Boss

by Tracy Brown

  She forced herself up on her elbow, every nerve in her body aching from the beating she had just endured. Still foggy, she narrowed her eyes, and the scene before her suddenly came into focus.

  Malik!

  Malik had come home from his basketball clinic and could hear the music from outside of the house, and immediately sensed that something was off. His mother never listened to music that loudly. Especially not new music. Georgi loved everything old-school. She would never be blasting “Throw Some D’s.” He stood there with his keys in his hand, contemplating. He moved to unlock the door. The key turned in the lock. But before he could push the door open, it swung abruptly on its own. He flew forward from the force of it and was snatched quickly by a man he didn’t recognize. He saw a large scar on the man’s face and knew immediately that his whole family was in trouble.

  The man pulled him into the house and bolted the door. He dragged Malik through the foyer where he saw his worst nightmares come to life. His mother was crumpled in a ball, crawling pitifully toward the coffee table in a failed attempt to crawl beneath it. A big man was beating her with a large gun. A third man stood like a conductor directing a twisted symphony.

  Malik was dragged into the room and shoved forward. He tried to assess the situation in a desperate attempt to get them out of this. The conductor, dressed in a leather jacket, moved to turn down the volume on the stereo. Malik made his move. He charged toward the man beating his mother. The man with the scar intercepted him, though. He swung a baseball bat directly at Malik’s chest, sending him reeling backward.

  Wes stopped his assault on Georgi and joined them. They fought to wrestle Malik to the ground. Don was telling them to get him on his knees and put their guns to his head. His best bargaining chip had just arrived. But Malik would not go down without a fight. He charged forward again. Don was yelling at Wes, ordering him to “fuck that nigga up.” This time, Wes swung his gun on Malik and the cold steel connected with the young man’s skull, buckling Malik momentarily.

  Georgi cried out, but the words came out jumbled. Unaware that her jaw was broken, she sobbed, watching Wes continue pistol-whipping her son. Malik recoiled, dazed and in pain from the force of the blows. Georgi cried out louder. The music drowned out the sound.

  “Okay!” she yelled. “Okay! Please! I’ll tell you!”

  But Don had that look in his eyes that Quincy once described. The look of a man possessed. He fixated on the sight of the men beating Malik, who no longer even had the strength to fight.

  “Fuck him up, Wes! Kill that muthafucka!” Don bellowed.

  Wes delivered a brutal and merciless beating until Malik stopped putting up a fight. Malik stood, attempting to raise his hands in surrender. But Wes smashed his gun into Malik’s head so hard that the crack was audible despite the noise around them. Malik fell helplessly in a bloody heap. For good measure, Wes kicked him so hard in the face that Georgi watched her son’s teeth spill out onto the floor. She closed her eyes and cried from the depth of her soul. From where she lay, Malik looked dead. Don’s two goons stood over his unmoving body. She felt like her heart might burst in her chest. Her worst fears had been realized.

  Don walked toward her, satisfied now that he had made his point. He meant business. Quincy owed him something. He wasn’t leaving without it.

  He pulled Georgi up by her hair, now tousled, caked with blood, and wild around her face. She winced at the pain of him pulling against the follicles in her already pounding head. The ringing in her ears was deafening now. The music sounded like a record playing backward.

  Don pointed his gun at her face. Then, with a twisted grin on his face, shoved it roughly in her mouth. The metal tasted foreign in her mouth, death tickling at her tonsils. He looked deep into Georgi’s eyes, an unspoken conversation already under way. Finally, he asked her, “You gonna tell me where it is or not?”

  Slowly, she nodded.

  THE LONG KISS GOOD NIGHT

  Sprawled out on top of blankets on the floor of Uncle Don’s apartment, Troy kissed Sydney deeply. His hardness pressed against her. Light-headed from his kiss and from the liquor they’d been drinking, Sydney felt like she was dreaming. His arms were wrapped around her, his hands roamed her body. She wore only a cotton tank top and panties. His hands were up under her top, teasing her. A moan escaped her lips and then Troy was on his knees, his lips pressed against her stomach, her hips, and thighs. Slowly, he slipped her panties down her legs. Then he was on top of her, kissing her again. Sydney came alive.

  She tugged at his shirt, her hands eager to touch his skin. He wiggled out of it, and she gripped his arms and his back desperately. He unbuckled his pants and pulled them down, his hand on his most powerful weapon. His heart thundered in his chest.

  “Mmm,” he growled, spreading her legs apart, and pushed himself inside her wetness.

  Sydney gasped, pleasure searing through every vein. His lips were on her throat, his tongue against her skin as he moved inside of her. Sydney felt so tight around his thickness, her moans excited him even more. She grinded back against him and with each stroke he dove deeper inside of her. The hardness of the floor against her back left her no escape from the power and intensity of his massive dick. He slid his hands underneath her, scooping her ass into his hands. Sydney held on for dear life, her breathing heavier now. She wrapped her legs around him tightly and matched his rhythm as best she could despite the power of his penis. Her legs began to quiver and her voice climbed several octaves. The orgasm rocked her, great waves rippling inside of her. The force of it sent Troy over the edge as well. He came in volcanic spasms that left him breathless.

  They lay together afterward on the floor of Uncle Don’s vacant apartment, staring up at the ceiling, still winded from their lovemaking.

  She broke the silence. “I don’t want to leave here. I wish we could stay just like this.”

  He smiled. “What would we eat?” He looked at her skeptically. “Can you even cook?” He had a playful gleam in his eye as he imagined a naked Sydney cooking for him. The very thought made his dick start to grow hard again.

  Sydney laughed. “I can cook. Aunt Pat taught me. She says a woman who can’t cook is like a man who doesn’t have a job.” Sydney shrugged. “My mother can cook just enough to get by, but Aunt Pat takes cooking seriously. She taught me well.”

  He nodded. “Good to know.” He thought about them living together. “Uncle Don would let us have this place, too. If we wanted it.” He imagined it for a moment. “But we belong at Howard. This is not our world. This is somebody else’s. We’ll create our own.”

  She propped herself up on one elbow and looked at him. “What’s our world gonna look like?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. She giggled at the sight of him like that. He looked childlike, innocent.

  “We’re gonna make our own money,” he said. “We’ll have a lot of it.” He kept his eyes closed, but pulled her closer. “You’ll win your Pulitzer Prize. I’ll run a big corporation in my mama’s name.”

  She smiled, pleased that his vision was so in line with her own. “Why did you decide to do the right thing instead of being drawn into your uncle’s business like Wes?” Every time they were together, Troy spoke of his determination to emulate his father. He wanted to play the role of the straight man. The one who never got his hands dirty. Or so he thought.

  Troy stared at the ceiling in silence for a moment. The truth was he hadn’t figured out the answer to that question, either.

  “My mother tried to shield us from the truth about my family’s businesses at first. She made us think Uncle Don was some kind of legit businessman. But then my dad lost a whole bunch of money in a bad investment. Uncle Don bailed him out and Wes started asking questions. He wanted to know how Uncle Don could afford to do that. Meanwhile, we had never seen the man go to work. His kids had cars at, like, fourteen years old. Money was pouring in. When Wes found out the truth, he put it right in my father’s face. Basically, taking drug money i
s the same as making drug money in my brother’s opinion. He feels like my father’s a hypocrite. And to him, Uncle Don is the man. He makes the money, gets the respect and all that.” Troy shrugged.

  Sydney watched him. “What do you think?”

  “I think my father tries his best to be a good man. And I think in his own way my uncle does, too. They go about it in different ways. For me, neither one of them is the bad guy.” He looked at her and gently moved a strand of her hair away from her pretty face. “I guess you could say I’m somewhere in the middle.”

  Sydney thought about that. The sun had begun to set, the fading light pouring in through the parted curtains in Uncle Don’s apartment. She snuggled in next to him and decided that she was willing to see what “the middle” was like with Troy. This feeling was one she never wanted to end.

  His cell phone buzzed and he reached for it. Glancing at the screen, he was surprised to see a text from his uncle.

  Text me when you’re ready to take Sydney home. I’ll send Butch to pick you up.

  Troy’s eyebrows raised a little. Uncle Don was being awfully generous. He set his phone back down and pulled Sydney close again. It was a Saturday night and Sydney had no curfew. Now they didn’t have to rush for the last ferry departing for Staten Island at a decent hour.

  Sydney gestured toward his phone. She had seen the way his expression had changed when he looked at it. “Everything alright?”

  He nodded. “Everything is perfect.”

  * * *

  Pat read the text message again for the thousandth time. It was from Georgi.

  Bring the box to my house. It’s an emergency.

  The box. That box told a story so scandalous that the sisters had never really discussed it. That box represented many unvoiced truths that they had chosen to sweep under the rug in favor of a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil mentality. Despite that philosophy, Pat knew the moment she read that text message that Georgi’s dirty deeds had finally caught up with her.

  Pat grabbed her car keys and headed out the door. She called over her shoulder to Destiny. “I’m going out real quick, Destiny. I’ll be right back.” The door swung shut behind her.

  Destiny lay on the couch watching TV, completely unaware that the dinner party she and her cousin had gone to last night had resulted in a wild chain of events that would rock her family to its core.

  * * *

  It didn’t take long for Pat to realize that her sister was in trouble. Every time she called her, the call was sent to voice mail. The text had been brief and ominous. The reference to “the box” made her nervous. Georgi had never asked for it before.

  One morning in 1991, Georgi had come running to her mother’s house with the kids in tow. Years before, their mother had moved to Staten Island at a senior living complex there. Pat applied for a job at a hospital nearby and followed her there soon after. Life in the “forgotten borough” was much quieter, slower, more family oriented. The community was more closely knit and Pat found friends there. She met a man, became pregnant, and suffered the heartbreak of abandonment when he left her after Destiny was born. Her mother had been by her side through all of it. Georgi, on the other hand, had been nowhere around until that morning.

  Mama had gotten the children settled in her spare bedroom while Pat peppered her sister with questions. Where was Quincy? What had happened? Why had she left Brooklyn with only the clothes on her back? Georgi had leveled with her. She feared for her very life and wanted to come clean in case it all caught up with her somehow.

  Quincy’s intuition had kicked in the night of the robbery. He spent a sleepless night thinking about all the diamonds and the jewels in his house. Something in his gut told him something wasn’t right. By the time the morning came, Quincy was nervous as hell. He gave Georgi a lockbox tucked inside a small suitcase. He didn’t tell her what was inside at first. Didn’t give her the key. He just instructed her to leave as if she were taking the kids to school, but instead head to Staten Island and stay at her mother’s until further notice. She was to contact no one and keep a low profile until he told her otherwise.

  Georgi had never seen her husband so shaken. He wasn’t himself. That alone gave her reason to be nervous when she arrived at her mother’s apartment in Staten Island. Georgi and Pat sat up drinking and talking far into the night. The robbery was the top story on the local news. The manhunt was intense and it didn’t take long for the sisters to surmise that the contents of that box had to be what was stolen. Once word came that Quincy had been arrested, Georgi became even more paranoid. She rarely even went outside. So afraid of being recognized or spotted by Don or one of his cronies, she remained holed up in her mother’s apartment or at Pat’s. The sisters grew closer then. And their children forged a bond as they grew up so close in age.

  Georgi survived at first by living off of the cash she had managed to grab from the safe before her exit. That money kept her afloat for the first year. She communicated with Quincy through his mother. Although the letters bore her name and address they were written by Georgi and packed with coded language. In their own version of Morse code, they talked about the progress of his case, about the kids, their living situation, her need for more money. Then Quincy was sentenced and all hope for his release was lost. It was time to move the diamonds.

  Through his mother, Quincy got the key to the lockbox to Georgi. She opened it one afternoon with Pat by her side. The black pouch with the gems inside seemed so harmless in the palm of her hand. But the weight of what it had cost them was heavy—Quincy was in jail and Georgi was in hiding with two kids. She was afraid, but now she had moves to make.

  She gave two of the stones to a man she and Quincy met years ago. His name was Paz. He was Brazilian and his name meant “peace.” Quincy had moved some stolen gems through Paz’s hands years ago behind Don’s back. Paz worked for a man who worked with Don. While the two big men did business, the two protégés exchanged information. Weeks later, Paz helped Quincy move a few emerald rings and two diamond necklaces. The deal had earned them both a pretty penny. In the weeks afterward, neither of their bosses got wind of it and their alliance was cemented. Now locked up and helpless, Quincy sent Georgi to meet with Paz and prayed that he could still trust him.

  Paz could have given him up. Instead, he took the diamonds, valued at close to a million dollars, and gave Georgi seven hundred and fifty grand in cash. Paz would move the jewels on the black market and make nearly twice what he paid. But Georgi didn’t care. She was in a bind and there was no one else she trusted to help her. All of the jewelry from that heist was hot. In the wrong hands, those diamonds could put them all in jail. Paz did his thing and did it quietly. Georgi couldn’t have been happier when it was all over. Quincy, too, was pleased with the deal. It gave his wife enough money to set herself up with the kids in a comfortable and quiet life in Staten Island. Money to bury Quincy’s mother when she died two years later. Georgi hadn’t been able to attend the funeral. Still afraid that Don might be lurking somewhere, she grieved for her mother-in-law alone at home while the services took place. Quincy attended his mother’s funeral in shackles, flanked by two federal police officers. His children attended the service, accompanied by his sister, Shana. After the service was over, Quincy went back to jail and the kids went back home to their mother into obscurity. Until now.

  Since then, Georgi had rarely come back to that box. Paz got locked up for theft in an unrelated case. His sentence of eight to ten years made it harder for Georgi to make moves. Quincy wanted her to be patient. He didn’t want to see his wife and kids placed in any type of jeopardy. He said to hold on for a while until he could figure out a way for her to move the jewels without Paz and minimize the risk of her freedom at the same time. Still loyal to Quincy, even after so much time had passed, Georgi tightened her purse strings. She hated it. No more trips to the salon, no mani-pedis. She began to feel like a caged lioness, anxious to get out of her cage and get back to being the life of the party. She longed
to get dressed up and go out. But Quincy said it was time to save money.

  In essence, it’s what tore them apart. Georgi woke up one day and realized that she had turned into a ghetto version of a soccer mom. Her kids were in school all day, while she perused the mall on a budget, watched corny daytime TV shows, or sat around the kitchen table getting fat with her mama and Pat. Georgi grew bored. In the absence of all the spending she’d become accustomed to, she began to feel less attractive. She became depressed. It began to feel like she was being forced to make a choice between the man she loved and the love she had for herself. While incarcerated, Quincy communicated with Georgi through his sister, Shana. She was the one who had to deliver the news that Georgi had moved on. She did ten years as a prisoner’s wife before calling it quits in the hopes of finding love again. Quincy didn’t take it too hard. He didn’t put up much of a fight. Instead, he told himself that Georgi deserved to be happy. He had several pictures of her taped to the wall of his jail cell. In every one of them, she was smiling. Seeing her smile had made him feel like he could conquer the world. Her joy was contagious when she was at her best. He wanted her to smile again, even if he couldn’t be the man to make it possible.

  In the time he’d been away, Georgi had moved about half of what Quincy had given her. With the proceeds of those sales, she had bought her house, financed Sydney and Malik’s education, invested a portion in the financial market, kept Quincy’s commissary stocked, and financed quite a comfortable life for herself and for Quincy’s family as well.

  Pat had never asked for a dime. She didn’t want it, didn’t believe in a life of robbing, stealing, and killing to get ahead. She liked her brother-in-law Quincy. Liked him a lot, in fact. She believed he was the only man who could truly handle Georgi. Quincy was a go-getter. There was no laziness in him. But the danger that went along with the life he lived always repelled Pat. It had repelled her mother, too. That was one of the reasons Georgi had stayed away all those years while she and Quincy were living the high life. Georgi’s family would rather live a calm and mediocre life than a flashy and opulent one plagued by fear and the threat of danger at every turn.