by Pinky Dior
She couldn’t believe her best friend had just gotten shot right in front of her eyes. Mercedes waited for the guys to leave her crib. Mercedes looked over to her left and saw a black Expedition truck slowly easing down the street and parking on the corner. A masked man ran down the steps, passed Candy, ran down to the corner, hopped in the truck, and pulled away.
***
Felix noticed his cell phone ringing and it was his Uncle Romeo.
“What up, Unc?”
“Where the fuck you at?” his uncle barked into the receiver.
“I just dropped my fiancée off at her house and I’m heading to the crib to meet you.” Felix smiled as he said the word “fiancée”.
“Your fiancée?” Romeo asked, with a surprised tone. “You know what, Felix? I don’t give a fuck about your damn fiancée! I got more important things right now. Turn your ass around and come get me!” Romeo barked.
“Where are you at?” Felix sucked his teeth. His uncle told him the address and he found it weird that it was Candy’s street. Romeo told him to meet him at the corner. Felix quickly accelerated, making a U-turn. He drove down the street and met his uncle and his crew on the corner.
“What the fuck happened?” Felix barked as he looked over and saw his uncle holding a shotgun. “Where’s Maria?” Felix asked curiously, when he noticed they didn’t have her.
“Man, no one was in the house,” Romeo said, upset. “But I had to shoot some bitch standing in my way.” Romeo cocked back the shotgun.
Felix’s mind went straight to Candy. He hoped that she was all right. He contemplated calling her, but decided he’d rather wait until the morning.
Romeo was furious that Maria wasn’t home. He could have sworn she was in the house today. He had seen her go in and she didn’t come out.
***
Mercedes quickly opened up her car door and ran over to Candy. She knelt down and covered her mouth. Candy was lying flat on her back, with a hole in her chest, leaking blood. Mercedes looked up from her chest and focused her eyes on Candy’s face. Candy had tears sliding down her face, going sideways as she coughed up blood.
“Oh my God, look at you, Candy!” Mercedes panicked, caressing her friend’s beautiful face, which was now colder than ice. “It’s going to be all right, Candy,” Mercedes assured her, as she applied pressure to her wound with her hand.
“Am I-I going to die?” Candy hesitated to get the words out as she coughed up more blood and began choking. Blood trickled out of her mouth, making it hard for her to talk.
Mercedes was certain that Candy was dying, slowly but surely. She had been hit with a shotgun blast and she was losing a tremendous amount of blood every second. “Shh!” Mercedes placed her hands over her mouth. “Don’t talk like that; you’re going to be fine. I’m going to get you to a hospital.”
“Here, take this…” Candy tried with all her might to get her charm bracelet off.
Mercedes helped her and slid the charm bracelet around her arm. Mercedes placed her hands under Candy’s armpits and used all her strength to drag her to the car. Candy’s feet dragged against the pavement, leaving a trail of blood, smearing the grayish concrete. Mercedes opened up the door and put Candy in the passenger’s seat. She ran around the car, hopped in the driver’s seat, and peeled off. Mercedes looked over to Candy as she clung to life.
“You’re going to make it, Candy; you’re a bad bitch!” Mercedes smiled at Candy as she started to laugh, but only blood and muffled sounds came from her parted lips. She turned back and focused straight ahead as she accelerated quickly, pressing down on the gas. She flew down the highway, not caring if she got pulled over or not. Arriving at the hospital, Mercedes pulled up in front of the emergency entrance and jumped out of the car screaming for help, waving her hands back and forth crazily.
“Please, please help, my friend’s been shot!” Mercedes screamed.
The paramedics rushed over and looked into the car. They saw Candy’s clothes drenched in blood. They quickly pulled her out of the car and placed her onto a stretcher, rushing her down the corridors to the emergency room. Mercedes ran after them as they put her into a room. She wanted to be with Candy, but she wasn’t allowed to go back.
“Sorry, Miss, but you can’t go in there,” one of the nurses informed her.
“But I’m trying to see if she’s all right.” Mercedes panicked as she ran her fingers through her hair and held it tightly. She looked past the nurse’s shoulder and watched as they put Candy on the bed.
“We will do the best that we can. She’ll have to undergo massive surgery right now and she is clinging to life, so in the meantime, just have a seat.” The nurse gave Mercedes the eye.
Mercedes calmed down. It took her all her pride in the world not to fight back and argue with the nurse. She just walked down the hall, grabbed a cup from the water dispenser, and poured herself a drink. There was blood on her hands and they trembled as she carefully sipped on the cup of water. Mercedes reached into her pocket, pulling out her cell phone, but she had no service. She exhaled noisily as she walked down the corridors of the hospital and then over to the front desk, asking them to use the hospital phone. When she got the okay, she called Hazel first and told her what happened; then she called the rest of the girls. They were on their way.
Mercedes sat down on the bench as she sipped on the last bit of her water, patiently waiting for her girls to show up. Twenty minutes later, Hazel came running down the hall. Mercedes got up and embraced Hazel as she cried in her arms.
“It’s my fault,” Mercedes blamed herself.
“No, Mercedes, it’s not your fault.” Hazel rubbed her back as she consoled her.
“I-I was trying to call her and tell her, but it was too late.” Mercedes shook her head as she tried to shake the pictures of her best friend getting shot on her front doorstep.
“Yeah, I know, Mercedes, but you can’t blame yourself for this; you just can’t. You didn’t know that this was going to happen,” Hazel assured her, trying to comfort her.
Before Mercedes could speak, Shateeya and Chamari came running down the hall with concerned looks on their faces. They rushed over to Mercedes and Hazel; worrying about Candy and how she was doing,
“Well, is she going to be all right?” Chamari panicked.
“We don’t know yet. The doctor didn’t let me know anything yet.” Mercedes folded her arms across her breasts, hoping that she could stay warm.
“What happened?” Hazel asked inquisitively.
“I heard voices from downstairs. Someone had broken into my house, so I escaped through the window. Then I tried calling Candy over and over again, a million times, and she didn’t pick up. I was trying to tell her not to come, and …” Mercedes sucked in her lips, as she tried to hold back the tears. “She rang the doorbell and they shot her. I saw her body flying back at full force.” Mercedes hated to even think about how her best friend had gotten shot. Her eyes were refilling with tears. She blinked quickly as they escaped her eyes and traveled down her wet face.
“Oh my God!” the girls said in unison. They couldn’t believe it. They hoped Candy would survive, because they needed her.
The doctor came into the waiting room and removed his glasses. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.
“How is she, Doctor?” Mercedes asked. However, from the expression on his face, she knew he didn’t have any good news to tell her and the girls.
“I’m sorry girls, but Candice didn’t make it.”
The girls were heartbroken that Candy had died. They were still astonished about the whole incident that had happened that night. Hazel turned around and banged her hand against the wall, not caring if she broke her fist or not. Chamari walked over and calmed her down as she rubbed her back, whispering in her ear. Shateeya stood by Mercedes’s side as she consoled her, reassuring her that everything was going to be okay.
“Oh my God!” Mercedes covered her hands over her mouth as she sucked in her bottom lip to r
efrain from crying. She couldn’t believe her best friend had died. They had just reunited and she had suddenly been taken from her. She felt responsible; it wasn’t Candy’s time to go yet. They were just starting to live their lives.
Mercedes just stood there as her body started trembling. The girls gathered around Mercedes, hugging her. They all hugged each other and consoled one another. She wanted to break down and cry, but she knew tears wouldn’t bring Candy back. Nothing lasted forever.
Chapter Twelve
The black Cadillac
Mercedes had just come back from the car wash. She had given her Benz a nice cleaning and got her interior cleaned up, since it reeked of Candy’s blood. Before going to the car wash, Mercedes decided to change into some spare clothing she kept in a bag in the back. After getting into some fresh clothes, she decided to drive to her mother’s house to make sure that she wasn’t hurt. Mercedes figured there had to be someone who was after either her mother or her. She quickly concluded someone had followed her mother to her house that day from the grocery store, and thought that was where her mother resided.
Mercedes pulled up in front of her mother’s house in Manhattan, putting the car in park and killing the engine. She walked up the stairs and rang the doorbell. Her mother opened the door in nothing but her robe, holding a cup of hot coffee, her curly hair pulled to one side and flowing down the front of her chest. Mercedes bit on the bottom of her lip nervously as tears welled up in her eyes. Her mother knew she had been crying, because her eyes were red and puffy.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Maria asked. Her eyes quickly looked down at a shirt Mercedes’s held in her hand, which was stained with Candy’s blood. Her hands were shaking and she lost her grip on the coffee cup, dropping it to the floor. “Oh my God, baby, what happened? Are you okay?” Maria pulled her in for a hug, examining her body.
“I’m fine, Ma!” Mercedes pulled her mother back from the embrace, lightly brushing past her. “She’s dead.” Mercedes held back her tears. “They killed Candy.” Mercedes covered her mouth and felt as if she was going to throw up.
“Oh my God!” Maria’s heart dropped. She closed the door behind her, double-locking it. She walked over to the window, looking up and down the street.
Mercedes sat on the couch and sighed, trying to take in all the events that she had been through in the last year. Maria quickly picked up the broken pieces of glass that were on the floor and cleaned up the spilled coffee. She went into the kitchen and disposed of the glass and towels in the trash; then washed off her hands and poured Mercedes a cup of hot coffee.
“Here you go, baby.” Maria handed her the cup of coffee. “So what happened?” she asked, eager to know as she sat down next to her daughter on the couch.
“Thanks, Ma.” Mercedes smiled as she grabbed the cup and began slowly sipping the coffee. “Last night I was home and I heard some male voices in my house. They started coming up the stairs, so I quickly got out of the house. I was trying to call Candy and warn her not to go in the house, but before I had the chance, they shot her in the chest with a shotgun. I rushed her to the hospital, hoping that she would make it…” Mercedes’s voice cracked.
“You did all that you could do, baby.” Maria rubbed her shoulders. “Don’t beat yourself up and blame yourself for that girl’s death. You still took her to the hospital; that’s all that counts. The doctors did all they could, but now it’s God’s turn to take over, baby.”
“Yeah, I know, Ma, but she didn’t deserve to die.” Mercedes shook her head. “I think that should have been me instead of her.”
“No, baby, don’t say that! If God wanted you, it would have been you.”
“I don’t know.”
“God put you on this earth for a reason, and you’re still living today. You’re still young, Mercedes, and you have your whole life ahead of you.” Maria lifted up her daughter’s chin with her finger. “Now smile, baby. It’s going to be all right, okay?”
“Yeah, Mom… thanks.” Mercedes cracked a smile as her mother gave her a quick hug. “Let me ask you a question, Ma.” Mercedes pulled back from the embrace and stared into her mother’s luminous eyes.
“Yeah, sure, anything baby.” Maria took a sip of her coffee.
“Do you think this has anything to do with your father coming after you?”
Maria held her head down and looked back up at Mercedes. “Yes,” she whispered, lowering her head.
Mercedes knew it had something do with him, because no one else knew where she lived. It wasn’t sitting right with her. “They found us because of you.” Mercedes placed the mug on the coffee table and got up, pacing the floor.
“So are you blaming this on me?” Maria pointed to her chest, with her eyebrows arched up in a defensive mode.
“Ma, I’m not saying it’s your fault. But they didn’t know where I laid my head at. They were looking for you and they killed Candy.” Mercedes shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Mercedes,” Maria said sincerely. “I didn’t see anybody following me.”
Mercedes walked over and rubbed her mother’s back. “It’s not your fault, Ma. Don’t even worry about it, okay?” Maria sniffled as she nodded her head up and down. “Well, I’m going to be going now.”
“Where are you going?” Maria asked, treating Mercedes as if she was sixteen years old, wondering about her and her whereabouts.
“I’m going to go back to the house, grab some stuff, and check into a hotel, until I figure out my next move.”
“Girl, you sound like your father.” Maria shook her head. “But I don’t think that it’s a good idea to go back to the house. They could be waiting for you. That wouldn’t be smart.”
Mercedes considered her mother’s advice; she believed that what her mother was saying made sense.
“Why don’t you just stay here, baby? I wouldn’t mind you living here with me.”
“Ma, it’s okay. I just need to be alone right now,” Mercedes assured her mother. “I’m going to check into a hotel until I find somewhere else to live, because it’s not safe at my house.”
“All right, Mercedes, you be safe now, okay? Call me if you need anything.”
“All right, Mom, see ya,” Mercedes said, giving her mom a hug and a kiss on the cheek before leaving.
Mercedes hadn’t had anything to eat, so she decided to stop at the nearest McDonald’s and grab a bite to eat. She got a large Sprite, two double cheeseburgers, and a large order of fries. Mercedes usually didn’t eat at fast food places. She was always eating out at expensive restaurants with five star meals. Right now though, she didn’t have time.
After Mercedes pulled out of the drive thru and was driving for about five minutes, she noticed the same black Cadillac switching in and out of lanes, trying to keep up with her. It was a familiar black Cadillac with a rust spot on the passenger side door. Mercedes thought that was weird. It looked like the same car that Emilio had in his backyard, but he was dead. Who else could it be? That question stayed in her mind as she continued driving. Mercedes pulled over to the side and watched as the black Cadillac kept driving straight ahead. Maybe I’m tripping. I’m too paranoid, Mercedes thought as she drove to the mall. She decided to grab a couple of outfits, since she couldn’t go back to her house just yet. After buying a couple of outfits and sleepwear, Mercedes got in her Benz, pulled off, and drove to the Marriott hotel.
After she parked the car, she got out and held her food in one hand as she grabbed her bags from the trunk, holding them in the other hand. Mercedes checked into the hotel under a different name and they gave her the room key to her suite. If she was going to be staying in a hotel, she needed to be in a nice suite with a comfy bed and a Jacuzzi. Mercedes entered the room and closed the door behind her. She forgot to put the deadbolt on. She was so tired; she just wanted to shower and then rest. She placed the bags on the bed, and her gun on the nightstand. Mercedes went into the shower for about fifteen minutes and then got out. She pulled on her bra and panties.
Mercedes heard a noise that sounded like the door had opened up. She quickly slid on her Capri pants and emerged from the bathroom, pulling her hair up into a ponytail.
“Hello? Who’s there?” Mercedes called out as she peeked out of the bathroom. She didn’t see anyone. Mercedes chuckled nervously. “I’m so bugging right now,” Mercedes said aloud as she shook her head. She headed back into the bathroom and brushed her teeth, and then washed her face. After exiting the bathroom, a cool chill ran through her body, as a cold metal piece rested on the back of her head and clicked.
“Don’t you fucking move!” the familiar female voice demanded.
Mercedes put her hands up as she stood there and sucked her teeth. She remembered that she had forgotten to lock the hotel room door when she came in.
“I knew I would catch you one day!” The girl pushed Mercedes’s head with the gun.
Mercedes turned around and noticed a familiar face. “Milan?”
“Yeah, it’s Milan, bitch!” Milan pointed the gun at Mercedes’s head. Mercedes wondered why she didn’t kill her back at the salon. I guess too many witnesses. She’s smart.
“Where’s the money at?” she asked.
“What money?”
“Don’t play fucking stupid with me, Mercedes!” Milan barked. “I know your father was well paid—paid in full. I know he left your ass with a lot of money,” Milan assumed, quickly thinking back to the day she had found the stash.
***
With her hair all out of place, Milan stood in front of Emilio with her arms folded across her breasts, displaying a cocky-ass attitude that Emilio couldn’t stand. Milan was dressed in nothing but her black and red lingerie set, which showed off her smooth, brown skin complexion. Her plump breasts looked luscious and she had the ass of a model. They had just finished having sex for the last time, and Emilio felt guilty about having sex with her before leaving her. He informed her that he had feelings for another unidentified girl and he didn’t want to be with her anymore.