Animal by K'wan Foye

think we can win together. Even though you got a twat between your legs, you’ve got bigger balls than most niggaz out here. The stakes we’re about to be playing for are too high for mistakes, baby girl. One fuck up could mean the end of both of us, ya dig?”
    “I hear you talking,” she rolled her eyes.
    Cutty laughed. “There’s that funky-ass attitude. You know, sometimes you remind me of my daughter. She’s another young broad who’s got her ass on her shoulders and thinks that she’s got the world all figured out.”
    “Fatima is seventeen; I’m grown,” Frankie pointed out.
    “Don’t matter. The both of y’all still wet behind the ears when you measure it against what a vet like me knows.”
    “You couldn’t have known that much or else your ass wouldn’t have winded up in prison for all those years,” Frankie rolled her eyes.
    “Don’t get fucking cute, Frankie. I did what I did for the team, shorty. Loyalty above all else is how me, Rio, and Shamel lived, and I’m trying to see if some of your cousin’s blood actually flows through you or if all y’all share is a last name.”
    “You know I’m built, Cutty, so you ain’t gotta question my character,” Frankie assured him.
    “I ain’t questioning your character; I’m questioning what’s going on in your head. Your mind is supposed to be on money at all times and not whether I called my bitch or not to check in.”
    Frankie’s eyes narrowed to slits. “See, that’s the bullshit with men. In one breath you claim to love us, and in the next breath, you’re calling us all kinds of bitches. How would you feel if somebody was always calling Fatima a bitch like you do Jada?”
    “Nigga call my baby girl a bitch and I’m gonna put his fucking lights out,” Cutty said seriously.
    “Exactly, because it’s disrespectful and you’d hurt a nigga who disrespected someone you love, so why does that make it okay for you to do it?”
    “Damn, you going through all this because I didn’t call Jada to let her know I was staying out?” Cutty was confused. He knew Frankie could be a firecracker, but he’d never seen her that irritable.
    “It ain’t just that; it’s a bunch of shit. Look, just forget it. It ain’t my business, and I shouldn’t have said anything,” Frankie said.
    Cutty looked over at Frankie, who had her arms folded and was staring intently out the window. Her face was as hard and uncaring as it always was, but there was a wavering in her eyes that said something was going on with her. Cutty knew from his championship bouts with Jada that there was no wining anargument against a stubborn woman so he offered a truce. “I’ll call Jada in a few if it will appease that woman code thing nagging at your conscious.”
    “Thank you,” Frankie said sarcastically, then went back to looking out the window.
    Cutty coasted through the Holland Tunnel, cutting across Canal Street, and eventually crossing the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn, where Frankie was currently resting her head. After getting evicted from the project apartment she and her roommates had been subleasing, Frankie found herself in quite a bind. In the beginning, she bounced around from place to place until she could think of what to do, and it was Cutty who came to her rescue . . . again. Cutty hooked her up with a Jewish cat he knew that owned a building in Bed-Stuy and was looking for a tenant to fill a recently vacated apartment. Because he owed Cutty a favor, the dude agreed to give it to Frankie for half the normal rent for the first three months. It was a small one bedroom, but it was perfect for Frankie. She was just happy to have a crib she could call her own without having to share it with roommates, at least not permanent ones.
    Creeping up Marcus Garvey, Cutty drove past the Blood Orchid, which was a small social club and current mystery to the people from the neighborhood. Since it had been erected it had never been officially open for business,