by Brick
“I expect you and Manuel to work together to get that basement cleaned, and you will allow him to patch up your lip. Are we clear?”
Ella’s lips pressed into a thin line. Her eyes narrowed as she crossed her arms across her chest. Her annoyance didn’t move me. I sent her to the bathroom with Manuel, knowing the storm had subsided. I chuckled to myself while going to sit down.
I rolled my shoulders, trying to stave off the chills running up and down my back. The day felt odd for some reason. Something just didn’t feel right. Maybe it was the fact that I still felt it peculiar that the Commission had called a meeting with me again. Maybe it was the fact that my woman was in Creek Town without me. Either way, something felt off, and I couldn’t shake it.
I pulled down my ledger and double-checked my numbers. All my shipments were in check. All members of the Syndicate were accounted for. We’d just had our annual meeting, where we all sat down and talked about where we wanted to take the Syndicate next. The Irish were giving me a bit of a problem, but nothing that couldn’t be handled in-house. Monies had been divvied up. Everyone’s pockets were fat. Product was up; arrests were down. Pipelines were clean and clear. Quite frankly, it had been one of the best years the Syndicate had seen....
And yet there was a monkey on my back today that I just couldn’t shake. I picked up the phone to dial my wife. The phone at her parents’ home rang three times before someone answered.
“Hello,” Deedee barked into the phone.
Being that she had an attitude, I knew shit hadn’t gone smoothly.
“I’d like to speak to my wife,” I said, wanting to keep the conversation with her short.
“I’d like a few million fucking dollars and a new life. We can’t all get what we want,” she replied sarcastically.
“Put my wife on the phone, Deedee.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’m going to have my man Snap put a bullet in your asshole.”
“Ugh,” she spat into the phone.
Disgust had been ladled all in her response. I didn’t give a shit. The woman got on my nerves, and the only reason I tolerated her was for my wife.
“Claudette, the uncouth nigga you married is on the phone,” Deedee yelled.
A few seconds later, the beautiful sound of my wife’s voice came through the line. “Baby. King, everything okay?” she asked.
Her voice was strained, and that alarmed me. “Don’t worry about me. You okay? Do you need me to come? Because I can lock it all down and come to you.”
“No, no. Don’t leave your post. I’m . . . I’ll be okay. Just . . . damn Deedee done brought that goddamn child-molesting pedophile into my family. And she’s pregnant, King. She’s pregnant.”
“By that clown?”
“No.” She got quiet, which told me there was something more to this story.
“By who, baby?” I asked her.
“Luciano.”
It was my turn to get quiet. It was no secret that Luciano and my wife had dallied a few times before I made her my wife. The slick-tongued Italian was still after her, so the fact that he went after what he considered the next best thing didn’t surprise me.
I didn’t like to hear her stressed. It crushed my soul the way those folk back in Creek Town could suck the vibrancy right out of her. Her family was a pack of toxic leeches. I knew telling her about what Deedee’s husband had done to Toya would send her running down there, but she loved that little girl, even when Toya, just like Deedee, would do everything in her power to spit in my queen’s face.
“Well, I guess you’re going to hear about it sooner or later,” I said.
“Hear about what, King?” Claudette asked.
“We had an all-out war between the Cherokee/Taino and the Seminole out here today,” I said, changing the subject to take Claudette’s mind off the bullshit she had walked into.
“Huh? Say wha—” she said, then stopped. “Oh, sweet Mary’s virgin ass, did Ella and Manuel have a fight?”
I laughed. “Indeed.”
I did a rundown of what had happened and the words that had been exchanged. By the time I was done, Claudette was laughing and threatening me to keep my mannish boys from her girls at the same time.
“Oh, no, Ella didn’t say that to that boy,” she cried in a fit of laughter.
“Oh yeah, Mama, she said it. That gal a wildcat, cha? You need to get a handle on your girls, running around here, slanging knives and threatening to have folk breathe through their assholes and shit.”
“As soon as you get Nighthawk from around his drunk daddy on that damn rez. If that boy had respected my little queen, none of this would have happened.”
“Naw. I’m of the mind she baited him in. Everyone around here know how sensitive Manuel is about his Native heritage.”
“What’s that got to do with hot piss on a tin roof?”
“All these little black girls with long hair claim they got Indian in their family.”
“And Ella actually does.”
I smiled, loving to hear that I could change my wife’s mood in a split second. I had called to tell her about the meeting with the Commission, but as soon as I’d heard the stress in her voice, I’d changed my mind. Telling her about the meeting would have only set her nerves on end, like it had mine.
Her happiness was short lived, though.
In the background, I heard a ruckus, and then Snap said, “Mama, you’d better get out here.”
“Why? What’s happening? Why is Deedee screaming like that?” she asked him.
“Toya coming down the street. She beat up real bad,” he said.
I heard when the phone hit the floor. I knew Claudette was gone before Snap picked up the phone.
“Boss,” he said.
“Yeah, son?”
“Knew she was talking to you by the smile on her face.”
I chuckled inwardly, then asked, “How bad is it down there?”
“We’re going to need to call the police,” he said.
That was code for Claudette was going to have to kill someone.
“You just make sure no harm come to my woman, Snap.”
“Yes, sir.”
I hung up the phone, hating that I hadn’t got to tell Claudette I loved her.
Chapter 8
Uncle Snap
I looked at Javon once we had made it back to the hospital and had some alone time. He had King’s journal in his hand. I ran my hand through my hair, crossed, then uncrossed my arms.
“We kinda ran through Cavriel’s place real reckless, nephew. You got a reason for that?” I asked him.
“Reckless?”
“Yeah. We ran through there like Wild Bill, scraped up some shell casing, and that was that. We didn’t really look around for no clues or nothing that may have pointed to who did it or even who took Absolan. Just kind of went in, shot shit up, and moved out.”
Javon closed the book, crossed one leg over the other, then studied me. “So even after this whole time, even after I’ve proven to be an effective leader, you still doubt me, Unc?”
“Not doubting you, nephew. It’s because you’ve proven to be effective that I’m asking the method to your madness, is all. It’s not like you to be so haphazard.”
“Then if you know there’s always a method to my madness, you should be comfortable with what I did today.”
I couldn’t say anything there. He had called me on my bullshit. I was about to tell him as much until Deedee walked in. She had a girl who looked like she could be Lucky’s sister in tow. Beautiful girl of mixed race. You know, typical mixed-looking chick. Nothing really special about her looks. But she had her eyes set on Javon.
“This is my daughter, Lucky’s sister,” Deedee said. “Giana Monroe Acardi is her name.”
I rolled my fucking eyes. She was so proud of her fucking self, birthing Luciano Acardi’s kids.
Javon gave me a look that told me to keep cool. Giana, in her painted-on leather tights, thigh-high boo
ts, and thin blouse, sauntered over to Javon.
She extended her hand and said, “Hello, Javon.”
Javon looked at her hand but not at her. “We’ve met,” was all he said. He didn’t take her hand, though, which surprised me. Nephew was normally about decorum.
Giana was caught off guard and clearly taken aback by his rudeness. She said, “Yes, we have. Last time you were visiting Uncle Luci.”
“Good. You remember. So, let’s get this little game out the way,” he said, closing the journal and putting it back in the inner breast pocket of his jacket.
“I have a wife who can shoot at a ninety degree around a corner, blindfolded,” he said to Giana, then looked at Deedee. “You don’t want those kinds of problems on your ass, so don’t come offering me your daughter. Shanelle will shoot, and she will shoot to kill. I don’t want to be on the end of her wrath, so I don’t have shit to offer your daughter, not even dick.”
Deedee took an offended step back, then gave a slow blink. “Why, I never,” she gasped.
“And neither you nor your daughter ever will,” Javon said, then stood. “Let’s go, Unc.”
I shot daggers at Deedee with my eyes, then followed my nephew.
“You are disrespectful, just like King and Snap. How fitting she’d pick a male orphan like the husband she got killed,” Deedee spat at our backs.
Javon stopped, took a deep breath, then turned around. By now, Lucky had heard his mother’s loud-ass mouth and stepped outside of the Old Italian’s room.
“What’s going on?” Lucky asked. “Ma, you okay?”
“Why did you bring them here?” she asked her son.
“Uncle Luci asked for them, Ma. They’re good men. They can help us find out who did this.”
“They have no couth.”
“She just tried to offer me your sister, and I have no couth?” Javon said, sarcasm in his tone.
Giana cut in. “She was introducing me to him. Nothing more.”
Deedee twisted her mouth. “I should have known anything Toya bred would—”
“Why didn’t you come to her funeral?” I asked.
She turned to me. “What?”
“Why didn’t you come to your sister’s funeral?”
Deedee opened her mouth. She looked like a damn fish as she tried to talk and nothing came out.
“Sister,” Lucky repeated.
The boy looked as confused as his sister.
Deedee, looked at her children, specifically her son, then back at me. “You know she wouldn’t have wanted me there,” she said.
“You lying sack of shit,” I spat out at her. “She still loved your conniving ass, even after all you’d done to her.”
Deedee drew in a hard breath. “You’ve got some fucking nerve when you’re the one who brought her goddamn killer in her house. You, Raphael, are the reason she’s dead.”
It was no guess how she knew that, since Lucky had been the one to help take down Elias, the man who had helped Melissa kill Mama.
“Ma, chill,” Lucky said.
He, his sister, and his mother went back and forth at one another in Italian, while Javon placed himself strategically in front of me. He knew anger simmered just underneath my skin. I knew he could feel the anger and angst seething just below my surface. What Deedee had said had been eating me alive since the moment I found out it was Melissa who’d helped to orchestrate her death.
“Move outside, Uncle Snap,” Javon said.
I didn’t give him any lip. I was quite sure I’d embarrassed him and myself enough.
“You’re letting your emotions get the better of you,” he said once we were in a secluded area. “Since you handed me King’s journal, you’ve been going through something. Whatever it is, squash it until we’re back on home turf. Will you do that for me?”
I grunted my response.
Javon chuckled. I didn’t know why he chuckled. I couldn’t read his body language. “Did you know King had a meeting with the Commission on the day he died?” he asked me out of the blue.
I frowned “Huh? No.”
I thought back to all those years ago, to the day Mama and I went to Creek Town to take care of Toya’s rapist. That wouldn’t have made any sense. The Commission and the Syndicate had already had their annual summit. Wouldn’t make a lick of sense for them to call a meeting with the Syndicate again so soon. I told Javon as much.
“You didn’t really read his journal, did you, Unc?” he asked.
“I started it but couldn’t finish. Too many memories with him and Claudette. Too many memories of my old mentor. Shit got me fucking emotional,” I finally confessed.
“It’s right in his journal. I started from his last pages. He said the Commission called a meeting, and just like you, he was confused by it.”
“That makes no fucking sense,” I said.
“King’s murder was never solved, right?”
“No. We knew someone did it, but even after we wreaked havoc all over the States to find out who had done it, we never did.”
“Who has enough power to cover their asses so thoroughly, Unc?”
I took a step back as the reality slammed into my chest like a head-on collision. “No . . . you don’t think . . .you don’t think the Commission . . .”
That shit sobered me right on up. Would Luciano be so cruel as to kill Mama’s husband, my mentor, just to get another shot at being with her? As far as I knew, King was in good standing with the Commission, so why would they kill him? Although, King had been a black man with a lot of power. That made the establishment nervous.
He gave King’s journal in his pocket a tap. “Cavriel’s murder isn’t the only one I plan to solve. We find Absolan, and then we get these old heads to tell us who killed King, or I’ll dismantle the Commission from the inside out.”
Chapter 9
Cory
“Sir, we have activity.”
I held my hand out and was immediately presented with a tablet. By my side was one of my Forty Thieves. This one was a Korean brotha with a spiked fade, and he was in all black from his boots to his gloves. On the side of his neck, curling under his ear, was a tattoo that rivaled my own. He was called Sino and was our lead bodyguard.
Moving the tablet in front of me, I scanned the video before me, swiping and tapping on the screen to change the visual perspective. My brother was a madman, and like a moth to a flame, our ambush drew out the one we were looking for—the goons who were working for whoever had gunned for the Commission.
“Just like magic,” I said with a smirk. As I exited the hospital and walked toward the ride I had requested, I continued watching the video. “Kind of sloppy of them, huh?”
“Indeed, sir, but when the hired help is sloppy, it makes it easy for us to determine several things. One, whether it’s a trap. Two, they want to know who had taken out their men. And three, whether it is a decoy.”
An amused chuckle made me look up at the brother who was part of our team. “What you determined Luciano’s men to be?”
Sino gave a shadow of a smile. “For now, they appear as loyal as ever. No stench of disloyal behaviors is kicking off, sir. However, that doesn’t mean a damned thing.”
“No doubt. An old lesson well learned.” With a sigh, I handed the tablet back and folded my arms over my chest. “A trail has been put on them?”
“Yes, sir.”
Rubbing my jaw, I continued processing. My mind was on the shell casings, but also on the need to get back to Carviel’s. We had rushed out as fast as we had only because of the attention brought our way, which was purposeful, but we still needed more than what we had.
“Good. How is the search going in the empty building across the street? You all followed my report?”
Sino gave me another nod. “I have a few combing through the tunnels. So far, no footprints or anything out of order, but we are still investigating and have breached Carviel’s home, per your request, sir.”
This was why I was Von’s shado
w and part of his security. I realized the importance, the gravity of my role after almost dying. When Von needed additional hands, I’d be that, and so I was. It was part of the plan, and I intended to sniff around while others thought we were distracted.
“A’ight, keep me abreast of everything. If anything seems shifty, contact me immediately.”
“Yes, sir.” Sino gave the Forty Thieves a nod of respect, then left the hospital.
As for myself, I moved back to the secret bunker hospital. I had been given a time line of who all had been around Absolan before he disappeared. In the notes, it was reported that Absolan had been about his regular routine: spending time at his favorite spa, making his rounds in the community, giving prayers and seeing what was needed, and overseeing the usual confession.
The name Paulo Begetti was also on the list. From what was written, Paulo was Absolan’s transport man and ran a deli in the priest’s zone. He had been the one to alert Lucky that Absolan was missing. However, there were some time inconsistencies, and from what my crew had found out from a little digging into some cameras around the way, it looked like Paulo might have some dealings with the actual kidnappers. On the camera footage, they had seen two goons, who we had killed at Cavriel’s home, exiting the deli.
Something to report to Von. I quietly walked in thought, going over in my head why Absolan had been left alive but taken. Why hadn’t any piece of him shown up? It wasn’t sitting right with me.
“But she’s your sister, Mama. You and the old man didn’t feel it important enough to tell me? Especially after I put my life on the line for . . . for basically family?”
I stopped in my tracks at the sound of Lucky’s voice. From where I stood, it sounded like some truths had finally come out, and since it wasn’t any of my business, a nigga walked on and sought out my uncle and brother.
Finding them didn’t take long. Von was on his phone, pacing back and forth. When I heard Shanelle’s name, I relaxed.
“Unc Snap.” I strolled up to the OG, then pulled up a chair to sit in front of him as he sat just outside the cafeteria at the hospital. Even though it was a new day, no one had gotten any real sleep after last night. “I need your help.”