by Brick
* * *
I woke up the next morning to Lu Orlando standing over me. The scream that erupted from my lips could have awakened the dead. I wrestled with the covers, bucked and kicked my legs. I had to get away from him. Not again, my mind screamed. Not again! I swung out, fighting with everything I had within me.
I was in my office again, in Atlanta. Lu had just walked free. I was the laughing stock of the DA’s office. Everyone but me had gone home for the day, and I found myself face-to-face with a maniac.
He hadn’t given me time to say a word. I had always thought men like him sent others to do their dirty work, but not Lu. Lu came to see me himself. The first hit sent me flying over my desk. I got back up. If I was going to die, it would be on my feet. All I could think about were Tone and Jewel. They would be alone, free to move on without me. That was what I’d always been afraid of, Tone and Jewel moving on without me. I’d never thought I was good enough for him or her.
Even though I was at the top of my game, I still felt they deserved more. Jewel deserved to come from a better stock of mothers. That was why I didn’t put up that much of a fight when Tone said he could do better at raising her. Deep down inside, I felt that he was right.
So, when Lu Orlando punched me again, I took it. Even as I fought back, I knew it was a fight I wasn’t going to win. He was too big, too strong, and came packed with way too much aggression and evil. He had a hold of my collar while he punched and slapped me to his content. I tried to claw his eyes out. Blood dripping down my face, teeth bared like that of a scalded cat. I tried to rip his eyes from the socket as my nails dug into his face. I would have succeeded had he not tossed me across the room. I almost went flying out of the window had my thigh not gotten impaled by a piece of broken wood. Too scared to feel pain, I pulled my leg off the wood and tried to run.
“Nothing better than pussy that fights back,” Lu had said. “Always loved me a strong woman, ADA Kenya Gates,” he snarled as he stood over me.
“Somebody help me,” I screamed.
“Nobody’s coming and even if they could hear you, they wouldn’t hear you, know what I mean?” he taunted as he stalked me.
Eyes dark and narrowed, I could see the evil that lurked just behind the surface. His lips were in a cruel snarl that sent chills through me. He shrugged and brought his fist down into my face again. I thought he had killed me this time. My brain rattled around in my head. Punch after punch to the face, chest, stomach, and kicks to the ribs, back, and neck.
“That is enough,” I heard a voice rumble out. “You have lost all the mind you have left, boy!”
“Kenya.” I heard my name yelled again.
This time I recognized it. Knew it meant me no harm. By the time I came back to reality, Tone had my naked body locked against his, my back against his chest as he held me. Caltrone was in the room. Had come to wake us up so we could move out when I woke up screaming, swinging, and kicking.
“Kenya, calm down. What’s wrong with you?” Tone asked.
I gawked at Caltrone, whose eyes looked to have darkened. “I think it’s time you told Antonio the truth about what his brother did to you. What you just displayed is a weakness I won’t allow. If I find this is a hindrance to you, I will exploit it and I will force you to confront it until it no longer bothers you. Your hands touched my face, Kenya.”
He said that last part as if I had committed a great atrocity against him. He hated to be touched unless he invited you to and, even then, you had to be careful. When I opened my eyes, I was half asleep and half awake. Seeing Caltrone standing over me must have made me think he was Lu. My fight-or-flight instincts kicked in and I chose to fight.
“I expect you two to be dressed and downstairs in twenty minutes,” Caltrone said before turning to leave the room.
Tone dropped his hold on me then asked coolly, “What did he do to you?”
I sighed then shook my head.
“What did he do you, Kenya?” Tone roared.
“He beat me. Lu beat me pretty badly. You were overseas doing that stint with the military and I was in my office. He came in and he beat me. Caltrone stopped him, got me to a hospital for treatment. Everything was done on the low. I didn’t want anyone to know what happened. I had nowhere to turn. Everybody from the police to the mayor were in the Orlandos’ pocket. Felt like that man beat me within an inch of my life, but Caltrone, he came in and he helped me. Afterward, after I had healed and was back to work, that was when Caltrone approached me about putting Lu away.”
Chapter 12
Antonio
A harsh splash of a chilly sensation washed over me as if I had ice water thrown on me. I was taken aback. I was stunned. I was hurt and I wanted to kill. As I stood looking at a woman who lied to me by omission, all the old angst between us flooded back. I watched her without feeling, an empty void growing bigger every minute. In my mind, I heard my father’s voice, quoting his favorite military strategist, Machiavelli: “‘For among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible; which is one of those disgraceful things which a prince must guard against.’”
That quote played over and over as I stared into Kenya’s eyes. I heard her explaining that it happened while I was overseas working for the military with Doctors Without Borders. Heard her say that she was still frightened to tell me anything when I came home, and all I could think was that she had lied to me and her actions could have put our daughter at risk back then. Jewel visited her mother often and Lu could have easily targeted baby girl to get back at Kenya. The nigga had been touched in the head like that. I was genuinely pissed.
My life was not my own. No matter how hard I had fought to keep clear of my father, his shadow always reached me once it stopped reaching for my mother. Lu, my older brother, had come for the mother of my child. He had almost killed her for his own twisted bullshit and she kept that shit from me. Kenya was a liar. She was a manipulator. She was a risk.
A slap against my chest barely drew my attention. Had Kenya not appeared in my face screaming at me, I thought that I would have stayed where I was, in a catatonic rage, for hours.
“Tone,” she screamed, tears running down her face. “Tone, breathe. You’re scaring me. Baby, your nails are cutting into your palms and they are bleeding. Antonio.”
In a daze, I glanced down at my fisted hands then back up toward Kenya. To my ears, my voice was a cold monotone, devoid of everything as I mentally went over what she told me and started putting the pieces together during that time when we were trying to work it out, again for the hundredth time.
“When I came back from doing a Doctors tour, you told me that you wanted nothing to do with me anymore. Said it was foolish to try to work this out. Told me the fire at the DA’s office was the writing on the wall that we just couldn’t work it out,” I muttered.
“I was scared. I needed to get away from Atlanta and if that meant dropping you, I had to do that for my mental state. And I had to be able to heal without you asking questions,” Kenya explained. “I didn’t know you were an Orlando and I was scared of what could happen to you and Jewel.”
She stood with the bedsheets wrapped around her and it reminded me that we had just dropped to our rawest moment and used that to fuck. To release emotions and tensions that this whole ordeal had put us through. She was mine in that moment, fuck the world and her fiancé, and now we were back to the way it always was between us: her over there and me over here, a large wall rising between us.
“You ran. You told me nothing and a year later you hooked up with Isaac,” I quietly said, ticking it all off in my mind.
Reaching out to take my hand, she carefully pried my fingers open and used the sheet to dab at the cuts there. “Please understand, I didn’t want to put you in danger. I lied to protect my family and to protect our daughter.” Kissing my palm, she looked up at me with tears in her eyes.
“You put me through bullshit. Anger, fights, hate . . . You should have told me.” See, to me, that
part came out soft and understanding of the trauma she had gone through. I turned away from her. But, in reality, hazing out of the red zone, something I hadn’t experienced since childhood, I stood by a broken lamp breathing heavy, shouting, “If our daughter hadn’t been with Mama in Miami, she could have been at risk because of you! You should have fucking told me!”
Behind me Kenya stood away from me in fear clutching the sheets to her petite form. For a second I thought she might run, but when those tears fell and her eyes narrowed, I saw a different side to Kenya that I recalled from our younger years.
Foul words spewed from her lips as she walked up on me shouting, “You lied to me too, you know. You put me in the center of a goddamned spiderweb, all controlled by your evil-ass father! But you have the goddamned nerve to talk to me about I lied? Yes, I lied. Yes, I put you through hell. I was wrong, but it was all I had to protect myself. And even after all of that, all I had was Isaac.”
“You could have had me! I would have fixed it. I wish you would have told me—” I started, knowing what I said was irrational.
“And then this shit with your father would have started even earlier. Antonio, I was terrified, traumatized! You weren’t there when it happened and I started to resent you for that. I’m sorry for that part of it. The rest I couldn’t stop.” Kenya’s words came out in a strong vibrancy with the tremor of weakness.
My father was wrong that she was weak from it. Scared? Yes. But I saw something deeper: a woman trying to survive a traumatic experience put on her because of my family. My fucking terrorist family. Because of that, I came out of my dark rage over her and channeled it toward a brother I hated with my very soul.
“If there was ever a time that I needed you to understand, it’s right now. I need that small sliver of clarity because all the nightmares are coming back and I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m falling into a void.” Standing in front of me, Kenya was pleading with me.
Being with an Orlando was dangerous. I knew that the day I fell for Kenya. Essentially, had I kept my distance, she might have had a normal life with a normal man like Isaac. Instead, she fell for me and her life had been nothing but the worse for it. It was my fault.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry you couldn’t tell me. I’m sorry.” Dropping my forehead against hers, I closed my eyes then kissed her temple as I whispered those words. “I’m in that void right now. If Lu were here, I’d kill him.”
Feeling the soft sweep of Kenya’s small hands against the surface of my abs, I shuddered feeling the old me within aching for her. I couldn’t crumble to this weakness. I was taught to turn that into power, and so I would.
“I’d let you.” Softly she kissed my chest. Gently she let the tip of her tongue trace over where her name used to sit against my ribcage.
Then, like the confident, sexual powerhouse I knew and taught her to be, Kenya scraped her teeth over that spot and whispered, “Mine.”
I lifted her around my waist, fisted my hand around her hair and then her neck, squeezing; then I dropped to a knee to place her on the bed as I found my way back inside her. Screwing had always been our thing—mentally, spiritually, and physically—and right now it was mad good. Thrust for thrust, we made the bed quake. With it we both growled out like animals as our flesh slapped against each other. This was no love shit. This was old-school animalist shit. I punished her cookie for her lies and the agony she’d put me through. She returned the favor by throwing it back and leaving my skin covered in her passion marks.
We were locked into old patterns and we didn’t give a fuck. I knew after this if she wanted to go back to Isaac I’d have to let her, because I knew this life wasn’t for her. But, for now, she was mine and I planned on making her kitty remember each stroke I initiated against her when we first made love back in our youth.
Our quickie put us back in order and had me clamping down my emotions. After, we found ourselves downstairs in my father’s war room. Computers and screens where everywhere. The pictures from Fallon’s cell were on a few of the monitors while programs played with algorithms meant to search out a person through face recognition.
Kenya went to Benita to debrief with her about what she learned. I moved with purpose around that busy room, hands in my jeans, to position myself near my father, who stood akimbo with his arms crossed.
“You rectify the weakness?” he said staring at the group picture with my daughter.
John Coltrane played low over the house system. Collective click-clacking of keys melded with the low mutters of my father’s tech team handling business. My niece, Maria-Rosa, oversaw that part while typing on her own computer.
I stared at the faces in the picture. Two of them we had crossed out. Three were left. The bastard who was turned away from the camera, I felt in my gut, was Keith. Then there was the young girl sticking her tongue out, and Donna. She leaned against Fallon, smiling; however, her eyes were on the brotha who had his back turned.
Her hair was mermaid blue. Her blue jean shorts were cut so high that she might as well have been wearing panties. She wore a tank that had KILLER MOB scrawled on it. Little Miss Donna seemed like her goal in life was to be a trap queen and a leader in her own right. Focusing on the varied chess pieces of the group, I reached up to rub my jaw and answer my father.
“Yes, sir, it’s handled and it won’t be an issue for you again,” I coolly stated.
I felt the tight squeeze of my father’s hand on the back of my neck. We kept staring at the screen as I listened to him.
“You’ll never be me, but you know that and don’t want that. But you will make a strong right hand once you cleanse yourself of the emotions you allow to lead you, Antonio, my son. There is a place here for you, this is your familia and my lessons shine bright in you. You will help teach the next generation how to keep this family strong.”
I turned my head to stare in his intense eyes. My father cracked a menacing smile and continued, “We kill out of need; we don’t kill in excess. Each kill is our mark, our art, and we paint the streets in blood to show the world who we are. Never let another enemy dictate your steps. You make their movements lead to you.”
“Sí, Father. And like a roach running from sunlight, Mallock was that; and through his stupidity I learned a lot,” I calmly said, staring at my own reflection, albeit different, in my father’s face.
“Tell me,” he ordered in an even tone.
“Donna’s spot is two blocks over from where Fallon’s complex is. We should case it and scrape up whatever information we can find, because she’s not in Houston. She ran off to L.A., I assume to be near the home base of the Knights.”
A sharp hiss escaped my father’s lips. For a second, I thought that he might flip; but when a cold calmness washed over him, I knew that he wasn’t going to reveal a thing.
“What do you know about these Knights?” Caltrone asked me, removing his hand.
Feeling as if I had the control, I smirked, “I know they are all over the U.S. in pocket factions, just like us. I know they gun hard in Miami and seem to be trying to grow there; but, above all that, I remember a meeting with you and their duel kings: Emmanuel and Yasmine Knight. I think it would be wise to get to Donna before she makes it to the Knights, Father. Right?”
Just like that, my father’s jaw began to twitch and I knew that he was holding something back from me. He turned away from me, glanced at a wall that held the insignia of a lion with a crown, then walked out.
“Pack your bags. We’re going to L.A.,” he said as he walked passed me. “Benita! Scour Donna’s apartment. Find whatever you can and meet us on the jet. If you are late, we will leave you. I expect a phone call,” he shouted behind him then slammed the duel mahogany doors of the room behind him.
I didn’t know what secrets that old man was holding but I knew one thing: the Knights and the Orlandos were on tight leashes with one another. From the whispers I heard as a child, those leashes were held by old-world gangste
r respect and territory lines, nothing more. I knew on day one when I caught a glimpse of that inked chess piece and it triggered an old memory that nothing good was going to come from our hunt. When Kenya relayed the information she learned, I knew a war was going to come if we weren’t careful.
Too bad that was after I took off that kid’s head.
Following my father’s orders, we all packed up our gear. Once Benita effectively trashed Donna’s apartment, we took to the air and ended up in sunny L.A. Loose ends needed to be tied up and I was anxious to learn what Benita found.
Dropping a bag between our feet as we rode down the interstate, Benita glanced at Kenya and me, then frowned. “I found a bag of your daughter’s clothes, and shoes. Found her cell phone, found her laptop. Looks like Donna was going to sell it for parts because it was in pieces,” Benita said.
I felt Kenya tense by my side. She slowly slid forward and reached down to rummage through the bag before she asked, “What else?”
Exhaling, Benita was about to speak up but stopped when Mark took over. “Dumb bitch was scattered. Her place was fucked, which I took to mean she was running. Guess she got word about Fallon because the punta just left according to neighbors.”
Focusing on my hands, I flexed them in thought. I used to be a healer and now I was the angel of death. “So, nothing worth shit to go off of?” I asked quirking an eyebrow.
“Naw, I didn’t say all of that,” Mark said chuckling. “Found out the bitch is a honeypot. Maria-Rosa found some scattered notes with girls’ names, ages, and Twitter and Facebook tags with dollar signs by them.”
Both Kenya and I glanced at Maria-Rosa, who sat wide-legged watching the cars and clicking on her cell.
“I’m still doing some searching but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the setup. Looks like Donna friends the girls, and gains their trust and eventually gets their information. Then, I’m assuming, Fallon and his niggas swoop in,” Maria-Rosa said.