wolf handled him. I don’t keep disloyal fucks around me, so I got rid of the dead weight. I want that old bitch and his bitch, and I want them now.”

“What happened to the other one responsible?” one of them raised their arms with a question.

“I like someone who asks questions… fuck is your name?”

“Melvin.”

“Well, Martha, the one responsible is mine.” I swayed my foot as I thought about Wonder. “Kind of obsessed with her… you ever felt that way about a woman, Mary?”

They were unsure on if they should answer me or not, and I nodded giving them the okay. “Feel that way about my fiancée… she can get whatever out of me. She got a nigga whipped.”

“Ah, so you know what I’m feeling like… see, when I’m feeling like this, you would think I would be more relaxed, right?”

They all nodded, thinking I was going to say I was going to be more relaxed. “Yeah.”

“Fucking wrong… I’m on yo’ asses even more ‘cause let some shit come to me and my baby, and I’m chopping heads off. You remember what happened to that other nigga.”

They all gasped and looked away, remembering the last time that I picked a nigga’s eyes out his head while forcing them to watch. Ryan was in the front row, so I don’t know why he wanted to betray me like this.

“Sick ass nigga,” I heard the one in the back mumble.

A fun fact about me is that my ears were sensitive. I could hear every fucking thing, even when somebody mumbled some shit in a warehouse that echoed. It was the reason my room was on the third floor. I originally had it on the second floor, but I could hear the humming from the fridge’s downstairs. Jeffie thought I was crazy because the distance from the kitchen to the second floor was vast, and she couldn’t hear what I was talking about.

I could.

Ryan knew how I got down and decided that he was going to stick his neck out on the line for somebody who wouldn’t do the same for him. He knew when I got to the edge, there was no pulling me back. The only thing that made sense to me was crazy.

“Yo, Mens?” I heard Core’s voice and had come back to reality, realizing that I was now in front of homie, and my gun was lodged in his throat.

I looked at my phone and then called Wonder. “Yes?”

She was painting. I could hear “Fire and Desire” playing softly in the background and her voice sounded far away, which meant she had me on speaker. “Do me a favor, Wonder?”

“Sure, one sec’.”

“Nah, baby, you don’t have to stop what you’re doing… give me a number.”

“A number?”

“Yeah… any number, Wonder.”

“Why would you want me to give you a random number, Mavie? Unless this is like a surprise, and you need the number to confirm… um…”

“Wonder, baby, this ain’t rocket science. Give me a number, Beloved.” I continued to hold this gun in his mouth, drool spilling from his mouth, pissing me off.

“Four.”

“Bet.”

I ended the call and pulled that trigger four times while everyone around him scattered, even homie holding his leg. “Don’t fucking call me a sick nigga ever in your life.”

“You’re fucking sick for killing your family…. A fucking Menace,” I heard my uncle’s last words before I took his life ringing in my head. I opened and closed my eyes a few times to get that shit out of my head.

Nobody said shit as I looked at the gun and then commenced to beating the fuck out his dead body, blood splattering everywhere. When I was done and had enough, I tossed the gun on the floor beside him, and Duke handed me a towel to wipe my hands.

“You straight… breathe… your point was proven, Boss,” Duke whispered to me, and I nodded my head. “Change of clothes in the back and we keep pushing… need to go pick that up for Steve-o.”

I looked at the back and headed to change, while Corleon kicked a dead Ryan in the head. “Big Mens… handled business.”