by Brick
The Syndicate 3:
Carl Weber Presents
Brick & Storm
www.urbanbooks.net
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Prelude - Claudette
Chapter 1 - Shanelle
Chapter 2 - Claudette
Chapter 3 - Javon
Chapter 4 - Uncle Snap
Chapter 5 - Javon
Chapter 6 - Claudette
Chapter 7 - Kingston
Chapter 8 - Uncle Snap
Chapter 9 - Cory
Chapter 10 - Javon
Chapter 11 - Claudette
Chapter 12 - Shanelle
Chapter 13 - Lucky
Chapter 14 - Uncle Snap
Chapter 15 - King
Chapter 16 - Javon
Chapter 17 - Cory
Chapter 18 - Shanelle
Chapter 19 - Claudette
Chapter 20 - Uncle Snap
Chapter 21 - Javon
Chapter 22 - Cory
Chapter 23 - King
Chapter 24 - Uncle Snap
Chapter 25 - Shanelle
Chapter 26 - Uncle Snap
Chapter 27 - Javon
Chapter 28 - Javon
Chapter 29 - Shanelle
Chapter 30 - Claudette
Chapter 31 - Lucky
Chapter 32 - Javon
Epilogue - Javon
Urban Books, LLC
300 Farmingdale Road, NY-Route 109
Farmingdale, NY 11735
The Syndicate 3: Carl Weber Presents
Copyright © 2017 Brick & Storm
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior consent of the Publisher, except brief quotes used in reviews.
ISBN: 978-1-62286-585-7
This is a work of fiction. Any references or similarities to actual events, real people, living or dead, or to real locales are intended to give the novel a sense of reality. Any similarity in other names, characters, places, and incidents is entirely coincidental.
Distributed by Kensington Publishing Corp.
Submit orders to:
Customer Service
400 Hahn Road
Westminster, MD 21157-4627
Phone: 1-800-733-3000
Fax: 1-800-659-2436
Prelude
Claudette
Back in Atlanta . . .
Kingston had pulled me into his office the day before and had sat me down and told me that I had gotten a call. That delicious husband of mine had literally squatted down in front of me, taken my hands, and told me that I needed to take this call. He had sweetly told me to forget about any anger that I had toward the person who called me and just to listen....
“She’s a Miss Beautiful Supreme. A girl that others wish that they could be.” He smiled as he sang a little of Stevie’s “Ebony Eyes” to flirt a bit and to calm me.
My King made me laugh because he’d always sing those lines to me while looking at me in a manner that only he could: with a slight lick of his lips, a mischievous glint in his eyes, a flash of his pearly whites, and twin indents in his cheeks.
I remembered him smelling like sweet grass, the warmth of the sun, and his favorite cologne. My sweetheart wore camel-toned work boots, casual jeans, a white tank. He was taking off his work gloves. He had been working outside on the house when he got called to his office by young Snap. He called for me, and I came into the room with ice water, a sandwich, and some of my plans for work in the house for him. I remembered the way the sun broke through the stained-glass window of his office and bathed him in soft light. My man was illuminating, and it wasn’t just his magnetic personality. It was his aura.
My Kingston had a brief smile when he saw me. He always did, but it faltered with his next words. “Dette, come sit with me for a moment.”
Kingston Francis McPhearson was my everything, so I didn’t question why he was asking me to sit with him. Maybe he had something he wanted to teach me, or maybe my man wanted to feel a little bit of Claudette.
I watched him casually walk over to his desk with that sexy, confident manner he had before he sat behind his desk. I made my way over to sit near him in a long-back old chaise chair that I loved—one that he never let anyone sit in.
He stopped me with a, “No, right here, woman, where your throne is. You know betta.”
Heat rose to my cheeks. Always did when he flirted with me. I happily went on over, sat where he patted on his thick-toned thigh, and relaxed.
I knew something wasn’t good. We always had a way of communicating without words, knowing the secret thoughts of one another without sharing. So, the sadness, with a glint of anger, in his eyes let me know something wasn’t right.
My King gently ran his hand up and down my spine. His other hand found its way against my folded hands on my lap. We laced our fingers together. He put my hands to his lips and looked me in the eyes.
“Ain’t never been any other woman but you, Dette. You own me, all of me,” he told me.
“You own all of me, too.” I laid my hand against his cheek, loving the feel of the slight stubble on his strong jawline. “Like two stars in the black night . . .”
“I’m always by you,” he said, finishing for me.
That simple saying had always been ours. When I looked in King’s eyes, I felt his lips meet mine and fit just right. I loved all that man, all of him.
“I always feel a part of you with me no matter where I am,” I said.
“Good, because like I always tell you, one day you’ll need to remember that I’m always with cha no matter what.”
I loved when he let his accent come out; it felt like home.
“And I told you not to tell me stuff like that. I hate when you talk in finalities. It hurts. So stop it, King, and tell me what’s running in your mind that got you talking like that. You’re worrying me, and you know how I get when that happens.”
“Uh-huh. You try to get your gun to shoot me in the foot if I start vexing you, or your blade to swipe at me.”
I laughed at his goofy jokes, then gave him a stern gaze.
King squeezed my hand and pulled me closer as his voice deepened even further, betraying his playfulness.
“What’s wrong now, Kingston?” Nerves had me standing up. “I always get calls. What’s different about this call that has you looking like that?”
King followed my movements but didn’t let me move too far from him. He hooked his hand around my waist and had me sit in his chair. He squatted in front of me.
I watched as he stared toward a picture of us on our wedding day. It sat on the fireplace mantel, facing his desk. We were so young and happy in love and lust. It was the finest moment in my life. Loving Kingston.
“Ghosts are the main difference with this call, my Dette. We . . . you have a situation that you need to handle.” Only my Kingston could make me swallow my pride and do something, such as talk with the person whom I called a blight on my soul. Only my husband could make me forgive as a lesson in learning how to work with those we called the enemy, though this person was different from the ones we dealt with in the Syndicate and in our designated area.
Only my lover and best friend could calm the rage in a storm. So, in listening to my husband, I returned the call that would put a chill in my heart and have me flying down the highway toward a place I had left when I was twenty years old: good ole Creek Town, Georgia.
“Claudette! What you doing round here, gal? Been a long time since I done seent ya pretty self .”
It was the summer of 1985. The wafting scent of burning sweet wood, blended with spices and the savory addition of mea
t, brought me back to my youth. Rows of old wooden houses were cloaked in sporadic bushes of ancient trees and other plants. Other homes were bare and falling apart, with rusted fridges, cars, and other metal objects lying about. From their porches, people were watching me. They were either sitting on the stoop or standing, with one hand holding their sloping tin roof.
Kids played all around, some running up and down the unevenly paved streets while others rode their bikes. Some played basketball. A few played hand jive, while others took turns in double Dutch. Small that it was, my home was busy with life, and it made me happy that it hadn’t died in all these years.
Constrained anger had me on edge, while a tinge of red scabbed over my eyes. In other words, a sista was pissed and ready to kill. I was as hot under the collar as a pussy in heat, okay?
I was thirty years old, with a gun hidden against the back of my purple, wide-legged cropped pants, a switchblade under my white top—in the bra—and a personal vendetta needing to be handled. While I walked up the sidewalk to my childhood home, B.B. King could be heard crooning on the radio in the old juke joint down the street. It was a place where I used to wait tables at as a teen. A place where I was also wooed by my husband, Kingston. The memories of those days helped me keep a calm center while I visited this old home of mine.
“Ain’t doing nothin’ but brang’n’ some trouble to a motherfucker who did some foul wrong, Miss Jenkins.” Being back in my familiar surroundings had me returning to the natural Southern drawl of my birth.
Sun in my eyes, I turned to address Miss Jenkins, who was chewing tobacco, while shielding my eyes from the bright glare with my lace-covered hand. “You wouldn’t know what I’m talk’n’ ’bout, now would cha?”
“Still ya daddy’s chile, huh?” Miss Jenkins said with a sweet smile on her face. She sat with the ends of her blue dress bunched up on her lap, revealing smooth, toned brown legs and her white house shoe–covered feet. In her hand was a sharp knife, one that was cleanly slicing thin slivers of apple. “I see ya got ya some fancy taste now too and a handsome young man, huh?”
A gentle laughter came from me. Miss Jenkins was being nosy, but she also was making sure that I wasn’t breaking the community code and bringing in a threat. Since it had been a while, I figured that I’d entertain her curiosity in the only way I knew how: by avoiding her questions.
“Yes, ma’am, I am still my daddy’s child. He always taught us how to handle business and keep our shadow protected,” I said, glancing toward the young brotha by my side.
Miss Jenkins followed my gaze. The blade that had been in her hand disappeared as she laughed. “Mm-hmm. You ain’t lied ’bout that one, baby girl. Yo’ daddy taught y’all just right. Mm-hmm . . . I just like how han’some that protection can be.”
Tall like a willow tree and built lean but sturdy like a brick wall, my shadow kept his expressions stoic. His skin was smooth and flawless, and he had a shadow of dark, soft hair on his jaw. Because of the weather, he wore a white linen shirt that had the sleeves rolled up around his arms. Suspenders were attached to his brown trousers. Miss Jenkins’s chuckle made me look up at the man by my side. My husband had made him promise to protect me, even at the risk of his own life, while down in this little sweltering town.
“Don’t give this boy the big head,” I said with a light chuckle. “He’s just protection. Ain’t that right, Snap?”
I studied how Snap’s taunt jaw relaxed and a cool breeze of a smile spread across his handsome angular face. Snap reached for the screen door of my family home. When I looked past his shoulder and behind that screen door, there stood someone whom I had been preparing myself to see, the person who had called to tell me about our old friend’s daughter, Toya, having been raped. Raped by a bastard who had, in my youth, been a well-feared hoodlum, one who had married the bitch I had written off from my life.
As I squared my shoulders, I readied myself. This poltergeist had called me to help end the blight that she had stupidly let in her life and to avenge our fifteen-year-old god-daughter. As Snap stepped back from the door, I stood there in silence. The sun soaked into my skin. Sweat slipped between my breasts.
My lush black hair, which was slicked back into a ponytail, with a large puff in the back, started to become wild in the humidity. And through it all, Snap stayed by my side. From his body language, I could tell that he felt the anxiousness in me, the constrained anger, the flashes of hurt, and the unspoken “How could you?” pointed toward the person behind the screen. Because of it, and as trained as he was, I knew that he was watching the same person behind the screen as I was.
It was then that I wished Kingston was here and not tied up in Syndicate business.
When Snap shifted his hand, he reached up and tilted toward Miss Jenkins the hat that sat on his head. He then opened the screen door and said, “Yes, ma’am. That’s my job.”
Chapter 1
Shanelle
The cries of a baby woke me up in the middle of the night. Life in the McPhearson household had changed drastically. It had been one whole year since our foster mother, Claudette McPhearson, had been gunned down on the street. One whole year since we’d found out she was not the woman we had thought she was. On the day of our mother’s funeral, we found out that she had been the leader of a crime ring called the Syndicate. Since then, our lives had played out like a crime mob or gangster movie.
Mama Claudette had raised us like we were her own children, all the while giving us the skills we would need to control one of the biggest criminal enterprises since the Commission, which had been the governing body of the top five mafia families in New York at one time. It had been a hard pill to swallow for those first few days—hell, for those first few months—but we’d done it. Javon had done it.
In a few short days after learning the truth of who Mama Claudette was, Javon had taken the Syndicate and turned it on its head. He’d taken out the Irish, who, we’d initially thought, put the hit out on Mama, and had brought in the Commission to have a seat at the table. My husband was a mastermind, and Mama Claudette had known this, which was why she’d tagged him to be the one to take her place.
I frowned as I sat up. I threw my legs over the side of the bed and instantly regretted not sleeping with socks on. The floor was as cold as ice. I yawned as the baby’s wails got louder. I looked behind me and almost jumped out of my skin. Javon’s eyes were planted right on me.
“Jesus Christ,” I whispered, laying a hand on my chest. “I thought you were sleeping.”
He grunted. Yawned. Scratched at his nuts. “I was until that baby started wailing.” His voice was low and guttural and told of how tired he was.
I’d found out I was three months pregnant shortly after finding out one of our foster sisters, Melissa, had been the one to set Mama Claudette up to be killed.
“I don’t know why she’s crying,” I said. “I fed her and changed her—”
“That’s not our kid,” he said.
I furrowed my brows in confusion. I was still halfway asleep, so I didn’t readily get what he was saying.
“Huh?”
“That’s not Honor crying,” he said as he slowly sat up.
I watched the muscles in his back as he stood from the bed. He looked tense as he rolled his shoulders and lolled his head from side to side. The sinewy muscles in his back rolled and coiled. His ass was tight with muscles. Thighs flexed powerfully with each stride. He walked over to my rocker and snatched up his linen pajamas.
“That’s Justice,” he sighed.
I flipped the light switch on and got my senses about me. As I listened, I realized it was our niece wailing at the top of her lungs and not our daughter. Javon turned to look at me. I looked at the clock. It was 3:00 a.m., and most of us who had chosen to keep living in Mama Claudette’s house had things to do later that Monday morning. A crying baby ruined everyone’s sleep.
“You know that means that in about five minutes we’re about to hear Jojo and Dani arguing,�
� he said.
I nodded. It was a sad situation to see my little brother end up with a girl—I refused to call that bitch a woman—who wanted to do any and everything but be a mother. I didn’t like to be one of those women who judged other women, but Dani had gotten with my brother when he was sixteen and she was grown and in college. That would forever make her ain’t shit in my eyes.
But one year and a three-month-old baby later, she was proving to be exactly what I thought she was: a nothing-ass bitch.
“Go get her, Shanelle,” Javon said.
I snapped my head back around to look at him like he’d lost his mind. My upper lip twitched. “Say what?” I asked.
“Go get her. If they’re about to start their bullshit, Justice doesn’t need to be in there with them,” he said.
I shook my head, ready to put up a fight. This had been the routine far too many times. I had our own daughter to think of, and she would no doubt wake up soon because of the noise. “I’m not about to take on—” I started, then stopped.
Javon stood to his full height, then took a deep breath. Annoyance was in his eyes when he looked at me. He’d gotten fitter over the last year as well. He’d always taken care of himself, but over the last year he’d cut most meats from his diet. He ate a lot of raw fruits and vegetables and worked out more than ever. His chest and arms were sculpted, and his abs contracted and released with each breath he took.
“Look, I know I’m asking you to do something you don’t want to do, but I don’t want to hear that tonight. I’d have liked to sleep through the night, but that’s not going to happen obviously. I told Jojo I’d let him handle his own business with Dani, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to subject Justice to their bullshit. So, will you get her for me?”
I let out a deep breath while staring my husband down. Clearly, he wasn’t in the mood for any back-and-forth. I could tell by the way he quirked a brow at me and tilted his head. I wanted to cuss him out; I really did. But Javon was good to me, and I never wanted for anything materially or emotionally. So I swallowed down my annoyance and headed to Jojo’s room. I did stop in the nursery to check on Honor, our baby girl, who was still on her back, fast asleep. I closed the door before knocking on Jojo’s door.