by Lauren Wood
“I know. Do you think Ralph will let me take the day off?” I didn’t want anyone to see me like this. It was embarrassing, but like I said before, sadly it wasn’t the first time that I had shown up for a shift with a black eyes. This time it was just a little worse and it was everywhere. I felt like I was never going to be the same again, but I knew that it would pass, like it always does.
“I don’t know. You know that we are short because Kristy decided to quit. I think you should go in, if nothing else so that he can see.”
I felt like I was an animal in a zoo. I didn’t want him to know how bad it was or how bad I felt. I certainly didn’t want to hear him tell me that he told me so. I knew that is what Ralph would say. It was my fault that I hadn’t left him. There was truth in that, I could see it of course, but there wasn’t much that I thought I could really do about it. Cass was most likely taken care of.
“Yeah, I guess I don’t really have a choice. Now that I don’t have a place to stay, I definitely can’t lose my job too. It had been too much of a pain to get the one I have now.” She was right and I was thankful that Stephanie had her head on straight. I was too full of nerves to be thinking that clearly.
“Well come on. Take a shower and you will feel better. I am going to make some coffee. Do you want some?”
I told her that I did, though I didn’t drink coffee that often. I needed the bitter brew if I was going to make it through the day. My mind was full of what-ifs and it was only when I got under the hot steaming water that I was able to really get myself together. I was worried about all of the wrong things, I knew that now. When I had been worried about making Cass happy, I should have been running the other way.
“Better?”
“Yeah, I do feel better. The coffee smells good. Do you have any creamer?”
Stephanie handed it to me and I put enough in the coffee to get it closer to white than black. I had to put so much into the coffee to make it palatable, that I supposed there wasn’t much left of the actual caffeine drink. It was warm and sweet though, just what I needed as I took on another day looking like a punching bag.
As I looked in the mirror as I got ready, I told myself again that this was never going to happen. I was never going to let a man do this to me, but more than that, I wasn’t going to let Cass get me down. He was out of my life and that just left me able to move on.
***
Work was just as it always was. It was busy by the time me and Stephanie got there and Ralph made a comment about us being late. When I turned around to answer him, I forgot for a moment that I looked like I had been hit by a Mack truck. It wasn’t until I seen Ralph’s face that I remembered.
“Fran…”
“Sorry Ralph. We didn’t mean to be late. It wasn’t Stephanie’s fault. She was nice enough to let me stay with her last night and I think that I kept her up.”
He was staring at my face and the quiet man just shook his head. I knew that he wasn’t going to admonish me or yell because we were late. He was going to do something far worse. Ralph was going to give me that look of pity that I hated so much. Didn’t he understand that I hated the pity more than anything else? I would rather him be angry at me. That I was okay with it for some reason. If he was angry, then that meant that he wouldn’t give me that look that I hated to see so much.
“Fran, what happened?”
Steph chimed in and told him the basics. It was most likely already known. Like I had said before, this certainly wasn’t the first time in the last six months that I had come to work like this. This time it was just worse.
“Fran, I hope you are going to leave that man. He is going to kill you. You have to see that.”
I could see that of course. It wasn’t hard at all to see and know that if I didn’t get away from Cass, he was going to kill me. But maybe I didn’t have to worry about him anymore. I still didn’t know what happened last night over at his house, but I heard the gunshots. People can’t just shoot at the police. I felt like something was going to have to come from all of this. There was no way that shooting the police was going to get him anywhere but dead.
I had too much stuff over at his house to get and it got me wondering what I was going to find when I got there. I knew that whatever happened though, I was going to be okay. I wasn’t going to let Cass bring me down anymore. I was done with men like him.
“I know Ralph. I don’t think I am going to have to worry about him anymore. He messed up and got into it with the police.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I left they were shooting at each other. I jumped out one of the windows in the back. I don’t know what happened, but I am sure that Cass isn’t my problem anymore.”
He looked shocked and it told me that maybe I should feel the same way. I didn’t though. I was far more worried about what was going to happen to me. How I was going to get my things and where was I going to go next? It was a relief on one side of the coin, but then again, it wasn’t. I did love Cass in my own way. There was a good man in there, but the drugs brought out the worst in him. That was just the way it was.
“Well you worry me Fran. I will be happy when you are away from him. Have you checked the news to see what happened after you left?”
I shook my head that I hadn’t. I didn’t want to go there and find out what happened from one of the neighbors. There was still a chance that Cass was there and I wasn’t going to take that chance. I was going to have to see what happened first another way that didn’t put me into danger. I still had to get my stuff out of the house, but I was far more worried about what I was going to do afterward I got it.
“Thanks for understanding Ralph.”
He waved me off and told me that I just had to let this all sink in. “Let this be the last time that you come in here like this Fran. You are a beautiful girl and you don’t deserve this. There are plenty of men that would love to treat you the way that you deserve to be treated.”
I had a feeling he meant himself. I just smiled and kind of nodded my head like I agreed with him. It wasn’t the first time I questioned the boss’ attitude. It made me feel like he was nice to me because he wanted to be that man, but Ralph wasn’t my type. Not even in the least bit and even if I gave up on the bad boys, I wouldn’t go that way.
Chapter 3
Lucas
“What the hell happened to you last night, Lucas? One minute you were around and the next you were gone?”
David looked at me with expectations. I didn’t know what to tell him. With everything that happened the night before, I was glad I had left. There were several arrests as people tried to leave. I had warned them and I was thankful that most of the people that took off were not from the gang. My members did what they were supposed to do and David was one of them.
“You know I got a couple of warrants David that I don’t want to deal with right now. I saw that shit going down next door and had to make sure that I didn’t get picked up. Did anyone from our side go in?”
David shook his head. “No, we all stayed in and waited them out. You should have seen how many cops were here last night. It was more than I thought we had here. I even saw a couple from Marrero that was here. They called everyone in. One cop got shot and then the place was flooded with them.”
“What happened to the guy that lived there? Wasn’t he the one that was shooting at the cops?”
“He was taken out on a stretcher. Not really sure what happened to him, but I would imagine that he got some lead in his ass. You know the cops don’t play with all of that around here.”
“Yeah, well I guess that is good. I didn’t know him very well, but we don’t need that kind of shit around here.”
David nodded that he understood and I looked to Marcus. He was calling his old lady and letting her know that he was going to be around a couple of more days. While he may not be in the gang anymore, he was a good friend and I was glad to have him around. I wanted people like him around because I knew that I could trust hi
m. I can’t say the same for many others.
“So how did everything go over here?” I turned to Ethan for his take.
“Not too much. Remember that chick that was dancing naked on the table?”
“Yeah, what about her?”
“She came out of the house in the middle of it and had those big ass bouncing around. The cops about lost it. They didn’t ask her to get into the back of the car. They had her out on one of the hoods. The craziest shit ever. Some cops were in the house dealing with the shooter and the other one’s were out in the front fingering that drunk bitch.”
I just shook my head. I knew that she was an easy target when I saw her.
“Should have video taped it. We could have used it when they pop us for small stuff later. A little bribe can go a long way when I bet those cops were married.”
“No man, you don’t understand. That bitch was squirting or pissing, hell I don’t know what it was, but it was hot as hell. Half of the house was checking it on in the windows. I haven’t ever seen a bitch do that before.”
I didn’t know what to say, but I wished that had taped that. It wasn’t like everyone in there didn’t have a phone. It had to have been quite a sight to have made it that hard to remember how to push a button.
“She was asking about you earlier.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“I was going to try first. She wasn’t biting though. Once you get a hold of them, they are ruined for us.”
I wasn’t going to get clarification on that. I didn’t care what it was that he meant. I had to get the images out of my head and my mind back on what I was thinking about. I asked if the cops were over here for anything else.
“The cops did come over here asking some questions.”
I looked back to David and asked him what it was that they were asking about. I didn’t like that they were here or that anyone was involved, but I at least had to know what was going on. What were the cops doing here?
“They wanted to know about some woman. They said that she was the one that had called. Said she was locked in the bathroom or something that the man was getting violent. I don’t know about all of that. I have never seen a chick over there. Do you know what he was talking about?”
“Yeah, when me and Marcus were going out the back, I saw someone jumping out of one of the windows. She went towards the back alley and was gone. I would say that she is fine.”
“Well they want to talk to her. I didn’t even know that there was a chick living there. Cass was one of those guys that didn’t seem to have a girl around. He reminds me of you, more single than not.”
I didn’t like the thought that me and the crazy neighbor were at all the same. I had some women around, but I was single more than I was anything else. Women were more trouble than they were worth half of the time and I just didn’t have any extra energy to put on them. I had enough going on and with the cops sniffing around it was just going to make my job a little harder.
“That is the way to be. Everyone around here is getting whipped by their women. Hell I might not even have a gang if this keeps up. You guys are more worried about the coochie then you are anything else.”
Marcus just shook his head. He knew that he didn’t have an excuse. He was one of the men that I didn’t think would fall for it, but he had and I was still left reeling by how many of them had taken up with a permanent chick this year and how many more had gotten married. It wasn’t natural and I for one wasn’t going to get caught up in all of that mess.
“Glad to see that you and Marcus made it out. You had me worried when you wouldn’t answer your phone Lucas.”
I told him why I had taken so long to get back. Me and Marcus had some work to do and instead of just staying away, we had taken most of the drugs that were on the premise to make sure that they weren’t found by the cops. So we didn’t drive around with it, we sold it. That meant that I needed to re-up and figure out what to do next. With the incident from last night, I had a feeling that we were going to have to keep a low profile for a while. Our gang had been getting into too much trouble lately and it was time to take a back seat to it all and figure some things out. We needed to still do business, but make sure we weren’t caught doing it.
“Sorry about that. It was just a long night. We had a lot to unload and with a few guys out of it from the last fiasco, it took longer than I thought it would.”
“So you got rid of it all?” David sounded surprised.
“Yeah, it’s all gone. I am getting some later and I want you to run it to Santiago.”
David had this look on his face. He knew that the last time we messed with him, there were problems. But the Arc Angels were done and no longer an issue to worry about. Santiago was still one of my best distributors and I was ready to get him back in action. It had been long enough.
“Okay, are you sure that we can trust him?”
“Well I don’t trust him like I trust you and the other guys, but yeah, I think he is good. It wasn’t his fault that he got pulled in before. I know that he was telling the truth when he said he didn’t know. The man is too scary to do something like that.”
“But do we really want to do business with a man that gets scared so easily? I worry that he is going to get in deep with someone and the first thing he is going to do is sing to the cops.”
It was a legitimate question, but the answer was still the same. He got rid of a lot of product for us and I wanted to continue working with Santiago. It was just something that had to be done.
“You know how I feel about it. For the time being, there is no one else to take his place, so we will have to use him. We need runners and distributors and he has both.”
David didn’t second-guess me very often and that was why I let it slide. He was still sort of new and I would give him lee-way this time. It didn’t mean that I actually liked it though. If I was truthful, it drove me crazy.
“I am going to take off for a bit. I am starving and I need something on my stomach. Why don’t you just come by later after you are done over there and we will talk about next steps? I think it would be best if we kept our heads down until everything on the block settles down some. I also need to know what is going on with that man next door. He doesn’t know much about us, but if he is looking for a little mercy, he may remember seeing a lot of people over or something like that. You know how easy it is for people to snitch.”
David agreed and I could tell that he was worried about it as well. It wasn’t like there was anything that we could do about it. What would be, would be. I couldn’t worry about it right then. I had to get some food and then meet with Boris. I owed him for patching up a couple of guys last night and I wanted to ask the Russian about a couple of things I was curious on. He wasn’t part of our group, but his ears were always open and he was a great source of information, as well as many other things that he did well.
I waited for David to leave before I jumped in the shower and changed clothes. My stomach was growling and I was legitimately starving. With all of the chaos that was going on yesterday, I had forgotten to eat and now I realized it as it rumbled almost as loud as the bike motor.
“Stacy’s Place.”
That was the place I had heard about opening up on 5th. The place had been there for some time, but it was the first time I had the inclination and time to try something new. Some of the guys had raved about the food, so naturally I had to give it a shot. It wasn’t like I cooked, so there was nothing that I could do but eat out. I had been told to get a woman for that, but I didn’t want to have to deal with one, just to make me a couple of sandwiches every now and then.
When I walked into Stacy’s Place, it wasn’t at all what I had expected. Everyone was looking at menus, while I was checking out the wait staff. I don’t know what it was about waitresses, but I had a thing for the apron. It made them look more feminine and tastier in my opinion.
“Welcome to Stacy’s Place. Go ahead and find a table and
I will be with you in just a minute.”
The voice was attached to a woman that I recognized from the night before. It didn’t take much to realize that she was the one that had been jumping out of the window last night. It was also pretty clear that she was the one that had been screaming as well. Her face was pretty, but there was bruising and swelling that made it hard to imagine what she really looked like underneath all of that.
“Do I know you because you look so familiar?”
She nodded her head. “I don’t think so, but I know you Lucas. We used to be neighbors not too long ago.”
Used to be. That was what she said, though I had to wonder what happened. I wanted to ask, but instead I went to find a seat like she suggested. I would ask her later, although I could tell that she didn’t like the attention I was giving to her face. The woman was embarrassed and I wanted to tell her not to be. It wasn’t like she had done anything wrong, but for a moment I wanted to do something to the person that made her look that way. No man should put their hands on a woman.
Was it wrong for me to check out her ass as she walked away? The woman was hot and my body reacted like it did last night. This time was no less awkward then riding my bike as we got away last night. Did my cock know something that I didn’t?
Chapter 4
Fran
“So what is your name then since you already know mine?”
I looked to the man that I had lived next to for a couple of years and pointed to the nametag on my shirt. It said that my name was Fran and it was rather obvious then what it was. Most guys read it just fine because it was located on my chest and that was where their eyes usually were.
“Fran. That is a beautiful name. It suits you quite well.”
“What can I get for you Sir?” I was not in the mood for his flirting. The guy was extremely hot and I could tell by the way he was acting that he was used to girls at his feet.