by Keta Kendric
Thankfully, I had stockpiled money and befriended the right people during my years of working under Raymond’s tutelage. I copped a fifth of what we needed to keep us going, until I came up with a plan to bounce back.
I hadn’t let the men know the actual hell we would be facing if I didn’t fix shit and did my best to keep things on the streets moving, and the rumors from ruining us any further. Today, my plan was to introduce the crew to Arjen, who stood behind me against the wall like a tall, well-built bodyguard.
No one had mentioned him yet, only allowed their eyes to linger as they, with no degree of subtlety, fingered their weapons. Although our wedding was a big event, Arjen hadn’t invited the media, and any pictures taken at the event were screened before the guests were even allowed to walk away with them.
It didn’t matter, however, if the photos were screened because the guest were members of the syndicate or closely associated with it, so our wedding wasn’t getting out unless we wanted it to. Two cameramen were allowed to film the event, and they had signed agreements that only allowed them to release the recordings to me or Arjen.
Judging by their attitudes, it appeared that none of my men had recognized who Arjen was in person. His name sparked fire and fear, but he, his brother, and members of their organization had done one hell of a job of keeping their faces from the media.
Standing behind the chair Raymond usually sat in, my gaze locked with each man sitting before me as I prepared to make the introduction.
“I called this meeting to announce my recent nuptials.”
Eyes went wide, and all of the side-talking, ceased.
“What is a nuptial?” Brandon, ‘Bizzi’ asked.
Off a heavy sigh, my eyes fell closed on a silent prayer for those left behind. I shook my head while others laughed.
“I told you to stay your ass in school, but you wouldn’t listen.”
More laughter sounded, but Brandon and I was going to have a serious talk about his education.
“It means I was recently married,” I explained. The news lifted his brows as he peeked up at me before aiming his gaze at Arjen.
I had been married for over a week and had never been questioned or congratulated. It proved that no one from my crew knew about the knot I had tied. Aside from a few hard glares at the boulder on my ring finger every once in a while, no one had commented or questioned me about it.
Now, after a few words, I had their full attention. Ten sets of eyes, some thoroughly checking out my ring now, and others aimed at my face, were waiting for me to proceed.
“You. Married?” Marshawn asked. His tight forehead and pinched gaze cast doubt along a deep lip smirk. He had known me for years, knew that I dumped men faster than a newborn’s soiled diaper.
“Yes. I’m married,” I replied.
I turned and reached back for Arjen.
“Husband,” I called back to him in a sweet tone. The simple action caused mouths to fall open, eyes to buck, and glaring stares of disbelief. A few gasps and “Oh shits!” joined their awed expressions.
“Hell, no!”
“Why you playing, Mecca?”
“You’re fucking with us,” Marshawn’s frustrated tone sounded above murmurs of protest when he read my serious expression and realized I wasn’t playing.
“This is my husband, Arjen Vallin,” I announced in a boisterous tone, ensuring they heard his last name. Arjen nodded towards the group, not bothered by any of their behavior, even as a few snarled like dogs.
Half the table had the presence of mind to know the name, and stared in awe between Arjen and me, knowing what a marriage between us could mean. I noticed Johnathan, ‘Ja Ja’ punch his cousin, Shawn ‘Shockey’ in the arm to get his attention before he leaned in to share his knowledge.
Some of the group were too in their feelings to let the Vallin name spark the flame that should have ignited in their brains. Once Shawn was informed, his eyes widened before his intrigued gaze landed on Arjen and stayed on him, observing with newfound respect. At least more than half of them knew the name and were smart enough to connect the dots.
“I don’t believe this shit. Tell me you haven’t gone and married a white boy?” came Marshawn’s outburst.
“Yes, I have gone and married whoever the fuck I want,” I replied. My voice was low, but my eyes were cutting his ass into bite-sized pieces. I stared at him, unblinking, my glare saying, Keep-fucking-questioning-me.
Marshawn was one of the hardest workers in our group, but I had warned him many times that that mouth of his would get him in a world of trouble. Also, we had hooked up once when I was twenty-two, and he presumed it gave him extra privilege and an elevated level of authority.
He was a few years younger, so fucking me had inflated his ego even more than it already was. Although it had happened once, four years ago, he had never given up the quest to get me back in bed with him. He wasn’t a bad bed partner compared to what I had gotten tangled up in but sleeping with him was a rookie mistake on my part.
“No, I don’t believe this shit either,” Marcus, Marshawn’s cousin, stated, following in his cousin’s footsteps with the unnecessary mouth action. They weren’t real cousins, but they had been aces long enough that they claimed it.
I reached down, taking my time, fingering my shoes off. The audience at the table, as well as Arjen, watched, curious as to what I was doing.
The purple designer pantsuit I wore, highlighted my curves. The jacket was cut to flash a little bit of cleavage that I had just given them a glimpse of when I bent. The action quieted the last hints of chatter. There were times when I enjoyed being a woman. We had the ability to control men without them even realizing it.
Without my extra four and a half inches, I didn’t tower above them like I wanted, but a bunch of grown toddlers complaining, and the shoes pinching my left baby toe had me about ready to blow the hell up and lose the little bit of chill I had.
“Does your uncle know what kind of ratchet ass bullshit you’re out here pulling?” Marcus continued, showing out in front of his play cousin.
Before I could catch myself, my red bottom heel went flying at Marcus’s head, but unfortunately not connecting with the big ass target he provided. The other shoe went flying at Marshawn, who dodged it before it caught him in the eye. I had done my best to blind their asses. It was too bad I wasn’t a better shoe thrower.
The rest of the group, including Arjen, were unable to hold in their laughter, but I stood in place, steaming. The mean glare I cast at the cousins quieted everyone else’s laughter. One was staring back at where my shoe had landed, attempting to hold in a laugh, while the other cast deadly eyes in my direction.
“Next time, it will be a fucking bullet. Now get me my fucking shoes before you make me do something I’m not going to regret.”
HB sat snug against my back, begging for a chance to demonstrate his talents. He gave a motherfucker seventeen reasons not to piss me off. HB had been with me since I was nineteen, and although I owned a cache of other weapons, he kept me protected better than any of the others.
HB also had the most bodies on him. If he came out, he would eat because I rarely denied him a meal. This group knew of the havoc me and HB were capable of stirring.
The silence in the room came alive. When they knew I was pissed or getting pissed, they jumped serious, knowing it was crazy Mecca coming out. The one they had seen take men out without batting an eyelash. The one whose name was whispered about and looped with the word ruthless and insane. The one that was always packing and ready to live or die by the oaths of the streets.
These mouthy fuckers had made the good Mecca go bye-bye, and they were left with the one that didn’t have one worthless fuck to give about how they felt. Zero to crazy. There was only so much I would take, and I prayed my husband was paying attention.
“This is Arjen Vallin, my husband. In case you were too fucking ignorant to know, he is the head of the Vallin family, and one of the head men in the Fe
rali Syndicate.”
The mouths of the ones that were finally making the connection fell open.
“Yes, that syndicate. For those of you that don’t know Latin, Ferali means, deathly,” I informed their asses, my hard glare on Marshawn in particular. He and Marcus sat slack-jawed, eyes blinking like trash had been blown into them by a hard wind at the realization of who was standing beside me.
I pointed a stiff finger and shook it in their direction.
“Know who the fuck you’re dealing with before you run your fucking mouth. And I don’t need anybody’s permission on who the fuck I marry. You got a problem with it; write to your congressmen so he can call you back and tell you about the fat ass stack of cash I send him every month.”
Arjen stood in place as quiet as the men staring holes through us. Having to explain myself to them had my damn blood pressure about to blow my head clean off. I changed the subject quickly and proceeded with information about Black Saints business, like my news about my marriage hadn’t just stunned them.
“I received intel that we’ve been using a couple of underaged runners. If they’re not eighteen, they gotta go. Hire them to babysit, or do your housekeeping or some shit, but they can’t be involved in this business, in any way. I don’t care if they turn eighteen tomorrow, send them home and tell them to come back at midnight.”
A couple of faces fell into deep frowns before their hands went up. They had a problem with the guideline because using the younger kids was cheap labor, and they could influence them easily.
Raymond had loosely implemented the rule when I had suggested it three years ago. Now that I was running things, I wanted to make sure it happened. The last thing I wanted was to be responsible for the life of someone’s child. It was bad enough when adults were killed.
“What?” My hot glare was slung at Marshawn.
“Two from my crew are under eighteen. If I let them go, we are not going to be able to cover our territory.”
His eyes fell to my heels sitting on the table in front of me as I brushed the tips of my nails along the top of one of them.
“When I was out there, it was two or three of us covering a much larger area. I don’t care how you do it, make it happen.” He didn’t like my advice, and it burned him up that I didn’t care what he thought of it.
Two more complaints was all I could tolerate. The next subjects delved into supply, distribution, and production. I didn’t lie about our supply issue, but I didn’t disclose the full truth either, since I was actively working on finding a solution.
A deep exhale relieved some of the tension build up when I was met with more complaints and opposition from Marshawn. He was testing me. He hadn’t seen me murder anyone in a while, and it appeared he was angling for next in line.
The rest of the crew continued to stare at Arjen. Was he going to say anything? I had offered him the platform twice, but he had declined, content with allowing the mystery of his deadly reputation to keep the group in suspense. There were things about him that I hadn’t figured out yet either.
“Are we a part of the Ferali Syndicate now? Are we going to start selling guns?” Timothy ‘Tims’ asked the questions that was likely on all their minds.
“We are in an alliance with them. Therefore, we are more of a collection of powers, than one being absorbed into the other. We fall under the syndicate’s umbrella, which means if we fuck up, it looks bad on them. It also means that we have an army standing behind us that we didn’t have before.”
With that bit of information, frowns turned into smiles, and eyes were now blazing with interest. I gave the guys shit, but they were smart enough that they would eventually find inventive ways to make the syndicate work in our favor. For now, I was content to stay on their asses until they turned something up that I could be proud of.
They wanted to know what was in it for them now that we had allied with the Vallins and the syndicate. They continued to go back to the question, like I hadn’t heard it the first three or four times.
“We’ll discuss the specifics of this alliance once we work out a few more details and guidelines. For now, it’s business as usual for us.”
Once I adjourned the meeting, the men came up and shook Arjen’s hand. Marshawn asked for a few minutes with me away from the table. We walked a whole ten steps to the back of the room away from the crowd that had gathered around Arjen, asking him about guns.
If Marshawn wanted to catch a bullet by continuing to fuck with me, I was in the right frame of mind to throw him one. I glared at him, my strong gaze raking him up and down as his words went in one ear and pinged off the other. He was being way more persistent than he usually was.
Why was this man continuing to test me when he knew how short my fuse could be?
14
Arjen
Mecca’s men were interested in guns, not knowing that I sold them by the semi-truck load to more legal agencies, than I did to illegal ones. They were talking weapons, but my mind kept lingering back to the view I had gotten of my wife getting dressed this morning.
She assumed I was asleep since she rose so early, but on my way to use the bathroom, I was stopped when I caught sight of her. The light shining down on her in the closet was in contrast to our dark room and put me in the presence of mind of watching a cinematic performance.
How could I not watch Mecca, especially in that moment? My very sexy wife was sitting at the small table positioned in the nook of her large closet, in a black lace bra and panty set cleaning her weapon. The sight had my dick so hard I’d had to hold it down. I should have felt guilty for spying on her, but I didn’t. A part of me believe she had left the door open on purpose.
There was no better view than watching her get dressed, something I had never been interested in seeing from any woman. Usually, I hardly noticed what they had on because my interest was only in taking it off.
Mecca was art in motion, demanding my attention in everything she did. Her hair was always perfect, clothes expensive, and she always smelled like a mixture of heaven, hope, and sunshine. This morning it pleased me to see that she didn’t do much to enhance her beauty, a light stroke of make-up, eyeliner, and a brush of lip gloss.
The finishing touches were her weapons. It wasn’t what I had expected of such a well put together woman. She had taken the most time placing and securing her instruments of destruction, so that they wouldn’t be obvious to outside eyes. If I hadn’t seen her arranging them, I’d have never known she was carrying a gun, a smaller back-up gun, two knives, and two extra clips of ammunition.
Observing the way she had taken care in securing her small arsenal, caused me to speculate if she was strapped with weapons at our wedding. It was becoming apparent that she didn’t go anywhere unprotected. This was part of an explanation for why she didn’t mind putting herself in dangerous situations.
I took in the team of men that worked for her, allowing my gaze to travel over them while studying their behaviors. Now that they realized who I was, their evil glares had turned into something resembling respect, and their lips were looser.
The undeniable respect and admiration in their glares and the tense set in their postures as they observed Mecca is what piqued my interest. It was difficult from an outside perspective to understand their mentality or the dynamic of their behavior where it concerned her.
Each time she directed a concentrated glance at one, they would tense, and a hint of something like apprehension would surface. Yet, they spoke their minds, often giving her unnecessary shit like they enjoyed toying with her anger.
My men would never speak to me the way these men had to Mecca, but something I couldn’t place, fit the way they interacted. Although they were giving her shit a minute ago, they now stood around me, whispering her name and bragging about the infamous stunts she had pulled off.
The one she had nearly hit in the head with her heel was one of her biggest supporters. Two others captured my attention with a comment about an infamous kill sh
e had executed.
“She’s killed people for her uncle?”
I directed the question at the group, my eyes searching the four men surrounding me for a reply.
“There are a few we know of that she iced for him, and a few for the Saints. The whole mystery about Mecca is that no one actually knows how many people she’s killed. People who need to be dead, disappear, and no one claims the kills, some of us believe it’s her, some don’t. She never confirms or denies anything, keeps people in suspense, on edge, and is so fucking quiet about it, you never know what to think.”
“So, what are you saying? You think she’s a hit-woman?” I questioned, taking the opportunity to ply them for information on my dangerous wife. Two more men had joined our group. A few of the men answered no, while the majority said yes.
“Look at her,” the one she had addressed as Timothy, suggested.
A glance in her direction caused a smile to touch my lips. The man aimed a quick head gesture in her direction, but kept his eyes on me.
“No offense to you as her husband or anything, but looking the way she looks, it’s hard to picture her cutting a man’s throat or putting a bullet in one’s head, but I’ve seen her do both.”
He shook his head, as a far off look danced in his eyes and hinted at the hell he had witnessed her unleash.
“No remorse, no regret, no nothing. It’s like she can turn off her conscience and not feel a thing. We call her, Quiet Chaos, because she goes into what she calls, “the quiet.” The shit is creepy. Add to that, she can pull off some of the most heinous shit without speaking a single word. She is the only person I know that can yell without raising her voice. All I know is anyone that has good reason to be, ends up dead. Hell, some of us believe that she’s who they call La Asesina.”
The Assassin, I translated. Some of the guys shook their heads while others nodded in agreement.
“It’s another reason why we call her quiet chaos.”
Quiet Chaos. I was learning a lot about my wife. Things I was sure she wouldn’t voluntarily tell me unless I found a way to drag it out of her.