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  Other books by Evei Collection Books by Blue Saffire

  Destiny 1: Life Decisions

  Destiny 3 coming soon

  Other books by Blue Saffire

  Placed in Best Read Order of Legally Bound and the connected Spinoff Series

  Also available….

  Legally Bound

  Legally Bound 2: Against the Law

  Legally Bound 3: His Law

  Perfect for Me

  Hush 1: Family Secrets

  Ballers: His Game

  Brothers Black1: Wyatt the Heartbreaker

  Legally Bound 4: Allegations of Love

  Hush 2: Slow Burn

  Legally Bound 5.0: Sam

  Yours: Losing My Innocence 1

  Yours 2: Experience Gained

  Yours 3: Life Mastered

  Ballers 2: His Final Play

  Legally Bound 5.1: Tasha Illegal Dealings

  Brothers Black 2: Noah

  Legally Bound 5.2: Camille

  Blue Saffire Coming Soon…

  Legally Bound 5.3

  Brothers Black 3

  Destiny 2

  Decisions of The Next Generation

  Blue Saffire

  Perceptive Illusions Publishing, Inc.

  Bay Shore, New York

  Copyright © 2013, 2016 by Blue Saffire and Evei Lattimore.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Blue Saffire and Evei Lattimore/Perceptive Illusions Publishing, Inc.

  PO BOX 5253

  Bay Shore, NY 11706

  www.BlueSaffire.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Ordering Information:

  Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the “Special Sales Department” at the address above.

  Destiny 2 Decisions of The Next Generation/ Blue Saffire and Evei Lattimore – 2nd ed.

  It all comes full circle when it is time.

  ―Blue Saffire

  Chapter One

  Falling Apart

  I never thought my life would turn out the way it has. Not when coming from a mother and father that were drug dealers. I thought Harlem would be the last stop for me. It was for both my parents.

  Not that they never got out of the hood. It’s just the hood has that magnetic call that keeps drawing you back. I always thought you had only one chance out and I had mine already. I didn’t expect to get another, but thank God for destiny and divine interventions.

  I guess it was time for a change in my family tree. I wasn’t meant to follow in my parents’ footsteps. I was well on my way to at first, hanging with the wrong crowd and making poor decisions.

  I had little guidance or motivation from home. My mom was more of an encourager of bad decisions, than a voice of reason. The closest person I had to a role model was my Uncle Siqso. Who honestly was also a drug dealer himself, but he tried to keep me focused on positive things. He wasn’t my real uncle, he was an old friend of my dad’s.

  My name is Meliyah. I was named after my mom and the woman I would someday see like a mom. One of my dad’s best friends or at least someone he was really close to.

  I think that drove my mom crazy. She never called me by my real name, unless she was mad at me. She would always call me, Mellie.

  I laugh at that now. She was always trying to shut down the best part of me. The part of me that was named after Melissa Grant was the knucklehead that almost ended up in the streets.

  My Uncle Alex and Aunt Taliyah saved my life. I was headed for nothing and nowhere, until life threw me a curveball that changed things forever. I found real love, a family and a way out, something I think my dad always wanted for me.

  I remember the day it all changed like it was yesterday. Everything from that day is crystal clear. The smells, the conversations, and most of all the fear.

  I was sixteen at the time, living in King Towers, in Harlem, New York. I was at my boyfriend, Pedro’s, apartment that night. Pedro was twenty, he was one of my mother’s runners. He also had a few girls he called his self pimping.

  I don’t know why I was dating him. I think it was more to get my mom’s attention. Which didn’t make sense because she was more worried about La Mafia, the crew she ran with, and whatever guy she was dating.

  It was pretty pathetic. My mom was seventeen when she had me, and at thirty- two she was still hustling. I had been dating Pedro for a year and she said nothing about it. Any other mother would have had a problem with their fifteen-year-old daughter starting to date a nineteen-year-old, drug dealing, pimp.

  It was around twelve o’clock at night and I was just getting ready to go home. My mom hadn’t even called my cell phone to see where I was. I had been at Pedro’s all night watching T.V., while he was in and out serving customers. He was getting too comfortable with his hands under my shirt, so it was time for me to go.

  I was very developed for my age. Most people thought I was my mother’s sister and not her daughter. At sixteen, I was already a double d cup and my hips were very shapely. My skin could be considered a caramel brown, that’s complimented by my butterscotch eyes. My hair has always done a thing of its own, not sure if it wants to take after my Spanish father’s hair or my African American mom’s.

  Only the people in the neighborhood that really knew me, knew how wrong Pedro really was for dating me. If you just looked at me, you would never know the difference. You’d probably think I was eighteen or even nineteen.

  Pedro had a two-bedroom apartment, his sister left him in the Towers. It wasn’t the greatest place. Other than the really nice flat screen on the living room wall and the leather sofa, the place looked pretty empty.

  He was always trying to get me into the bedroom, claiming we could relax and be more comfortable in there. Tonight was no different. He had been trying to get me to go in the room for hours.

  “Stay with me tonight, Mama,” Pedro crooned as I stood to put on my coat. The apartment still smelled from the batch my mom had him cook up earlier.

  “Not even, Poppa. I’m going home,” I said as I pulled on my coat.


  Pedro wrapped his arms around my waist and pressed his lips to my ear. “Come on baby, when you gonna give that up? I’ve been waiting a minute for you, Ma.”

  “It won’t be tonight. I’m going home.” I turned to face him and lightly kissed him on the lips.

  As I did a round of shots fired outside the window. That was nothing new in my hood, but on this night something about the sound made my gut turn. I just wanted to get home and into my bed.

  “See Mellie, you safer here with me,” Pedro crooned and pulled me toward him.

  “I’ll take my chances out there. Now you walking me home or not?”

  He sucked his teeth and released me. “Hold on,” he grumbled.

  Pedro walked over to the kitchen table and grabbed a pistol and his pack from it. He shoved the pack in his pants as he gave me a look that offered me a last chance to stick around. I shifted my weight to one leg and folded my arms across my chest and shook my head.

  I was not interested in what he was offering. I was a virgin and staying that way. I was determined to not be pregnant at seventeen like my mom. If I started having sex now, my chances of that were not too good.

  Pedro had other plans for my sex life. He was trying to get me to promise to let him take me to a hotel for my birthday. That is, if I didn’t give in before then. He threw in the offer of a shopping spree, hoping it would help his cause.

  I still wasn’t having it. Even if I was interested in sex, Pedro was not the one I was going to give it up to for the first time. I wasn’t stupid, just misguided.

  As we walked to my building we could hear the sirens and all the commotion. There was a crowd already forming around my building and the police were getting the yellow tape in place. We pushed through the crowd to get to the front where they were already chalking out the body laying on the sidewalk in front of the entry to my building.

  It was like everything went silent. As I stared at the white coat lying on the ground, I knew who it belonged to. Pedro had bought it for me a week ago and she had asked to hold it this morning.

  My stomach felt sick. This was not happening to me again. I slowly slid to the ground to catch my breath. My mom was being zipped into a body bag in front of my eyes. I could barely breathe. My head was spinning as the white coat stained in red disappeared into the bag.

  I looked up to see the officers pushing people back. One of them looked in my direction and started over toward me. I quickly pulled it together.

  My mind started to race. My mother was all I had. My father’s mom passed away last year and my mother’s mom lived in Texas.

  I didn’t want to live with her and I didn’t want to go in the system to live in some home or something. I quickly stood up and grabbed Pedro’s hand, taking off through the crowd. If the cops started asking questions I was in trouble.

  My mom had just been killed and my dad had been murdered a week after my first birthday. I didn’t have any parents now. No one to take care of me and I was only sixteen.

  I didn’t stop until we were back at Pedro’s apartment. I sat down on the couch and curled into a ball as I started to sob. I had no idea what I was going to do.

  I didn’t have any money. Rumor has it my dad left my mom money to take care of me, but she blew through it before I turned five. Which shouldn’t have been possible.

  My dad left us a brownstone and enough money for my mom to raise me and send me to college. My mom sold the brownstone once her and her boyfriends burned through the money. We ended up right back in the hood.

  She had killed my chance to get out. Only my mom could have millions dropped in her lap and end up back in the hood. The thought of it all made me sob more.

  Pedro sat next to me and rolled an L. As he lit it, he tried to pass it to me. I could hear my mother’s voice playing in my head. ‘It doesn’t make sense trying to hustle if you’re going to use the product,’ she would coach.

  It looked like I was about to have to learn to hustle something, so I wasn’t going to start smoking now. I pushed Pedro’s hand away and he smoked by himself as I cried. I wasn’t sure what to do.

  I felt so alone and scared. I wanted to run to my mom, but she was gone. I never thought about what I would do without my mom.

  She may not have been the greatest mom in the world, but I still had one, before. Now, I was all alone with a boyfriend that didn’t have enough sense to hold me to comfort me as I grieved. Things started to come into focus as far as Pedro was concerned.

  If he loved me like he said, he did, he would be doing a lot better than what he was doing now. He hadn’t moved to hold me or comfort me once. He was a joke.

  An hour or two must have passed. Pedro was answering calls from the crew about my mom as I sat sobbing to myself. When the phone stopped ringing he went into the bedroom and changed into some sweats and a t-shirt.

  I hadn’t realized I was still sitting in my coat. I slowly pulled it off and curled back up into the same spot. Pedro sat down beside me and placed his hand in my hair as he started to kiss my neck.

  I wasn’t in the mood to make out with him. Little did I know that wasn’t what he was in the mood for either. I pushed him away, but he reached for my waist.

  “Baby, stop crying. I’ll let you stay here, you just gonna have to start treating me like a man,” he said in my ear.

  “Stop,” I cried.

  “Come on, Mellie. I can make you feel better, Mama.”

  “Get off me,” I yelled as he pulled me toward him and went to unfasten my pants.

  “Why you being like that, Mellie? I’m giving you a place to stay.” He started to push his hands under my shirt. “Don’t you love me?”

  I swung at him and my fist crashed across the side of his face. He fell back and before he could recover, I kicked at him, letting my foot connect with his chest. I grabbed my coat and ran for the door.

  I didn’t stop running until I made it to my building. By now, there were just a few people standing around the building, starting to put out candles for my mom. I kept my head down and went straight into the building. I rode up to the eleventh floor and ran right into my apartment. 11-G never felt safer to me.

  I got into the shower where I cried some more. After a while, I started trying to put a plan together. I needed to search the apartment for my mother’s stash.

  She had to have money somewhere in here. I was sure there was enough to hold me for a few days and to help me re-up after I finished with whatever my mom had left in her pack.

  I was sure someone from La Mafia would set me up. That’s how La Mafia started, with Victor and Alex; they lost their family and made a new one and money as well. La Mafia had to help me, for my mom and my dad.

  I stepped out of the shower and I could hear banging at the front door. I was scared. I didn’t know if someone told the police about me and that I had come home.

  I tried to stay as quiet as I could. I tiptoed to the peephole and when I looked out I saw Pedro scowling as he banged again. I should have known he would come after me, but I wasn’t worried about him.

  I had bigger problems. He continued to bang on the door and yell for me to open it. At least, he did until I heard one of my neighbors come out.

  “Yo, get away from that door, Son,” my neighbor Chris bellowed.

  “Mind your business,” Pedro yelled back.

  “For real, shorty is my business. If you don’t leave you gonna be the next one they roll out of here tonight and your punk ass know I’m not playing,” Chris growled.

  I was suddenly happy my mom was letting Chris use alternative payments for his weed. He was playing boyfriend around here for a few months until him and my mom started to fight over her not paying me any attention. Chris also didn’t like when she started selling the hard stuff as well.

  Chris is really a nice guy, but I was sure he was going to make good on his threat if Pedro didn’t leave. The gun Pedro carried was more for show than anything. He would probably shoot himself by accident before he would shoot
anyone else.

  He wasn’t stupid enough to pull it on someone like Chris. I heard Pedro curse to himself as he left the hallway. Chris watched him leave, then lightly tapped on the door.

  “Little Mama, don’t open the door. I just want you to know I got you if you need something. Call me if you need help,” Chris called through the door.

  “Thanks,” I said softly.

  “Aight.”

  I watched through the peephole as Chris went back into his apartment. Once he was gone, I sighed with relief and started for my mother’s room. I was still in my towel, but I needed to find money fast.

  I wasn’t going to be able to stay in this apartment too long before someone came for me. I tore my mother’s room apart as the tears streamed down my face, feeling like licks of fire kissing my cheeks. This was so hard to handle.

  I found a few rolls of cash behind one of her drawers. A few stacks were under her mattress. A knot of cash was in her nightstand, along with a pistol and some loose singles in a shoebox under her bed.

  I started for the closet next. I was sure there was more. When I got in the closet there was a gold pouch that looked familiar to me.

  I’d seen it every time we moved. It was one of the few things that always came along with us. I reached for it and pulled it from the closet.

  I went to sit on the bed as I opened it. There were a bunch of papers inside. I wasn’t sure what any of it meant.

  I tried to read them and understand what they were saying. I saw my name a few times on both stacks of papers that were bound together like legal documents. One set had my dad’s name on them and the other had my mom’s.

  I was so confused. I got frustrated and threw the papers to the floor. I started to cry again. I didn’t know what the papers meant.