by Carl Weber
“Good to know. And Keisha, you be safe.”
“I’m sorry for everything, Niles.”
He ended the call without responding. I lay back on the bed and, for the first time since I’d left New York, I allowed myself to cry.
Niles
78
The sun was just about to rise when we reached the top of the hill behind Majestic’s mini mansion. Willie had wanted to hit the place last night as soon as we got the address from Keisha, but I’d learned a few things in the Army about attacking a stronghold, and having Majestic’s guys stay up all night, making them antsy and sleep-deprived, was probably the best way—not to mention having the sun in their eyes as we attacked east to west.
“You don’t have to do this. I can go in by myself,” I said to Willie, who was carrying so many guns he looked like a caricature of a soldier.
“He has my sister,” he answered, raising one gun in solidarity, his expression determined. I should have known he’d insist on helping me save my mother, the same way he’d always been there for both of us. “And that motherfucker killed Tanya,” he added, and I knew he needed to get at this guy as bad as I did.
I looked at the house through the scope of my rifle and spotted six heavily armed guards posted around the backyard and another two standing by windows. I glanced at Willie. “You ready, Unc?” He nodded, and I pointed at a patch of trees near the house before firing six silenced shots from my rifle.
Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk. All six guards fell.
We ran like hell toward the house, not stopping until were in the cover of the trees. “You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. Just give me a sec,” he replied, gasping for air. “I ain’t as young as I used to be.”
While he was catching his breath, I used my scope to check on the six targets I had taken out. All appeared dead, and it looked like none of the people in the house had noticed a thing.
I gave Willie the signal, and we made moves to the back door. I looked around for cameras and saw one or two, but we circumvented them in order to enter through a side door somebody had left unlocked.
We moved slowly from room to room, taking out these amateurs like fish in a barrel, until the place was eerily empty and strangely silent.
“This one?” Willie whispered as we approached a set of closed double doors at the end of the hallway. I nodded as I tiptoed toward the handle and pushed it open. It was one of those home theaters, and sitting in there were three guys. Two of them were huge, and the third was just crazy-looking.
My heart dropped when I realized my mother was in there with them.
The biggest dude stood up when he saw me, and put a gun to my mother’s head. The other two jumped up and aimed at me. I raised my gun and pointed at the guy near my mother. Willie stepped up beside me and aimed his piece at the second big dude.
“You come to watch me kill your mother?” the guy with my mother said, and I knew that this was Majestic.
I glanced at my mother. Her mouth was taped shut, her hands were tied behind her back, and her eyes were wide with fear. I felt myself one second from going ballistic on his ass, but I knew the other two dudes would start blasting, and my mother would get caught in the crossfire.
Majestic had the nerve to look calm, like we were invited over to have a cup of tea. “I see you had no trouble finding the place. I guess those military skills came in handy. Bravo.” He seemed to know a lot about me, which put me at a disadvantage. Then again, there was only one thing I needed to know about him: This piece of shit was threatening my mother’s life.
“Step away from her.” I moved closer.
He smirked. “Sorry, but that ain’t gonna happen. I’m gonna do to her what you did to my brother, except in this case, you’re gonna watch. The only reason you’re alive right now is so you can see her die.”
“I swear, if you hurt my mother, there will be no place in this whole world you can run.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I’m not the running type. Bitches run from me.” His crew joined him like shit was really funny.
I was boiling over. “Take that tape off of her mouth. Take it off!” I yelled, hating everything about seeing my mother like this. I had every intention of making him suffer. If I could take out El Gato, imagine what I would do to this motherfucker.
He looked down at my mother and shook his head. “All the squawking this bitch do, you should be thanking me.”
Calling my mother a bitch was almost worse than kidnapping her, tying her up, and holding a gun on her. I took a step forward.
“One more inch and I will blow her away. Won’t even give you a chance to say good-bye. Then I’m gonna turn this gun on you and blow you away. After that, I’m gonna go upstairs and have myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with some milk, watch a little ball, and have one of my lady friends give me a blow job.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what a coward would eat,” I shot back. “At least your brother was a man. At least when we had an altercation, he wasn’t afraid to fight me. He wasn’t hiding behind his weapon or his flunkies.”
He puffed up his massive chest, probably thinking he’d intimidate me.
“Oh, you think I’m afraid, you punk? What kind of guy picks on women when there are grown-ass men for him to fight? Yeah, you. A punk and a coward, killing an innocent woman and going after my mother. Hell, if you ask me, the wrong brother is dead.” I taunted him, fully expecting it to rile him up, and, of course, it did.
“You gonna wish you didn’t say that!” he threatened.
One of his thugs moved in my direction like he had every intention of taking me down, but I already knew how to deal with his ass. As soon as he came close enough to touch me, I flipped his ass halfway across the room, slapping a dot on the back of his neck.
“So what? You his big protector? Figures,” I said to the guy, changing my stance like I was ready for him to get up and fight again.
Majestic finally stepped up to fight his own battle. “I done took all I can out of you,” he said. “Let’s go. Mano a mano.”
“Yo, Bruce. Watch this bitch while I handle him.” Majestic handed my mother off to the other big guy, who put a gun to her head; then Majestic tossed his gun to the side. I handed mine to Willie.
“You wanna fight? Let’s fight. I’ll show you what really happened to your brother.”
He started to jab, taking swings at me, but I was relentless, wanting blood for the crimes he committed against my family. I caught his fist in mid-air and slammed him to the ground. As he was getting back up to come at me again, the crazy-looking flunky fell to the ground. The poison had taken effect.
Majestic freaked out, stumbling in confusion.
“Ma,” I said, turning to her for a quick second, “that guy’s just going to sleep while we have our little fight.” I lied because no way did I want my mother to know I’d just killed a man in front of her.
Majestic got himself together and started delivering a series of punches, but I was matching him throw for throw. I’m not gonna lie; he had training, but it was still no match for my will and my anger. Three quick hits to the throat and he was wobbly; one more and he was on the floor.
Willie tossed me my gun. I stood over Majestic and pressed it into his forehead.
“Don’t do it, man, or your moms is dead.” It was the other big dude, the one he’d called Bruce, talking to me. I turned to look at him, my adrenaline pumping faster at the sight of his gun against my mother’s temple. The shock and fear I saw on her face caused me to lower my gun. She’d never seen me for the professional killer I’d become.
Willie descended on me, which told me he’d seen it too. Next thing I knew, he had his gun trained on Majestic. I knew Willie wanted to finish him off. I went over to rescue my mother, raising my gun to point it directly at Bruce.
“Niles! You take one step closer and I’ll blow her brains out,” he said.
“I’m gonna give you one chance. Let her go and walk away, �
�cause if you don’t, I can promise you, you’re going to die today.”
“Fuck that. I got her, so I’m the one in change. How the hell you making the rules?” Bruce ripped the tape off my mother’s mouth. I cringed when I saw how much pain it caused her. “Tell your son to put down his gun.”
“Baby,” my mother said.
“Yeah, Ma?”
“Shoot him.”
“Gladly.” I smirked, pulling the trigger and landing a shot right between his eyes. Bruce’s body slumped to the ground.
“Mom, I’m so sorry,” I said as I took off the tape and undid her restraints.
“I told him my son was gonna kill him,” she bragged as relief flowed through me. I loved my mother.
“Come on, Ma, let’s go,” I said, leading her out, but not before Willie mouthed to me exactly what I needed to hear: I got this. My smile widened as we left the room. A few seconds later, I heard the sound of a shot. I knew he’d done that for Tanya, but I planned to celebrate by taking my mom home.
Niles
79
I’d just come in from feeding the horses when I noticed a black SUV sitting in the driveway. The driver stepped out and opened the back door. I recognized his passenger as soon as I saw her. It was Nadja from Dynamic Defense. I felt the stress building up in my neck immediately at the sight of her, even though she had been very instrumental in covering up the details of my mother’s rescue from the police. It’s not every day the Long Island police find a house with a dozen dead bodies scattered around, so without her help there would have been one hell of an investigation, and I did not need that kind of scrutiny.
I headed to the porch to meet Nadja. Willie must have seen the car too, because he stepped out from the house and came to stand beside me.
“Good afternoon, Niles.” She reached down and picked a daisy from the garden. “Beautiful place you have here.”
“Thanks. We like it,” I replied, feeling very standoffish. “How can I help you?”
“Well, I’m headed back to Europe, and I just wanted to say good-bye and give you this.” She reached into her pocket and handed me an envelope.
“What’s this?” I asked, not giving a shit that I sounded suspicious.
“The director wanted to make sure you were reimbursed for every dime that was taken from you, including that last job.”
I opened the envelope and studied the check that was inside. There were a hell of a lot of zeros.
“Mr. Monroe, I’d like to offer you a job,” she said. I had expected this day to come.
“Tell the director I’m not interested,” I said. “I’m done with Dynamic Defense. Have a nice flight.” I turned to go into the house, but she wasn’t done.
“Tell me you don’t miss it: the thrill, the excitement, the rush of adrenaline?”
“I don’t miss the lies and the bullshit your company put me and my family through.”
“I can’t say I blame you, but hear me out.”
I suppose I could have listened to her. After all, she had just hand delivered to me a very solid future, but I swear I’d had enough of people like her, and my temper got the best of me.
“For what? You want to try and seduce me too, so you can mess with my mind? I’m not stupid. I’ve been there.”
She narrowed her eyes and stared intensely before answering quietly. “Sex is not part of my job description. In my culture, the women are pure. I hate to disappoint you, Mr. Monroe, but I’m a virgin.” She said this without a hint of irony or venom, just matter of fact. Her words shocked the hell out of me.
“She got you on that one, didn’t she, nephew?” Willie laughed, and I shot him an evil look.
“Look, my father runs the company’s Western European office. I’m just here to offer you a job because you’re good at it. That’s all.”
My mother came out and walked over to my side. “What kind of job?” she asked suspiciously. She made no pretense of her protectiveness over her only son. I would never get tired of that.
“The kind of job your son is very good at,” Nadja answered cryptically, instead of telling my mother that I killed people for a living.
She turned back to me and explained, “But this job is different, because it’s working solely with an international clientele as a freelancer. You’ll see that life outside of America is a different experience. I think you’d all like living abroad.” She finished confidently and then opened her bag. This time she pulled out three plane tickets and handed them to me.
“Three first class tickets. You have my number. Just let me know what you decide,” she told me before getting back into her car.
As soon as the SUV pulled away, I turned to Mom and Willie.
“Willie? What do you want to do?”
He looked from me to Mom. “I don’t know,” he answered, but my mother had already made her decision.
“Europe’s beautiful this time of year, and we could all use a fresh start.”
Epilogue
Five Years later
“Niles! Niles!” Willie yelled, bringing me back into reality.
Within a matter of seconds, my life had flashed before me, giving me a glimpse at just how crazy it had been. For the two years following my departure from the United States, I’d worked relentlessly for Nadja, taking out target after target throughout Europe by day and mindlessly screwing every halfway decent woman I met by night, until I ran into Paris.
She’d broken down my walls of resistance and taken my heart in what seemed like no time. Hell, I’d only loved two women up until then, and both Keisha and Bridget had betrayed me in some form or fashion, so I should have known Paris would be no different.
I gazed down at the humming bomb, acknowledging that their betrayal hadn’t remotely compared to what Paris had done.
“Niles, God dammit, answer me!” my uncle shouted at me again.
“I’m here, Unc,” I said, dropping the bag containing the bomb and quickly heading toward the rear of the plane. “Like I said before, Unc, if I don’t make it, I want you to kill her. Do you understand me? I want you to kill her.”
“Sure, sure, I understand, but let’s concentrate on getting you off that plane and away from that bomb.”
“Yeah, let’s.” I quickly strapped on a parachute, taking a quick breath before grabbing hold of the latch for the rear door. I turned it until I heard the hissing sound of the seal being broken, then I opened the door completely. I glanced over at the bag one last time, a vibrating symbol of Paris’s ultimate betrayal, shaking my head before I jumped from the plane.
I made it, I thought the moment I began to drop from the sky, but I wasn’t quite safe yet. I’d just barely cleared the plane when I heard the bomb go off, and I was immediately propelled by the violent heat of the explosion. I flew wildly out of control for what felt like an eternity. The heat was so intense I worried I could be on fire. I reached for the pull for my parachute, knowing that I was in so much pain I was on my way to blacking out, Shit, this could be the end.
Urban Books, LLC
97 N18th Street
Wyandanch, NY 11798
No More Mr. Nice Guy: A Family Business Novel
Copyright © 2016 Carl Weber
Copyright © 2016 Stephanie Covington
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: 978-1-6228-6938-1
First Hardcover Printing February 2016
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.
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