“Brax, what would happen next?”
“What do you mean?” He pulled back a little to look at her. “Like once I finally get you naked?”
“No. You know. After…” she left off and waited for him to understand what she was trying to say. “After we finish. What then? I’ve never thought about doing anything like this before. Would I just leave and never see you again? Chalk it up to a fun vacation excursion?”
That made him laugh out loud. “Well it would be a fun vacation excursion, that’s for sure, but honestly I don’t know what would happen after. What do you want to happen?”
“I don’t know. I guess if we were actually going to do this, I wouldn’t want it to be a one-time thing. Is that what it would be?” Why was she even asking him that? It’s not like it could ever be more.
“What do you mean if we were going to do this? We are going to do this,” he reached down and took her hand. “And it definitely won’t be a one-time thing. I’m not that guy.” He looked over toward the door. “Come on, let’s go.”
Walking without waiting for a response, he practically dragged her behind him.
“Wow, you are relentless!” she called out, digging in her feet to force him to stop and turn back to her.
“Babe, you have no idea.” His demeanor suddenly changed from playful, to serious. “I want you,” he said in a hushed tone. “To be more specific, I want to fuck you. I want to hear what you sound like when you’re cuming and screaming my name.”
Annie could swear she felt her nipples harden at his vulgar wording. They apparently wanted that too.
“But I also want to cuddle with you and play with you and talk to you and whatever else you want to do, I want that too. So tell me what I need to do. How do I get you?”
Holy shit this guy was good. If leaving with him was ever really an option, his sweet dirty words would have sealed the deal right there. She knew then she had to cut him loose or risk making a terrible decision.
Dropping his hand, she told him what she should have said from the beginning. “I’m sorry, but you’re not going to get me.” Too embarrassed to tell him the actual reason, she went with a straight up lie. “Look, I’m just not that into you. I appreciate you trying, but this isn’t going to happen.”
Braxton stepped back in shock at her admission. “That’s a fucking lie.”
“Whatever, think what you want. I have to go.”
“What about the shot? Was that a lie too?” He pulled the napkin out of his pocket, not knowing why he took it with him and tossed it toward her. It drifted down to the floor, but they both knew what it said.
Digging in her purse, she took out a pink and white card and handed it to him. “That was a game. I was drunk and fucking with you, hence why I didn’t stick around to talk. I didn’t realize I was going to end up seeing you here this morning.”
Braxton looked down at the card he was now holding. 100 points was written across the top in pink and below were the words, Buy an attractive guy a shot.
“You were the only guy in the bar under the age of forty and therefore the lucky winner.”
He crumpled up the card in his hand and attempted to calm himself. His pupils dilated and seeing red became less of an expression and more of a reality. He didn’t know why he cared. She was just another dumb cunt he would have used for a Sunday morning quickie, or at least that’s what he kept telling himself, but if that were true, then why was he so upset. He hadn’t felt rage like this in a long time and that’s saying something coming from him. He was thankful they were in a crowded place with a lot of witnesses or he might have done something stupid. This was so fucked up and yet oddly aroused him. He had never been turned down before, well maybe not never, but it was a rarity.
“If I was just a game to you then why’d you kiss me? You want me and you fucking know it.”
“I’m sorry to put a damper on your overly high self confidence, but I don’t. Maybe a little before, but now you’re trying too hard and it’s kind of pathetic.”
“Excuse me?”
“Like I said before, I’m not that kind of girl. I’m not looking for a fling that’s going to end when I have to go back home or more than likely thirty seconds after we walk into your office. I’m sorry you couldn’t close the deal, but you need to move on.”
Bethany walked right past him toward the exit and he yanked on her arm bringing her closer. “You have no idea who you’re talking to right now and if you did—”
She cut him off by shrugging out of his grasp. “I could care less who I’m talking to.”
He could have held her back, could have forced her to stay until she saw reason, but he didn’t. He let her walk right out the door, leaving him standing in a room full of gawking people.
Braxton was utterly in shock. He made grown men piss themselves and she wasn’t afraid of him at all, although, she truly didn’t know who she was dealing with, but then again, she wouldn’t. He didn’t broadcast it to people, and it’s not like she would ever find out either.
Sitting in the same chair he was contemplating breaking against the wall not two minutes earlier, he took a couple deep breaths, letting himself return to sanity. The show was now over and people seemed to be going back to their own business, but he continued stewing over what happened. No one ever spoke to him the way she did, even people who didn’t know what he did on the side. He was livid, yet still wanted her even more so than before. She was right. He was pathetic. That or completely fucked up in the head. Probably a little bit of both, but he knew there was something between them. No way his instincts were off by that much. When they kissed he could practically feel the pheromones coming out of them. But whatever, fuck her. He could get pussy anywhere. He had more important matters to worry about.
Three
Braxton dressed in all black for the night’s deal. A tight, black, long-sleeved shirt with a Kevlar vest underneath, black cargo pants and black boots. He slipped into a shoulder rig to holster his .40 caliber pistol and extra mags and added a black leather jacket to conceal the gun. He also had a small .22 holstered at his ankle and another on his back. It was standard protocol to show up armed to a deal, but he was packing more than usual.
Drug deliveries always made him nervous, but that night even more so because Vinnie insisted Ax, an alias he used since the start, deliver the drugs to him in person. He claimed he wanted Ax there as a sign of good faith, to ensure the cops were not going to raid the deal, but Braxton had insider knowledge from one of Vinnie’s own men; they were the ones working with the cops.
Little did Vinnie know, Braxton had all kinds of connections inside the police department and he put the deal off for weeks to find out more information, which had finally come through. As it turned out, Vinnie’s dipshit rookie recruit was telling the truth. Vinnie had worked out a deal with one of the up and coming detectives; he gets to bring in Ax, one of the most notorious names in the underground world, and look the other way on any future Baller Grim drug deals. He had to hand it to Vinnie, it was a good plan, and there was a slight chance it would have worked if he hadn’t found out about it first.
Braxton fixed the situation as he always did, a good old-fashioned bribe. He sent a mediator to tell Detective Lopez he would pay him three million dollars; the same salary a Senior Detective would get over a thirty-five-year period, and he would pay it all up front. The mediator gave him a million in untraceable cash cards on the spot and told him the rest would come after he looked the other way during the deal and let Ax have Vinnie for himself. Lopez agreed, and now Braxton just hoped the deal would go down as planned and the detective wouldn’t change his mind and screw him over.
Looking out the high-rise window of his office he saw the SUV waiting below. It was time. Well past eight and any weekend working staff long gone for the evening, the building felt eerily quiet as he stepped off the elevator on the ground floor and headed out. Getting in the car without a word, the driver took off for the meeting spot were Br
axton switched vehicles and got into an unmarked white van with six of his other associates and a few million dollars’ worth of cocaine.
When they pulled up at the drop, Vinnie and his men were already there. Vinnie, the leader of the Baller Grims, was a small man, but there was something about the guy that told people not to fuck with him. Maybe it was the tattoos covering his face or that he was insane and once bit through a guy’s neck and ripped out his trachea. Either way, after today no one would have to worry about not fucking with him because he would be dead.
Ax pulled a ski mask over his face and stepped out of the van, followed by the other six men. The drop was behind an old abandoned building in the Bronx and all that lit the area were the headlights from their van.
Two armed men flanked Vinnie’s left, two men on his right and two behind. Braxton noticed one of the men behind Vinnie was the undercover detective. They made eye contact and he slightly nodded his head to indicate he was on Ax’s side.
“Do you have the money?” Ax asked Vinnie.
“Of course. Tony, get this man his money.”
The shorter of the two guards on his right turned toward their suburban and pulled out three black briefcases. All stacked on top of each other as he set them down in front of Ax. Without being asked, his second in command for the mission, knelt down to open the briefcases and checked their amounts.
During the minute this took, Ax noticed Vinnie look back at the detective a couple times, probably waiting for him to make his move. It almost made him laugh. After his man was finished with the check, he closed the lid of the third and final case and hit the top twice with his palm. That was the signal. In unison, all seven of them pulled their guns and fired, the other guys didn’t even have time to think about retaliating.
The gunshots were loud and deafening in the quiet, desolate, dirt lot. The men surrounding Vinnie slowly folded down on themselves and dropped to the ground. The only two left alive were the detective and Vinnie, but Ax’s gun was trained right on him and if he made a move for his weapon, he would blow his hand off. He needed him alive for now to really make a statement to everyone else who might try to fuck with him in the future.
Detective Lopez stood by and watched the whole thing go down without raising an arm. The story would be the drug deal went bad. Vinnie wanted the drugs and wasn’t planning on actually paying. He ran away after his men were all gunned down and had no choice but to get the hell out of there.
In order to make the story look believable, they had to reorganize the crime scene. Ax and his men relieved the fallen of their guns and shot them off toward their van. Picking up one of the bodies, Ax and Benny carried him by his head and feet and deposited him off to the side, placing him with his gun in hand. They did the same with three of the other guys, but left the guns just in their vicinity so it looked like they dropped them while going down in the fight. If forensics really looked close, they would notice the discrepancies, but since there would be an eyewitness of an undercover detective and it was the scene of a drug related crime, Ax didn’t think he had to worry about anyone investigating too thoroughly.
There was just one final thing left to be done. “Hey Lopez, do you have your phone on you?” Ax called out to the detective.
“Yes, why?” he shouted back toward Ax who was now loading the briefcases into the van.
Ax set down the last briefcase, turned toward Lopez, brought up his gun and shot him. The detective went down hard, clenching his shoulder in pain while Ax walked toward him. “No hard feelings. Had to make it look real.”
Lopez didn’t respond to Ax, but seemed to understand what happened was necessary. He reached for his phone and immediately called for backup. “Officer down, six homicides, backup needed at…”
Ax stopped listening and walked away to make sure his guys had Vinnie secured in the van and when he noticed the detective end the call he walked back over to him. “The three briefcases in the van are filled with a million dollars each, two of which will be delivered to your apartment tonight. My man will be discreet and completely untraceable. I trust my debt to you is settled?”
Lopez nodded, gritting his teeth in pain, and as Ax was getting in the van he called out to him. “So you’re keeping the drugs, you got me to give you Vinnie and you made him front the bill for it all?” It was more of a statement than a question and Ax didn’t reply. Just smiled at Lopez’s realization of his manipulative abilities.
Vinnie was taken to a warehouse in lower Manhattan and other than a couple punches to the face during the ride, was not badly hurt, but he would be soon. It had been a while since Braxton ordered a hit, maybe he was growing soft at his ripe old age of thirty-four. Or maybe he just wised up from his teenage years and learned you can’t go around killing people for no good reason unless you want your ass to end up in prison, and even if you have a good reason, that can still happen. It’s better to take your time with murder, contemplate it and know exactly what you’re doing before it happens.
Braxton used to be ruthless and it earned him rapid respect. He would execute anybody who didn’t follow their code, whether an order was given for their death or not. It was how the nickname Ax came to be and how he climbed the ranks. Not yet at the top, but as close as he could be out in the free world. There was only one other person above him and he was serving life at Attica Correctional Facility.
He still remembered it like yesterday, when the man he came to think of as his father was arrested and sent to prison. It was March 18th of his junior year of Business School at Columbia. He was newly twenty-one and spent the prior night celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with a shit ton of beer and coke. He lived in a constant state of megalomania and never thought anyone could get close enough to touch him. He was a god and could do whatever he wanted. If a guy wronged him, even if it were over something stupid, like bumping into him on the street without apologizing, he would drag him into an alley and beat him senseless. This happened on more than a few occasions, and specifically the night before his father’s arrest. He was drugged up and couldn’t stop beating him, didn’t even want to; feeling powerful was amazing. The guy, on his knees, bleeding profusely from his nose and mouth, actually started crying. He begged Braxton, begged him not to kill him, and that’s when he truly felt god-like, he had the power over who lives and who dies, literally right at his feet. It was better than any high he ever felt. He pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket and stabbed the guy in the throat, just because he could, and stood there watching him bleed out.
He woke the next morning and for the first time felt remorse for his inhumanity. Everyone else he killed was business, all in the name of their organization, but this guy had nothing to do with them, he was an innocent. Minutes later he got the call from Benny, letting him know Cole had been arrested. The FBI had a year’s worth of surveillance and he was on trial for three counts of murder in the first degree, drug trafficking and extortion.
It was a solid case and a quick trial, and on June 12th, Cole was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The government seized his assets, including the money he paid for Braxton’s tuition and he was forced to either drop out of school or get an actual job for the first time in his life to be able to afford a student loan. Braxton was the only person he knew to finish high school, let alone college, and he was so close to being done. He talked his way into a managerial position at a small bar near campus and started making his own living. At first he thought the work was demeaning, cleaning up after people’s messes and letting dickhead customers treat him like shit, but then the pay checks started coming in and it felt surprisingly good he no longer needed to depend on someone else for his well-being. He could take care of himself.
After a while he learned to ignore the petty annoyances by focusing on fixing them. By the time Braxton graduated, the small bar was one of the most prestigious nightclubs in the Manhattan area. He still couldn’t beat the shit out of anyone who gave him lip, which was rare due to the high caliber cli
entele they started to receive, but by that point he wasn’t dealing with them directly, he had people for that.
With Cole gone the syndicate fell apart, they needed a leader on the outside. Braxton was apprehensive about getting back involved, he had been out for a year, doing things right for a change, minus a few mess-ups here and there, but after a call from Cole, he felt indebted to him. The man took care of him since he was thirteen and taught him everything he knew. Cole claimed Braxton was the only person he could trust for the role, that he was being bred all along for the position. He told him he was a genius and a natural leader and would one day rule over New York. It felt good to hear the votes of confidence and he accepted the position, but there was always something in the back of his mind telling him he didn’t have a choice. If he turned down the job, he would have been taken out. It wasn’t a life you could just leave when you wanted.
Braxton had an uncanny ability to rebuild businesses and over the next several years he turned around Cole’s underground organization as well as several other legitimate companies. When he first took over for Cole he started out hard, ordering hits on any little infraction toward their members, just to reinstate fear on the streets. He then built up an organized drug distribution system, where the smaller, inferior street gangs were forced to buy their product from them if they wanted to sell.
Untraceable guns and ammo also became a high commodity and he set up an alliance with a local shrimping boat to pick up the shipments out in international waters and hide them amongst the crates of shrimp they brought in. The profits from the guns recently started to surpass the drug sales.
Other than the misstep with Vinnie, Braxton brought the organization up to be strong, feared and rather peaceful; well, peaceful as far as mobs go. Their members grew into the thousands as people looked for a place where they could feel protected in numbers, and the Emmo always put their members first. If there was harm, or even the threat of harm against a member, vengeance would be paid, and that was exactly what was happening to Vinnie.
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