by Brick
My teammate called after me, “I’ll keep Coach off ya back since you know we ain’t supposed to leave and shit until he gets at us. I’ll holla at cha.”
I ignored him. Hitting dial on my phone, I took an alternate exit route that gave me privacy away from the reporters who were lurking around.
Several rings kicked up my temper as the phone was finally picked up on the forth ring. “There go my money. I see once motivated, a nigga can conquer the world, eh? How that shit feel, nigga? I know I feel good. Ooowee! I feel very good.”
Heated, my eyes narrowed and it took every ounce of strength not to get at this dude. “Yeah. It was a’ight. Where’s my brother?” I asked as I dropped my bag to the floor.
The sound of laughter in the background with music and female laughter let me know Micah was celebrating. The reception on his end rustled and I listened as he snorted and laughed hard. “No, man, I told you though, that little nigga got feet of gold! Don’t I pick them niggas right? Never doubt me, man, never doubt my chaotic method, ’cause you’ll be left out somewhere floppin’ like a guppy,” I heard him say on the other end.
I stood waiting in the hallway, pulling on my tank, and picking my bag back up from the floor. Laughter blasted from the cell. My anger rose the longer I waited.
“Yo! I did what you wanted!” I found myself barking into the cell. Silence replaced the background noise, and my nostrils flared as I breathed in and out in anger. Heat rose to my face while this motherfucker made me his bitch.
“So you understand me now?” Micah’s voice questioned me in malicious enjoyment. “You get who got the power and who don’t? Because I don’t think you do. Check your text and you’ll see the good time me and your brother had today. Go ’head, flip that cell on speaker.”
Not even waiting a heartbeat, I moved him to speaker and ground my teeth as he spoke to others on his end of the cell, laughing, sniffing, and clinking glasses. “I’m telling you, Enzo is that nigga. The best of friends we are and with my sponsorship and working with his coaches, he is going to lead us to championships,” Micah boasted.
As he talked up my game, I found my messages then checked the video sent from “unknown.” I watched in silence as a scene that would sicken some other niggas only made my world tilt back. Blood drained from my face as I watched my baby brother be pushed into the screen. Deep male voices sounded in their malicious laughter. I saw Angel writhing on the bed as my brother was pushed onto her naked body.
My eye twitched as I watched my brother touch her in curiosity before he fell into natural law and rode her like he was pro at it. I glanced around in panicked anger. I felt moisture rim my eyes as I bit my lower lip to keep from screaming in fury. The jarring pain of my fist hitting the brick wall of the hallway I was in, leaving blood to mark my hit, didn’t help the pain I was feeling watching my brother be forced to fuck some broad. Not any broad, but one I used to have to protect.
I felt sick in that moment, only because I was supposed to protect him from the streets. I had taken him from the same place that raised me and thought he would be safe, but no, I was wrong. Everything in the actions of my past was wrong, and the video I was watching was proof of that.
“Good look, ain’t it, nigga. Ain’t nothing like experienced pussy to make hair grow on a little nigga’s dick, right?” I heard Micah’s voice say to me, drawing me back to reality.
I ended the video quickly, not able to take any more of it. I couldn’t say I was a weak nigga. Being brought up by my aunt but also by Dame, I had seen everything and experienced worse. But it was something about family being subjected to that violence that cut my soul out and left it at my feet.
My tongue ran over my lips and I swallowed a couple of times trying to work my throat muscles. “What do you want?”
Glasses clinked again with Micah ordering everyone out of whatever room he was in. “Now we get to that understanding, don’t we? Niggas like to play King Kong in this bitch, but remember it was a motherfucking plane that took that monkey down, and, nigga, I’m that plane.”
He paused then cleared his throat before making a “ssss” noise as if inhaling before speaking back at me with a croaking tone to his voice. “Eh, yeah, shit a’ight. What I want you’ll continue to find out. Once we hang up here, you can expect to find your package being delivered to your private residence. On that thought, I have to say, nigga, you made that place look damn good. Dame would be impressed with how you got it; your pretty aunt must have helped you.”
No words could be said to express how much red I was seeing. My hand pressed against my thumping skull, sweat ran down the curve of my shoulder blades. I knew I was about to black out and fuck some shit up. This nigga had been in my home. He knew where I lived, which meant he had to have snatched my brother from where we lived. This nigga had upped the ante on the playing field and stepped into my spot.
“Do you know how much money I could make off your sweet auntie’s sick pussy? It’s a world for such places, bet all the dick I could give her would make her heal up like Saint Matthew, ha! Anyway, kid, tell me, if you understand that, you have no way out. That freedom you think you got, you can have, but know I own the strings. You fuck with my jimmy and I fuck with your mammy. Understood? Your brother was just nice little piece of fat on the steak. You keep playing and I’ll take the whole entrée, yeah?”
My jaw was set in a hard line. I could feel the veins popping out on my forehead. My forehead pressed against the cold wall of the hallway and I listened to a nigga just pull power on me. If it were just him and me I could simply handle this with ease, but because he had my family, I had to play this point to the tee.
“I understand,” was all I stated while waiting.
The sound of a chair squeaking echoed back to me. “Good. We’ll be in contact.” With that, his cell went dead.
I stood in place where I was for what felt like hours before I heard several females scream and jump near me. “Oh, my God! It’s Enzo! Enzo! Ahhhh!”
Their squeals were sharp like razors while I stood bowed with my forehead pressed into the wall. I stepped back and started at the two women. I couldn’t see shit in the moment. Everything was a blur. But the quick silence then stunned murmurs that I was bleeding made me turn then snatch up my bag before stepping off with my dark thoughts trailing me.
As I walked off, I felt them following me. I growled, “I’ll be good! Just part of the game. Back off.”
Dizziness claimed me while I slammed open twin steel doors and headed to my ride leaving the groupies behind me. Getting to my place didn’t take long. I drove there by rote, in a daze. The shotgun I had in my ride was in my hand the whole drive over. I walked into the place I was calling a temporary home and dropped my bag not missing a step. Tunnel vision worked me as I searched every room stopping once I got to my aunt’s room. The familiar sound of her machines pumping chemicals into her system brought me back to reality while I watched her sleep. In her hand was the house phone and I could see her cheeks were damp with shed tears. I hated to wake her up but I had to. I had to know how that nigga got my brother.
Carefully moving around the bed, I checked her machines, having memorized every drug she needed. I made sure she was all good. I moved to sit on her bed. As I did, the sound of a pistol cocking alarmed me. I turned to find myself staring down the barrel of a gun. My aunt was slowly sitting up, starring me down with hatred before it melted away in pain and sadness.
She dropped the gun then reached out to hug me. “Shawn! I thought you were someone else. I’m sorry, baby.”
Shifting my shotgun beside me, I wrapped my arms around her, taking comfort in her embrace as I spoke against her neck, “Who’d you think I was, Tía? Huh?”
Her hands gently slid up and down my broad back. A slight tremble from her had me leaning back to see if she was okay, as I stared into her eyes. Eyes that used to be hazel were now bluish gray from all the chemo.
“Drew didn’t come home. Some man in a suit came in
when I thought it was Drew. He came in looking around and asked questions about you, this chemo, and me. Said he was some rep for your team and that he was going to take care of us all. Yet all the time he was here, Drew never came home and that man kept watching me in a crazy way. You know I don’t trust no one, so the fact that he was in here without a key, without Drew being in the house at the same time saying he had let him in, I knew something was wrong,” she explained.
The fear in her voice had me holding her hand a little too tight. I could see a fire in my aunt, one I remembered as a kid myself. Before I had got hooked up with Dame and the game, I had been playing football at my middle school. Back then, I lived on the field. I did everything my coaches wanted, and made sure I learned everything I needed.
My team and I had been at a game in Alabama. During that time our assistant coach had to take us so, anyway, long story short, nigga found a way to try to fuck us kids, literally. He had walked into the showers with us after our win and tried to wash up on us kids. We were all freaked the fuck out ’cause this nigga had never done anything like this. I stepped out quick and hit up my aunt who drove hours to get to where we were. Before she got there, our assistant coach had already warned us not to say anything. He tried to tell us it was normal and shit for an adult like him to shower with us kids and try to touch our shit. Yeah, I wasn’t even hearing it.
My aunt dragged me out with some of the other kids and took us home. Some days after, my aunt had dropped me and Drew off at Jake’s gram’s home to stay with her for a week. I remember that well. My aunt had that same look in her eyes like she did now.
I watched her head out and didn’t see her until a week later. That was the same day I heard on the news that our assistant coach had been found dead in his car with a gunshot to the skull. Back then, I wouldn’t even have thought on it, but I remembered my aunt had a Glock under her bed. She had told us it was there for protection. Yeah, that shit was gone and replaced with a new pistol. I had wanted to ask my aunt about it. I got my answer when she turned off the news and said, “Vengeance heals what evil has broken.”
That day she made me and Drew cookies and told me to never let that nigga’s evil pollute my gifts. She assured me that she would always watch out for my brother and me because that’s what family does. Now I stared at those same eyes and my stomach clenched in response.
I inhaled slowly, bowing my head, doing my best not to watch her fragility flicker with energy bent on killing the threat that came into our home. I knew I had to tell her about Drew. There would be no way I couldn’t.
“Drew—”
A knock at the door kept me from having to explain to her that he was missing. I stood then grabbed my shotgun. I glanced at my aunt and saw that her pistol was gone.
“Evil is at our door again, but that’s okay, Shawn baby,” she said. “We’ll ride it out like we always do. Don’t let it touch your power, remember that.”
She had always dropped wisdom on me. Made me wish she wasn’t sick anymore. Made me wish she was the happy aunt who used to dance around the house, belting out all the cuts, and who would spit rhymes and poetry every Saturday to bring extra money in the house.
A second knock, this time harder, made me nod. “I remember.”
I made my way to the door, moved to the side where I positioned my gun behind me. I opened the door then pointed it at the source of the knock. A pitched, “Damn!” made me glance to see who it was. I moved my body fully into the door with a cold expression on my face.
“Where—”
“He’s right here; put the gun down, please,” Angel pleaded.
She looked as if she had been dropped into the middle of a storm, but she also looked high as fuck. I moved my gun gesturing with it to tell her to come in as I kept my eyes on her. I didn’t see my brother until she turned her back to me then reached to the side to pull him in. He stumbled in, disheveled, slumped as he walked in drenched in sweat. I already knew what that look was about. I aimed my gun at Angel again as I slammed the door hard by reaching over her head and pressing my palm against the door.
“Sit him down and spill that shit!” I ordered.
She held up both of her hands then rushed my brother to the couch to lay him down. She pushed her stringy weave over her shoulder and kept watching me as she helped him. Sweat was also covering her paling caramel skin. She appeared red in the face and her eyes were bloodshot. Her arms wrapped around her stomach. Her tongue darted in and out to wet her lips and I could tell she was ready to throw up.
Pointing with my gun, I tilted my head as I glowered at her, “Do that shit in the kitchen sink so I can watch you then talk.”
I didn’t have to repeat myself because she ran to the gourmet kitchen and emptied her stomach into the massive stainless steel sink before her. Shaking hands cranked the water on, and she cupped them to splash water on her face. Through her fingers, I can tell she was crying but hiding it by the way her hunched-over back would shake and she would take deep breaths in between each retching puke.
Rustling behind me made me step back. Drew groaned and held his dick. His usually golden brown skin was now a sickly pale yellow with red tints. Heat generated from him, but he shook like he was cold.
“What did he fucking take?” I shouted, not even caring that Angel was still puking.
Angel wiped her mouth while watching me with uncertainty. “Micah made him take Indigo and Rémy liquid and pill form. Drugged us both.”
Sourness in the form of bile in my throat had me contorting my face. I needed to hear her say what happened, needed to see the reality of the fucking shit that went down and tell me to my face. I asked sharply, “For what?”
Pain flashed across her face. Her head tilted to the side as if she wanted to hit me. “Motherfucker, what the fuck you think? Indigo mixed with alcohol makes a male, any age, a slave to his dick. So what you think it was for?” she screeched out.
Red flashed across my eyes again. I stomped across the kitchen with rage in my heart. Angel screamed then stumbled backward. My free hand found its way around her throat and I squeezed hard lifting her in the air with my gun pressing into her stomach. Heat traveled up my body in strengthening anger. The sound of running water and dishware crashing to the floor with my Nikes crunching into them echoed in the condo.
I could sense her slapping and kicking at me, but I couldn’t feel it. I took a couple of steps forward and slammed her head back into a column in the kitchen and I growled low, “Bitch, you get off on fucking my kid brother? You so gone that you upped the pussy to a kid? You need goddamn money that bad? Huh!”
Gasping breath was all I got in response. Angel’s eyes bucked out at me as she flapped her mouth trying to speak.
“I should shove this fucking Glock up your pussy, bitch, and end you right here.”
“Shawn, put her down. She needs help and so does Drew. They both were attacked. Put her down,” sounded behind me.
“Enzo, that nigga made us do it, big bro. Stop, please, bro!” Drew’s scratchy voice also chimed in.
My teeth clenched and my stomach tightened in sickness, causing me to twist my face up and turn my head. He sounded different to me now. My own brother sounded like he now had more bass in his voice. It could have easily been my mind playing tricks on me. A taint spread through me causing my world to tilt again.
I knew he would forever be changed by this and it was my fault in reality for not hiding them. All of it rested on my shoulders. I squeezed harder, my eyes squinting in fury as I shifted my hand and pressed the end of my gun against her pussy. She had on loose sweatpants and, as she squirmed, her shirt rose and I could see a fresh burn on her side. Her hair spilled over my wrist as her tears spilled down her cheeks.
My aunt’s tugging on me pulled me back from blacking out again. My chest rose up and down like a bull ready to attack. I knew I had to be looking crazy but I didn’t give a fuck. My eyes kept darting back and forth. Angel’s words that they had been drugged final
ly registered to me.
“Please . . . let . . . go,” Angel gasped while frantically tapping my arm with her hands.
My aunt’s frail arms enclosed me from behind and pulled me back. Out of my peripheral, Angel slowly slid down the wall then stared up at us from her crouching position on the kitchen floor. She held her neck rubbing it, and her chest rose rapidly up and down in a pant trying to regain herself. I could hear my aunt telling Angel to go sit down as I hugged her instantly worrying about her being out of bed.
“Tía, you should be resting.” I disjointedly stated.
She turned my jaw to look into her caring face, making me focus. “I have enough drugs in me to keep me going. You sit, and you let this girl talk as I bring their high down. Once that happen, we’ll pack up like you said and figure out the next move, okay?” she explained walking me to the living room.
I didn’t notice the gun in my aunt’s hand until she had me sit in the massive black chair she had bought special for me.
All I could do in that moment was nod, chest becoming tighter with every tight breath I took. I heard her, and I agreed with her, but my mind was on one thing: killing Micah. He didn’t deserve a simple kill. Naw, he deserved something special. Something I knew I needed to be able to do without it tracking back to me afterward. It was then that my mind started clearing up and I began setting up my agenda. I had friends in high places too. This nigga was not about to take me down, not before I dragged him to hell with me.
Chapter 7
Angel
“Ahhhhh! Grrrrrr!” I groaned into the pillow as the burning of alcohol singed my back.
“What kind of animal would do this to another human being?” Enzo’s aunt, Shy, had pulled away the last bit of the T-shirt that had been stuck to my back. She continued to fuss. “This is lunacy. I’m sorry this happened to you, baby. This is going to hurt so bite the pillow and bear with me.”
“While she works on you, I need you to tell me what he wants you do to for him. Obviously you’re a henchman too now since this has happened,” Enzo said to me.