by V Vee
“So glad you could meet me,” a voice said, it was soft and slightly husky, I stiffened where I stood on the path, and made a move to turn around.
“Uh-uh-uh,” Charlene tsked as she walked up behind me and pressed the gun against my lower back. “You can’t see my face until it’s the right time. You and I have a very special meeting. Someone has been looking forward to seeing you again.”
I rolled my eyes as I went to reach for my 9MM in the pocket of my coat. I grunted when my arms were grabbed and yanked behind my back, a zip tie placed on the wrists.
“Oh ho, were you going to try and grab your weapon, little sister?” Charlene mocked me. “But whyever would you want to kill me?”
Her tone was snide, evil, dark. And that’s saying something. I lived with dark motherfuckers. I lived with snide assholes. I slept with a man most would consider the most evil ass motherfucker that ever lived.
But they all had a code of honor that had passed over my sister. Never ever would one of my Andrew’s men nor any of my girls have placed a bomb, strapped to a person, on a bus with elderly people, pregnant women, and babies. That shit was foul as fuck. And for that reason alone, I wanted to put a fucking bullet in my sister’s head.
“Twenty-eight,” I gritted out as Charlene led me over to an idling black SUV.
She sighed and gripped my hair in her hand so she could shove me forward. Bitch done lost her damn mind messing with my weave like that. I should shove a fucking knife in her jugular just for that shit. “What?”
“There were twenty-eight people on that bus you blew up. Five children three with their moms, two whose parents were letting them ride the bus for the first time by themselves. Two pregnant women. Six senior citizens, two of which marched with Dr. King. Four college students, one who was going to be a doctor, one who had the voice of an angel, according to Julliard School of the Arts, one of whom wanted to work in human rights law, and the other who wanted to make movies starring diverse actors. Two veterans who served more than eight years in the military, one of whom was home on leave to propose to his longtime boyfriend. The bus driver trying to make enough money to send for his family in Iran. Two fathers on their way to work to take care of their children and their families. Three mothers on their way home from work. A daughter who took care of her sick mother. And three sons, two of them related to each other, on their way to surprise their parents because they’d found out they were both the valedictorian and the salutorian of their high school, the other one going to tell his parents that he’d just gotten engaged.” I’d found out everything I could about every person on that bus. Their names, their faces, seen in funeral programs, and in photos, their stories, it all haunted me. I wanted it to haunt her as well.
Let’s be real, I wanted Charlene to be thinking of those twenty-eight people when I jabbed a blade in her eye and directly into her brain.
It would be what she deserved.
Instead of her being bothered, or having any type of emotional reaction at all, Charlene spun me around by my hair and stared at me, as she pressed me against the side of the SUV, the muzzle of the gun pushed against the bottom of my chin.
“Like I give a fuck,” she hissed. She looked me up and down and sneered.
“I don’t know why Andrew wants you so much, and I have no idea why in the world he said I couldn’t kill you, but just know, the minute he gives me the go ahead? I’m going to enjoy marking up that pretty face of yours, right before I claw your heart out of your chest with my bare hands,” she threatened.
I couldn’t respond, too busy staring at Charlene in surprise. It was like looking in the mirror. Well, an inverted mirror. Where I was a dark brown color, Charlene’s skin was pale with a subtle tan. Our eyes were similar, and we both had the same tilt to our full lips. She had the same long, graceful neck that I did, and the same type of physical build, though thanks to being pregnant and having had twins, I had a bit more curve to mine. Other than that, it was a bit like seeing the biracial version of myself.
Charlene’s mother was white?
“You look like me,” I said, and Charlene snorted.
“No bitch, I was here first. You look like me. But apparently my mother and I weren’t black enough for Daddy, so he left us for you and your bitch of a mother.”
I made a move to attack her, no one talked about my mother that way. She may not have been the best mom in the world, but she was mine and no one disparaged those who belonged to me. I was going to tear her throat out with my teeth.
“Perhaps it was because he knew that you were going to grow up and be batshit crazy?” I snarled.
“Oh no. That was actually a positive to her. And what did I say, Princess? Don’t hurt the merchandise,” a deep, familiar voice said from behind me. “We need her. Once we get that Irish bastard to give us everything we want, everything we’re entitled to, you can do whatever you want with the darkie.”
Stepping around Charlene to look down his nose at me, as if he hadn’t spent years giving me kisses and telling me he loved me was the one man I’d only recently begun to suspect wasn’t actually dead at all.
“Daddy?”
I wanted to vomit as I listened to Charlene and my father talk about their plans for the money and property they planned to get from Andrew.
“Then after that can we go to Paris, Dad? I’ve always wanted to see what the museum would look like on fire,” Charlene asked.
“Whatever you want, baby,” my dad said.
I grunted as Charlene grabbed the back of my neck and tugged me backward. She ran the edge of her blade against the side of my throat and hummed.
“Come on, Dad, just one small cut. That’s it. I just want to know if she bleeds black or red,” Charlene pleaded.
My dad considered me and nodded. I refused to cry out as Charlene excitedly ran her blade over my skin, before she got to the base of my neck and sliced me, not deep enough to kill me, but definitely enough to scar. I didn’t make a noise as she did it, though the sting of pain was almost too much. I did, however, maintain eye contact with the man who’d had me calling him “Daddy” up until the point he “died”.
Andrew was going to be pissed.
Because while I’d never considered myself a damsel in distress, ever needing a man to come and rescue her, I was zip tied to a chair, pregnant, and bleeding now. I needed some sort of rescue, or even the slightest bit of a sharp object to help me turn this situation around. Charlene and my father may have thought they were criminal masterminds, but they were nothing compared to me and mine. I just needed the slightest bit of an advantage.
“So tell me, what brought you two together again?” I asked conversationally, my eyes moving only subtly around the room as I looked for something that would help me to get free.
“Do you think we’re going to be like those villains in the movies and books who wax poetic and monologue about their diabolical plans and what horrible childhood event turned them into serial killers?” My father laughed and shook his head. “The plain and simple fact is, my parents were poor, I refused to be. I did what I had to do to make money. To get power. When your grandmother threatened to cut your mother off, I knew it was time to act. I never actually loved her, but the terms of the prenuptial agreement were that we had to have children before your mother would get access to the millions your grandmother intended to give her, and that I couldn’t have access to it, at all. Not even after your mother died.” He winked at me. “I’d always planned to marry her, knock her up, then kill her.”
I shook my head. “How did you even find out that she had money?” I asked.
My father laughed. “How do you think? Your mother used to love to brag and run her mouth. I overheard her one night in the bar, looked it up realized she came from money, even if no one knew it because of how your grandmother made them live. Why that was, I don’t know.”
“Because we were there to serve our community, not ourselves,” I murmured, reciting my grandmother’s words.
/> Charlene and my dad laughed and waved away my words. “Sounds like she was just cheap.”
“Anyway, I knew the only way I would get the money was to wait. I just had to be patient. The old bitch would die, and you would get access to the money. I would reemerge, with amnesia that had only since faded away, and I’d raced to you to be reunited with my baby girl. Where I would get you to make me the trustee of your money. Then you would die in the same sort of tragic accident that your mother did. Twisted irony and all that.” He laughed, then frowned almost instantly.
“But you had to marry that fucking Irish bastard. Get pregnant…” he shook his head.
“So you all have to die, because Daddy and I have plans…” Charlene said with a wide grin.
I wanted to warn Charlene that my father was only out for himself. I could see it in his scheming, lying face. He was using Charlene to get the money, to clean away loose ends, then he was going to kill her, the same way he’d murdered my mother and…
“Did you kill my grandmother and Jenafer?” I asked him.
My dad held up his hands and flipped them back and forth. “Oh no, I killed your mother, for sure, bitch was too chatty, but my hands are clean from any other murders since then.” He pulled Charlene into his side with one arm and patted her cheek. “That was all my oldest here.”
Charlene smiled up at him with fondness and daughterly love shining from her light hazel eyes.
“What about Charlene’s mother?” I asked hoping to stir up speculation and suspicion in my older sister.
“What about her?” My dad repeated, frowning at me.
“Is she still alive?” I asked.
Charlene shook her head. “She died when I was fifteen. Hit by a car. One driven by your precious Andrew. My sister and I were inconsolable.”
I frowned. “Who is your sister?”
Charlene merely giggled and skipped over to the other side of the room.
Yes, the bitch skipped.
“Dear God, save me from crazy people,” I muttered.
Before anything else could be said, a car ran straight into the middle of the room. It was a Dodge RAM 2500. A truck I’d only seen once before…
Andrew.
He called it his F-SUT “Fuck Shit Up Truck”. I began grinning widely that he’d finally gotten there, until bullets started to fly through the air, between Andrew, my father, and my half-sister.
“Andrew! Don’t you let them shoot me, or I will kill you, asshole!” I growled.
“Kinda busy baby,” Andrew yelled back, firing back at my dad and Charlene, barely throwing me a glance.
I shrugged as best I could.
“I’m just saying.”
Chapter Seventeen
Andrew- The Irishman
My wife is the only person I know who could be tied up, pregnant, sitting in the middle of a room with bullets flying around her, giving people orders.
Fuck, I loved that woman.
“Oh come on! I thought you were The Irishman!” A man I could only assume was related to Kyra in some way yelled at me. “How is it that you haven’t hit one of us yet? This is the man my daughter married? I’m a little disappointed.”
His daughter? I looked over at Kyra and she rolled her eyes and nodded.
“Yeah, asshole’s still alive. And kind of a self-hating colorists, if you want to know…”
I frowned. “Like in a hair salon?” I asked, aiming at her father’s shoulder and aiming.
“No, like he has an issue with dark skinned black people. Has a problem with someone whose skin is a different color than his own, but only if they are of the same race. Get what I’m saying?” Kyra responded.
I wracked my brain trying to remember what I’d been told about colorists. Kyra had given me a “crash course in African American studies, African history, Indigenous history, Latinx culture, Asian history, and Middle Eastern culture” when we’d first gotten together, because even though I had an adopted black sister, that didn’t mean I was “conscious and aware” which was completely different from being “woke.”
“Oh! You mean like from School Daze©? Like the whole colorism thing?” I called back, referencing the Spike Lee movie, as I exhaled and squeezed the trigger. My bullet ripped through the glass of my driver’s side window, shattering it all over me and the floor at my feet, before tearing through Kyra’s father’s shoulder.
He cursed and collapsed. He reached out for the version of Kyra who had the skin color of Lisa Bonét, and whom I could only suspect was Charlene, asking for her to help.
Charlene shrugged and ran. My eyes widened in surprise and I looked at my wife who was shaking her head.
“You should know by now, Daddy, there’s no honor among thieves.”
I chuckled and headed towards Kyra’s father to toss the mother fucker into the back of my truck. He and I had unfinished business.
The sound of a throat clearing had me stopping dead in my tracks. I grinned sheepishly at Kyra, before I yanked out my knife and walked in her direction.
“You were seriously plotting revenge and going to go and grab my dad before you freed me, weren’t you?” She asked.
“No baby… well, I mean…” I stammered.
“Oh no, you are sooo going to pay for this,” she promised me.
Now that I knew she was okay, and I had her back in my arms… almost, I had no problem with making up for my little… faux pas.
Nothing and no one.
Chapter Eighteen
Charlene-The Bastard
I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Finally he stepped out of the darkness and headed directly for me.
“Is it done?” He asked.
I shook my head and he let out a curse.
“Goddamn it, Charlene, you said you could handle this.”
“Grandpa, I can. I promise. It’s just that… Andrew showed up.” I shrugged.
“What do you mean Andrew showed up? There’s no way those assholes would have let him out of the house to go after her,” my grandfather said, folding his arms across his chest.
“I looked back at the camera feed.” I shook my head. Andrew had done something we hadn’t anticipated, throwing our entire plan out of whack. My little sister—half-sister—was supposed to be dead right now. And so was my biological father. But he’d been taken down into the basement at the estate, and she’d just gotten done having sex with her husband.
The man who didn’t even remember me.
Or the child we’d had together.
No one ever remembered me.
“So, do you think I can see AJ?” I asked.
My grandfather scowled at me. “Did you complete your task for today?”
I shook my head.
“Then I do believe you know the answer to that question, Charlene,” he stated, before shutting the back door closed in my face.
I sighed, wiping the tears from my eyes, and heading back to the apartment my grandfather had gotten for me, that was over five miles away from the rest of my mother’s family.
The O’Sullivan family was special, prestigious, elite, purebred Irish. They couldn’t let anyone know they had a half-black family member. They’d rather people know about my cousin’s affiliation with Clan McCarthy than for anyone to know about me.
And they’d gone to great lengths to get rid of that link.
Who knew what they would do if the truth got out about me?
No. I had to do what my grandfather told me to do, so I could get my son, Andrew Junior, and leave Baltimore, and the country.
For good.
Chapter Nineteen
Kyra- K-Love
I’ve got rhythm, I’ve got music, I’ve got my man, who can ask for anything more?
Ella Fitzgerald played loudly in the tarp covered, soundproofed room. I snapped my fingers as I moved around the room. Back and forth. Back and forth. Each time I bobbed my head not only to the beat of the music but also to the screams and
curses that followed my footsteps, providing a beautiful harmony to the melody of torture and vengeance I was currently engaged in.
It was really beautiful music.
At one point, however, I had to pause, a surge of pain wrapping tight around my lower back and belly. I hissed and rubbed my stomach.
“Come on now KJ, can’t you wait just a few more hours? Mommy is almost done.”
My husband wasn’t too happy about my current... entertainment, especially in light of my advanced pregnancy, but what the fuck did he know?
I was one hundred percent that bitch; and I could torture, get revenge, and then go have a baby all in one day.
I turned back around to the person who I had tied up in my chair, a hand saw clutched in my hands. My face felt funny and when I reached up to find out why I felt my lips pulled up into the biggest smile I’d ever had.
Hmm... Maybe I am a psycho bitch after all.
I shrugged. I could be that too.
I walked over to the chair, surrounded by blood, holding a dying, limp figure with wounds and gashes all along their flesh. I tilted my head to the side. Where to cut... where to cut...
I was going to have to change anyway, might as well go for the hands, which had caused so much problem. I hummed as he screamed. As they begged and pleaded. And it was only when I was finished, and my clothes were splattered with the rotten, corrupted blood of the person now dead that I stepped back and sighed.
Torturing and killing someone while in labor was hard work.
But the bitch deserved it.
The door opened and the shiver racing down my spine, the pounding of my heart, and the growing wetness in between my thighs let me know who it was without my even needing to turn around.