by SLMN
Cash did as he was told, squinting into the darkness as the car rumbled down the narrowest of narrow lanes. No lights, it was just a darker scar on the landscape.
“Goddamn, it’s so fuckin’ dark, I damn near missed it. How far?”
“Not much further. Pull up down by the lake.”
They rode the last stretch down, taking the pothole-pitted track with care. Even so, it still punished the suspension on their wheels. Out here, they might as well have been hanging out on the edge of the earth. It was beyond dark, and so secluded it would take a year for some hiking party to stumble upon a corpse. It was a good place for smugglers looking to get product moved from one city to the next without worrying about the law.
Cash and Mac got out of the car.
The lake was a shimmer of unbroken glass, reflecting the moon.
“These niggas always late,” Cash remarked, not hearing the churn of powerboat engines out on the water.
“Yeah, they gonna be late for they own funeral,” Mac retorted.
He pulled out his gun.
Cash didn’t see him at first, but when he heard the hammer click in the darkness, he looked at his man.
“What up, brah? Expecting trouble?”
“Not much,” Mac replied.
Cash still hadn’t caught on, but his street senses began to buzz with warnings he really didn’t want to believe.
“Then why the gun?’
“Ay yo… shit is crazy, but it’s O.”
“O?”
“He has this crazy idea in his head that you fuckin’ Mona. It’s fuckin’ with him, man. Told me to bring you out here.”
“Fuckin’ Mona? Fuck he get that idea from?” Cash said, but then it all came to him, and he answered himself with, “From you...”
Mac smiled.
“You catch on quick, brah. Of course from me. I played y’all niggas like a Steinway,” Mac laughed.
Cash tried to creep his hand around to the small of his back and get his gun, but Mac cut that move short.
“I get it, nigga. You’re gonna die anyway, so might as well try, huh?” Mac smirked, not that Cash could see his face in the dark.
Cash stopped and dropped his hands by his sides.
“Why, Mac? We family!”
“Times have changed. You’ve got O to thank for this, by the way. See, the crazy part is, the dumb muhfucka was going to give you the connect over me. Like I could have that. So I needed you to over play your hand. Nothing major, just enough to get his jealousy going. I told you to holler at Mona to put you in the game. Then, it was just a hop and skip into making O think you were fuckin’ his lady, being you did fuck her, after all,” Mac explained.
“What’s going to happen to her?” Cash asked.
“Who knows? More importantly, who fuckin’ cares? Only thing that matters is I know exactly what’s gonna happen to you.”
Buck! Buck!
Mac put two in Cash’s chest.
No more words.
No more taunting. They were brothers, after all.
Cash staggered back, slumped to his knees, then toppled, lying on his side in the dirt, snuffling and grunting in pain as he sucked in air. “You a piece of shit Mac. Always have been, always will be,” Cash cursed, a dead man’s naming, marking Mac for eternity in the eyes of the almighty.
“Yeah, but at least I’m alive.”
Cash laughed.
“Fuck is so funny, dead man?”
“You, nigga! You killin’ me for something I didn’t do, but you so fuckin’ dumb you never guessed the pussy I did do!”
“Fuck you talkin’ about, Cash?”
“Ask Kandi, bitch ass nigga! Ask her about this dick!” Cash cackled, grimacing through the pain as he bled out.
Mac put him down.
Buck! Buck! Buck! Buck!
Four in Cash’s face, making a bloody mess not even his mother could recognize.
But, the damage had been done.
The same seed he had planted in Othello, was now taking root deep inside him, and he could feel it growing greener and greener…
Cash’s death rippled through the city, the reverberations rocking the underworld.
Othello used his death as a convenient excuse to wage war on his perceived enemies, quelling the streets, and leaving them awash in the blood of the fallen in the process. He was a brutal overlord. Worse than any of them might have imagined even when he exploded onto the scene with those early kills.
Even The Commission watched on nervously, their own hitters on high alert, ready for the moment Othello’s power became absolute and they had no choice but to fight or die.
Everyone came to Cash’s funeral to pay their respects and to pledge their allegiance to Othello’s factions.
Plain and simple, if you didn’t come to bend the knee, you looked guilty as sin and nobody wanted to face O's wrath over his man’s slaughter, so crews came from far and wide to make sure their names were on the right side of the ledger.
Mona was distraught with grief. It tore her up in ways that only could’ve happened if everything he’d feared was true, so O felt good about the order, even if it meant that whore’s heart ached. Let her fuckin’ dream of what might have been.
Othello watched her with an eagle eye, his own heart breaking a little more with every tear she shed over Cash.
Still, it was done.
They could move on.
Find peace.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Joe Hamlet told Othello, shaking his hand with the coffin as a backdrop. “If there’s anything I can do, please just say the word. Your grief is my grief, son,” Othello nodded solemnly.
“Thank you, Joe. His death has forced my hand, decision made and all that. I’m leaving Mac in charge and giving him the connect. I am ready to step back.”
Joe took the news in stride, but there was relief in the knowledge that Othello was finally honoring his word. He didn’t want to see Mac in charge any more than anyone else, but if it kept his babygirl safe it was a sacrifice worth making.
“It’s your call, son, and I respect your decision,” Joe replied, hand on his shoulder. “It will be better from here on, trust me.”
Across the way Aphrodite was commiserating with Mac.
“Your skirt is showing, Macklin,” she remarked.
Mac noticed the bruises around her throat, but said nothing about them.
“I wasn’t aware I was wearing one.”
“You know what I mean. Your fingerprints are all over this. Believe me, I applaud you. It was a masterful performance, but I know Cash was supposed to take over, and here you are, heir apparent. I don’t believe in coincidences.”
The older woman was sharp.
“You’ll appreciate the encore, I’m sure. Tuesday good for you?”
Aphrodite looked at him, the red hue of barely suppressed lust in her gaze, and answered, “Anytime is good for you.”
She walked off, the sway in her stride, subtle but unmistakable.
Whatever had happened to her, she was definitely the Queen Bitch in the game.
Kandi didn’t miss it either.
As soon as Mac approached her, she grilled, “Who was that?”
“Joe Hamlet’s wife,” Mac answered.
“Hmm-mmm, I don’t trust the bitch. She got snake written all over her slither,” Kandi remarked.
Mac side-eyed Kandi.
Takes one to know one, huh? He thought.
No matter how hard he willed those dying words out of his mind, he just couldn’t purge himself of Cash’s taunt. Half of him desperately wanted to believe it was a bluff, just words that Cash hurled because he had no other weapon. But the other half of him believed him.
Mac, like Othello, had always felt inferior around Cash when it came to the women. And when it came to sex, penis envy was an inadequate assessment. It went much deeper.
“Why you lookin’ at me like that?” Kandi asked.
“Just tired. Let’s get the fuck out o
f here. Funerals depress the shit out of me. Especially when it’s my best friend in the box.”
Othello shut the front door behind Mona as they walked in.
It felt good to be out of the church, but not right to be home.
He wasn’t sure anything about this place would ever feel right again.
Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy from her tears.
“I… can’t believe he’s gone,” Mona commented, going through to the kitchen to brew coffee.
Othello tossed his suit jacket over the arm of the couch.
“That’s the game, yo. Here today, gone tomorrow.” It was too dismissive, like he didn’t care.
“That’s why I’m glad you’re getting out of the game, baby,” she called through. “I couldn’t stand to lose you, too.”
He joined her in the kitchen.
“Too?” Othello echoed, looking Mona in the face. “What do you mean too?”
Mona looked confused.
She hadn’t thought at all about her choice of words.
It was just a comment comparing the two deaths, not equating them.
“It was nothin’, a comment comparing two deaths, not equating them, baby. I just can’t imagine life without you. You are my world, baby.”
“No,” Othello huffed, his anger building steam, “You said too like you lost him. So tell me, what the fuck am I supposed to think that means?”
Mona stared at Othello like he was a stranger.
She knew just how dangerous her love was, and how dark a place his mind could be.
She couldn’t wrap her mind around why a word so small and simple could set him off in such a way, unless… It hit her then—the full force of the realization—he had to know about her and Cash. She bit back on the urge to deny, to say it was just one time, before we even…
“Othello, what is wrong with you?” Her tears returned, but for an entirely different reason.
“Oh, now you gonna play with my intelligence? I know exactly what you meant by too.”
“Othello, if you have something to say, then just say it,” she said, finally ready to get everything out in the open.
“You fucked Cash didn’t you?”
His words were like a slap in her face—a slap of her own reality, her own guilt, her own responsibility that she had ducked for too long. All she had to do was own it, tell the truth. It was history. It had no bearing on them.
“Yes, Othello, yes! Okay? Does that make it better I had sex with Cash?”
That was all she got out before Othello smacked her so hard, he damn near knocked her out, blood and teeth flew from her mouth. She hit the wall so hard it would have set the big one off in LA.
Mona came down hard, sprawled across the coffee table. The glass shattered under her weight. She fell through it to the floor.
Othello stood over her.
“You ho ass bitch! I knew it! I fuckin’ knew you were nothing but a bitch ass cunt, just like the rest of these dog ass bitches in the street! You fuckin’ whore.”
She stared up at him, desperate, pleading, needing him to believe, “It was before you, I swear! I didn’t know you then!”
“Bitch, you lyin’! I saw him when he left the theater, and you didn’t say a thing about it! Then I heard him talking about you, how he was blowing your back out and you loving it! Then, on top of all that you nasty no good slut, I found your scarf, your scarf in his fuckin’ crib!” Othello raged. He hammered a kick into her ribs so brutally it lifted her off the floor as if to punctuate his last word.
The pain made Mona see stars, all the heavens, and hell waiting for her on the other side.
She heard her ribs crack.
Felt the unbelievable stab of pain.
“Please, O! I swear I didn’t have sex with Cash while we were together!”
“You lying!”
Another brutal kick, this one to the side of her head.
It took her out, the pain was clouding her mind. She couldn’t think. She needed him to believe… to understand… The scarf.
“O, I gave that scarf to Kandi. I let her borrow it, I swear, ask her! Ask her! I’ve never been to Cash’s place!” She sobbed.
Othello’s chest heaved as he stood looking down on her.
“Bitch, you better not be lyin’. You lie, you fuckin’ die, understand? You really want me to make the call?”
“Ask her!”
“Fine.” Othello snatched up his phone and hit the contact.
Kandi picked up.
Othello put her on speaker.
“Kandi.”
“Who this? O?’
“Yeah.”
“What up, booboo?” She greeted.
“Ay yo, let me ask you something, truth. Has Mona ever given you something to hold?”
“Not that I can remember? Like what?”
“My scarf, Kandi! Tell him! Tell Othello I let you borrow my scarf!” Mona yelled from the floor.
“A scarf? Naw baby, that wasn’t me. What kind?”
He didn’t need to hear anymore.
He killed the call.
“She’s lying, I swear to god,” Mona sobbed, her voice hoarse with desperation.
Othello grabbed her by the throat, snatching her off the ground.
The pain in her ribs shot up to her head.
“Bitch, as much as I loved you, I hate you now even more. You better walk on goddamn egg shells around me, because if you don’t your whole goddamn family dead!”
He threw her away like the trash she was.
Mona only heard half his words. The pain was so intense, she floated between consciousness and oblivion for a moment before succumbing to the darkness.
Adonis sat in the bar, alone in the corner booth.
He was a changed man in every single way bar one, he still loved a dead man and there was nothing he could do about it.
The place was a frequent spot for the LGBT community. It wasn’t somewhere he went often, but the music was good, the atmosphere was better and his discretion was growing weaker by the day. He could have gone back and fucked his mother again. Part of him wanted to stand over her and just piss on her face, completing the ultimate degradation, but he knew that going back there, deep dicking her again, that went from monster to Greek tragedy, and he wasn’t ready for that yet.
He had already drunk four shots and was nursing a glass of VSOP when the front door opened.
Devante walked in.
He knew it was his ghost that came to taunt him, all beautiful and dead, and remind him what he could have had, but Devante didn’t disappear when he tried to blink him away and clear his half-drunk vision.
It was Devante, only it wasn’t. He wore women’s clothes, and his shape was more feminine. There were proper breasts, too. Rising proud.
Their eyes locked.
Even in his drunken mind, he knew this couldn’t be real, that he had to be seeing things. There was no way Devante was still alive… he had killed him… been inside him when his sphincter collapsed, shitting himself into hell, his hands wrapped around his neck. The clean-up crew chopped the body up and dissolved what was left of him in acid, making sure there was nothing but the residue in the tub and even that was cleaned up with bleach. There was nothing left of Devante apart from the memories in his head.
So could a memory come to life and sashay in through the door of non-existence to taunt him with tits and teeth?
He felt sick.
Lost.
Broken.
The closer he came, the wilder Adonis’ heart beat until the ghost in drag walked right up to his table, smiled and said, “Looking for me?”
Adonis was dumb founded. “I-I’m sorry.”
He smiled.
“I mean, the way you were eyeing me when I walked in, I was sure I was the one person you were waiting for. True love. My name’s Rihanna.”
Adonis blinked again, this time as he reached for his glass to down what was left of his drink, his vision reset and he was able to see that
it wasn’t Devante come to drag him all the way to hell with him, but there was an uncanny resemblance.
“I’m Adonis. Join me?”
“Sure, sugar,” Rihanna sat down across from him.
“What’re you drinking?’
“Whatever you’re buying.”
Adonis smiled, then waved down the waitress, ordering Rihanna a drink.
The waitress disappeared through the crowded bar.
“So, let me guess, I look like someone you know,” Rihanna teased.
“Is it that obvious?”
“You have a real pretty poker face.”
They both laughed.
“How come I’ve never seen you around here?” Adonis asked.
“I just came home a few months ago.”
“Came home? Were you in the army?”
“Close. Prison,” Rihanna replied, eyeing his reaction over the rim of the glass, “Does that bother you?”
Adonis shrugged.
“You’d be surprised… I’ve done things… so, no, it doesn’t.”
“Good, because I like talking to you,” Rihanna flirted.
Adonis raised his glass. “The night is full of possibilities,” he toasted.
Clink!
“I see you don’t waste time getting to the point?” Rihanna remarked, enjoying the way Adonis was looking at him.
“Life’s too short, and I’m a man that knows what he wants.”
“My kind of guy.”
“Shall we?”
“We shall, again and again and again. It’s gonna be a good night,” Rihanna promised, then downed his drink and walked out and into a whole new life…
Mona felt like shit.
Worse than shit.
Every part of her hurt, inside and out.
Heartbroken, ribs fractured, pride was shattered and her mind was frazzled and guilt ridden.
She had brought this all on Cassio and herself.
She had done this.
Killed him.
If only she’d told Othello the truth from the beginning, Cash would still be alive her marriage intact.
They were victim’s thoughts.
Victim’s rationalizations.
She sat in the hospital room, her ribs bandaged up, woozy from the pain medication.