Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE UNION III
The Finale
CHAPTER ONE
When the shot rang out, Mox’s initial instinct was to lunge for Brandi. Again, she screamed, “Daddy!” and raced down the steps.
“Brandi, get down!”
The bullet struck Jennifer in the middle of her forehead—she was stretched across the living room floor—blood, seeping from the small dimple in her skull. Priscilla’s face was flushed with gloom as she clasped the handle of the murder weapon. Her soaking eyes dropped to the corpse; one deep breath, then another.
“Priscilla, let’s go!” Mox yelled. He held Brandi in his arms at the front door.
Priscilla looked up. The fear she saw in Brandi’s eyes was heart wrenching. Her only seed—a child, subject to the jagged realities of a world she had never asked to be birthed into. A beautiful baby girl, who was unconscious to life’s rights and wrongs, oblivious to decision making, but included in every decision made.
This wasn’t the life for a child. This wasn’t life for anyone.
She gripped the pistol tighter and the tears came down faster. A sour, dreaded feeling bubbled at the base of her stomach. Priscilla murmured. “Do you really love me, Mox?” Silence lingered in the gunpowder-filled air, and her eyes were locked on Mox’s face. “Do you love your daughter?” Her arm was moving upward, and the gun was still in her hand.
“Priscilla, put the gun down and let’s go.”
The small droplets continued to cascade down her cheeks. “I gave you everything, Mox.” She inched her pointer finger around the trigger. “What’s left to give?” Her voice was low and barely audible.
Mox stood in silence. His focus was keyed on Priscilla’s trigger finger. Quickly, he moved to her eyes. They were riddled with agony and defeat, stress and despair. He saw in them the beautiful young lady he had met years back. She was still there—just fighting to be released; struggling for a chance to be loved.
“Don’t do this, Priscilla. You know I love you. I’ve never in my life loved a woman the way I love you. Look…” He took a step towards her, Brandi clutched in the fold of his arms. “Look at our daughter.”
“Stop lyin’ to me, Mox!” Her voice gained volume. She was less than ten feet away with the gun pointed at his head.
Mox glanced down at Jennifer spread across the floor. The look on her face was sickening. He raised his head, and with his good eye, he peered down the barrel of the loaded handgun. “In about five minutes,” he whispered. “This whole spot gon’ be surrounded wit’ police, and ain’t no way I’m lettin’ them muthafuckas take me back to that hell… so, either you shoot me right now, or put that fuckin’ gun down and bring yo’ ass on.”
Minutes later…
“Brandi, make sure you have your seatbelt on.” Priscilla rushed to start the car. She jammed the key into the ignition. “Where we goin?” she asked, turning to Mox.
For the first time in his life, Mox didn’t have a plan. He hadn’t had time to think this one through. “I don’t know, but we gotta get the fuck outta here. Now.”
Priscilla adjusted the rearview and put the car in gear. She took one more glance at Mox, smiled, and then mashed on the gas pedal.
________
“Damnit Six, we fucked up!” Tyrell slammed his fist on the table.
“Nah nigga… you fucked up. You gave the order.”
Tyrell snatched a chair from underneath the table, sat down, and placed both hands on his head. “I don’t believe this shit, fuck!”
The decision he made to have Leo killed turned out to be the wrong one, and now the burden of his death weighed solely upon his shoulders. Trying to include Six was a physiological move, but truthfully, he knew it was his doing and his doing alone.
“These are the muthafuckas you lookin’ for, champ?” Boom Bam, an ex-football player turned hood legend, came from the back room and dropped a piece of paper on the table in front of Tyrell. They were in his apartment. He was Tyrell’s best worker. “They definitely ain’t from around here,” he said.
Tyrell picked the paper up and stared at the two faces. “Is it them, Six?”
“Yup,” six nodded. “That’s them muhfuckas right there. I remember those faces anywhere.”
“What the fuck these two white boys doin’ in the hood, and who the fuck are they?” Tyrell was baffled. “Boom Bam, you can’t find out who these dudes are?”
In college, Boom Bam was a computer expert, so in the hood he used his talents to support his lifestyle. He had the ability to hack into anything that could be hacked, and Tyrell summoned his expertise to get the video footage from the cameras set up in the lobby of the building. The task had been completed in a matter of minutes.
“Already done, champ.” He dropped another piece of paper on the table. “This is serious business right here, y’all ready for this typea shit?”
Tyrell read the printout and then angrily crumbled the paper in his hands. “I don’t give a fuck if that nigga name is John Gotti… they took somebody close to me. I’ma make ʼem pay for that shit. I put that on everything.” His thoughts drifted back to the last time he saw his cousin, Dana. It was equivalent to traveling down an empty passageway—one that had been avoided for specific reasons.
His grip tightened and he crushed the paper. He bit down on his back teeth and clenched his jaws. Measure for measure—eye for an eye, it was the only way. Losing a loved one—an extremely close loved one, birthed an animal not even Tyrell could contain. His initial introduction to the streets was money oriented, but now—now murder was becoming habitual, and his sensibility to love and human life had lessened.
Boom Bam and Six stood in the kitchen watching Tyrell as he went through his motions.
“I knew this lil’ nigga was a bug-out.” Boom Bam looked at Six. “He gon’ get you killed.”
Six was fearless, but he wasn’t stupid. He acknowledged that the odds were beyond evenly matched. In fact, there were no odds according to him. How could two young dudes from the projects wage war against a mafia crime family?
“I think you need to take some time wit’ this one… think it over a lil’ bit.” he said.
Tyrell looked up. “You think I need to take some time? I huh, what the fuck happened to we? It was just we this, we that… what happened to that shit, Six?”
Six didn’t think he would catch it, but Tyrell was sharper than what most people assumed.
“I’m sayin’, I—”
“You what?” When Tyrell stood up, Six got tongue-tied.
“I—”
“That’s what I thought. Don’t bitch up on me now, Six. It’s crunch time, baby.”
“I ain’t bitchin’ up, Rell. I’m jus’ sayin’… we need to come up wit’ a plan if we goin’ at these dudes. We gotta use our brains on this one.”
Tyrell reached into his pants and pulled his gun out. He held it in his palm while looking at Six. “You don’t need brains when you got bullets, Six.” He cocked the weapon and passed the barrel under his nose. Inhaling, he stared at Six and said, “Either you wit’ me or you against me, and if you against me… you a dead man walkin’.”
A shiver flowed
through Six’s body. He knew if it came to it, Tyrell wouldn’t hesitate to kill him. He’d seen it done—he’d been a part of it. A choice had to be made, and time was more precious than a newborn baby.
Boom Bam’s doorbell rang and they all looked at each other.
“Go see who it is, Boom…”
He walked to the door, put his eye to the peephole, and then looked back at Tyrell and Six. “It’s the lil’ nigga, O who used to stay in the hood. He prolly wanna cop.”
Tyrell tucked his gun and then fixed his shirt over it. “Let ʼem in.”
When the door opened, a five feet tall young kid with a protruding belly, blue jeans, and a hoodie entered the apartment.
“Whaddup, Boom? I need five hunit soft.” The kid reached into his jeans and came out with a wad of bills. He looked up at Tyrell and Six, and then took a seat on Boom Bam’s sofa.
Tyrell caught a glimpse of the kid’s face when he pulled his hoody back. “Yo, Omar, what the fuck you doin?”
“Oh shit… Rell… wassup?” Omar got up from the couch and walked over to Tyrell. “I aint even know that was you. Boom keep it mad dark in here, you can’t see shit.”
Tyrell hadn’t seen Omar in years—since his mother had been sober and held the responsibility of caring for a few neighborhood kids. Back then, they played together, ate together and shared the same couch when it was nap time in the Michaels’ house. And now, it looked like they were in the same line of business—the coke game.
“You hustlin’ now, huh?” Tyrell smirked and his attention went to the pile of money Omar had laid out on the coffee table. If he was coming to buy five hundred grams at thirty dollars each, then it had to be at least $15,000 on the table.
Boom Bam appeared from the shadows holding a beat up Nike shoebox. He took a seat in his old, ragged, wooden rocking chair that was opposite of where Omar sat. He put the box on the table. “Y’all know each other?” he asked.
“Yeah, we know each other.” Tyrell replied. “My mother use to watch this nigga. We practically grew up together… Yo, Omar how your moms doin’?”
“She’s dead.” he said, without a flinch.
“Damn, son. My condolences to you and the family. Where you at now?”
Omar cut his eye at Tyrell. “Homey, you askin’ alotta questions, wassup wit’ that?”
“Fuck you mean, wassup wit that?”
“You heard me, nigga.” Omar stepped back and went to reach in his hoody, but Boom Bam jumped to his feet and got between the two young men.
“Y’all niggas chill the fuck out. This is my shit!” he growled.
Omar kept his hand in the front pocket of his hoody, “Who this nigga think he is, Boom?”
“Omar, sit yo’ ass down.” Boom Bam lightly shoved him towards the sofa. “Cool off, nigga.” He turned to Tyrell. “Why you always startin’ shit?”
Tyrell smiled and let out a slight chuckle. “You right, Boom. My bad.”
Being the mediator, Boom Bam diffused the situation before it became hostile. He couldn’t understand the mentality of today’s youth because he’d grown up in a different era—an era where you fought your problems out if it came to it. But this was the norm now. He’d been watching kids kill kids for the past ten years, and it was becoming an epidemic.
“Y’all fuckin’ retarded. I truly believe it’s an entire generation of crack babies, and all y’all doin’ is knockin’ each other off.” Boom Bam shook his head and then sat back in his chair. “That money right, O?”
“My money always right, Boom. You know that…” Omar paused and turned to Tyrell. “Wassup wit’ your man, he good?”
Tyrell kept a straight face and held his composure, but what he really wanted to do was shove his gun down this bitchassnigga’s throat and make him apologize for his rude behavior. But he was easy. He sat back and played the fool as expected.
Boom Bam picked up a half-smoked cigarette from the ashtray and lit it. “He cool.” he answered, letting the smoke filter through his nostrils. He pulled a digital scale out the box along with a zip-lock bag filled with cocaine rocks. While they conducted their business Tyrell and Six acted as if they were invisible, but they heard everything that was being said.
“Yooo,” Omar was putting $1,000 stacks together and placing them to the side. “I ran into that nigga… umm…” He couldn’t remember the name. “That big nigga that use to play football from out here, I think his last name is Davis or some shit like that.”
“Who, Cleo?” Boom Bam questioned.
“Yeeaahh, that nigga. I bumped into son down in SC. He was doin’ his numbers. I think that nigga on the run for somethin’ though… he be mad nervous n’ shit.”
“Word?” Boom Bam brushed it off and never thought twice about it. He knew what Cleo was on the run for—shit, the whole hood knew why Cleo was on the run, but what Boom Bam didn’t know was that Tyrell was involved.
After he weighed out the product and they made the exchange, Omar went on his way, but before he left, he said something slick. “Yo, Rell…” He was halfway out the door. “You was never a tough guy. Don’t try to be one now. Boom, I’ll see you on the next trip.”
Tyrell got up and reached for his gun, but Boom Bam stopped him.
“Chill, Rell… he’ll be back.”
CHAPTER TWO
A delicate mist mixed with light flurries descended from the darkened sky as headlights from passing vehicles on the expressway served as extra light on the vacant streets. Tricia pranced up and down the strip in her wig, fake fur, tight skirt and four-inch heels, awaiting the arrival of a potential trick. A burning cigarette sat between her index and middle finger, while her eyes followed the dark grey Mercedes Benz that slowly passed.
“Get yo’ skinny ass off the strip!” the passenger yelled.
“Fuck you, bitchassnigga!” The Benz pulled away from the curb and Tricia plucked the cigarette in the street. “Ol’ broke ass nigga,” she mumbled, checking the watch on her wrist. Headlights from a black Audi pulling into the parking lot forced her to shield her eyes, but she was adamant on seeing who the driver was. When she noticed it was a female, she sucked her teeth, rolled her eyes, and sashayed back into the lobby of the motel.
“Why did you tell me to get off at this exit, Mox?” Priscilla questioned as she tried to find a space to park.
“Because we hot, Priscilla. Since you and your little friend back there wanna do secret missions n’ shit… this is what we gotta do.”
Priscilla badly wanted to snap and curse Mox out, but she remembered Brandi was in the back seat. “Whatever you say, Mox.” She mumbled, put the car in park and they exited the vehicle and entered the motel lobby.
The poignant aroma of badly cooked food filled the cramped lobby space causing Mox and Priscilla to turn up their nose. “Damn, it stinks in here.” Mox complained.
Tricia stared at the couple as she sat in a chair off in the corner. “Hey Daddy.” she said, smiling hard.
Mox heard her, but he ignored her.
Priscilla heard her and replied. “Bitch, you blind?”
“What?” Tricia stood up. She and Priscilla were almost the same size and height.
Priscilla let go of Brandi’s hand and took a step forward. “You heard me, bitch. Are you blind?”
A sharp clicking sound caught Priscilla’s attention. “Naw, but I bet you bleed.” Tricia clutched an old school box-cutter in her right hand. She kept it low, but Mox saw it and stepped between them.
“Fuck is wrong wit’ you?” he snatched the skinny prostitute by her weave and shoved her into the corner.
“Hey!” The attendant behind the glass yelled. “No fighting! I will call cops!” he shouted in his heavy foreign accent.
Tricia bounced against the hard plastic window and the razor fell from her grasp and hit the floor. She fixed her wig and skirt and bent down to pick up her weapon.
“You bedda get that bitch before I cut her.”
“Try it, bitch. I dare you.” Priscil
la replied. She had her finger wrapped around the trigger of the gun in her pocket. After she was cut the first time, she vowed to never let it happen again.
“Priscilla!” Mox yelled. He felt Tricia take a step towards him, so he turned around. “Get your stupid ass outta here before you fuck around and get hurt.”
Tricia mumbled a few words and then slithered out the front entrance, but kept an eye on Priscilla the whole time.
“Can we get a room, please?” Mox asked the attendant.
He stared at the couple with his dark eyes and then looked down at Brandi.
“How long?”
“One night.”
“Forty dollars for the short stay, seventy-five for the night.”
Mox turned to Priscilla. “You got money?”
“No.”
He turned back to the attendant. “Hold on, I’ll be right back.” Mox breezed by Brandi and Priscilla and walked out to the parking lot. “Fuck!” He cursed himself as he headed back to the car. The burden of being financially unstable was eating away at his conscience, and he had no clue how he could make things right. He hit the unlock button on the car keys and searched through the vehicle for any loose bills that may have been lying around. “It gotta be somethin’ in here.” he said aloud.
After rummaging through the entire interior of the car and finding nothing, Mox popped the trunk and prayed for a miracle. He dug through a black bag that was full of Priscilla’s clothes. As he continued to come up empty handed, he tossed garment after garment back into the trunk and his frustration grew more intense. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Priscilla and Brandi looking out at him from inside the motel lobby.
He started to say prayer as he pulled out the last pair of Priscilla’s jeans, but he felt something in her left pocket. He reached in and came out holding two $100 bills. Mox shoved the remaining clothes back into the bag, slammed the trunk and kissed the money up to the sky as he walked towards the lobby. “Here,” He said, pushing a hundred dollar bill through the hole in the glass. “One night please.”
“Where’d you get that money from?” Priscilla asked.
“Mommy…” Brandi was crisscrossing her legs and she looked very agitated. “I gotta use the bathroom.”
The Union III Page 1