by Brick
We took a loose dirt road until we got to a small farm. There was an aging red barn in the back of the bungalow-style house that had four armed men guarding it. The land looked as if it hadn’t been used in some time. Most of the grass was a brownish yellow. The faint smell of horse crap clung to the air. Two old cars had cinder blocks for tires. Pecan and peach trees sat about. They looked bare.
Benita slowed the truck down. Tone was so anxious to get to the men that he didn’t wait for her to fully stop the truck. He jumped out, and didn’t wait for me either. Each stride he took was more powerful than the last. Once Benita parked, I hopped out of the truck and rushed to catch up with Antonio. I was just as anxious as he was until I saw the faces of two of the young men guarding the barn.
I’d seen the big one and the other young man before. His locs were a little longer but I’d never forget that face. As usual, he had on a hoodie. His face held a dispassionate look, but there was an aura around him that said he wasn’t to be taken lightly. He was a little on the skinny side, but definitely stockier than the last time I’d seen him. He watched me from underneath his hood. Hands in his pocket, he turned to look at his boss.
I could hear men screaming in the barn. It sounded as if their souls were being ripped from their bodies.
“Who’s inside, Trigga?” Dame asked the boy in the hoodie.
“Enzo,” Trigga said.
Dame smiled. It was so wicked that it chilled me. He looked at his grandfather, who I noticed had donned latex gloves and a surgeon’s mask. “A boy after your own heart,” he said to Caltrone.
I had no idea what he meant by that, but once the big, beefy guard slid the barn door open, I got my answer. One of the men was hanging in the air. There was something that looked like a double-ended pitchfork. One end was pushed under the man’s chin and the other to the sternum. There was a strap used to secure the man’s neck to the tool as he hung from the ceiling.
“When’s the last time that man has slept?” Tone asked as he moved closer.
“Answer him, Enzo,” Dame ordered.
The boy slipped the Nightwings cap back and looked over at us. I almost gasped. It was another gotdamned Orlando. How young did they start training these motherfuckers to be so damned evil? Yes, Enzo was an Orlando, but it was as if there was a calm nature about the boy. He reminded me of Tone, which probably meant his mother had kept him away for as long as she could before the Orlandos came claiming what was theirs.
Judging by the way Caltrone tilted his head and looked at the boy, I knew I was right. However, Enzo didn’t even look at Caltrone. He focused on Tone.
“The purpose of the device is so he can’t sleep. If he does, the prongs will pierce his throat and chest. Nigga didn’t want to talk. Since he won’t talk, he won’t sleep, not unless he wants to die,” Enzo answered.
Damien smiled like he was a teacher proud of his student.
“A heretics fork,” Tone said.
Enzo nodded. Tone studied the kid.
I could tell Tone was thinking along the same lines I was. One Orlando knew another one. Any other time, Tone would have probably been lucid enough to question why Damien had two kids doing this kind of dirty work, but not today. Today we came to learn the whereabouts of our daughter. That was all that mattered.
“The other one was more pliable,” Enzo said.
I walked over to the other table. There was a silver instrument on the table that looked like an expensive rattler. It looked as if molten lead and tar had been sprinkled on the man’s face, eyes, and stomach. The man was breathing raggedly as he shivered and shook on the glass table. He was bound by his ankles and wrists. A gaping hole had been burned through the man’s guts. I could have sworn I was able to see vital organs in the man’s abdomen on display. And the smell was so putrid, bile rose to my throat.
“You used a lead sprinkler on this man?” Tone asked Enzo.
He answered without blinking, “I did.” There was no pride in Enzo’s voice. More like he was content in the role he had been given.
“What did he tell you?” Tone asked.
“Said once Dame didn’t want to buy the girl, they dropped her back off to the head nigga. Last he heard, they were headed to Augusta.”
“You believe him, kid?”
“I believe he told me all he knows. But the nigga hanging up there knows more.”
Just as Enzo said that, there was a loud clap that rang through the air. The man’s yelps and screams made me whip my head around. Dame had put some gloves and a surgical mask on. In his hand was a two-by-four that had nails protruding from it. He’d hit the man so hard that the plank was now stuck in the middle of his back. The man’s body jerked violently as blood trickled down his ass crack.
Caltrone handed Dame another two-by-four. Dame walked around to the front of the man. “Care to talk?” he taunted him.
The man said nothing. I didn’t think he could talk, he was in so much pain.
Dame took a stance like he was about to hit a homerun. This time, he hit the man right in the abdomen. Again, the two-by-four stuck into the man’s flesh. Tone picked up the lead sprinkler and made a move toward the man, but Caltrone held out a hand to stop him.
“Allow Damien to do the dirty work for his insolence earlier,” he said.
Tone laid the torture device back on the table and watched on. I was quiet. In my own head I was trying to figure out how much of the information we had been told so far was useful. Had he taken our daughter to Savannah or Augusta? Had she been violated again, by different men? There was no doubt in my mind that all her innocence was gone. Being raped changed a girl. I never thought we’d be here. I worked hard and Tone worked hard to ensure that Jewel would never have to go through what I did. And, yet, here we were.
Chapter 17
Father Rueben
Back in Fresno, California . . .
As I knelt at my altar, I felt my soul was bogged down. Being born into a family that was inherently evil wasn’t something I was proud of. I abhorred it. Yet, when my brother, Carlos, came calling, I always answered. It was the way of the Orlandos. To not do so would be blasphemous in the family’s eyes and, sadly, my own.
It was in our blood to answer when called upon by family. It was like some kind of innate sixth sense within the Orlandos. Sometimes I detested my younger brother. No, sometimes I hated him. I’d had many confessionals about him. However, I couldn’t hate what he was because he was I and I was he. We were cut from the same cloth. Endured the same kind of abuse at the hands of our father.
My hate for him deepened when he befriended Moses Ekejindu. Carlos had been able to escape the madness that was our home. He found a family who wasn’t repulsed by the sight of him. Found a friend who genuinely loved him for who he was. I was the elder son. My fate had already been sealed. No one looked at me without seeing our father. The people in our small town hated me, but they feared our father. They feared the light brown–skinned man who stood six feet six with a temper that would put the fear of God into God Himself.
I didn’t understand how Carlos could find the love of family and friend and yet turn out like the man who was our father. I’d always thought that if we could all just find someone, some adult to love us, we’d be different. I was wrong. Caltrone had found that love and, in the end, he ended up just like the man.
A loud tapping against my door brought me out of my thoughts.
“Father Rueben, you have guests, sir,” Father Delaney said.
“Who is it, Father?” I asked.
“It is Emmanuel Knight, sir.”
I stood and straightened my priest robes. My spine stiffened and my face became unreadable. It was time to be about my father’s business.
Chapter 18
Antonio
There was nothing but the sound of my boots meeting dirt blending in with the shrill sound of a sharp scream. The clandestine clink of chains rattling, along with Dame’s occasional manic rumble of a chuckle, were in the background.
Like a smooth soundtrack, both created a rhythm that provided a sinister song marking me as what I was: an Orlando. This was hell. But I’d never let on.
None of the men here would ever see the revulsion etched inside my blackening soul. Not in the reflection of the emotions in my eyes. Not in my body language. No. I remembered and reflected what I was taught: to be a blank slate of controlled emotions. It was strange enough with the young kids surrounding us, soaking up everything like a sponge, especially the one named Enzo. I could feel a connection with them, that they were like me. We all were just surviving.
However, emotion was formulated in vengeance and rooted in evil.
I was ready to go after my daughter, but nothing was making sense. Dame had said the men heard them mention that Keith was heading to Savannah, yet this motherfucker who was strung up mentioned Augusta. The fact that we were even in the same state as my daughter and her kidnapper riled my soul. I wanted to blaze a burning trail through all of Georgia just to get my child back, but I understood that action would be a brazen, reckless one. I was better than that, smarter than that, and now with so much blood on my hands, more calculating than that.
No. It was time to make Keith show his own hand. The fact that he let these two live showed that he was borderline sloppy due to running out of connections. That was our genius in snipping away at his network. There’d be no goons in Mexico or Texas who could help him. The only thing that was keeping him as hidden as he was, I felt, was his link to the Knights, however deep that was. Which brought me around to my father.
He stood back, akimbo, but with his arms crossed over his chest. There was a deep pride in what was going on here. A small part of me was disgusted; however, growing up around his mythos dictated that this was who he was. Even watching him in his element, I knew it was just ingrained in my father’s bones: pride over the eradication of weakness and underlings all in the name of Orlando. With that in mind, I rested a hand against my father’s shoulder and spoke low against his ear.
I was ready to get this done and, strangely, the hippie Robin Thicke was holding up against Dame’s torture antics. Must have been all the coke running through the idiot’s system. When my father gave a nod at my request, he pulled out his cell phone and began making contact. Stepping away, I moved to Kenya, who stood as far away from the scene as possible. The shadows of the barn cloaked her in a veil of blackness. She reminded me of Morticia Addams because the light seemed to shine only around her eyes.
This whole world was changing her. I wasn’t a fool in seeing that. We both had been ripped down to the primordial core of ourselves, letting whatever evil that lived there manifest itself. There was no pride in that at all, which had me reflect on the tone of the budding torturer, Enzo. He had removed himself from the scene, standing close to the two young henchmen Dame had brought with him. All three flanked the door of the barn and watched on with stoic expressions.
The kid with the locs and hoodie had his head bowed in a manner where you’d think he wasn’t watching, but staring at his feet. However, something in me knew that wasn’t the case. His shadow, the big, quarterback-looking brother, stood as if he were a bouncer ready to take on whatever came his way. While Enzo . . .
Everything about him screamed Orlando. I mean, he had a different look to him where, if I didn’t know what I was looking for, I wouldn’t have guessed he was one. Kind of like myself. The tattoos on the side of his neck and hands kind of obscured the signature Orlando looks in him, along with the eyebrow piercing and the medium-large earlobe plugs he sported. He’d slightly fade to the back if no one was paying attention. However, his work on our two friends hanging in the barn stated otherwise.
A part of me wanted to tell each of those kids to run away, to find another hustle out of Atlanta and never again allow themselves to be found by my family but, of course, I didn’t. We all made choices that linked up in this game. It wasn’t my place to fuck with it, because there was no saving to be had here. I grew up with that mantra and when my father found my mother and me years later, that reality became etched in stone.
I prayed the kid wasn’t what I thought he was, because my father’s fascination was already showing. Quietly studying the three, when Enzo shifted his cap down over his eyes and crossed his arms to mirror the bigger guy’s stance, I turned my attention away from them and back to Kenya.
“You should go back to the car. It’s only going to become messier.”
Kenya’s gaze focused up at me. She had that dark look of madness in them with a touch of exhaustion. There was going to be no turning her away from journeying down this path with me. She already got blood on her hands. I guessed she now wanted to bathe in it.
“Please.” She softly scoffed. “You have a collection of body parts traveling with us, Tone. I was there when you appraised them. This is nothing.”
Clearly, she was lying and putting up a façade for my sake. I honestly commended her for that but, at the same time, I worried about her because of that. In a sick way, this whole situation had brought us closer together. I wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing, or where it was going to lead us. I just understood that, all for the sake of our daughter, she had done something I once thought was unattainable. I just hoped that it didn’t ruin her.
“Is there anything you need me to ask them on your behalf?”
Our voices were low in a manner where it almost didn’t seem as if we were actually interacting. If you glanced our way, you’d think we were enthralled with how Dame had the hippie sniffling and begging. I waited for Kenya to speak up. Her unrelenting silence made me wonder just exactly what she was thinking. Was she mentally dismantling the two who attempted to sell our daughter to Dame on behalf of Keith? Or was she thinking of something else entirely?
Such as her fiancé. From how her cell phone kept vibrating on the ride over, I assumed that it was him. Her electing not to answer didn’t surprise me in the least. We were at war and him checking on her just wasn’t equating to the overall picture. I mean, I didn’t blame the brotha for reaching out but, if he trusted her, he needed to keep as safely away as possible. Something in me had me smirking in thought.
If he trusts her? My shaft low-key hardened at the reality of that trust, the consequences of that trust, which had her here with me. I had her in the most biblical of ways because of his trust of her. But though the dog in me wanted to gloat about the fact that I still had that power over her and she over me, it was quickly tucked away at the sounds of screaming.
“I don’t know anything. We . . .” Mr. Hippie’s teeth were chattering. Part of his eyelid was sliced to the juicy, fleshy matter resulting in a swollen, bulging eye with drying rust-colored liquid dripping down his face. “We owed him. Had no choice to deliver . . . h . . . her.”
No one was ever innocent in this shit. So, I didn’t believe him. When he started to jerk and twitch like he was on drugs, I reached up to clasp my chin. That’s when I heard Kenya’s soft voice.
“Huh? Repeat yourself, baby,” I said while glancing down at her.
“Did they touch her? Did they rape her? Ask them that.”
Jaw clenching, I gave a nod. “I will.”
More chains rattled. Dame laughed an evil laugh. One that made my flesh crawl. “Yeah, right, homeboy,” he said in amusement. Running his gloved hands over a table of utensils, he clicked his tongue then picked up a thin metal barb.
With no thought to anything but my daughter, I took several strides forward and bent forward with my hands resting behind my back and I whispered to my nephew. His soulless eyes narrowed. A thumb swiped his nose, then he leaned back, head tilted as if he had been offended by what I shared, which were the full details behind what Keith had done to our daughter.
I knew that he didn’t like what he’d heard by the way he abruptly stopped smiling. It was one thing for him to test the waters and cause us pain by entertaining the thought of selling our daughter, and making her his. It was a mark of showing his power by allowing
Keith to take her again, but hearing about how Keith treated her was another thing.
I shook my head, then took some steps back for my nephew to handle business. Dame was a fucking nut and it worked to our favor because he was able to work out a second location where these two met up with Keith. Sloppy, sloppy. Or a setup.
“I hear your boy, your boss, has a reputation for touching what isn’t his and allowing his ‘boys’”—the last word was accentuated with a midair quotation—“to sample the same goods as him. You owed him, a’ight. I get that, but touch her? Touch my blood? No. That I don’t understand.”
Mr. Hippie began fighting again. His head lolled to the side in a deep drop. My hand reached up in a vise grip. The fires of hell bore into his droopy gaze.
That’s when he tiredly drawled, “Oh, shit. Dude. Just kill me. Please.”
I looked Kenya’s way. We knew that was an answer to her question.
Dame chuckled. His fiddling fingers held up a thin steel barb spike. “Now, why would I do that when I enjoy our conversation? Besides, I think that you’ll love this penetration.”
A sharp, ear-splitting scream erupted through the barn. Dame took that barb and meticulously ran it through Mr. Hippie’s urethral opening, pushing it all the way back then curving it down near his sacs. I watched as Dame twisted that barb and blood leaked everywhere. All this fool had to do was open his mouth and talk but, of course, he and his friend had to stay tight-lipped. Their fault. This shit wasn’t going to end anytime soon, especially once I got my hands on Keith.
The sound of a door opening behind where Dame’s crew stood caught my attention. I glanced to see the door being held open. Standing outside of it, from how he was positioned, no one would really notice the tall cop in all black. He wore a helmet that obscured his face. I knew near the covered side of his neck were the Cuban and U.S. flags merging as one. If he took that helmet off, locs would fall out. The one member of this fucking family I embraced as my own blood, Fuego, stood outside. He nodded my way, and I returned the same.