Best Laid Plans

by Brick

  There was a stoic look on Tone’s face when he answered. Caltrone was in a private cabin on the plane. Tone and I were sharing the main cabin. Tone had changed out of the clothes he had on earlier. He’d replaced his old attire with sweats and an all-white T-shirt. He had pulled his hair from the ponytail it had been in and there was a constant frown on his face.

  It had been eerily silent on the way back to the airport. Caltrone’s face was emotionless but he sat rigid. Something about what Savoy had said rattled the normally cool, calm, and collected old demon.

  “Which part?” Tone asked.

  “Who’s Moses? And your father’s real name is Carlos?” I asked.

  “No one calls him by that name.”

  “Father Rueben just did.”

  “Father Rueben is the oldest son. He can do as he pleases. No one else would be foolish enough to call the old man by his name as such. Moses was once Pops’s best friend.”

  “Was?”

  “He’s dead now.”

  “Oh. And Caltrone had something to do with that?”

  “More or less.”

  “And what is it about Uncle Savoy that makes my flesh crawl?”

  Tone sighed. “For starters, he’s a sociopath with a narcissistic personality disorder. And he has a weird fetish for collecting women.”

  “How is that any different from what your father does? Doesn’t Caltrone have a harem of women at his beck and call?”

  “Uncle Savoy collects women. The emphasis is on collect. He doesn’t procreate or have sex with them. He just collects them. He calls them his porcelain dolls. So, think of it this way: he has a house full of dolls.”

  I guessed by the way Tone shook his head as he watched me that my face showed my disgust or disdain, whichever was etched on my features at the moment. “How?” I asked, still aghast afterward.

  Tone shrugged. “I don’t know the particulars, but it’s always best if a woman doesn’t stare at him too hard or too long. Once he gets it in his head that you want him or that you’re making fun of him, you’re pretty much fucked.”

  “So he’s a serial killer?”

  Tone took a deep breath and sighed. “No. None of those women he collects are dead. They probably wish they were though.”

  For a moment, I sat there, puzzled as hell about what I’d just heard. I couldn’t form another question to ask even if I wanted to. So I didn’t. I didn’t think Tone was in the mood to talk anyway. He sat down in one of the plush seats on the private plane. The scowl on his face would stop the devil in his tracks. We still had a huge problem. Our daughter was missing.

  “So we’re headed back to Atlanta?” I asked after we had been in the air for a while.

  “I’m not sure what move Pops is about to make next. I know I’m anxious and I won’t be able to take this shit for much longer,” Tone said.

  I could feel his tension, the angst. Shit, I knew what he was feeling because I felt it too. Every time I took a breath, I thought about Jewel. I thought about what her body had endured. Wondered what this shit would do to her mind. As her mother, just knowing the things that had happened and what could be happening to her was enough to drive me mad.

  We landed in Atlanta a few hours later. I would have said it felt good to be back home but in no way did it feel good. My daughter wasn’t here with me. We had been all over the world it seemed only for it to bring us back to Atlanta. I wasn’t even sure she was here anymore.

  The private airport was alive with life. Men and women dressed in all black flanked the plane. Most had guns on their person. Others rushed to flank Caltrone as soon as he stepped off the plane.

  Caltrone barked out orders as he took powerful strides toward a black SUV. “I need every available body we have in Atlanta at the safe house no later than nine in the morning,” he ordered, his strong baritone laced with a tone that said he meant business. “Nobody and I mean nobody should be late. Are we clear?”

  The woman he had been speaking to nodded. “Would that include your grandson Damien, senor?”

  Caltrone stopped then scowled down at the woman. “What part of ‘every available body’ did you misunderstand, Danielle?” he asked her.

  She nodded, lowered her eyes, and rushed off. Tone helped me into the truck after Caltrone got in. I was so out of it that the name “Damien” didn’t quite register with my senses yet. We were all silent for a moment. Caltrone looked to be so deep in thought, I didn’t even think he was with us in mind. What his brother Savoy had said to him really shook him to the core. Or could it have been that the threat of whoever these Knights were rattled Caltrone’s cage as well?

  Either way, none of it mattered more than getting Jewel back.

  “I have some information,” Caltrone said once we were all in the truck.

  “Let us hear it,” Tone said.

  “Damien has seen your daughter,” Caltrone said.

  “Damien? Damien Orlando?” I yelled. My heart sped up. Damien was a pimp and if he had gotten a hold of my daughter . . . I let my thoughts trail off. I couldn’t fathom even thinking about that possibility.

  “How do you know?” Tone asked. He had leaned forward, concern etched on his features.

  Caltrone said, “I had her picture passed around when you first came to me. He told me someone brought her to him to sell her before he knew it was her.”

  “So why didn’t he reach out to someone?”

  Tone’s question confused me. “He didn’t know it was her,” I said.

  “Bullshit,” Tone snapped at me. “An Orlando always knows another Orlando,” he said to me then turned back to his father. “So why didn’t this nigga reach out to someone and ask some fucking questions?”

  “Antonio, calm yourself,” Caltrone said.

  “I am fucking calm. When did he see her?”

  Caltrone took a deep inhale. “It was as recent as last week.”

  Tone’s whole body shook violently before he yelled, “And this is after you had already put out a BOLO? And that nigga didn’t think to—”

  “Antonio,” Caltrone yelled his name, his accent thick.

  “Fuck you, old man. That nigga Dame has seen Jewel, has been in her fucking presence. She is an Orlando. One Orlando always knows another. It has been that way since we became a faction. One Orlando is never in another’s presence without us knowing who they are even if we have never seen them before. It is the way of the Orlandos. I’m going to kill this nigga,” Tone roared then started rocking back and forth.

  “You will do no such thing. Damien can point us in the right direction,” Caltrone said sternly. “We need him alive.”

  I knew Tone was livid. He had gone from Harvard to hood in his vernacular within seconds. My soul was tired and scared. I was shaking so badly that my teeth ground. Jewel had been close. So fucking close. How dare Damien play with her life?

  “I have already spoken to Damien about this. Once he learned that Kenya was the mother of your child, I suppose his anger at his father being put away and subsequently murdered clouded his better judgment. We need him alive, mijo. Atlanta is his domain. He can tell us who and where,” Caltrone continued.

  Tone cut his eyes at his father. “Then you had best keep him away from me.”

  * * *

  The next morning, I sat next to Tone in a mansion near Alpharetta. Being in a room full of Orlandos and their relatives made my flesh crawl. There were so damn many. All the men were similar in looks. No matter if they had olive complexions, brown skin, black skin, or caramel skin, they all had that Orlando look to them. Even the ugly ones were appealing. However, the ruthlessness that emanated from them couldn’t be denied. They all spoke to Tone. Smiles were on their faces. Most of the women treated him like royalty. Everyone was shocked to see him for the most part, but the general consensus was they were happy he was home, so to speak.

  Tone took it all in stride. He never smiled but he acknowledged everyone. He gave a nod here, gave a wave of the hand there. But he never sa
id more than two words to anyone but me. He seemed to be cool, calm, and collected, until Damien Orlando walked into the room.

  That could have been because I stiffened. My whole spine went rigid. That man had tried to help his father kill me. I’d never forget the boy in the hoodie warning me to leave my office. Damien was every bit of Lu, his father. He walked with an arrogance that could be matched only by Caltrone. In his hand was a cane that I was sure hid a sword on the inside. Damien was dressed in a tailored Armani suit that fit his athletic frame perfectly. It was easy to see how he was so successful at being a pimp. Women flocked to him like stank on shit.

  The man carried an all-knowing smirk on his face as he walked to the long dining table and took a seat across from me and Tone. His smirk deepened when he laid eyes on me. Tone bristled. Damien noticed and turned his gaze to his uncle.

  “What’s up, Uncle Tone?” he spoke. Damien’s voice carried a sexy but deadly undertone. “How did you manage to get this bitch in your stable?”

  Tone sat forward, his eyes cold and unmoving. “If you value your life, it would do you good not to say another fucking word to me.”

  The room got silent. All eyes were on us. There was a chill in the air when Damien’s smile turned from a smirk to a full-on grin. He showed all thirty-two of his perfectly white teeth. His light eyes sparkled with evil intent. “Or what?” Damien challenged.

  “Or what your father got in prison will be considered child’s play once I’m done playing with your entrails.”

  Damien’s grin left his face. A scowl took up residence. “You threaten me when I’m the one who passed up on whoring your daughter?”

  Before the words finished leaving Damien’s mouth, Tone had jumped across the table. Dishes went flying; broken glass and falling utensils could be heard hitting the floor. Tone had tackled Damien. I wasn’t sure who threw the first punch, but the men in the family rushed in to pull them apart before any real damage could be done.

  Tone had a knife in his hand and Damien was bleeding from his neck. I didn’t know the men holding Tone back, but they were family. The Orlando eyes didn’t lie.

  Damien’s eyes widened when one of the women screamed and started cussing in Spanish. She was calling Antonio crazy. She kept yelling that she couldn’t believe he had tried to kill family.

  “You shut the fuck up or I’ll come for you next,” Tone yelled as he pointed the bloody knife at her.

  The woman gasped and jumped back. She clamped her mouth shut but stared at Antonio like he was the devil incarnate. Damien rubbed his neck where he had a fresh cut and then looked from his hand to Tone.

  Tone turned the knife back to Damien. “You’re lucky they pulled me off in time or I would have ended you. Don’t fuck with me, Dame. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not fucking ever,” Tone spat.

  “I didn’t know she was your daughter until Grandpops showed me a picture, you irate motherfucker,” Dame shot back. “Even so, I had enough sense to pass on her when she was brought to me. You should be thanking me, nigga. I could have made her just another Orlando whore”—Dame turned to look at me—“just like her mother.”

  I kept thinking about how close Jewel had been to being rescued, how easy it would have been for Dame to take action and bring my baby home. Yet, he’d done nothing. All because he felt like he had to get some kind of revenge against me. All because of me, my baby was still out there somewhere. Now it was my turn to lose what little grip I had on reality. I couldn’t jump across the table like Tone had done, but Dame was close enough for me to spit on. So that was what I did. I spat right in his face. Fuck him. Fuck him and his demon-possessed father. I hoped Lu Orlando was rotting in hell.

  A few people in the room gasped. Dame’s whole face turned red, and I knew when he checked out of reality. I didn’t know much about the man, but judging by the way disgust overtook his features, I knew I’d angered him. He reached out to grab me. Tone broke loose from the men holding him. I tried to wrestle free of Damien. He was so busy trying to choke me that when the butt of the knife Tone was holding caught his face, he didn’t know what had hit him.

  Chapter 15

  Antonio

  “Motherfucker, have you lost your goddamn mind?” I roared as the back of my blade made contact. “I will erase you.”

  “Ha ha! Damn, I forgot how mad Uncle could be,” Dame taunted between my punches.

  Fury had me going in on my nephew. At this point, I gave not a damn that I was going against the grain and taking out my vengeance in front of family, against a family member. This shit was fair exchange because if my daughter died due to something he could have stopped, then his right to life would be forfeited.

  “Listen as I tell you this one more time, nephew . . .” How do you put a monster in his place and make him feel it in his black soul? A small part of me didn’t know at one time. Now, everything was different. A bastard with the same blood as me, the blood of the head of our family of monsters, the devil himself, lay under my foot. The pressure of it had Damien choking. His fingers clawed at my shoe as I pressed down on his throat.

  We all were aware of how much Damien liked to play sadistic mind games. How much he got off on his masochistic ways. Everyone here turned a blind eye to it, until me. The one thing that he was not going to do was put family in harm’s way and get away with it. Not with me. Not my daughter and not the mother of my child. Damien was not and never would be his grandfather, my father, and I aimed to teach him that.

  “What you’re not going to do is touch what is mine, feel me?” Slipping from my lips was pure ice, seething hatred for this waste of cum pumped from my brother’s dick. “Not again. You disrespected this family by allowing an enemy to this family to have my daughter. Strike one. Then you come for my wife, again? Strike two.”

  Damien gagged but he wickedly smiled as he did so. As if he were enjoying this crap. The shit pissed me off so much that I pressed harder, close to getting a snap. I was at the edge and if killing him threw everything out of order, at this point, I truly didn’t give a fuck. The devil in me was coming out more every day, and I had that legacy straight from the pure tap, unlike my nephew. Watered-down-ass nigga he was. Close in age we may have been, but that did nothing for me in retaining loyalty to his putrid blood. He allowed my daughter to be taken. Played with the idea of selling her off, all for his own machinations.

  Today wasn’t the day that I was just going to let him off without showing him how much like my father I could be. Without a thought to the matter, I pressed down again, swiped his favorite cane, and slammed the end of it against his face. The satisfying sound of pain he made had me unlock it, and pull out its blade.

  I knew his secrets. I had been there for a short while when his father was the first to learn them. Wasn’t shit original in Damien’s style except that it was a pale imitation of the better model. From what I was hearing anyway, his brother Dante was the one carrying on the legacy of a devil better than this asshole right here. But, that was just me being the motherfucker I could be by minimalizing the insane genius that ran through all of us.

  “Dame.” Something like sick, dark laughter came from my soul. It had me toying with my nephew, giving him back what he gave out in energy to us all. Pure, unadulterated insanity. There was something in me that would get joy from dismantling his body, limb from limb, and peeling his flesh from him, layer by layer.

  The demon in me flashed across my face in a quick, twisted grin, and showed itself to let Damien know that I could be my father in every way imaginable. If pushed, I could be a sicker bastard then Damien could ever be. The humanity in me was the only thing that was keeping me on a calm level higher than that of my father.

  “Strike three will mean your death. I might not be able to kill you right now because we need you but, one day, if it’s not me, one of your many whores is going to show you just how much of a dickless motherfucker you really are and cut your shit off then feed it to you.”

  The fire in me had me momentari
ly glancing around the room at the rest of my family with a “try me if you want to” stare. This was my moment. If anyone outside of my father tried to challenge me, then they were going to get the same treatment.

  As I focused back on the piece of shit under my feet, my lip curled up in a sinister snarl. “You don’t rouse your elder’s strife, nephew, and think nothing will happen to you when you do. This act of yours will never be forgotten or forgiven.” That blade of his glinted in my hand as if in sync with my rage. “I’ll personally skin you alive, do you understand me? Entiendes?”

  Dame tapped my foot and I eased up. Of course, he swiped at me, leaving a thin line of blood on my jaw. Where he came up with that blade, I really didn’t know. I was about to feed him my fist when I heard my father’s cough. Both of us stopped our scuffle with me pinning him again, face against the floor, hand against the side of his face.

  My ribs were sore from where he punched me hard and kicked me. He could hold his own. He probably could have killed me but he didn’t. When Dame locked eyes with me again, I knew what he was going to do before he did it, which was why I gave a sharp laugh and playfully, yet forcefully, slapped the side of his head. My fingers dug in to shake his skull as I stepped back, challenging him with a hard stare to try it again.

  Caltrone’s slow stroll between us had me stepping back farther. He glanced between the two of us, his hands tucked behind the small of his jacket-covered back. Like the man he was, he spoke to us with superiority, shutting down our brawl without flexing one finger.

  “Let this go. Enough time has been wasted on elementary emotions; and punishment will be handed out for the blatant disrespect toward our family code. But, until then, step back. Entiendes?”

  Of course, when my old man laid down the law, we all listened. I moved toward Kenya and positioned myself in a manner that blocked her from any attack from Dame. A deep, rattling cough came from Dame. He casually took his time in brushing off his Armani tailored suit, as if what went down was just another ordinary day. However, being that the fuck boy had OCD, I knew his nerves were on edge from the imaginary dirt he felt was on him, along with his blood and Kenya’s now-drying spit.