Best Laid Plans

by Brick

  “Are you ready?” Tone asked as he walked into the room.

  We were preparing to leave Cuba to head back to Miami. We’d left Atlanta on the first thing smoking back to Cuba. Caltrone had ordered an extraction of sorts. We buried Jewel in a cemetery next to all her ancestors. She had a beautiful home going. One that I was barely there, mentally, for. It wasn’t until they lowered her all-white and golden-trimmed casket into the ground that I completely lost it. Tone had to sedate me. He knew me so well that he’d known to bring what he needed to the burial.

  “No. I have no desire to go back home. I don’t want to leave her here,” I said.

  I looked out at the landscape. Cuba, this part of Cuba, the part Caltrone had carved out for himself, was beautiful. However, all I kept seeing was that farmhouse in Augusta. I kept seeing that woman come from the shadows like the grim reaper. As the trees rocked and swayed outside and the smell of rain penetrated the air, I was numb. Gray clouds took over the sky and thunder clapped in the distance.

  “You have a life you left behind. You probably should get back to it. You can’t stay holed up in this room like my father is in that basement,” he said.

  Tone’s voice was low. Sadness emanated from him like it did from me and Carmen. Carmen had fainted at the news of her only grandchild being shot down like a rabid dog after all she had endured. The woman fainted and, once she awakened, she had to be told again that Jewel was gone and she wasn’t coming back. I’d never seen the utter look of horror on that woman’s face before and I never wanted to again.

  However, nothing broke me down the way Tone’s tears had. The way he had fallen to his knees when we were alone, laid his forehead to the floor, and sobbed. His wails and tears, the way he apologized to me for failing me, for failing our daughter, broke me down some more. He cried. I cried. We mourned together.

  I turned to look at him. “I don’t have a life anymore. My child lies in rest here.”

  Tone watched me. He watched me the way a man watches a woman he cares for but whose mental well-being he worries about. Dressed in all black, the only color he’d worn since Jewel’s death, he gazed at me. His eyes were red. His shoulders were kind of slumped, but he tried to be strong for me and Carmen.

  “What about Isaac? What about the bakery?”

  “I don’t care about Isaac or the bakery. I called Isaac and told him to go to hell. I told him to fuck off and never call me again. All he cared about was if I was screwing you. Once I get back to Miami, I’ll tell him to his face. I’ll sell the shop.”

  “Don’t sell the shop. She, Jewel, loved that place. Don’t sell the shop.”

  He was right. Jewel did love the shop. She loved when I thought of a new cupcake recipe. I would always remember her smile when she would come in after school with her friends. I wouldn’t sell the shop. “I won’t sell the shop,” I said.

  I walked over to Tone, not sure about life anymore. Not sure of almost anything. But what I was sure of was that Caltrone Orlando had been right. All his philosophies and the way he thought about life in general had been right. No matter how much good you do, none of it mattered. Evil would find you and evil would have its way with you.

  So, now the chips would fall where they may. I would do all the things Caltrone had asked of me. I would be that criminal-minded attorney at law. I wouldn’t be a bad guy. I wouldn’t be a good guy. I would be what life had made me to be: criminally insane.

  So, I laid my head on Tone’s chest. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t cry anymore. I listened to him tell me that his father was doing badly. Tone told me he had seen the old man in a way he hadn’t ever seen him before. Caltrone had been played. Caltrone had been bested. Caltrone had lost.

  “The old man is broken,” Tone had said.

  “He didn’t know her,” I said.

  “But I’m his son, his prodigal son. The son who came back home because I needed his help and he failed me like I failed you, like I failed Jewel. Uncle Rueben told us some things. Said it had all been a ploy. Said that Keith had planned it all from the beginning. Keith was a Knight. He had cameras set up in that house so that the bed he kept Jewel on was in a blind spot. So, there had been no way they could see what he had done to Jewel. The feed was sent to the Knights’ headquarters. There was no sound. So it looked as if Pops and I were torturing Keith for fun. Looks as if we killed Caitlyn because she was trying to defend Keith. Keith did all of this because he thought Caltrone killed his grandfather. It wasn’t Caltrone who killed him.”

  I shook my head. Couldn’t listen to any more of this. I didn’t want to hear any more about how the supposed sins of Tone’s father had killed our only child. “So, now what? We retaliate, right?” I asked.

  Tone nodded. “But not right now. We wait. We plan. They’re expecting a war right now.”

  “For how long do we wait?”

  “Uncle Rueben said we wait until they least expect us. It could be a month from now. Could be a year from now. Could be years from now, but we wait. We wait and we plan. That’s two families Pops will have to fend off sooner or later. The Kulu Kings and the Knights. The Kings have all right to come after Pops, but Uncle Rueben and my aunt just revealed something to me that will surely bring Pops and the Kings back to the table to have peace talks. However, that’s another time and another story. We have to worry about the Knights now. Now, we do whatever Pops asks of us. We become those people we didn’t want to become.”

  So much had been said, almost too much to process. I was about to say as much until my stomach lurched. I tried to rush to the bathroom but ended up throwing up all over the floor on my way to the toilet. I’d been doing that a lot for the past two weeks. Thought it was because of the grief of losing my daughter, but when I looked at the pregnancy test on the counter everything changed. During our brief affair, Tone and I had created another child. I’d only taken the test a few minutes before. Had asked Tiffany to get it for me.

  Tone followed me to the bathroom. “You okay? Need me to get you something?” he asked.

  I pointed to the counter as I emptied my stomach.

  Epilogue

  Antonio

  Three Years Later . . .

  “Y é chate pa’ca ¡Guaya, guaya! Eso me gusta, eso me encanta como tú me lo haces, papi a mi me pone sata . . .”

  My attention focused on the robin blue Caddy that carelessly drove by blasting reggaetón, clueless of the evils of the world. The sun was blazing bright. There was a breeze that caressed my nose with the scent of the fresh sea and palm trees. In that Caddy were four people. All young, all slick from what I assumed was beach fun. Each one was in a string bikini or board shorts, dancing and twerking in the Caddy. Their music trailed up to where I stood on the balcony of my high-rise security condo. A part of me would enjoy the energy they kicked off. But the new me saw them as vain idiots who were clueless about the evil realities of the world. If they crashed, I wouldn’t give a damn. I’d probably toast them in a salute and continue watching from my view.

  A light giggle stilled my darkening thoughts.

  Jewel, Daddy misses you.

  Clearly, our life had changed. Where I was living with an open sore in my heart, the soul that I once had was locked away, leaving only a hanging shard in its place. That shard belonged to the only lifeline I had now, Kenya and our little girl. I turned to see my wife watching me from the bed we now shared. Crinkled white linen sheets framed her as if she were Venus rising from the sea.

  Her nut brown skin was golden from the sun. Her bountiful, swollen breasts and her thighs, legs, calves, and feet were lightly covered in the sheen of our sex. She was emotionless, except for the hand that caressed the swollen belly that protected our growing children within: twins, a boy and a girl. Both futures promised, like our second child, to be protected by my and Kenya’s deal with my father to be full Orlandos.

  I lied. When she connected her broken, dark gaze at me, a spark of light was there. It matched my own and in tandem they faded into the
solemn bleakness of our shared first loss. Since the murder of our baby girl, everything changed in a way neither she nor I could have predicted. Kenya left behind almost everything she had with Isaac. I insisted that she stay with me, only because I knew that if either of us was alone for too long, we both would be swallowing the barrel of a gun.

  That reality made the transition easier for us. In the beginning, we weren’t focused upon rekindling our relationship, but we were together, so to speak. At that time, we were two people locked in similar pain and loss with old love and memories keeping us together. So, I guessed that made us a couple. We had no label. We weren’t in that type of thought process to even go there, but now three years and a beautiful daughter named Serenity later, I openly called her my wife. She was mine.

  Kenya kept the bakery open, having it run by family, then she opened another one, naming it after Jewel too. The bakeries were her homage to our daughter. Her other life as a criminal lawyer was her crossroads in the light and dark as an Orlando. Her award-winning skills were far-reaching. She had saved a group of children being trafficked to Atlanta in a semi truck while burying, literally, the men who had collected them.

  As for myself, I became a sought-after surgeon, top in the nation. My skills led me to open a clinic that helped not only the community and incoming immigrants, but all Orlando fronts. Because of our life in Miami, both of us stacked legit and shifty money to the point that we were multimillionaires. However, we didn’t give a damn about it. It was just something to pass on to others, and our legacy.

  “How long will you be gone?” she asked.

  I turned Kenya’s way then walked slowly toward her with our daughter Serenity on my hip. My head bowed and I kissed the top of her soft, coiled ’fro, just like her mother’s. I loved this little girl with every inch of me. In her big eyes, I saw Jewel, but I also saw the unique spirit that was my baby girl Serenity. She helped make that shard in my spirit bigger, yet guarded. A cool breeze brushed around us, caressing us, causing my pants to quake. Kenya shifted and closed her eyes with the same caress of that breeze. I couldn’t help myself in thinking, in asking, Jewel, is that you?

  The weight of my body caused the bed to indent where I sat. I let go of Serenity and watched her crawl then curl up against her mother, seemingly relaxing peacefully. My wife shifted to kiss the top of her head and inhale her scent then hold her close while returning her attention to me. Only when Serenity was in her arms or when Kenya and I were making love did the old her surface.

  Watching on, I took Kenya’s small foot in my hands, allowing my palms to swallow it as I gently rubbed. “An hour. Two, stretching. You’ll be able to see everything once I’m there.”

  “And you’re sure they are there?”

  I bowed my head, and lifted her foot to my lips to kiss the top. “Yes. Father gave out the order so Uncle Savoy is waiting.”

  “Then don’t make him,” she said.

  “Of course.” Slowly standing, I looked down at her and our now-sleeping daughter. “I won’t.”

  * * *

  It didn’t take me long to meet with my legally insane uncle Savoy. I enjoyed the drive from Miami Beach to Flagler Beach. That same breeze seemed to stay with me, filling me with a comfort I hadn’t had in a long time.

  “Keep me covered in your grace, baby girl,” I muttered as I parked my convertible drop top. “Because I don’t deserve it.”

  Sun glinted against the surface of my sunglasses. Music thumped: a mixture of African beats and Haitian hip hop. I gave a nod to the beautiful, smiling people around me walking toward outside plantation ruins. My hand dropped slowly from my hat, then slid into the pocket of my linen suit pants.

  Women watched me in awe and I knew why: I had a clean face, my hair was cut low, and I was dressed in the style of a Miami businessman with the collar of my shirt open and buttoned down to show my smooth collarbone. My sepia-toned skin had that golden sun kiss that people envied. I trumped up that megawatt smile of mine, one that was a façade for the world, and I knew I smelled fuckable.

  Everything was a ploy. Everything was a trap meant to draw people in, and keep me unassuming. This allowed me to take in the schematics of the area: four groups of security flanked the area, my Uncle Savoy and cousins in the mix. We didn’t acknowledge each other and that was good.

  I strolled through, grinned, held the hands and wrists of many flirting women, then found my seat in the back. I was cordially invited to the wedding of Tamika LeMont, niece to the queen herself, Yasmine Knight. Young Tamika was to be married to Jeffery Knight, nephew to King Emmanuel. Ain’t love grand? Photographers flashed cameras. I happily posed in my seat for a few, my hat tilted forward to shield my eyes. I was here for a show and, look, it now was beginning.

  I checked my cell because it was kicking off its vibration. The old man left me an encrypted text telling me to fly back to Cuba with the family. I had two long-lost nephews to meet. Two young men who, I was told, reminded him of me. When I read that, I couldn’t help but think, I pray not. Loss can change a person and I wouldn’t have wished that on them at all. If anything, they needed to run and hide from this family or take us down. But, that was the old me whispering in my mind with that.

  Music played, people danced, ate, waiting. When the tune flipped to that standard wedding jam, a beautiful cocoa sister stepped out to sing in Haitian Creole. She had the look of the woman who’d killed my Jewel. Everyone here had the look of that bitch. Adjusting my jacket with one hand, I quietly sat and observed. The couple was beautiful walking down the aisle, both in all white, matching the scheme of light colors and white.

  The bride was a gorgeous dark cocoa, where her husband-to-be, standing and watching with his Kappa brothers, was the typical color of shea butter. The crowd was a nice, intimate medium size. It had to be, considering where the wedding was, which allowed for the next part of the wedding.

  The loud rat-a-tat-tat of a semiautomatic peppered the crowd. I sat back as everything went down like a Scarface film. Bodies quaked; others popped up then fell to the earth. A few tried to rush to see where the gunfire was coming from, but no one could see who was shooting. I sat with my fingers pressed against my mouth in a steeple. When a few eyes looked my way, I played the game and hunkered low trying to stay clear of the fire.

  “Nooo,” was screamed repeatedly in the crowd. “Please, stop,” followed.

  My hat low, I looked around waiting for the shots to stop. When they did, a slick smile spread across my face when I heard, “Help! Help. Please, someone, help!”

  “We need a doctor. Someone call the police.”

  “Daddy.”

  “Mommy.”

  Those two screams made my body tense immediately. I was suddenly back in Augusta. My baby girl was shot backward into her mother’s arms. Her face was forever frozen in shock. My baby girl, my world, Jewel . . .

  I found myself gripping a folding chair hard as the smoke cleared. Sweat trickled down my back until a sharp scream reverberated in my skull and brought me back to the present.

  “Help!”

  Slowly, I looked around. I walked forward with my hands up. “I’m a doctor. I can help. Allow me to help.”

  There were several people still living, some crowded to the right and left, others standing around the bloodied bride, groom, singer, and wedding party. Everything looked like a Renaissance painting. Streamers fell, as did a podium stand. With each step, I moved with purpose. As I moved closer, Uncle Savoy stepped in behind me near the door. Screams made me look to the side and I saw him grinning with a cigar between his teeth. He chuckled, then again let off more rounds.

  While Queen Yasmine and King Emmanuel Knight were not in attendance—something about their private flight being delayed, which was courtesy of my father, of course—this would let them know that we declared war.

  My uncle finished off the sides of the wedding while I, well, I found myself with a scalpel in my hand. As I approached the group before me, I kept one glove
d hand behind me and the other upward. They killed my daughter in cold blood. No care. No concern about the truth of their own who started this shit. Keith had won and he took my baby from me, along with my sanity. There was no more functional Tone. There was nothing but the son of Satan, an Orlando prince.

  Eyes dark like those of my father, I took a knee, gave a deep, menacing chuckle, then swiftly connected my blade to the throats of everyone around me, including the bride, groom, and the singer.

  “Shh, stay where you are. I can help. I’m a doctor.”