Anatoly's Retribution: Book One (The Medlov Men 5)

by Latrivia Welch

  Most would assume that because she had lived the brutal life, she’d be against it, but Tenisha felt that if she could survive at the age of ten, so could they as teenagers.

  No mercy. No regret.

  It just so happened that all of her efforts had not been in vain, even though the sale of the four girls might not pan out. While she was always looking at the high schools for girls to turn out, she kept a close eye on the normal ho-strolls around the city. Over the last two weeks, a little girl named Peaches had been working Third Street alone and gaining more and more attention for her appeal.

  Peaches was easy money. Thin, tall, small breasts, high cheek bones, a little ass with wide hips, the girl knew the street but didn’t have the miles to show it. She had a medium brown complexion with natural brown hair that she wore up in pixie ponytail and bright brown eyes that she highlighted with pink sparkly shadow. While other girls wore gym shoes, Peaches wore heels all day every day. She also had the body for the short shorts and tank tops she donned every night. To top it off, the cops liked her. They stopped and talked to her every once in a while, but they never picked her up. Most would have assumed that it was because she was a plant, but Tenisha had a cop on the inside who confirmed that she was just a working girl.

  If she wasn’t a snitch and she didn’t have a pimp, as far as Tenisha was concerned, Peaches was free game. She sent Rico to play the john first. He brought her back to the hotel, paid for a blow job and then an hour later, Tenisha burst in with her trusty Smith and Wesson knife, a bottle of acid and three bodyguards.

  After taunting her for a while first, she gave Peaches the same two options she gave every girl. Work for her or be carved like a pumpkin. Naturally, Peaches opted for the less violent of the two.

  Now, Tenisha was going to sell her with the four girls, if the deal went through, to a guy who traveled the south giving private parties to high rollers with a penchant for teenage whores. However, if that didn’t work out, she could always put Peaches on the street herself and give her a quota. Either way, it was a win-win.

  ***

  Peaches passed one of the girls a napkin to wipe her tears. Sitting in the corner, between the queen-sized bed farthest from the door and the wall, she watched each of the four men carefully while they called themselves watching the door. In truth, they were looking out of the window and brandishing their guns. The verdict was still out on if they knew how to use them properly.

  Amateurs. The lot of them.

  Rico, the head of muscle for Tenisha’s little hodge-podge crew, was getting high on a blunt while he periodically peaked out of the window and played Candy Crush on his cell phone. It was a bad move for a man who was supposed to be ready to fight at any time. In about ten minutes, when he needed to be quick on the draw, the marijuana would slow down his reflexes at by at least ten seconds. That could possibly cost him his life.

  One of the men wore a second-hand gun holster on his right side even though he was right handed, which made his gun about as useful as tits on a bull if he needed to quickly reach for it.

  The other two knuckle heads were local gang bangers who probably had never fought one-on-one ever in their lives. They had laid their guns on the table while they played cards, assuming that the little girls they were holding hostage were no physical threat.

  The only time Tenisha wore a gun period was during a sale. With a four-man bodyguard team that was always packing, the extra muscle made her feel invincible, especially with those who couldn’t defend themselves. Instead, she kept a sharp little knife stuffed in her front pocket where everyone could see it. Over the years, she had used it enough to think that she was good with a blade, but the false sense of power would be her downfall tonight.

  “Bitch, keep crying and Imma stick a dick your mouth,” Tenisha threatened one of the teens, who had been crying for her mother for about three hours straight.

  Peaches put her hand on the girl’s thigh to silence her sobs and calm the girl down. She knew they were afraid, but she had to keep them calm if her plan was going to play out without a hitch.

  The girl sniffled and wiped her face. Not used to being manhandled, she lashed out despite her situation. “I just want to go home,” she cried, trembling with fear. “Just let me go home!”

  “You ain’t going nowhere!” Tenisha screamed, spit flying out of her mouth. She pushed up from the bed on her feet and stalked over to the girls lined up on the wall. Seeing them their helpless and afraid only made her feel stronger. “Say something else!” she screamed, raising her hand at the crying girl. “I dare you!”

  The other three girls held on to each other quietly, trying hard not to upset their captor again. Tenisha was a monster. They had all suffering beatings by hear hand over the last week and were covered in bruises. However, she had promised them that if she wanted, things could always get worse.

  The defiant girl rolled her eyes at Tenisha. Unlike the others, her spirit had not yet been broken. “I hate you,” she whispered, crossing her arms over her chest.

  Tenisha coiled back and slapped the girl in the eye with her open hand. The sound echoed around the room. “You hate me?” She hit her again, this time harder. “How you like me now, bitch?” Balling up her fist, she punched the girl in the mouth for good measure. Blood ran down the girl’s mouth onto her torn shirt.

  Only inches away from Tenisha, Peaches cringed at the brutal beating. These poor kids didn’t deserve this shit. She had to step in to make it stop before she did something she would regret later. “Nobody is gonna want a bloody whore,” she piped up. “She’s just scared. Leave her alone.”

  Just as she had intended, Peaches drew the wrath from the poor little teenager to herself.

  Tenisha bent down and eyeballed Peaches curiously. “Leave her alone? What? You her momma now?”

  Peaches held her composure. She swallowed hard like she was afraid but still poked the bear. “No. I just don’t want to get caught because she’s crying. Someone might call the cops. And I already got a record. If I get busted, they not gone believe that I didn’t steal the little bitch myself.”

  “So, you running things now?” Tenisha didn’t like defiance even in the smallest measure. In order to keep the other girls under control, she had to act even if Peaches had a point.

  With the tilt of her head, she bit her bottom lip. “I’m not running anything, I was just saying, it’s a stupid move.” Peaches continued to eyeball Tenisha, infuriating her. She knew it was cardinal sin to stare her pimp in the face, still she did it anyway.

  “So, we stupid too,” Tenisha said sardonically. Laughing, she looked back at her crew to see if they were watching. They were. Everyone in the room was sizing her up because of this bitch. She reached back and slapped Peaches in the face as hard as she could. “That’s for having a fucking opinion.”

  Knowing that would not be enough, Peaches looked back up at the woman with a mouth full of blood. She continued with her reasoning. “I’m just saying that…”

  Tenisha hit her again. This time, she leaned into Peaches, grabbing her by her white tank top, stained with sweat and droplets of blood, and pulled her up to her knees. Hitting her again, over and over again as hard as she could, she didn’t stop until she was winded.

  Tenisha rose back up and pointed a stern finger. “All of you, shut the fuck up. One more word, and I swear to God I’ll have Rico take you in the bathroom and beat the fuck out of you! I’m not gone say that shit anymore,” she warned, certain that she had secured their attention. “That’s what’s wrong with these hoes that work the strip on their own. They don’t know how to listen and follow directions.” She glared at Peaches, face swelling from being battered. “But I’m gone teach your ass before it’s all over with. You gone learn tonight.”

  Peaches nodded her obedience but didn’t speak. Everything in her wanted to lash out right then at Tenisha and claw out her eyes, but Nadei had taught her to be patient and calculating, instead of giving in to spontaneous emotion
.

  During the scuffle, she managed to grab Tenisha by the top of her pants. Holding on to her as she took the blows, Peaches absorbed the pain while at the same time, running her hand over Tenisha’s pants pocket to pull out the knife. She slid it in her hand before the loud, obnoxious woman could notice. Falling dramatically against the wall when the harsh reprimand was over, she eyed the guards to make sure that they hadn’t notice her pick Tenisha’s pocket. But based upon the look on their faces, none was the wiser.

  Gotcha, she thought to herself, barely able to conceal a naughty smile.

  The other girls whimpered in fear. Even the defiant one kept her mouth closed, avoiding contact with Tenisha or the four men who snickered at them.

  As soon as Tenisha sat back down on the opposite bed and picked up her phone to check it again for the text she was waiting on, Peaches tucked the knife safely away in her back pocket, took a deep breath and spoke again. Her voice cut through the silence and baffled the girls beside her.

  “When we gone get some food up in here at least. We hungry,” Peaches chided in a whiny voice. She could feel the tension thick enough to cut in the room. No one could believe that she was actually bold enough to speak again, even after being warned.

  “That’s it,” Tenisha snapped, throwing her phone down again. “Rico, take that bitch in the bathroom and teach her a lesson. Don’t stop until you see the white meat. Make that ho bleed.”

  Peaches pushed back in the corner away from the girls. “I’m sorry,” she begged. “Please,” she cried. “I won’t say nothing else.” She knew her pleas would fall on death ears, but she had to make it believable.

  Tenisha tuned the woman’s whining out. All she wanted to hear at that moment was the sound of bones breaking. Grabbing the remote, she turned on the television and casually pulled a chicken wing from a Styrofoam container.

  With a huff at the drama, Rico uprooted his overweight body from his perch by the window and slowly made his way to Peaches. He kicked the other girls up against the wall out of his way like trash. “Come on,” he growled as Peaches tried to pull away from his gorilla-like grip. Snatching her up by her slender neck after he couldn’t grab her arm, he lifted her off the floor and forcefully dragged her into the small bathroom. Slamming the door shut behind him, he turned on the vent to drown out the noise.

  Peaches continued to fake cry as she looked around plotting her attack. Inhaling a deep breath of the odorous mildew coming from the pile of dirty towels in the corner and the rotting water-stained walls, she pushed up against the back of the tub, giving herself two feet of space from Rico.

  “Why you gotta be a mouthy bitch, huh?” he asked, wrapping a hand towel around his knuckles and pulling out a roll of quarters. He’d learned to muffle the sound and harden the punch with this simple technique. Sighing, he shook his head. “Now, I gotta beat your ass when we could have just sat there and waited like folks with some sense.” Enforcing wasn’t one of the finer points of his job, but it was a staple of it. He did it without protest or emotion.

  “You don’t have to do this, Rico,” Peaches said loud enough for everyone outside of the bathroom to hear. She eyed the snub-nose 38 in his waistband and stealthily put her hands behind her. Undetected, she pulled the knife from her pocket and popped it open. Stuttering, she tried to bargain with the large man. “We’re cool remember. Instead of getting that blowjob the other day, all we did was talk. Remember?” Her eyes darted around the room, but she stayed perfectly still. “I can give you that blowjob now, and we can call it even.”

  Rico clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and rolled his neck. They all begged when it was their time to pay the piper. Peaches was no different. “Sorry, baby girl. You heard the boss lady. Gotta teach you a lesson.” He liked Peaches alright. She seemed nice and easy to talk to when no one was around, but business was business. She had to bleed.

  Pursing his lips together, he took a step forward with his left leg for balance and reached back with his right fist to gain momentum. As soon as he swung taking aim for her delicate face, Peaches ducked, barely missing his fist by a hair’s breadth. At the same time, in one smooth motion, she sidestepped him and jabbed the small serrated blade into the front of his neck, slicing through an artery and his larynx, making it impossible for him to scream out.

  They made eye contact for a few brief seconds and in that suspended time, he saw what he had missed before – a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

  Peaches didn’t blink, didn’t breathe, didn’t react. She glared at him with absolute impassivity.

  The shock on his contorted face was unmistakable. His watering eyes bulged in fear, knowing that he had met his end too soon.

  While Rico fought to take his last breaths, Peaches impatiently snatched the gun from his waistband and pushed him out of her way. He fell to his knees and drooped over on the seat of the unflushed toilet, bleeding out on the floor as his eyes faded over a bowl of piss.

  Without thought, Peaches snatched the blade out of his neck and rubbed it on the back of his shirt to clean it off. She slipped it in the back pocket of her jean shorts again and checked the gun for bullets.

  A glance in the mirror caught her attention for a minute. Oh, what a sight. After all the tousling earlier, her face was left bruised, upper lip swollen and bottom lip bloody, her bright brown eyes puffy and chest covered in nail marks. The sight infuriated her, and someone had to pay.

  A rush of adrenaline shot through her body as she grabbed the knob. There could be anything waiting on the other side. Either she had moved quick enough that they would never know what hit them, or they would be locked and loaded and she’d have to shoot her way out. No matter what, this ended tonight as she had promised her boss, Royal.

  Opening the bathroom door, she calmed her breathing and came out with Rico’s gun pointed. The first thing she heard was Tenisha’s booming laugh.

  “Damn, you done already, Rico?” she asked, looking up to see Peaches standing at the back of the room with a triumphant smile on her face.

  “Rico’s definitely done,” she said, left eye twitching.

  For a split second, all that could be heard was the sound of the air conditioning unit blasting cold air through its vents.

  “Shit!” yelled the bodyguard with the holster on the wrong side. He tried to reach for his weapon but was far too slow.

  Peaches was nothing if not a good aim. Pulling the hair trigger before the men could move from their seated positions, she mowed them down like they were bottles on a fence. She shot the holster boy first, dead center in his head. The other two she caught in the chest and back before they could get to the table. Three shots in three seconds. It was mechanical for her after doing it so long.

  In an act of sheer desperation, Tenisha dove for the sawed-off shotgun in the corner, but Peaches shot her in the thigh. She fell just a few inches short of the gun, but started to crawl towards it as she cried.

  How the mighty fall, Peaches thought to herself. Just a few short minutes ago, the glorified bully was content with herself beating the hell out of helpless children for kicks, and now she looked pathetic crawling on the stain-filled carpet like the slug she was.

  “Grab that gun, and I blow your head clean off, bitch,” Peaches said, kneeling down to put the barrel of the gun to the back of Tenisha’s head. It was a shame how much she was enjoying this.

  “Alright, alright,” Tenisha said, putting her hands beside her. Her nostrils flared in defeat. The pain radiated through her body causing her to push her head down in the carpet and growl. “Fuck that hurts,” she said, absently.

  There was no mercy now. No regret for Peaches.

  “Get up,” Peaches ordered.

  “I can’t. You shot me.”

  “Get up now or I’ll shoot you in your worthless cunt.” Moving in front of Tenisha and between her and the shotgun, Peaches trained her gun on the woman’s face. “Make one wrong move, and it’s a closed-casket funeral like your friend over t
here.”

  Tenisha glanced over at her lifeless bodyguard. His brains were plastered all over the sun-bleached curtains and the bullet had blown out one of his eyes.

  “I won’t tell you again,” Peaches hissed in a near whisper.

  Slowly, Tenisha stood up, balancing her weight on her good leg and keeping her hands were Peaches could see them. “Who are you?” she asked, certain the woman wasn’t a prostitute. “My competition send you? Whatever they paying, I’ll pay double.” Her brown eyes were wild with desperation. “I’ve got a hundred thousand dollars tucked away. It’s yours, if you let me walk.”

  Peaches eyed the pockets of Tenisha’s jeans. “Got the money on you?” she asked for her own amusement.

  Tenisha’s brow furrowed. “I can get it.”

  “This isn’t my first rodeo. All you pimps say the same thing.” Motioning with the gun, she made Tenisha move back toward the bathroom. “Let’s go,” she said, pushing her in the back.

  Hobbling, past the girls, who were still in the corner holding each other, she went to the back of the room and stood beside the closet. When she looked inside of the bathroom at Rico slumped over on the floor, she snarled, anger boiling in her belly. “Bitch, you better kill me.”