The Head That Wears The Crown

by D D Bridges

  “Look Darius, I know that this is hard for you,” she told me. “I mean, all of this shit is really messed up. But I know that you can handle it. I believe in you, baby.”

  I sighed as I continued to look at her. “I may be able to handle it, but I don’t want to. At least not right now.” Leaving my embrace, she went back over to the stove.

  “Well, what about D.J.?” she said, her back now to me. “I mean, I know that you didn’t like the way that he came at you, but he is your brother.”

  “He’s my half-brother, baby. And I wish that he would just go back to wherever the hell he came from,” I said.

  “Well, don’t you get any ideas,” she said.

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked, slightly confused.

  Her response was delayed but she finally said, “What I mean is, don’t make him go away the way that you made KaRon go away.”

  “Why the hell you gotta bring that shit up?” I stopped myself because I knew that I was getting upset and was about to go off on her. Just like any relationship we had our moments when we made each other mad, but I always tried to control my anger with her. I knew that my temper could be hard to handle when it came out full force.

  She turned around to face me, almost like she was daring me to explode on her.

  “Natalie, you know how I feel about you bringing that up. You need to just forget about that whole situation.”

  She began to tap her foot as she stared at me long and hard. She said, “Have you ever thought about how it makes me feel knowing that I’m possibly sleeping with a murderer?”

  “I am not a murderer. I don’t know how many times I’ve told you that and I wish that you would stop saying that shit,” I said as I walked up and got right in her face. “Besides, you dated KaRon for three years and I know for a fact that he was behind many murders. And I don’t like the fact that you keep bringing that nigga’s name up around me. You’re my lady now.”

  “Darius, I’m not trying to upset you,” she said, giving me a light push in the chest. “But how do I know that you’re not lying about what you did to KaRon.”

  “I would never lie to you, Natalie,” I told her. “But you need to know that I will always do what I have to do to protect you. That’s the bottom line. And as your man, that’s my job.”

  We both decided to drop that conversation for the time being because we didn’t want to ruin the rest of our evening. We had dinner and then watched a movie for the rest of the night. It was late when I finally headed home and I considered this to be a good thing because I didn’t feel like having to confront my mother.

  *******

  I came home to a quiet mansion around one o’clock in the morning. The drive from Natalie’s house had been a miserable one. There was no one or nothing to distract me any longer from all of the bullshit that was going on in my life. Still, I didn’t want to deal with this. There had to be an easier and less painful way to make this all go away.

  I walked into my enormous kitchen and went into one of the cabinets where I knew the liquor was. I grabbed a glass, sat on a stool at the island, and began to drink. With each gulp I thought about the betrayal and the lies that had been revealed a few days ago. At a time when there were multiple people that I wasn’t sure I could trust, the two people that I relied on the most had cut me deep. The craziest part was that they both felt justified in their reasons for lying to me. Is this really what my life had come to?

  I had completely lost track of how many drinks I’d had, and now I was staring down into an empty glass. The half-empty bottle sat on the counter a few inches away. A few minutes ago the bottle had been full. It was supposed to help me drown out my sorrows, but the shit wasn’t working. I was still hurt, I was still angry, but most of all I was still empty.

  In one swift motion I grabbed the glass and the bottle and threw them across the island, causing them both to shatter into pieces against the tile floor in front of the sink. I then stood up, grabbed the wooden stool that I was sitting on and hit it against the counter-top, breaking it in half. My heart was racing and I was sure that my blood pressure was through the roof. I knew that I needed to calm down but I couldn’t. I would break everything in sight if it would make me feel like I had some type of control over my life.

  Just as I was looking for something else to break, Phillip came rushing into the kitchen carrying a baseball bat. He stopped in his tracks and immediately relaxed when he realized that I was the one making a ruckus. He looked at the broken glass and spilled vodka that was on the floor and just shook his head as he looked at me.

  “It’s just you,” he said as he sat the bat down, allowing it to lean against the wall.

  I paced the floor while he looked for something to clean up the mess with. “You thought someone was breaking in and you come down here with a bat? Where’s the gun that I gave you?”

  “You know that I don’t like guns,” Phillip said. He grabbed a dish towel but instead of cleaning up the vodka he turned his attention to me. “Darius, I’ve never seen you like this. Now I know that all of this is a shock to your system, but it is not the time to lose control.”

  “Did you know about this?” I asked, abruptly cutting him off. “Have you been lying to me too?”

  “No, of course not,” he told me. “But I think it’s only fair that I point out that your mother didn’t lie to you either. Neither did Mr. Evans.”

  “You’re really gonna take their sides on this?” I said, leaning in across the counter.

  “I’m not taking anyone’s side,” Phillip rebutted. “I’m simply saying that I can understand how they both felt that not telling you about your family was in your best interest. Your father’s wife and kids may be your family, but there’s no telling what kind of hell they would have caused had they been around all this time. I think that it’s safe to assume that things would not have gone as smoothly as they have based on what happened when your half-brother showed up at the office.”

  “That’s beside the point,” I said angrily. “My mother and Walter only did what was in their best interest. They didn’t want to deal with the truth. I can handle it.”

  Phillip put the towel down and stepped forward to rest his hands on the counter. The island was the only thing separating us now and both of our faces were being illuminated by the overhead lights.

  “Darius, you are a very strong and courageous young man,” he told me. “Every day you do things that other men your age could never have the capacity to do. But you and I both know that there are some things that you haven’t been able to handle so well.”

  I immediately knew that Phillip was referring to the dreams. Even though I still didn’t know the meaning of them or what the cause for them was, I couldn’t deny the fact that they resembled some type of inner struggle. They also caused a great deal of anxiety that often kept me up at night even when I didn’t have the dreams. Ironically though, I had been able to sleep like a baby when I was with Natalie. She had a calming effect on me that was better than any sedative or other form of medication.

  “Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” Phillip said, piquing my interest.

  “Who said that?” I asked him, knowing that he must have gotten that quote from one of his books.

  “Shakespeare in Henry IV,” he told me with a gleam in his eye. He always seemed to be impressed with himself when he was able to name the author and title that a quote was from. “Henry IV quoted it after eluding to the fact that all of his servants and all that were in his kingdom slept peaceful, but he himself was unable to find that peace. As you can imagine with any king, Henry was under a great deal of pressure and stress. He realized that it all came with the territory though.”

  Leave it up to Phillip to be able to compare my situation to Shakespeare’s writings in a sensible way. The correlation that he made was right on point. I had the weight of a whole kingdom on my shoulders. The stress and pressure that I had been under over the past five years had just been multiplied
by ten. I was barely keeping my head above water before, and now I felt like I was drowning.

  “Listen Darius, I know that none of us can fully understand what you’re going through because none of us carry the amount of responsibility that you do. But to whom much is given, much is required. The crown is yours, and it’s up to you how you will wear it. Nobody can take it from you unless you give it away.”

  “What does that even mean?” I asked.

  “It means that nobody can tell you how to handle this situation,” he said. “You have to do whatever you have to in order to ensure that all of the hard work that you’ve done up until this point doesn’t go to waste.”

  As I thought about Phillip’s words I realized that he was right. Here I was sulking and having a pity party when I should be fighting for what was rightfully mine. I had worked so hard to prove that I deserved to be in my position, but now I felt like lying down and letting it be snatched from me. I invested too much blood, sweat, and tears in order for me to let that happen. Right then I decided that nothing and nobody was going to bring me down, not even my estranged family. D.J. might be carrying my father’s name, but I was carrying his legacy, and I would continue to do so until I was six feet under.

  Chapter XII

  “Look, all I’m sayin’ is that we got yo’ back.”

  “Yeah. We ain’t gonna let nobody disrespect you.”

  “And if they do, we gon’ cap ‘em. We can’t take no prisoners.”

  “Yo, will y’all shut the hell up and let the man talk,” Mike finally said.

  My boys had been talking all morning about how we were going to handle things. I knew that Terry was a hot-head, but I was surprised to find out that Kenny and Derek had become trigger happy as well. Give some people a gun and they don’t know how to act. Mike had the longest rap sheet but so far he was the one keeping everybody in line.

  “Darius is the boss,” Mike told them. “We do what he says. Y’all boys need to look around. This ain’t Edgewood and it ain’t Bankhead. We can’t think like some simple street niggas. And we can’t pop off whenever we fucking feel like it.”

  “Mike’s right,” I said as I stood and came around to the front of my desk. My boys were all posted up around my office. I tried to get them all to look the part but that was easier said than done. Mike and Derek had done alright with their clothes, but Kenny and Terry looked like they had just walked off the corner. It was a hot day so Terry refused to wear anything but a wife-beater and jeans. Even though I had taken Terry out of the streets, it was going to be hard to get the streets out of him.

  “Like I told y’all the other day, this is some serious shit,” I continued to tell them. “The people that we’re dealing with ain’t scared of our kind. They ain’t scared of anything. That French motherfucker rolled up on me like it was nothing. Him and his goons were ten or fifteen deep. You could tell that he didn’t give a damn who I was, and he could’ve capped me right then if he’d wanted to.”

  “So why are you having this meeting with him?” Kenny asked.

  “Because he may have some valuable information about what’s been going on with my company,” I said. “Something ain’t right. I just got that feeling. And I need to figure out if Francisco is going to be my enemy or an ally.”

  “Sounds like dude is a bitch,” Terry said. “Why you need a whole army in a city where nobody even knows you?”

  “He was probably just trying to intimidate you,” Mike said.

  “It doesn’t matter what he’s trying to do,” I said. “That man only had to say one word and all of his men moved at his command. That’s how tight we gotta be. Y’all are my boys and y’all gotta know what I’m thinking before I even say anything.”

  A knock on the door interrupted our conversation. I checked my watch and saw that there was still twenty minutes until my meeting with Francisco. The person knocked again. I nodded my head at Kenny and Terry who were standing on either side of the door. Kenny opened the door and D.J. came in. Before he could even get all the way inside Kenny and Terry were all up on him.

  “You need us to check him, boss?” Kenny asked as he and Terry were invading D.J.’s personal space. D.J. didn’t seem to be the least bit fazed, but I knew that my half-brother had no idea what my boys were capable of.

  “No, he’s cool,” I said as D.J. brushed past Kenny and approached my desk. “Fellas, this is my half-brother, D.J. D.J., these are my boys and my new security detail.”

  D.J. briefly scanned the room, looking at each one of the guys. “Decided to put your homie’s on payroll, huh?” D.J. said mockingly. “Or, wait a minute, not your homie’s. Your niggas, right?”

  “Yo’, chill out wit’ all that, man,” Terry said. “We here to work for Darius, so if you got a problem with that then you can kick rocks.”

  “Kick rocks, huh,” D.J. said with a laugh before turning toward Terry. “Why don’t I kick something else?”

  It took all of two seconds for Terry to close the space between them and get right up in D.J.’s face.

  “That’s right T, show him what’s up,” Kenny encouraged. He stayed in his spot by the door as Mike and Derek took their time moving toward D.J. and Terry. “I already don’t like his punk ass,” Kenny added.

  Terry exchanged a few words with D.J. before Mike came and pulled him away. I just shook my head at their antics as I stood behind my desk. D.J. glared hard at Terry for a few seconds before turning his attention back to me.

  “Motherfucka,” I heard him mumble under his breath before speaking loud and clear. “So what’s the plan for today? And when is my office going to be ready?”

  “Your office will be ready by noon,” I told him. “Do you even know what it is that we do here?”

  “Of course I know what we do. My dad used to bring me here all the time,” he told me.

  “I was just making sure,” I said. “We have a very important meeting in about twenty minutes.”

  Before any further discussion could take place, Juanita came into my office without knocking.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said, now standing in front of my desk. It wasn’t until then that she realized that she had walked into a room full of men who were all looking at her like she was a piece of meat in a dog pin. The tight pencil skirt that she was wearing did make her ass look extra good, so I wasn’t surprised at how my boys were checking her out.

  “What is it, Juanita?”

  “I need to talk to you in private,” she reiterated.

  “I don’t have the time. Got a meeting to be to,” I said as I began to put on my jacket.

  “But it’s really important,” she said and her eyes were pleading with me. I didn’t like the sound of this at all.

  “After the meeting, okay,” I said as I straightened my tie. Juanita looked defeated as she turned to leave.

  Fifteen minutes later, me and all of the executives were gathered in the conference room along with my boys. They were lined up with their backs against the windows trying their best to look inconspicuous. They were actually doing a good job and so far they had done everything that I had asked them too. Walter, Jai and some of the other important people around the office seemed to have a problem with them being there, but I didn’t give a damn. None of them new what I was truly up against, and until we could get to the bottom of things my boys would be there.

  Francisco and his men walked into the conferences room at exactly 10 A.M. Once again he was donning what I was beginning to realize was his signature look. The suit he wore was gray with a navy tint. It had one button in the middle and he wore a white shirt under it with no tie. This time he was only rolling with only four of his goons instead of the full entourage that was with him when he confronted me and Jeff in the parking garage. It wasn’t until now that I realized that Francisco’s men all looked alike. Aside from the fact that they were all dressed in black, they also had the same buzz haircut and the same facial features. I wasn’t even sure if these were four of the same gu
ys from the other night.

  I stood at the head of the large table and watched as Francisco made his way over to me. We shook hands and then he took a seat at the other end of the table.

  “Mr. King, it’s good to see you again,” Francisco stated.

  “Likewise,” I said solemnly and caught a glimpse of D.J. smirking out of the corner of my eye. I ignored him and began to make introductions. “I’m sure you remember Walter Evans. This is Jai Lucas. Over here we have Jeff Brunson and our new CFO, Daniel King, Jr.”

  Francisco took a moment to look at D.J. and then let out a small laugh. “So this is Daniel King’s other son,” he said with a grin as he was now staring at D.J. “Excellent. Shall we talk business, gentlemen?”

  “Yes we shall,” Jeff spoke. “We were hoping that you could continue to indulge us in the topic of Benjamin Ziegler and his desire to take over this company.”

  “Yes, of course,” Francisco replied as he stood and began to pace around the table. “As I alluded to the other night, Benjamin Ziegler is a man of many resources. He could prove to be very dangerous if he is not put in check. The truth is that ever since he and I cut ties about ten years ago, he has had every intention of bringing down his biggest competition, which is Kingdom Enterprises. As a matter of fact, it was his greed for power that eventually led to our falling out. He wanted me to help him overthrow Daniel but I refused.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Baptìste, but that’s not quite how I remember things,” Walter said. “Daniel cut ties with you because you were the one who was playing foul. You were using your foreign car sales as a cover-up for your money laundering schemes. Daniel had no choice but to pull all of our company’s funds out so that the whole company wouldn’t be brought down because of your criminal activity.”

  “Well, Walter, I’m sorry that after all of this time the truth still has not been revealed,” Francisco said as he changed directions and began to circle the table again in the opposite direction. “Ziegler was the one laundering money. The feds were on to him so he chose to lie and tell them that it was me. But I have no reason to launder money. My businesses oversees are very lucrative as well as my business here in the states.”