Rogue (In the life of the Rogue Book 1)

by KaNeshia Michelle

  The hooker’s hand drummed against my chest. Then her fingers stopped drumming and the index pointed to the cigarette burning softly in my hand. I stubbed out the dwindling cigarette, placed another in my mouth and lit it, intending it to be for her.

  And that’s when the screaming began from the bathroom.

  Zander was nude, hunched over on the toilet, with his eyes halfway up in his head. His face had gone to an ashy white. His hooker, her face contorted in just plain ole’ disgust, mingled with rage with a dash of hate, reared her hand back and slapped him.

  “You son of a bitch!” Her accent too had changed. “You took all of it!” She was screaming at him.

  It was then that I saw the needle poking out of his forearm and the blood cascading down, making a pool in his upraised palm.

  She cocked her arm again like a thumb would cock back a hammer on a glock. “You fucking bastard!”

  The slap against his cheek was so loud it sounded like a shot and I jumped, pulled out of my stupor. She reared again for another shot and I was on her, pulling her arm and pushing her away.

  My hand hovered over the needle in Zander’s arm. Not a drug addict, unsure of just what to do. I had the puerile thought if I withdrew the syringe then he would inflat like a balloon that lost its air.

  I turned to look at the hooker. “What did you give him?”

  Her head jutted up in defiance.

  I bared my teeth and my body coiled like a snake all too happy that she had given me her neck for easy ripping. She caught the look, the dangerousness in my face and wilted – she was ready to flee in terror and reached for her purse but I was quicker. I snatched it off the counter, overturned it and dumped the contents out on the floor. Make up, rolls of condoms – the cheap kind - and crumple up dirty bills fell out, followed by syringes and a little baggie with white residue inside it.

  “What is this?” I demanded.

  My whore was standing in the doorway watching the events. She shook her head disapprovingly at her friend. “That was for us. What were you thinking?”

  “He said he pay me double for it,” her friend whined back.

  I huffed and tossed the baggie down on top of her trash from her purse. “With what money? We gave you what all we had.”

  My words settled into a deep dark place with the bitch. She cut her eyes, glaring angrily at my cousin who I swore was dying right in front of me while I played twenty questions. She lunged for another round with Zander as if someone had rung a bell for the fight to commense again.

  I took her arms and wretched them behind her back. “Now you listen to me, whore. What the fuck did you shoot my cousin with?”

  She turned her head and spit in my face. “He shot him ownself up. And it was heroine.”

  With her spit sliding down the left side of my cheek, I closed my eyes doing the best to keep control and not choke her till she was limp in my hands. I pushed her out of the bathroom, sending her colliding into her friend.

  “Get the fuck out!”

  “You owe me,” she argued.

  Arguing was stupid and it took time that I didn’t have. I ignored the whores arguing as they slipped from English to Spanish as they called me names from nigger to bitch ass nigger. Zander was breaking out into a sweat. His body shivered violently. I heaved him up by his waist and settled him in the tub under the spray of water. I shut off the hot water and yanked the knob hard to get it as cold as it could be – I had seen it in a movie once when an idiot had overdosed. Calling the cops seemed out of the question. It was the bad part of town and they wouldn’t be here in time. No. If I wanted my cousin to live, I would have to do it myself.

  I pulled down on his chin to open his mouth and pinched his nose closed. C.P.R. would have to do and I hated the thought of our lips touching.

  “Fuck!” I screamed and did the unthinkable.

  I breathed air into my cousin’s mouth.

  Zander coughed violently but opened his eyes. I breathed easier but as soon as I did, I realized I had an even bigger problem. My cousin had happily slipped off the wagon. The warning signs were there. I had ignored them, hoping my cousin wouldn’t be dumb enough to make the same mistake twice when the consequences would mean his life. I should have known better because I was just as guilty.

  You were unbelievingly blind to the things you chose not to see…

  He blinked slowly. His breathing finally evened out. I saw his dilated pupils and the drool that lingered around his mouth.

  “This is fucked, Zander.”

  He swallowed, hard. His Adams Apple jerked violently down in his throat then bobbed back up.

  His eyes slid towards me. “I know, man. I just needed to escape.” His voice was extremely tight and horse. “I just needed to escape.”

  Escape… You only used the word when you needed Freedom that you just didn’t have. I would escape, too, if I could. I just needed to find the door that held me in.

  The night had been a bust. I let the water hit my hand, watching the way the water slipped through cracks of my fingers and thinking that this was what my life was like. Just in the palm in my hand but falling through the cracks, and what I lost, I would never get back. I was too busy reacting to life than actually living it. Zander wheezed and coughed but breathed all the same. If he wanted to talk, he didn’t utter a word and neither did I. I withdrew my wet hand and rubbed the cold water on my face, wiping off the whore’s spit. Breathing seemed hard. My mind working, thinking of ways to handle the drug problem wasn’t found in the burrows of my mind. And, to be real, my selfishness wouldn’t allow me the extra room to think of a way to save someone other than myself.

  The Katie incident rained anew all over again and I still haven’t learned.

  The self-pity was thick and cloaked me like a black cloud, but not so thick that I didn’t hear the door handle, to the room, move as if someone testing the lock. I instantly thought of the two very pissed whores that had left at some time during my breathing exercise with Zander, trying to get back in because they left something in their haste. The scrape of metal after the handle test outside the door made me think of a maid, whom I had yet to see, and by the condition of the room when we first step foot in it, and not to mention the obscene late hour for the imaginary maid to be working, was letting herself into the room with a master key card that had missed the slot on the first try. Yet when I heard the scrape again, and the lock clicking home, I knew someone was breaking in.

  The door creaked open and I waited behind it, ready to strike at any moment. The barrel, screwed tightly to a silencer, of a glock dipped into the flickering light from the television as it pushed further into the room. I waited until I saw the exposed wrist that led to the hand holding the gun. My left hand wrapped around the wrist, holding it from the base and pushed the arm up, while my right hand slammed down on the hand. The gun fired, the bullet hitting the floor between my feet. With the silencer it was like pfft! Then the gun dropped to the floor. I kicked it out of the way as a man stumbled through.

  He was too surprised and I was too quick to captilize on it. My hand was around his throat. He grabbed with his free, uninjured hand to loosen my hold. My heel kicked at the back of his legs and he fell, losing his footing and sinking into my choke. His eyes were wide. He opened his mouth to speak but I only tightened my hold to choke the words right out of his mouth. He would be dead on his feet. He knew it and I damn well knew it. A chuckle eased its way to my throat.

  I could be a killer, I thought. I was thrilled and terrified how easily I was ready to keep choking until he went limp. Then I heard a click as a hammer had been thumbed back. The barrel soon followed afterwards and touched my skin. The gunman hadn’t been alone, and I hadn’t checked to see if he had backup.

  “Let him go,” said the man with the gun to my head.

  I shrugged innocently and squeezed even tighter. I refused to even greet the partner who had the gun to my head. As far as I was concerned, he didn’t exist. He had me at a disa
dvantaged, so I built on my strength. My strength being that I had one of the duo seconds away from killing over.

  Then I got a surprise.

  I heard the click of a hammer being put back in its place and gun was removed from the side of my head. Only then did I loosen my hold but not by much. The guy getting choked gasped at some of the air I allowed him.

  I smiled as the gunman’s glazed eyes met mine. Only now that the immediate threat was put away, I glanced at the man standing beside me. He was an older gentleman with hard eyes. Not a thug but a man who did dirt but had class with the work he did. Fortunately being part of a Family, I could recognize Family hired thugs when one crossed my sight. I let go of the guy I was choking and backed away. He slid down to his butt and took a large healthy breath.

  “Let’s start over, okay?” I said, starting the conversation.

  I sank to the bed and snagged the cigarette I had intended for the hooker before the night went from thinly fine to fucked up. The move had put me closer to my gun inside the drawer lieing right beside the bible every shitty hotel had, like the people who took residence here had a need for divine soul searching.

  I took a hard pull on the stale cigarette. “Who sent you?”

  The gunman, who I hadn’t choked because I hadn’t known he was there, finally put the gun in his holster just inside his jacket.

  “Rogue,” he answered.

  I chuckled and pulled again, tasting the stale smoke. “Give me the phrase then.”

  He laughed. I figured he was thinking that even if he did know the code phrase used when addressing a member of the family whom you never met before but needed to talk business with, he didn’t have to give it to me.

  I was at his mercy.

  Or so he thought.

  He exhaled, his hard eyes getting even harder. “Thou that live by the Rogue have already sacrificed thy life for the Rogue.”

  Those words always goosebumped my skin. “My father sent you?”

  “Your grandfather, Tristan, and you should grab some pants on for the meeting.”

  I was still naked but that was the least of my worries. I still lingered on the burning cigarette. I took another healthy puff and blew out the smoke. “Is my grandfather in Miami?”

  “He is.”

  “Why?”

  The man helped his partner off the ground and dusted the back of his jacket off like me and Zander’s apartment was dirtying up his friend.

  Maybe it was.

  “You’ll have to ask him that yourself,” he said, “You want me to get your cousin or do you have it handled?”

  I stubbed the cigarette. “He’s under the weather.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Lord, protect me from my family; they’re worse than my enemies…

  I breathed into my hands. The bar felt good and solid underneath my elbows. Here I was, in another nice resort, but this time there wasn’t a dead man upstairs that needed to be misplaced.

  Dragging my hands down my face, I came face to face with a bartender who smiled a little too hard for me to take as genuine. I figured I looked a little too rough around the edges to be sitting in a place that was atleast a grand a night to stay in. Surely, I wasn’t a hotel guest; I didn’t fit the part. I hadn’t shaved in weeks – as to the request of my father – and my hair was an afro of curls that flopped against my forehead. My suit was wrinkled, stained and dirty. No money for a cleaners, or laudromat that could at least help with the smell of sweat, liquor and self-pity mixed with depression.

  “Take your order, sir?” The bartender asked. And it sounded nice enough for me to really believe he wanted to take my drink order.

  I quirked an eyebrow as my eyes scanned the assortment of pretty bottles with beautiful liquor resting inside, just waiting to touch my throat and ease the stress.

  Maybe the night was looking up?

  The gunman who had the gun pressed against my temple just an hour ealier, known to me now as Mr. White, slid a pre-paid phone next to me. “He’ll call when he’s ready for you to come up.” Then he glared at the bartender.

  The smile on the bartender’s face altered slightly from, I’m here to help with your drinking problem, really I am, to, I’m happy to serve as long as you don’t tear our shit up.

  Mr. White squeezed my shoulder, and I didn’t think it was as hard as I imagined until I heard his knuckle crack from the pressure. “Keep it light on the sauce.”

  When Mr. White took his leave, I smiled at the bartender, “The strongest drink you got, please.”

  I had plenty to drink about. My last twenty I had hidden in the bottom of my shoe went to the bartender to keep the drinks coming, but that would lead to him giving me a bill I wouldn’t be able to pay for when Papa called at the rate I was downing the booze. Zander was still in our hotel room with his eyes still half way up in his head, but at least his arm had stopped bleeding. He had tried to dress himself for the meeting but I ordered him to stay and sleep off the shit he took. No one needed to see him like this. Especailly Papa: the man with no qualms in having family killed for mistakes.

  I laughed into my glass because I knew life couldn’t get anymore fucked up, and then found myself near tears when a wave of sweet scented perfume brushed past my nose. I inhaled deeply, and instantly my mind was drowning from the familiarity.

  Life couldn’t get anymore fucked up? Life had answered back a little too quickly with: ‘yes it could.’

  “May I have a seat,” Lulina asked.

  I motioned to the stool next to me. She eased down beside me, her bare arm brusing against mine. The way her arm touched mine had shot sparks throughout me.

  Like always, Lulina knew my body better than I did my own.

  “Easy, Tristan,” she said, “we’re in a bar full of people. You can’t bend me over and take me here.”

  She smiled. Her perfect white teeth were glistening in the dim lighting. By far she was the most alluring woman in the bar. I could feel the men watching her, sizing her up and liking what they saw. She wore a tight leather skirt that split at the side where her long leg shown almost to her pelvic. She had a tight, white, sleeveless blouse that was unbuttoned low enough to make my mouth water. Her lips were heavy coated with red lip stick; heavy mascara that brought more attention to her hazel eyes. Her hair was down and wavy, touching her shoulders.

  Looking at her now made me think less of her but more of Dominique. Lulina reminded me of the girl who still had my mind plunging and my heart racing.

  Lulina had the sureness that Dominique had.

  I grasped my drink for a long, healthy sip but Lulina caught my arm. She didn’t like when I drank. Although she was married into a family that drank profusely, she didn’t like when I drank.

  She would say: You look like you’re never going to stop, Tristan.

  That was only because I never intended to.

  Her hand touched my knee and squeezed. She eased her hand higher up aiming towards my crotch but I turned my body away from her grasp. She smiled heavily but withdrew her hand. Part of me hated her. A lot of me didn’t like her, but most of me wanted her. It had been too long since I had her.

  She ordered a glass of wine. I drank only when she took a sip, and did my best to put the glass down when she did. My insides burned to ingest more but I did not.

  I ran a thumb over my growing beard, wondering dumbly if she would like the way it would feel against her lips if she kissed me.

  “Why are you here?” I questioned.

  She took another sip, ignoring my question, and I too quickly took another pull on my drink emptying my glass.

  The bartender came by and asked if I wanted another.

  “He’s done,” Lulina answered before I could even open my mouth.

  Denied more liquor and not happy about it, I went on, “You and Johnny having a vacation?”

  She took another sip from her wine glass but this time she swallowed her wine, hard. “Johnny’s not here.”

  Not here could me
an many things, but by the way she said it, and how she avoided my stare, but couldn’t cover up the quick sadness in her face, only meant one thing to me.

  “When?” I growled.

  My insides were steadily tightening but it didn’t reach my face. I didn’t like my brother, and I sure as hell didn’t love him, but he was my brother.

  I wanted to kill him.

  As for anyone else, it wasn’t fair game.

  It also meant that we were at war with either a neighboring family, or a street gang, or a punk kid who had got trigger happy when demanding my brother’s wallet. All elements I didn’t like. The latter was the easiest to revenge but blood was going to be spilt either way. But Johnny wasn’t like the rest of the Rogue men. Papa had made sure that his hands were barely dirty. He was sent to college. He had a degree and he worked the books. He never had to touch a gun, so he being killed wasn’t supposed to happen.

  Ralph? Yes, he was in the line of fire.

  Me? Yes, I did the dirty work too.

  Lulina waited until the bartender served her another glass of wine before she answered. “It happened last Saturday.”

  Today was Friday.

  I growled under my breath. I wondered when I was going to get the message that my brother was dead. It was the Katie incident smacking me in the face all over again - twice removed from the family circle and still falling lower and lower on the food chain.

  Still paying prices…

  I clenched my teeth and jumped when I heard my jaw pop because of it. “Do we know who?”

  Lulina glanced around at the half empty bar. “This isn’t a good time to talk about this.”

  The pre-paid rang, startling me. I swiped it up and squeezed until her the plastic crack alittle. “Is this what this meeting is about?”