Zain's choice ✔️

34: The key

Barack's POV

"It's not working as it should. Again!" I snapped into the phone.

"What do you mean? This is the best executed plan we have so far. Very soon, we will bury the remaining nine keys and we will both get what we want!" He sounds genuinely confused.

So he doesn't know!

Some boka dalla!

"You idiot! Marmie left two days ago. She went to see Zain and he was happy to see her. It's like nothing is happening!" I growl.

"Really? That means someone found the key I gave to Aliya! But they only have it. They haven't seen it yet!" He tells me what I already know.

"Look! Dalla find out where it is. Give it to someone else and bury the damn thing! I told you only burying works!" I snap angrily, cutting the line.

The gypsy, Tatiana, said and I quote 'the key will always find its way back to you unless you find a way to make someone else swallow it" she warns.

And she is right as usual. That stupid key is definitely finding its way back in some wired mysterious way I don't even want to know!

We have already put ourselves in this problem a very long time ago!

We were both nobodies crawling away in a third rate neighborhood in the slums of New York City. Our only hope is to live the street life.

Uzair is actually half Nigerian. His father is A Yorugba man who had come to America to make his riches. Only, things hadn't worked out too well. After siring Uzair with a whore in a brothel, he refused to accept the child. His mother drops him there to fend for himself.

And then there is me. I don't know my parents. I just walk around the streets, stealing by picking pockets and I later began to sell drugs because it brings more money.

At fourteen, I work for a drug lord who uses me for deliveries of his many drug consuming clients. He has this girlfriend who really likes me. I was tall for my age so I guess I look sixteen. But it didn't really matter. Shit happens. My age doesn't matter.

She was older and wiser and she was a woman. So she tried to make me deceive my boss by sleeping with her. He really likes her though. So I was afraid. And I don't even like her all that much. But she was beautiful and I was young and innocent about the ways of women. As most boys my age, I guess I don't really know much about how things work. But I am curious. And she used my curiosity to draw me in.

One day, I was drunk. Again, shit happens. She keeps blackmailing me to sleep with her by telling me she is pregnant and she will tell my boss and I know he is gonna kill me no questions asked!

I was in too deep. And then I met Uzair. He was also making deliveries and we sort of connected.

For days, we meet sometimes to hang out with each other's gangs. And then I told Uzair my problem. Uzair said my problem is easy. That sleeping with my boss's girl is a small sin. For him, it seems, he is in debt because one of the senior boys is exploiting him. Once his boss finds out, he would kill his mom and then kill him and sell his body parts. Except he went to see this soothsayer who gave him a talisman. He says he is in the boss's good graces since he went to see her! She gave him a key and told him to keep it away from prying eyes.

So I begged him to take me too.

And we went to see this soothsayer who gives me a key as well.

"You will close their eyes to your faults with this key!" Her smile is eerily sweet. I cannot forget it till date.