by W. S. Greer
“This doesn’t look like a hundred grand to me,” he says with a look of confusion on his face. When I don’t respond, he looks over at me. That’s when the real change in his demeanor happens, because now he sees that I’m aiming my gun at his forehead.
He doesn’t say anything at first. He just stares at me with a furious glower on his face. He’s staring, but he’s silent, and it pisses me off. I wanted to see the fear and shock in his face when I pulled the gun on him. I wanted to see tears in his eyes as he realized that he’d finally pushed me over the edge. He’d finally broken his son and forced me to do the unimaginable. But, he doesn’t give me that satisfaction, and it makes me livid.
“What’s the matter?” I ask. “You’re not surprised? You’re not shocked that you drove me to this?”
“I guess I underestimated you, Junior. I didn’t think you had this in you. I’m impressed.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, you’re impressed? Fuck you. You think I’m doing this for your approval? You’re out of your fucking mind. You pushed me to this. You gave me no other choice. You’ve ruined everything!”
“Ruined everything? Look around, Junior. You’re standing at the top of a multi-million dollar casino, surrounded by the most expensive furniture, next to a bar stocked full of the best liquor, wearing a two-thousand dollar suit, holding a chrome plated nine millimeter, and you live in a penthouse at the top of a hotel for free. I haven’t ruined anything. I’ve made your life better. I’ve given you the best life a spoiled little shit like you could ever ask for.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, asshole. All this material shit doesn’t mean anything to me. My brother died because of you and your drama with Ivan. Uncle Mikey is in jail because of you, and you made the biggest mistake in the world when you shot Lilliana. That’s why this is happening. You crossed the motherfucking line, and I’m never letting it happen again. You’ve made my life with Lilliana miserable.”
“Oh, please! You might want to look in the mirror before you start pointing fingers. You’re just as much to blame for your hardships as I am.”
“What?”
“You caused your own drama, boy. I didn’t tell you to move to the city, did I? I didn’t tell you to put a hit out on Ivan’s son, Abram, which was carried out by your Uncle Deshaun, which ultimately got him killed. You did that. That shit you pulled on Abram with your Uncle Deshaun is what killed him. You want to project your shit on to me and blame me for everything, that’s fine, because I don’t give a fuck. But, the truth is, you’re just like me.”
“No! I’m nothing like you!”
“Bullshit. Look at you, standing there pointing that gun at me. You’re the exact same as me. It’s my blood running through your veins. Where do you think you get that temper from? Push you the right way and you’re ready to kill someone, just like me.”
“Stop fucking saying that, goddamn it!” I scream. I can feel my temperature rising quickly. “I’m not like you and I never will be.”
“Lie to yourself all you want, but you know it’s true. Go ahead, Junior. Pull the trigger. Kill me, and then take over The Family. Like father, like son. You want to own the Red Chip? That’s nothing. Here’s your chance to own everything I own. Every establishment. Just pull the trigger. Make me proud, and pull the trigger.”
“Shut the fuck up!”
“You better do it, you little pussy, because if you don’t, I’m gonna hunt you down, and I’m gonna kill that little bitch girlfriend of yours right in front of you, and then I’m gonna kill you. You’re gonna watch her die, Junior. If you don’t kill me right now, you’re gonna wish that you did, I fucking swear it on Fab’s grave. There’s no way I’m gonna let you come in here and pull a gun on me, and then don’t kill me. You’re gonna die if you don’t pull the trigger.”
“Shut the fuck up!”
“It’s now or never, motherfucker. Either become me, or die by my hands. Make a decision or I’ll make it for you.”
Suddenly, I see him take a step towards me. I know that this is it. My blood is flowing so fast I feel like I’m going to pass out. He’s going to rush me if I don’t do it right now. He takes another step and I suddenly feel my finger begin to squeeze the trigger, and I listen for the sound of the gun going off.
“Well, that didn’t take long,” Trey exclaims as he enters the elevator.
“Hurry up, get in!”
As soon as he clears the doors, I slam my hand on the button to close it.
“Whoa, calm down. I told you, we can’t leave in a hurry, it’ll draw attention to us. Just chill out.”
“No, goddamn it! We have to go!” I yell as the elevator finally starts to take us down to the garage floor.
“What the hell is the matter with you? Just relax. I know this is a big deal. I get it. He’s your father, so I know it’s difficult. Just remember why we did this, Kelvin. It had to be done. So, let’s finish this the way we said we would. Nice and easy.”
“Listen to me, Trey. We can’t do it nice and easy. We have to go, now!”
The doors slide open and I bolt out of the elevator. Trey follows my lead, but he’s still confused.
“What the fuck happened, Kelvin?” he yells as we run towards his car, the bag of money swaying violently on my shoulder. He unlocks it and I immediately jump in and slam my door shut.
“Come on, Trey! Get in!” I scream.
“Hey! Talk to me, Kelvin. What the fuck happened up there?”
“Start the fucking car! We don’t have time for this shit!”
“What the fuck, man? What happened?” Trey starts the car and spins the tires as he pulls out of the parking space. He floors it and we rush out of the garage and onto the open road. Neither of us says anything for about a minute, but then Trey turns his head towards me. I can feel his eyes burning in to me, then he slowly looks back at the road.
“Kelvin,” he says mellow dramatically. “Tell me what’s going on. Did you do it?”
I don’t answer. I just stare out the window.
“You didn’t do it, did you?” he asks again, more certain this time. “Goddamn it, Kelvin!”
“No!” I scream. “I didn’t fucking do it! I couldn’t do it, alright! I couldn’t do it because I’m not him. I’m not him, Trey. I’m not a fucking murderer! I’m not like him!”
“Son of a fucking bitch! Damn it! Then what the fuck happened up there?”
“He came at me, but I couldn’t pull the trigger. I just couldn’t do it. So, when he rushed me, I hit him in the head with the gun. I knocked him out. I fucking knocked him unconscious, and I left him in there on the floor.”
“Great. That’s just fucking great, Kelvin,” Trey bellows as he floors it and begins weaving in and out of traffic. “So, what now, huh? Now what the fuck are we gonna do?”
“Hurry up and get me back to Aunt Lauren’s,” I reply, trying to force myself to calm down. “I have to get us out of here. Lilliana and I have to leave Chicago tonight. We’re leaving tonight. Forever.”
Carpet.
Wheels? The wheels on the bottom of a chair. The conference room table…
There’s blood on the carpet next to me. Where am I? What the fuck is going on? Am I bleeding?
Shit. It’s me. The blood is coming from me.
I struggle to roll myself over, and then reach up and rub the spot on my head that hurts like a motherfucker. When I pull my hands back, my fingers are smeared with blood. Why the fuck am I bleeding? I don’t understand what happened. What’s the last thing I remember?
My body jerks up into a seated position. I remember now. He hit me. Kelvin! He hit me in the head with the gun that he was pointing at me. I rushed him. I forced his hand, and he didn’t shoot me? He just hit me in the head. That was the biggest mistake he’s ever made in his fucking life. He had the opportunity to finally prove that he wasn’t some little cowardly bitch, but he choked. He couldn’t do it. He could’ve took over, and he didn’t. I guess he’s not like me after all, a
nd that’s the reason he’ll die.
I lift myself off the floor and stumble over to the table. He might be a bitch who couldn’t pull the trigger when he had the chance, but that little bastard sure can hit. My head is throbbing with every beat of my heart, and my vision is still blurry. He hit me right next to my temple, and my coordination hasn’t come back completely.
While I wait for my body to return to normal, I look around the room, in search of everything that I’ll need when I leave here. I look over at the bar. I know that there’s a gun in one of the cabinets underneath it. It’s a nine millimeter with a full clip already loaded. There’s another nine in the drawer next to the couch. I’ll take them both, just in case he tries to run and I need more ammunition. Or, better yet, I’ll be sure to bring some extra clips so that I can shoot him and Lily in the knees before I kill them. Yeah. I’ll shoot Lily in the knees, and then I’ll shoot her in the stomach so that she starts to bleed to death right in front of him. Then, I’ll shoot Kelvin in the knees, one at a time. But, then I’ll let him sit there so he can watch Lily bleed out. The moment I know she’s dead, he’ll probably have some sort of panic attack that’ll make him want to try to kill me, so I’ll be sure to shoot him in the fucking face right after that. Then, when the cops find the bodies, I’ll blame it on the Russians. That way, when it’s all said and done, I’ll get all the money from every establishment they own, too. I’ll fucking crush them, and end this drama with Junior at the same fucking time. As soon as I get my damn strength back.
As I attempt to stand up, I hear the sound of the door opening. In walks Clarence with a blank expression on his face. He doesn’t say anything at first. In fact, he barely seems to notice that I’m bleeding from the fucking head, but after a minute of staring at me, he finally catches on.
“Holy shit. What the fuck happened to you?” He approaches me slowly, like I’m emitting some sort of an airborne disease.
“What happened to me?” I snap, pushing him away. “You’d know if you would’ve fucking been here! You weren’t anywhere to be found. Where the fuck have you been?”
I notice him stand up straight and take a deep breath. “I had some business to attend to.”
“Business? Well, while you were out attending to your business, Junior came up and here and pulled a gun on me.”
“What?”
“Yeah! He called me and told me that he had sold some dope and wanted to bring the money by. When he got here, he pulled a fucking gun on me, threatening to kill me. So I rushed him, and that little bitch couldn’t even pull the trigger. Do you know what he did? He hit me. He hit me in the fucking head with the gun, and then ran off. He probably ran back to that little bitch, Lily. I bet she was the one who gave him the idea to do this, but she overestimated him. She’s too fucking stupid to realize that he’s a coward. He could never pull off a hit on his own.”
The look on Clarence’s face is one of pure confusion. His eyes are wide, and he’s not even blinking. He seems to look at everything in the room except me, before he finally snaps out of it.
“I can’t believe that,” he says solemnly.
“Well, you better fucking believe it,” I reply as I finally get my feet to work the way I want them to.
I make my way over to the bar and grab the gun that I scouted out a few minutes ago. I eject the clip and make sure that it’s completely full, then I reload it.
“What are you doing?” I hear Clarence ask, as if he can’t see me.
“What the fuck does it look like I’m doing, Clarence? I’m about to go handle this shit.”
“Handle it? You can’t be serious, Senior.”
“What the hell is the matter with you? That’s it! It’s over for him, Clarence. This bullshit has gone on long enough. He’s been breaking the rules of The Family since he got here, and now he broke the ultimate rule. You don’t come after me! You don’t pull a gun on me and not pull the trigger. Big fucking mistake. I wouldn’t let anybody else get away with that, and I won’t let him get away with it either. He broke the rules, and now he has to suffer the consequences. Plain and simple.”
“So, you’re gonna go kill him?”
“Fucking right, I am! But, I’m gonna kill his little whore first. I’m gonna fucking torture her right in from of him, and let her bleed out. Then, once he knows that he’s lost everything, I’m gonna shoot him right in the face. I’ll just blame it on the Russians. I’ve been wanting to eliminate them from the equation anyway. This is the perfect opportunity to do it.”
“Senior, just stop and think about this for a minute,” Clarence says.
“I have thought about it! I thought about it while I was waiting for my motor skills to return to normal. Why are you being so fucking sensitive now? What the hell is the matter with you, huh? It’s over, Clarence. This is happening.”
“Nothing is the matter with me. He’s your son, Senior. You can’t kill your own son.”
I walk over to the end table and pull the gun from the drawer. I check the clip and then reinsert it.
“He’s not my son anymore,” I snap as I walk past Clarence, towards the doors. “Both of my sons are dead now.”
“What’s going on? What happened?”
“I need you listen to me, okay? I need you to go upstairs and grab whatever we brought over here. We have to get ready to leave right now. We’ve gotta head over to the Red Chip as fast as we can.”
“Why, Kelvin? Tell me what’s going on,” Lilliana says in a panic, her eyes wide with fear.
I feel like I don’t even have time to answer her. I walk past her and find Aunt Lauren sitting on the couch, sipping her wine. When she sees me walk in, she immediately puts her glass down and stands up to meet me.
“What happened?” she demands. From the look on her face, I know she can tell that something has gone wrong. Lilliana and Trey come rushing in behind me. They stand there and wait for me to answer the question.
“Something bad has happened, and we need to go. Now,” I reply coldly.
“Stop it, Kelvin!” Lilliana shrieks from behind me. Her voice is high pitched and obviously frightened. She walks around me and stands directly in front of me. “I’m not doing anything until you tell me what the hell is going on. Start explaining.”
I look over at Trey, but he provides me no comfort. “Just tell them, Kelvin. They need to know,” he says impatiently.
“We need to know what? What the hell is it?” Aunt Lauren snaps as she folds her arms.
“I couldn’t do it,” I say. When the words reach their ears, Lilliana and Aunt Lauren both look shocked and terrified. “I couldn’t kill him.”
“What? Then, what happened?” Lilliana asks.
“I don’t know. I mean, everything went according to plan at first. I went in, dropped the bag on the table and he went to open it. While he was looking at the bag, I pulled the gun on him, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. He kept saying shit about me being just like him, and it just got to me. I couldn’t let myself be like him. I just couldn’t do it. So, when he tried to approach me, I hit him in the head with the gun and knocked him out. When I realized that he was unconscious, I grabbed the money off the table and ran out. I just left him there.”
It takes them a second to process everything I just said, so they all just look at me at first. They don’t say anything, and I almost wonder if I actually spoke the words. I look behind me at Trey, and he just stands there, shaking his head at me. When I turn around to face my aunt and Lilliana, they still haven’t moved.
“Oh my fucking god!” Lilliana finally says. “You pulled the gun on him and didn’t use it? You didn’t shoot him?”
“No. I couldn’t do it, Lilliana. You don’t understand. I couldn’t let myself be like him.”
“You couldn’t let yourself be like him? So, you’d rather be dead instead? He’s going to kill us both!”
“You think I don’t know that? I know what’s coming, that’s why I’m saying that we have to go ri
ght now.”
“I fucking told you, didn’t I?” Aunt Lauren interrupts as she walks closer to us. “I told you not to do this shit, but you just wouldn’t fucking listen. Of course you couldn’t do it, Kelvin. You’re not a gangster. You’re not like the rest of them. You don’t do this kind of stuff. You really thought that you could just pull the trigger and kill someone? You thought you could stand there and watch someone die right in front of you? You’re not like the rest of the Carters. You’re the one that’s different. That’s why he hates you so much, because you’re different from them. You’re better than them, and that’s exactly what’s about to get you killed. Your father will kill you. He’ll kill anybody. You just sentenced yourself to death.”
“Look, I really don’t need to hear that shit right now,” I respond angrily. “I know I fucked up. I’m just trying to do what I can to fix it now. So, we need to stop talking about it, and just get the fuck out of here. We need to go pack our shit and leave this fucking city. It’s the only chance we have. We have to go.”
“You think he won’t find you?” Aunt Lauren continues. “If Kelvin Carter Senior wants you dead, you’re dead. You have no idea how far your father’s power can reach, especially now that he has the Russians on his side. He’ll find you, or he’ll have somebody else do it. You can’t outrun this.”
“So, then what the fuck do you want me to do, Aunt Lauren? You want me to just sit around here and wait for him to come kill me? You want me to go back over to the Royal Flush and ask him for his forgiveness so that he can just shoot me right there in the conference room? Huh? What do you want me to do, then?”
“I don’t know what you’re supposed to do now. You should’ve listened to me.”
“Well, I didn’t!” I yell. “I didn’t listen to you, and it’s too late now. I can’t go back and change the fact that I didn’t listen to you. So, now we have to get over that fact and make a plan. Do you have one?”