When I finally got home the next morning, Jazz's whole face was black and blue. She had dark fingerprints around her neck and she looked like she was being terrorized, even though she was the only one sitting there. I was sick of seeing her looking terrified all the time, but I couldn't do anything about it right then. So I just shook my head and stepped through the door.

"Hey Aunt Jazz."

She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that it was just me walking into the house.

"Well, hi my favorite nephew!" I didn't know how she could still look happy about anything considering the life we were living, but she always looked happy to see me.

I put my hand on her shoulder and she flinched. Who knew what she looked like underneath her clothes?

"You ok?" The baby was screaming like crazy in the back.

"Yup."

"Rico here?"

"No." She looked down at her hands and I noticed that one of her wrists was swollen like a balloon. She must have fought back. She still did that sometimes. Jazz saw me looking at her wrist and subconsciously rubbed it. "Nephew."

"Yeah, Aunt Jazz?"

"Soldier up."

I just looked at her. I was sick of hearing that shit and she knew it.

"Just do whatever Rico says. Whatever he says. Fall in line, son." She was more sober than I had seen her in a while. "I taught you how to survive here with us, right?" I nodded. "So you do that, Kenney. You survive."

She must have felt that our days were numbered, too.

What she didn't know, was that Rico's days were just as numbered.

He was number one on my hit list.

"Ok, Aunt Jazz."

Then she stood up to walk away. I just shook my head and wished again that we could just get the hell out of there and never look back. Jazz didn't say anything else, so after visually scanning her body to see where else she may have been hurt, I left the room. It wasn't lost on me that she was limping when she made her way slowly into the kitchen.

When I got to the back, the smell hit me before I even saw the baby. Charity must have brought her back over to Jazz's early early, because it smelled like the baby's diaper hadn't been changed since. I was about to be pissed at Charity for bringing her back over to Jazz's instead of waiting for me to come get her, but I forgot that she and Tiana had to go to school that morning. Angel was standing up in her crib, looking miserable and over it. No baby should ever look that way.

Her diaper was filthy so I changed her first, and then ran her bath water.

"Hi my Angel." She smiled up at me while I changed her. "I missed you." She reached out for me, so I picked her up and took her into the bathroom.

After I had gotten her cleaned up and fed, I headed out for another long ass day. Jazz didn't even look up when I told her that I was taking the baby with me.