Boss

by Tracy Brown

  Sydney frowned. “They who? I was with Troy.”

  They arrived at Malik’s room and nothing could have prepared Sydney for what she saw. Malik was lying in a hospital bed bandaged seemingly from head to toe. A doctor was explaining that they had inserted some type of metal plate in his head to help him heal somehow. He had endured blunt force trauma to his head, a brutal beating that left him breathing with the aid of a machine. Sydney wept into her cousin’s shoulder. Malik lay with his mouth wide open, a ventilator inserted there. He looked like he was already gone.

  She looked at Destiny. “What happened to him?”

  Destiny was aware that the cop was all ears. Her mother had filled her in on what she knew. Still, she chose her words carefully as she replied. “Some strangers came in and they were robbing your mom. Malik walked in on it. Maybe he tried to save her. They beat him, took what they could, and left. Aunt Georgi is hurt pretty bad, too. Good thing my mom stopped by after work. She found them like that and called the police.” It wasn’t all a lie, Destiny reasoned.

  The officer closed in on Sydney again. “Where were you this afternoon?”

  Sydney looked at him. “I was with my boyfriend on Sixty-first Street.”

  “Did your mother or brother call you at all today?”

  She shook her head. “My battery died. I didn’t get any calls for most of the day.” She would never make that mistake again.

  Destiny led her cousin back to Aunt Georgi’s room. Sydney, still shaken from the sight of her brother, wept at her mother’s feet.

  A detective stood in the doorway and greeted everyone. Aunt Pat stood up as he approached her.

  “I just wanted to give you my card,” the man said. He spoke softly to Aunt Pat, aware that she had been traumatized upon finding her loved ones this way. “If you remember anything else, you give me a call.”

  Aunt Pat took the card and thanked him. He left and she tucked it into her purse. Destiny rose and shut the door behind the detective. As an awkward silence descended, Sydney felt like she might self-destruct.

  “Why isn’t anybody saying anything?” she asked. She became aware, for the first time, that her mother, aunt, and cousin were all looking at her oddly.

  Georgi mumbled something and Aunt Pat scrambled for a notepad at the bedside. She gave it to her sister. Georgi began to write. Finally done, she handed it to her sister.

  Pat passed the pad from Georgi to Sydney.

  She read her mother’s handwriting. Where you been all day?

  Sydney was filled with guilt. She had been wrapped in Troy’s arms all day, making love with reckless abandon while her family was terrorized. “I was with Troy.”

  “Where?” Aunt Pat repeated. “And how did you meet this Troy?”

  Sydney felt anxious suddenly. What kind of questions were these?

  “We were at his uncle’s apartment.” Her voice shook. She wondered why she felt so ashamed. All of them stared at her, their eyes accusing. “And I met him at school like I said.” She looked at Destiny for clues. “What’s going on?”

  Aunt Pat sighed. “Troy’s uncle, Don…” She didn’t know where to begin. Destiny had filled her in on the party Troy brought them to the night before. Now the pieces were starting to come together. Though the women had told the police nothing, they were aware of how a crazy twist of fate brought Troy and Sydney together and led Don right back to Georgi’s doorstep.

  Sydney’s heart raced. She wondered what the hell Troy’s uncle had to do with any of this.

  “Troy might have been in on this from the start.” Destiny hated to think the worst. But the irony of it all was too hard to ignore.

  Sydney frowned. “In on what?” She stared at them all in disbelief. “This?”

  “Uncle Don knew your father,” Destiny explained.

  “Years ago,” Aunt Pat added. “They parted ways on bad terms.” She lowered her voice, paranoid that someone might be listening. “Don’s the one who did this.”

  Sydney gasped. Tears flooded her eyes. She shook her head, refusing to believe this was even possible. She thought about Troy, about the uncle she met at his holiday party. She thought about the family emergency Troy had been called away on just as she was leaving. She tried to recall his demeanor all day. Had he been in on it all along? She couldn’t believe it. She wouldn’t.

  “No,” she cried. She shook her head as if doing so might make it all go away.

  Aunt Pat looked at her sympathetically. “I was there, baby. I saw the man.” She felt anxious just at the thought of him. Destiny had described the man she and Sydney met at the party last night. Destiny had described Don to a tee. “I will never forget the look in his eyes.” Aunt Pat shook her head.

  Destiny’s heart broke watching her cousin standing there processing the information she was hearing. She knew that Sydney was in love with Troy. She had believed that he felt the same way. Now she wasn’t so sure. “Sydney, I think Wes was there, too.” Her voice was low as she spoke. She took no enjoyment out of telling her this. “Aunt Georgi knows Uncle Don and recognized him from before. But she didn’t know the other two guys he was with. The way she described the big one … the one who beat Malik … it sounds like it was Wes.”

  Sydney closed her eyes, the world feeling like it was crashing down around her.

  “Who is Wes?” Aunt Pat asked.

  Sydney opened her eyes again and her gaze locked with her mother’s. Behind the clear signs of battery evident on her face and the contraption keeping her jaw in line, Georgi’s expression was angry. There was no doubt about it, she was pissed. Sydney realized that her mother thought this was all her fault.

  “He’s Troy’s brother,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Aunt Pat hung her head, dismayed that apparently they had all walked right into a trap.

  Georgi signaled for the notepad back. With her left hand, she wrote on it as legibly as she could. She raised the pad back in Sydney’s direction.

  Where did you get that necklace?

  Sydney touched it. She had forgotten it was there.

  “Troy,” she whispered. The tears poured forth again.

  Her mother stared at her for a while. Then she reached forward and snatched it roughly from Sydney’s neck. She clasped the broken necklace tightly in her fist and looked away while her daughter cried.

  The sobs wracked Sydney’s body as the reality of it all sunk in at last. She knew that she would never see Troy again. Worse, she wasn’t sure whether her brother would survive. And if he did, whether he’d ever be the same again. No matter how hard she tried, even though no one voiced the sentiment out loud, she believed that it was all her fault. It would take years before she learned the whole truth. In the meantime, all she had were a million unanswered questions and the burden of a broken heart.

  DOWNFALL

  Down in the basement of the abandoned house on Pitkin Avenue, Crystal stared at Troy now as it all sunk in for him. He sat with his eyes closed as he processed the reality that Crystal Scott was really Sydney Taylor.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her.

  “At first, I was offended that you didn’t recognize me,” she said. “But it’s not completely your fault. I changed everything about myself. Made a new life. Sydney was a plain Jane. But Crystal is a vixen.”

  She sounded crazy to him now, speaking of herself in these terms as if she weren’t both women. She stared down at him, her gaze filled with a combination of love and loathing. For the past ten years, she had been consumed by the thought of revenge. Troy had done her and her family dirty. Malik was dead. Her mother had never been the same. Her father had spent the past twenty-five years locked up in jail. They had lost everything. The pain her family experienced had been unbearable.

  She reflected on all she had been through. All the years she spent obsessing over reports about the Mitchell family in the press. None of her peers had understood her fascination with the publishing giant or her decision to leave a promising
career at Sable behind to join the ranks of Hipster. She had slyly woven herself into the fabric of the family business, earning Fox’s confidence, and landing the top position at the magazine. She got into Troy’s bed, earned his trust, and studied his movements. She had gone through his phone, perused his e-mails, his files, his accounts, his everything. All in a quest to bring him and the entire Mitchell family down. What she hadn’t counted on was falling in love with him. To her dismay, the passion between them had been as undeniable as her bloodlust.

  Several times, she had been tempted to call the whole thing off. She was in love with him, no matter how hard she tried not to be. Troy had stolen her heart again. But then she would see her brother’s face in her mind. Different variations of him. The young, vibrant, smiling Malik and the beaten, swollen, disfigured one. She would witness her mother walking through life afraid of her own shadow. She would talk to her father while he served a sentence for a crime he hadn’t done. And those reminders were all the fuel that she needed to press forward.

  Troy spoke up at last, his voice hoarse with emotion. “I always thought about what it would be like if I ever saw you again. Now I’m here and I don’t know what to say.”

  He was being honest. A million times, he had rehearsed it in his mind. How he would explain, apologize, confess. But all of that seemed pointless now.

  His voice betraying the unexpected emotions that consumed him, he said, “I didn’t know what they were going to do.”

  Wes sucked his teeth and looked at his brother sidelong. “You knew!” he insisted. “Don’t lie.” His expression was menacing, but she could see the fear in his eyes that he was doing his best to camouflage.

  Quincy looked at his daughter. “See?”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Troy yelled. He looked at Crystal … Sydney … he wasn’t even sure who he was seeing anymore.

  “I swear I didn’t know what they were going to do.” He looked her in her eyes sincerely as he said it. “I really loved you. That was no game.” He shook his head. “I didn’t know they were gonna do that.”

  She glared at Troy, angry at him and at herself. She should have known that he was too good to be true.

  “So, I’m supposed to believe that meeting you at Howard was a coincidence. And our families having beef was a coincidence, too?” She looked at him like he had lost his mind.

  He spoke anxiously, aware that time was running out. “I swear! When I met you, I had no idea that our families knew each other. You had no idea who I was and I had no idea who you were. We fell in love. And then I brought you home to meet my family.” He thought back to that night. “During the whole party, I kept wondering why my uncle was so interested in you. He kept asking you questions. But you didn’t seem to mind. I didn’t realize then that he was connecting the dots. It was some shit that had nothing to do with us.”

  Crystal watched him, analyzing his facial expressions and body language as he spoke. Looking for signs that he was lying.

  “After we brought you home that night, I went back to my father’s house. Uncle Don sat up talking to me. He told me that he knew your mother. He didn’t tell me the details. He just said that he knew your mother and he was gonna stop by and see her. He wanted me to keep you out of the house for the day. He told me we could use his empty apartment to hang out until he called me. I didn’t think anything of it.”

  Crystal looked skeptical. “So, you didn’t know what was really going on?”

  He shook his head.

  Wes laughed. “Uncle Don told you he was gonna rob her mother.”

  “Shut up, Wes!” Troy shouted over him.

  “Nah, nigga, you shut up. Stupid muthafucka.” He looked at Crystal, sneering. “Uncle Don told me the whole story. I knew exactly why we were going to Staten Island that day. But he told Tinker Bell here that he was gonna rob y’all while nobody was home, so Troy was supposed to keep you out of the house until the coast was clear.”

  She looked at Troy. He was staring at the floor, trying desperately not to cry.

  When he spoke, his voice was barely audible. “I never thought anybody was gonna get hurt.”

  “You knew. And you didn’t tell me.” She thought about Malik, walking into an ambush. She imagined the fear he must have felt. The pain.

  “My uncle came and got me that day after you left the apartment. When I got in the car, I could see that he wasn’t his usual self. He wasn’t making eye contact with me. He seemed a little more animated than usual. More talkative. But he wasn’t giving me any information about this emergency that was so important. We got to his apartment and Wes was there.” Troy looked at him now angrily. “His clothes were full of blood and he had cuts on his hands. I could tell that something went wrong that day.”

  Crystal remembered the condition she had found her brother in when she arrived at the hospital. Malik had been beaten so badly that the doctors had given him only a fifty-fifty chance of survival. She swallowed hard now, hearing Troy basically confirm that Wes had been personally responsible.

  “A couple of my uncle’s other boys were there. They all sat me down. I knew right away that it was bad.” He looked Crystal in the eye. “He told me that your father was an old friend of his.” Troy glanced at Quincy tentatively.

  Crystal felt her body tense. She shifted uneasily on the stool.

  He kept looking at Quincy. “He told me that your father stole something from him. Something very valuable. And my uncle had been looking for it for years. Even though your father was locked up, he had stashed something that meant a lot to my uncle. Stashed it with your mother.”

  Crystal’s heart was pounding in her chest.

  “When you showed up at the holiday party and mentioned your parents’ names, my uncle realized who your family was. He planned the whole thing without either one of us knowing it.” Troy’s expression was sincere. “I swear to God, Crystal. By the time I knew what happened, the damage was done.” He shook his head. He wasn’t looking at her now. “For years, I was in denial about who my uncle was. But after that night, I learned. I never forgave him for it.” Troy shook his head. “I’m so sorry for what happened to Malik.”

  Wes was sick of this shit. He laughed maniacally, his eyes fixed on Troy. “You know how you sound right now? Like a fuckin bitch, nigga. As usual. Just like you were afterwards.” He looked at Sydney … Crystal … whoever she was. “This nigga cried for days like a fuckin’ girl! Got so depressed over you that he couldn’t handle it.” He looked at Troy now, disgusted by him. As far as he was concerned, he had never had any heart. “All over some pussy. Weak muthafucka! You gonna sit here and beg, and apologize to this bitch—”

  Tyson hit Wes so hard that the whole chair went flying across the room. Wes, still tied to it, lay on his side groaning. Tyson untied him and stood back, waiting for Wes to get on his feet. The other goons who had been lurking in the shadows stepped forward.

  Troy watched, his eyes wide with fear. Quincy pulled out his gun.

  Troy began stammering an apology. “I can’t make excuses for the terrible shit my family did. But I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for the part I played in it. I’m sorry, Crystal … Sydney.”

  She thought about what Wes had said. That Troy knew his uncle planned to rob her family. “Did you give me that diamond necklace to make up for what you thought your uncle would take from me?”

  Troy stared at her. There was no right answer.

  She touched her collarbone absentmindedly now, remembering the feeling of it dangling there for those few brief hours.

  She met his gaze. “My mother hated me after that night. She never said it. But I could see the hate. I could feel it when she looked at me. Malik died in that cold, miserable hospital. He was already brain-dead by the time they got him to the hospital. We had to sneak out of there in the middle of the night. Out of fear of your family and what your uncle might do to us. We never even got to bury my brother. No funeral. No closure. All we have is a jar full of his ashes.” She looked over
at Wes. “You still have your brother, but I don’t have mine.”

  Wes finally got up on his feet. He stood in front of Tyson, shaking from the effort.

  Troy pleaded with Tyson, his hands high in the air. “Please! Please, don’t do this.”

  Tyson was mocking Wes, coaxing him to fight. “What happened to all that mouth you had last night? Huh?”

  Wes could barely stand. Even through the haziness, he was aware that they were about to take him out. But he wasn’t going down without a fight. He charged at Tyson, trying to flip him over in a wrestling type of move. Tyson tussled with him for only a moment before hitting him in the face with the butt of his gun. Wes went down hard.

  Quincy punched Troy in the face. Before Troy could recover, the two thugs pounced on him, stomping, kicking, punching him as well as Wes. Tyson joined in and savagely all of the men beat both brothers. Crystal stepped back, staring at the melee.

  Tyson pulled Troy up on his knees. Wounded and beaten, bleeding from his mouth, Troy looked at Crystal and said, “Please, don’t do this. I’m so sorry for everything that happened. I would bring your brother back if I could.” He saw the cold glare she directed his way.

  Tyson held Troy in place, forcing him to watch while they beat Wes viciously. Quincy cracked Wes across the bridge of his nose with the cold steel of his gun. Wes seemed to be leaking blood from everywhere.

  “Stop!” Troy screamed at the top of his lungs. Wes was broken already. As ruthless as he was, no one deserved to be beaten this way. “Stop! That’s enough!”

  Quincy turned on Troy, his eyes full of the blind rage he had been harboring for years.

  “Who yelled ‘stop’ for Malik?” His booming voice echoed off the walls in the basement. “Huh?” he bellowed. “Who the fuck cried out for my son?”

  Quincy walked back over to Wes and kept swinging. He thought about the last time he saw Malik. It was during a visit to the jail where he had served more than two decades for the Mitchell family. As he swung, landing blow after powerful blow, Quincy thought about Malik, crying out the way that Troy cried out now. He imagined him scared, helpless, powerless against this monster. Quincy thought about Malik until he beat Troy’s brother to death.