by Roy Glenn
“Black.”
“Thought so,” Mileena said because who else could it be.
Rain looked at Mileena and wondered if she should tell her that Carter was the reason that she had Black’s attention for him to notice her.
Those days, Mileena was bartending at Cynt’s when Carter went to jail to protect Black. The only request he made was to take care of Mileena. So Black got her the job bartending at Impressions and over the years, he got to know and observe Mileena. Therefore, when Rain was looking for somebody to run the gambling room, Black recommended Mileena.
“You know what's funny?”
“What?”
“I’m mad at Carter for being a part of the same thing I’m a part of,” she laughed, thinking that was the point, but at the same time wasn’t the point. Yes, they were a part of the same business, so she shouldn’t hold that against him. But I do. The truth was that Mileena was afraid. She had lost her family to the game, and she had lost Carter to it once before. She was afraid to lose anybody else that she loved. “But that is exactly why I have to go.”
If she were ever going to be happy and meet somebody that she didn’t have to worry about it being the last time she ever saw them each time she said goodbye, Mileena knew that she had to move on and that meant leaving The Family – her family.
“I understand. What will you do?”
“I don’t know. Get a job in a restaurant.”
“Why get a job? Why not open your own restaurant?” Rain asked with purpose in mind. Mileena was family, her family.
“On what? Good looks and personality?” Mileena laughed. “I got a little money saved, but it is definitely not enough to open my own place.”
“Suppose you had a silent partner that just shows up to eat and let you run your spot any way you wanna run it? What about that?”
“Who? You?”
“Yeah, me. I would be the perfect partner.”
“But, it would have to be strictly legitimate. No gambling, just good food and drinks, maybe a little live entertainment.”
“What kind of food you gonna serve?”
“What kind of food you like, partner?” she asked and thought about who she was talking to. “Never mind, as long as it’s good and you don’t have to cook it, you’re good.”
“See, the perfect partner. Whatever you wanna do is fine with me,” Rain said, knowing that this would be a good move for her. Black and Wanda had been talking to her for years about diversifying and getting into more legitimate business.
You’re not gonna be a gun slinger forever, you know, Black told her once.
And although Rain was fully vested as a shareholder in their legitimate businesses, God bless the child who had her own.
“So, what do you say? Partners in your own shit or interviewing to work a job that pays less than half of what I’m paying you now and won’t even compare to what you’ll make when we open our own place. The choice is yours.” Rain drained her glass and put it on her desk. Mileena finished her drink and stood up. She picked up Rain’s glass and went to the bar, refilled their glasses and handed the glass to Rain.
She held up her glass. “To partners,” Mileena said.
“To partners,” Rain said, and they drank to that.
Chapter Nineteen
At the end of that day’s training with Monika; a five-mile run with an M-16, Fantasy closed the door to her room and put down her rifle. She was exhausted, but after disappointing Jada by disgracefully throwing herself at Mr. Garrison as Jada said, Fantasy was determined to do whatever Monika asked her to do.
“What am I saying? Monika doesn’t ask anything. She gives orders and I do what she says,” Fantasy said and began to get undressed to take a shower.
While the water beat down on her tired and sore body, Fantasy thought about what her days had been like to this point. She began each day with a run, and then it was on to basic rifle marksmanship training. Monika was training her on engagement skills and situational analysis and then they did situational training exercises. The afternoon consisted of field training exercises, the confidence obstacle course and ended with yet another run.
Monika told Fantasy that she will complete marksmanship and combat training and she would learn to rappel at the Warrior Tower. After becoming familiar with the use of automatic handheld weapons and grenades, Fantasy would put her training to the test when she tackled the night infiltration course.
“Will that complete my training?” Fantasy asked her later that evening at dinner.
“No, Fantasy, it won’t. This is just the first phase of your training.” Monika laughed. “You’re in what I like to call the green phase because you’re green when you start the training. But I gotta tell you, you had a better first week than Jackie,” Monika chuckled. “She whined the entire week.”
“That is encouraging to hear. I admire Jackie for her strength and her courage.”
“There was never a question of her strength or her courage. Jackie Washington is always ready for a fight, but Jackie was soft when we started working together.”
Monika laughed as she remembered how Colonel Mathis threw her, Nick, Xavier, Travis and Jackie together to do a job for him. She also remembered how disappointed she was that the Colonel didn’t want Rain on the team.
Lorraine Robinson has a very volatile personality and would introduce an unstable element into this team, which has the potential of endangering the success of the mission.
Monika was sure that with Rain being Rain, she would be a great soldier. But Fantasy wasn’t cut from the same cloth as either Rain or Jackie.
“When I met you, I thought that you were … you know …”
“A tad bit prissy,” Fantasy laughed.
“Yes,” Monika laughed. “I was expecting you to be the same way as Jackie was that first week, if not worse. But you surprised me. You’re tougher than you look.”
“Thank you,” Fantasy said. “I wasn’t always like this. The me that you see is the me Mercedes and Jada turned me into.”
She too had come a long way from where she was when she first began working for the family. Fantasy was well known those days as being a dancer with good pussy, but she wanted so much more than that out of life and was determined to have it all.
Believe it or not, her real name was Fantasy. Her mother, Deloris was forty-eight when she got pregnant with her. Throughout her childbearing years, she had been told that she couldn’t get pregnant and if she did, she probably wouldn’t be able to carry the baby to term. So when she got pregnant, she began calling the baby she was carrying her fantasy baby and when the baby was born, she named her Fantasy.
However, childbearing proved to be too much for her. During the second half of her pregnancy, Deloris developed a high blood pressure disorder called preeclampsia that reduced the supply of blood to the fetus, which went undiagnosed due to poor prenatal care. The onset of the condition during delivery caused seizures that sent her into a coma and she eventually died from complications of kidney failure and cardiac arrest.
Since her biological father hadn’t been seen or heard from since the day Deloris told him that she was pregnant, Fantasy was taken in by her maternal grandmother and she stayed with her grandmother until she died when Fantasy was twelve. After that, she bounced around from aunts and uncles homes and to cousins she’d never heard of and friends she stayed with when things just got too crazy where she was staying.
That was why she felt such a strong kinship with Tenikka when they both used to dance together at Shooters. They were both from similar backgrounds and each saw dancing as a means to a better life. Tenikka wanted to go to college. Fantasy, well, she didn’t know exactly what she wanted to do, but she knew that she was destined to be more than just another dancer with good pussy.
She couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen when she first noticed it. At the time, Fantasy didn’t understand what it meant, but she noticed it in her panties. She was wet, very wet. When she mentioned
it to her aunt, she told her about panty liners. That helped some, but by then, she had noticed that anytime she was aroused by some type of mental or visual stimulation, she’d get wet.
It was evident the first time she kissed a boy. First her womb got tight, then there was a warmth that followed. It wasn’t until she moved that Fantasy felt the wetness seeping through her lips.
The first time that Fantasy had sex and he entered her, he said, “Damn, you so wet.”
During the experience, which didn’t last long, it was like he was trying to maintain control to keep from cumming the entire time. That experience was repeated in every sexual experience that she had during those years.
“I don’t know what happened. You got some good pussy,” was the line she heard over and over again.
All men say ‘you got some good pussy’ when they cum quick, a girlfriend told her, but after hearing, you are so wet, you are so tight, it is so warm, at some point, Fantasy started believing the hype.
She did, indeed, have good pussy.
But she also understood that to men, all pussy was good pussy after they came, so she was just another dancer with good pussy.
But she was Fantasy!
She was selling an illusion; therefore, while other dancers were giving it away, Fantasy boldly stated that sex with her would cost one thousand dollars. Since that was the same program Jada West ran to varying degrees during her dancing days, she was impressed with Fantasy and the way she handled herself. And like Jada, Fantasy soon found that there were men willing to pay her price.
And that was all well and good, and although it was great for her bank account, it didn’t move her toward her goals. Fantasy understood that she needed to do something to get noticed; to stand out from the crowd or be known as just another dancer with good pussy.
Her opportunity came when there was a plan to kill Black and Bobby in the hope that it would set Rain off and she’d kill Ed Weather. The plan failed … badly. The word on the streets was that Black and Rain were looking for anybody who had anything to do with it and that list included Luke Franken.
But instead of heading off for Mexico with Luke, Fantasy decided that handing over four bodies to Ed Weather was the first step to putting herself in a better position. Therefore, when somebody was needed to lure Keith Gerald out of the dice game that he ran for JoJo Royal, Fantasy stepped up again.
A few nights later, Black and Rain came to Shooters and when they came out of the office, Fantasy saw Rain pointing her out to Black. Even though they left without her getting a chance to actually meet Black and get the opportunity to pledge her undying loyalty to him, she knew that she had gotten what was really important.
Mike Black knows who I am.
“Anyway,” Monika said. “This training is intended not only to teach you the skills you need to handle any situation, but also to instill confidence in yourself.”
“So, what will come after this portion of the training?” Fantasy asked.
“What I like to call the black phase schedule.”
“May I ask what that entails?”
“We’ll do more engagement skills training, some more situational awareness training and then we’ll move on to the heavy weapons training,” Monika told Fantasy. She didn’t think she’d ever need to utilize the heavy weapons training, but it’ll be fun. At least it will be for me, she thought and continued. “We’ll step up to 10K and 15K tactical runs and we’ll do a number of field training and infiltration exercises.”
The mention of field training and infiltration exercises intrigued Fantasy. Her one and only time in the field in Italy was both fun and exciting and she was looking forward to applying what she had learned since then. It was then that Monika got a call from Black on her satellite phone.
“Hey, Black.”
“Is this line secure?”
“Hold on,” she said and switched to one that was secure. “What’s up?”
“I need you to do something for me,” Black said and told her what he wanted done.
Monika looked at Fantasy and thought seriously about whether she was ready to carry out Black’s order and take the shot for her family. Monika thought about Fantasy’s skill set.
“Is there a particular way that you want it done?”
“Use your own discretion.”
“Understood.” Monika ended the call and looked at Fantasy. “We got a mission.”
Fantasy smiled. “I am so ready.”
“I guess we’ll see just how ready you actually are, now won’t we?”
Chapter Twenty
“Hello, Mileena,” Carter said. He was standing in front of Yarissa’s desk. She had just gotten back after having that talk in Carter’s office.
“Hey, Carter.” She cleared her throat. “I’m glad you’re here. There’s something that I need to talk to you about.”
“Okay,” Carter said looking excited because if this meant what he hoped it did, he was glad that he had that talk with Yarissa.
“Excuse me,” Yarissa said and bounced up. “I’ll give you two some privacy.”
“Thank you, Yarissa,” Mileena said, thinking that her friend was just being courteous.
Although Yarissa had been expecting it and was prepared for it, actually hearing the words, it’s over between us coming out of Carter’s mouth was still hard to hear. And if Mileena wanting to talk to Carter, something she’d been avoiding for weeks, meant what she thought it did, she wanted to be nowhere around when Carter and Mileena got back together.
Again.
When Carter came out of Rain’s office with Jackie and said that he wanted to talk in his office, for a second there, Yarissa thought that she had read the signals that he was sending wrong and they were going to his office to do what they usually did. Yarissa happily got up and followed Carter to his office only to be told, “It’s over between us, Yarissa. What we did was wrong, and it shouldn’t have happened.”
All she could do was say okay and get out of there before she started to cry. When Mileena came out of Rain’s office, Yarissa was back at her desk and Carter, thinking that there was more that he should have said, had just gotten there.
“We can talk in my office or the lounge,” Carter said and extended his hand.
“Let’s go to the lounge,” she said, thinking that he had fucked Fantasy in his office, but not knowing it was Yarissa that he used to fuck in there.
“After you,” Carter said and followed her to the lounge. When he sat down and Mileena sat across from him instead of next to him, Carter knew that this wasn’t going to be the talk that he wanted to have with Mileena.
It didn’t take long, and besides, Carter didn’t hear much of what she had to say after, “This is my last night working here.”
The only thing that he really remembered was that when she was finished kicking his insides out, like he had done Yarissa moments before, she stood up and he wished her the very best. Then Mileena gave him a polite hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“Goodbye, Carter,” Mileena said and left the lounge.
He stood there for a while, thinking that Mileena was doing what was best for her and he really hoped that she would be happy without him in her life. When he came out of the lounge, Rain was standing there with a smile on her face.
“You look kinda down,” Rain said.
“Yeah, kinda.”
“She told you, huh?”
“Yeah, she told me that shit.”
“Fucked up, ain’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on. Let’s go kill somebody. It will make you feel better.”
“Yeah, let’s.” Carter nodded. “Doesn’t matter who,” he said and followed Rain.
On the way, Rain explained that she had gotten a call from one of her snitches that Marcos and some of his men were hold up at a house on Pelham Parkway and that was where they were going.
With silencers on their weapons, Carter came in firing and shot one man as he came out of the kitchen. Rai
n hit the one on the couch with her first shots, before he could get a shot off. A man who was by the back door came charging down the hall. Carter fired two shots to his chest. The man that Rain shot was crawling toward the door. Rain walked up and stood over him.
“Where’s Marcos?”
“Upstairs,” he said, and Rain fired two more shots to his head.
Carter followed Rain upstairs and then they just had to follow the sound of the music. When they got to the door, they moved to either side. Rain was about to reach for the doorknob when the door opened, and a naked woman walked out dancing to the music.
She was startled when she turned and saw Carter. He quickly put his hand over her mouth, and she froze, and her eyes opened wide when she felt Rain’s gun at the back of her neck.
“Marcos in there?” Rain asked.
She nodded her head quickly.
“He alone?”
She nodded her head quickly.
“Am I gonna have any problems with you?”
She shook her head and Rain nodded to Carter and he took his hand from over her mouth.
Rain put one in the chamber and pointed it at the woman. “What’s he doing?”
“He’s in the bed,” she said, trying to cover herself.
Rain pointed the gun in her face. “Stand in front of the door,” she said, turned the doorknob and opened it. As she said, Marcos was in the bed.
“What you doing?” he asked and was startled when Rain pushed the woman in the room, and she stumbled to the floor. She and Carter came in and before Marcos could reach for his gun, Rain and Carter opened fire.
As Rain reloaded her weapon, Carter walked slowly up to the bed and stood over Marcos’s bullet-riddled body. He put the barrel to his head and pulled the trigger. The splatter of blood sprayed back on Carter, but he didn’t care.
Rain pointed the gun in her face. “Am I gonna have any problems with you?”