Desired Too

by Lessly, S. K.

  I noticed the break in his façade, but he quickly hid it from me and pushed a couple of papers in front of me. “While we’re waiting for my team to comb through the warehouse, I have a few questions for you. Please confirm if this is your company.”

  I drummed my fingers on the table, then snapped my fingers as if a thought just hit me. “I bet he fucked one of your Ivy League girlfriends in college. Is that it? Is that why your dick is so hard? What did he do? Lay that fucking pipe so well that she completely forgot all about you?”

  “This is your signature, correct?” Daniel attempted to bring this interrogation back to his control, but it wasn’t working.

  “She sucked his dick, didn’t she? And you walked in on it? Yeah, that’s what happened. I know my cousin. I could imagine your shock. There was your teenager brother getting head by your college girlfriend and you lost your mind. Am I right? Come on, Cuz, tell me what happened. We’re family…”

  Suddenly, Daniel slammed his hand on the table. “We’re not fucking family!”

  I smiled. “That’s what happened, huh? I bet you were in love with her, weren’t you? I bet you’d already bought the ring and everything, mapped out where you two were going to live, how many kids you were going to have?”

  Daniel tried to recover from his outburst as smooth as possible, but I could see I’d rocked him already. That was easy.

  “Mr. Leonetti, answer the question,” he replied, but now that I tasted blood, I was going in for the kill.

  “Tell me what happened. You decided to surprise her and go see her at her dorm room and what? You heard her moaning behind the door-”

  “We have reason to believe that your company is a front for more than your ‘humanitarian activities’.”

  “Were you in shock? She probably never moaned like that for you, huh? I bet she probably faked that shit. Or what? She told you she didn’t suck dick? You gotta watch those college sorority girls. ”

  Daniel ruffled the papers he had in front of him, trying not to show the deep red that was creeping up his neck.

  Too late!

  I smiled broader. “Let me see if I could set the stage. You placed your sweaty palm on the doorknob, probably praying that it was her roommate that you heard. Much to your dismay and surprise, the doorknob turned freely. You walked inside-”

  Daniel’s voice rose as if the increased volume would shut me up. Oh, but his face was turning more red and deeper by the second. “There are six bank accounts under this company’s name, your company. My analysts had discovered some questionable transactions. Care to explain why you withdrew half a million dollars from each of the six accounts?”

  I leaned forward, my face bright with humor and satisfaction.

  This bitch is gonna crack any second. I wish Lincoln were here to see this shit.

  “You crept into the room slowly,” I continued, lowering my voice, deepening it as if I was a narrator of a play. “…Heart beating clear out of your chest. Your legs heavy with anxiety, mouth dry with fear. The sounds were getting louder. You’re closer to her bedroom door now, so you probably heard a deep male voice right along with your woman’s voice. You finally realized your worst nightmare was coming true. Which has me wondering, at this point, had the slurping noises started to caress your ears? Don’t you just love that sound?”

  Daniel cleared his throat, trying to get me back on task again. “Each of the transactions happened on the same day, and we know exactly where they went.” He looked through his folder, hands shaking with anger.

  I added fuel to this over ripe fire. “I bet this was the point in which you thought about running. I don’t blame you for thinking it. You could easily pretend this didn’t happen. No one saw you go into the room. You could escape with your dignity. I bet you even turned around to leave, but stopped the instant you recognized your own brother’s voice behind the door.”

  Daniel remained quiet, his eyes heavily on mine, allowing the anger to rise in him.

  You think I was making this story up to goat him? Well, I wasn’t. Lincoln had told me all about it. He said he went to see Daniel, for some reason, on campus. He went to his dorm room and his roommate told him that he thought he’d gone to some chick’s room. When he got to the room that Daniel’s roommate gave him, he asked for his brother and the girl that answered smiled, looking him up and down. Lincoln told me that the girl never said she was Daniel’s girlfriend, and Daniel had never brought the girl around the family. So, when she came on to him, Lincoln didn’t stop her.

  I added, “I could only imagine what you must have been thinking right at that moment. How could your sixteen-year-old brother make your woman scream with ecstasy and you couldn’t even make her moan your name?” I leaned in closer and grinned. “Was she butt ass naked when you walked in? Was she kneeling in front of him, bobbing and weaving? Lincoln probably had his hands in her hair, gripping her tight as shit, wasn’t he? What did he say to her? Knowing my cousin, he probably said something like, ‘You like that shit, baby? Wait ‘til I get in that pussy’.”

  He actually didn’t tell me that he said that, but who gave a shit, right?

  I laughed. Shit, I couldn’t help it. This motherfucker was as red as a fucking lobster.

  Here was the pièce de résistance…

  “Come on, I know you remember that night. Tell me what you did. Did you turn and run?” I shook my head. “No, you stayed to watch, didn’t you? You found that you couldn’t move. You just stood there like a dumb son of a bitch, and when Lincoln saw you, he just kept going, smiling. I bet she was wearing the engagement ring you bought for her too?”

  The look on his face told me that I was right, and I laughed again. I mean, I threw my head back and let a laugh so big escape my throat that it was loud and raw.

  “Oh shit! I bet she was! Damn, that’s fucked up. But you probably deserved that shit.”

  Quick as lightening, Daniel was on his feet. He lunged over the table and threw his hardest punch at my face. I stood quickly, moving out of his reach, as I knew it was coming. Daniel’s momentum carried him all the way across the table to the floor next to me. By the time he scrambled up off the floor and wrapped his hands around my neck, the door burst open and in came three agents.

  Some guy in a dark black suit came charging in the room after the three men with an air of some importance. He walked up to Daniel, face just as red.

  “Get your shit and get out of here, Lincoln, right now. Go walk it off.”

  “But sir…” Daniel protested.

  “Go!” he boomed.

  The air from Daniel quickly dissipated as he realized what just happened.

  See, I told you I was better at poking the bear. The point was to poke in order to get a rise out of someone, not just for kicks. If I was going to start some shit, best believe I was going all out. I poke for a purpose, and Daniel fell for it completely. I knew if there were a case, it wouldn’t be his anymore.

  As Daniel pushed his way out of the room, the red faced man turned his sights on me. I was rubbing my neck with an accomplished smile on my face.

  “You think I don’t know what you’re trying to do?”

  I didn’t reply.

  He pointed a meaty finger at my face. “You don’t fuck with my team.”

  I frowned. “No, you don’t fuck with my family. You don’t have shit on me. The longer you keep me in this room without legal counsel, the more I start thinking about pressing charges against your man.”

  He moved to my face. He was a foot shorter than I was, so the threat he was trying to portray didn’t go over as well. Besides, I was better at it. I met his gaze with some heat of my own.

  He faltered slightly, but he still said to me. “Is that a threat?”

  “Quite the contrary. It’s a fact.”

  “You have been arrested for terrorism. So, the fact is, you don’t have any rights when that happens. I can let you rot in a jail cell for the rest of your natural life before I even speak to you. Another fa
ct is that your high priced lawyer will not be able to do shit about it. As a matter fact, sit your ass down.”

  I waited a beat before I sat, grinning at his ploy to intimidate me. Now, I had to look up at him. He looked down at me for a minute, grabbed the papers from the table and left me in the room.

  I fucking waited for at least another two hours before two new suits came into the room with stoic looks on their faces. I guess this was their way of being menacing. Damn, they really need to work on that though, because it wasn’t working. Both were large men, stuffed in cheap dark suits. They sat down in front of me and pulled out the same folder Daniel had come into the room with earlier.

  I folded my arms in front of me. At this point, I was livid. I know for a fact they didn’t have shit. They kept me in that room to show face, that’s all. From the looks of these two idiots, they were trying not to demonstrate that they were defeated.

  “Mr. Leonetti, explain these transactions.”

  I didn’t reply, nor did I look at the papers they pushed in front of me.

  Both men as I said were big. One was a black man and the other was white. Neither one introduced themselves to me, but I could tell the black man was in charge. He had this air about him as if he was used to getting his way because of his status. He had dark, hard eyes, and a round face with a small mustache. His hair was black and cut low to his head. The jacket he wore hid his bulk well, but I could tell there wasn’t much muscle under his fat.

  I also deduced that if this one was in charge, then the other was muscle. The white guy had black hair and beady dark eyes. He was equally round and bulky, but I could tell he tried to work on it. He still looked stuffed in his clothes, though. When the white guy rose from his chair and walked around the table, I had a feeling this was a good cop bad cop type of scenario.

  The black man smiled. “Understand something, we’re not with the FBI. So we have our own set of rules.”

  With that said, the one behind me grabbed me by the back of my neck and forced my eyes down on the paper.

  “There you go,” I heard the man still seated across from me say. “Thank you for your cooperation. Would you now be so kind as to tell us about the transactions you forwarded from your business accounts to the account highlighted in yellow?”

  When my neck was released, I took a few seconds to calm down. I wanted to snap this motherfucker’s neck behind me, grab his weapon that I knew was off safety, and put a fucking bullet in this fat piece of shit in front of me. I could complete this in less time it would take for the fat fucker behind me to get his meaty fingers around his own weapon.

  But I kept my mouth shut and looked down at the papers. A smile suddenly creased my face, despite the fury flowing in me.

  I looked at the man in front of me. “If you’re not the FBI, we have nothing to discuss.”

  The man folded his hands on the table in front of him. “See, Mr. Leonetti, this case is now ours. The FBI is no longer involved. So you will speak to us.”

  I slouched in my chair and smiled. “Well, in that case, you’re fucked.”

  Doughboy One met my smile. “Really? And how do you figure that?”

  I sighed exaggeratedly and folded my hands before me. “Shit, I have to do your fucking jobs for you too? Okay, listen up. These accounts are bogus. Someone opened them in my name probably to set me up. I don’t know who it was. What I can tell you with confidence is that you’re shaking the wrong tree. That’s not my fucking money being sent to shit knows where for shit knows what.”

  Doughboy One and Two found that shit to be funny. They exploded with laughter and looked at one another.

  “Did you get that shit?” the one seemingly in charge asked the one behind me.

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  The one sitting across from me shook his head. “Boy, that is a great story. One that we have never heard before. ‘It’s not mine.’ Whew…”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you did,” I said as I leaned closer to him. “Did you also hear this one? Call the SEC. They will tell you that I have filed a complaint with them about these accounts several weeks ago. Actually, my financial advisor did it for me when she realized that these companies were trading under my name erroneously. They have all the information that you have. Probably more at this point. You should give them a call, lean on a little interagency cooperation and shit. I’m sure they would be willing to help you with your bullshit ass case.”

  I leaned back. “I have not consorted with terrorists. I don’t have drugs in my warehouse. If you would have asked me nicely, instead of keeping me cooped up in this fucking icebox wasting both our time, I would have told you this. Stupid motherfuckers.”

  The man in front of me looked up and behind me before he rose from his chair. They left the room without uttering another word to me. An hour later, I was walking out of the building with my lawyer next to me threatening to call some official he knew to complain. I was narrowing my sights to a much smaller goal, however.

  I told him to go home, and I called for a ride. Apparently, Hugo and Darrell were released hours ago and were close by.

  Twenty minutes later, Darrell pulled up in front of the Federal building, and I climbed in the back seat. I didn’t utter a word to them at first. I was trying my best to calm down. Never in my life had I wanted to kill in cold blood so badly as I did that very moment. In fact, I’ve never wanted to annihilate everyone around me, leaving only me standing. I’d been channeling my anger all day, but now I was at the point of exploding.

  “Have you found him yet?” I asked, closing my eyes, trying to count to ten and calm down.

  “No, sir, but we have some leads. We’re on his tail.”

  “Have you spoken to Russo?” I looked at Darrell through the rearview mirror.

  “Yes, he’s relayed your message to your father. He’s not happy with the events of today and wants you at the house now that you’re out.”

  I grunted and moved my eyes from his. “That’s not going to happen. Where’s Raquel?”

  “She’s at your apartment. She’s been calling for you nonstop.”

  I raised my eyebrows in question. “You told her where I was?”

  Darrell and Hugo exchanged looks with each other before Darrell, for some reason, rotated his shoulders.

  “As I said before, she’s scarier than you,” he told me.

  I shook my head. “Pussy.”

  We drove on in silence, with my mind putting everything I needed to do in order. First, I needed to deal with Raquel and, depending on what she said or how much she pissed me off, I’d go see my father.

  I knew I still needed to get with Drake. I had a feeling I was going to need him before this day was through. Eddie tried to put this case on me, one that would’ve put me away for the rest of my life and then some. I guess he figured that was showing me leniency. After all, he could have just put a bullet in me and called it a day. However, I wouldn’t be that lenient. I was going to kill him. It was just a matter of how and when.

  I told Darrell to take me to the warehouse. I wanted to see the damage the Feds had done and retrieve my weapons.

  When we got there, it was a mess. They were still on the scene, so I took this time to see if Lincoln was home. The sooner I brought him in on this, the better. We needed to squash our beef and get to business.

  Of course he wasn’t home. I did hang out with Georgia, but I didn’t stay long.

  When I got back to the warehouse, I was ready to go. The Feds were still trying to get me on something, and they still didn’t let my guys through. This was bullshit at its finest, and I really thought about going to war with the Feds. But I calmed down and told Darrell and Hugo to take me home. I needed to get ready for this meeting, and I needed to deal with Raquel first.

  Darrell pulled up to my building and as my eyes fell on my darkened windows. I could feel the anger building within me.

  “Go back to the warehouse and wait until the Feds clear out. If they haven’t in about an hour,
call that money sucking lawyer of mine and get his fat ass on it. We need to make sure our shipments go out as scheduled,” I barked.

  Darrell nodded, but Hugo asked, “How come they didn’t find anything?”

  “Because I’m not stupid,” I said quickly, then added, “Call Russo and tell him that I have some fires I need to put out before I see Pops. Also, did you find out when the meeting tonight is and where?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Send someone out to the site and have them sit on it. Make sure there isn’t any shit happening.”

  “Yes, boss. Already done,” Darrell replied, and I nodded. I knew I was wasting my breath. I didn’t have to tell Darrell the obvious. He knew what needed to be done.

  “Do you need one of us to stay here until you’re done with Ms. Waters?”

  I shook my head and got out of the car. “No, Junior is here. He’ll take me to my father. You two have shit to do. Besides, as you mentioned before, there’s some shit going on behind my back. I can’t have people doing shit for me that I can’t trust.”

  I closed the door just as Junior emerged from my apartment building. He looked solemnly at me, then watched the surroundings.

  I took the time to do the same, and it was that moment that something hit me.

  Shit, I have been out of it.

  I looked up and down the street, letting everything come back to me.

  “What’s wrong, boss?”

  I heard the alarm in Darrell’s voice, but I didn’t reply.

  Damn, how could I have missed that?

  Hugo got out of the car and started around to me. He pulled his weapon, and so did Darrell and Junior.

  “You see something, boss?” Hugo asked me.

  I couldn’t talk at first. Then I smiled.

  Son of a bitch.

  I looked at Hugo’s still slightly bruised face, then looked at Junior.

  I am losing it.

  My eyes settled on Hugo. “Get on the phone and tell Lincoln his brother is sniffing up his ass again for something. Tell him we’re not sure what it is, but to keep his eyes and ears open. I would do it myself, but our conversation would last more than a minute.”