"Barrett Anderson? Seriously, babe?"
"In his defense, I didn't exactly tell him what I was wrapped up in. He went in blind. It was my fault he got put in the hospital."
"No, Elsie. Don't take that shit on. He should have gotten answers out of you before he took the case. Sawyer was right in thinking he didn't belong in the field. It's not your fault he got cocky. It's not your fault you got choked either. So stop thinking that way."
I stood facing the coffee machine, listening to it drip as I took a couple deep breaths. I wasn't in any kind of shape to deal with him right then. Not after the day I had, with my emotions raw and all over the place. I just needed to be alone.
"Babygirl," Paine's voice said in my ear as his body cozied up behind me, his arm snaking around my lower belly and holding me against him.
"Please don't. I can't do this right now," I said, not caring how desperate my voice sounded.
"Talk to me," he urged, leaning down and resting his chin on my shoulder. I felt my head start to shake and his arm tightened around me. And damn if being in a man's arms, held back against his strong chest, didn't feel like exactly what I needed right that minute. "You need to get that shit out. It's eating you up. I'll listen."
"And get angry. And judge. And lecture me."
"No anger or judgment or lectures," he said, using his hand at my hip to turn me so I was against his chest, and wrapping me up tight. "Just an ear."
And, well, that just melted what was left of my puny defenses.
"My sister is missing," I said aloud for the first time ever.
Against me, I could feel him stiffen and his hold loosened slightly so he could push me back and look down at me. "Your sister is missing?"
I felt myself nod tightly. "Not officially seeing as there is no report of it."
"Why not?"
"Because my father is convinced she's not missing. She... was acting off for a long time before she disappeared. She was secretive and distant. She and I used to be best friends, then suddenly, she was like a stranger. And then she was gone. But she cashed out her trust fund first. Everything else, though, was left. Her house, her car, all her jewelry and clothes and, God, even her freaking parrot..."
"Her parrot," he repeated when I trailed off.
"He's fine. Living large in a bird sanctuary in Florida thanks to a nice donation from my father. But she left him. In his cage. For God knew how long. There was no food or water left when I finally went over to check on her when she hadn't returned my calls for three days. She never would have just... left him to starve to death in her empty house. No way."
"So why haven't you filed a report if you're convinced she's missing?"
"The detective I talked to agreed with my father. He said to give it a few weeks to see if she just got a wild hair and took off to Boca with a new guy or something."
"Was she a big dater?"
I felt the side of my lips turn up. "I tried that angle. She wasn't exactly a relationship girl. She had men in and out of her life, but no one serious. I couldn't see her just taking off with a guy. Not by choice anyway."
He nodded, pressing a quick kiss to my forehead in an offhand way that made my belly flip flop with the casual intimacy of it all. "Why are you working the Third Street angle?"
My hands went up, squeezing his sides and pushing until he let me go. I moved out into the living room, clicking the hidden latch inside the fireplace that unlocked the picture beside it and pulled it open to reveal the safe.
"Ain't looking," he said as I turned to check, his words of caution definitely making me more cautious about my codes.
I punched in the code and pulled the safe open, reaching inside and pulling out the small jewel-encrusted jewelry box that belonged to my sister, and holding it out toward Paine.
His brows drew together as he took it, pulling off the top. His breath hissed out of his mouth as he grabbed one of the small baggies and pulled it out. There were at least a dozen of them inside, clear zip-lock drug bags with a large blue three printed on the front and a fluffy brownish powder inside it. "She was using heroin," he surmised, putting the baggie back, but not handing it back to me.
"Seems the most likely explanation. Why else would she have drugs hidden in her bedroom? It also explains her weird behavior for the weeks before she went missing. I've never really known anyone on drugs; I didn't know what to look for, so I didn't see it."
"It happens," he shrugged. "Can't beat yourself up about it. So you thought... what? She cashed in her trust to buy more drugs?"
"Maybe."
"Babygirl, H is cheap. I don't know, and don't need to know, what was in her trust, but no way did she need to cash it all out to fund her drug habit."
"Maybe she got herself... involved with one of the guys in the gang. Maybe he got her trust, conned her into giving him the money? I mean... why all of a sudden can a measly street gang afford a huge warehouse like the one on Kennedy?"
"Got a point," he said. When I reached for the jewelry box, he shook his head and pulled it back. "I have to get rid of this, Elsie. You can't keep drugs in your house. Or evidence like the baggies even if you flushed the H."
Well, that was true enough. I felt uncomfortable having it in my house, even locked up in the safe. "Okay."
"Are you worried your sister is dead?" he asked bluntly, making me start.
I reached up and ran a hand through my hair. "I don't know. Maybe. I guess I'm kind of hoping she's just holed up with some gang banger, too in love or too high, or both, to care about her old life."
"It's possible," he said in a guarded voice.
"But not likely," I said, interpreting his tone.
"Not likely. So you want answers."
"Yes."
Paine looked away for a long minute, staring out my front window before he turned back. "I can get you answers."
"How?" I asked, thinking he was going to start bashing heads together until he got them.
"Babygirl, I used to run the Third Street gang," he admitted in an empty voice. And damn if it was the absolute last thing I had expected him to say. I would have been more accepting of him telling me he was an alien from Mars who spent his free time training poodles to dance while he dressed in women's clothing.
"I'm sorry... what?"
"That gang... I ran it for years. And the man who is in charge now? He's my brother."
"Brother?" I repeated dumbly. "You said you had sisters," I said, knowing my face was a mask of confusion.
"I do. And we're tight. I also have a half brother. Same father, different mother. His name is Enzo and he is in charge of Third street and the drugs and the whores."
I flinched inwardly at that word, but was too preoccupied trying to reconcile the image of Paine, the drug and whore lord, and the Paine I thought I was beginning to get to know, the one who saved a girl off the street and asked for nothing in return, who loved his sisters, who kissed like no one I had ever come across before, who was willing to be an ear when I needed one and get rid of illicit drugs I had no business having in the first place.
"Are you and Enzo... close?"
To that, Paine let out a humorless snort and shook his head.
"No."
EIGHT
Paine
If you looked into me, if you pulled up my records, I was as clean as the fresh fallen fucking snow. No arrests, no holds for questioning, not even a damn parking ticket.
That being said, looks could be deceiving.
I grew up in the ghetto with a mom who had enough of the lying, cheating, drug-addicted shithead who sired me and my sisters. I distinctly remember a few days after my fifth birthday walking out into the hall with my mother, one sister on her hip, the other in a cheap umbrella stroller, and almost walking right into a kid who could have been my twin. Tall for his age, solid, same color skin, same color eyes. The baby bag my mother had been trying to get onto her shoulder fell to the ground and the contents flew across the dirty hall as she looked down at
the little boy with understanding, then at the kid's mother with horror.
"That mother fucker," the other mother said, shaking her head. I remembered Annie as being too upper class to live in the crummy apartment building. I don't know where my young mind got the idea. Maybe it was her clothes that seemed nicer than my mom's and my aunts'. Maybe it was the way her short cap of blond hair was always perfectly styled and shiny. Something about her screamed 'money' to me. "He's five?" she asked my mother who gave me a tight smile.
"Yep."
"Wow," Annie said.
"Yeah," my mother agreed, shaking her head.
From that day on, those two were as tight as two women could be. I guess it came from sharing a lying, cheating, drug-addicted shithead unwittingly then both dumping him and trying to move on with their lives. Annie, I would learn later, had just divorced from her husband, the couple being an upper-middle-class childless family who just couldn't make it work. She had a nice apartment in a nicer town where she met my father who had been working at a repair shop she brought her car into for a tune up. The rest, as they say, was history. He saw dollar signs; he latched on; he pulled at her heartstrings and sucked her dry. She wisened up and kicked his sorry ass to the curb and about three weeks later found out she was pregnant. So fast forward to her working two jobs to support a kid in a roach-infested apartment.
Because our mothers got tight, Enzo and I became brothers in all the ways that counted. We walked to and from school with each other, we had each other's and my sisters' backs. We raised hell together. We chased girls together when we were old enough.
And, being so close, we grew into similar young men: driven, ambitious, wanting nothing more than to rise up out of our shit beginnings. Living in the slums, that meant one of two things: you got good at a sport and got a college scholarship the hell out of there, or you sought a way to run the streets. Enzo could shoot hoops, but busted a kneecap his senior year, killing his chances of any kind of sports career.
I had never had any skill in any sport, so by sophomore year, I was already learning the ways of street corner politics. I made myself available. I carried product because I was underage with no priors, making myself the fall guy for whatever hustler that knew that if he went back inside, the only way he'd be leaving was through the back door.
Back then, it was weed or rocks.
Before long, I was doing the actual dealing with some other banger watching over me to make sure I didn't fuck up deals or take a cut that I wasn't entitled to. It wasn't more than a couple months before I was having a meeting with the shot-caller, a tall, skinny dude in his late twenties with eye teeth so pointy they looked like fangs named Terrell. It didn't take much for me to realize he wasn't long for the leadership position. First, he smoked rock himself. Second, aside from somewhat crazy eyes, there wasn't a fucking scary thing about him.
"Ain't got no time for no fucking pussies workin' for me. You want in, you get beat in. You survive, you're in. You follow orders. You don't run your fucking mouth. And we have a reputation to uphold. Don't be selling no wolf tickets. You calling someone out, you better back that shit up. Got it?"
"Got it."
That night, in the empty parking lot of an abandoned department store, a circle of Third Street boys closed in on me. Within minutes, I was unconscious. When I woke back up, I was in.
It was that easy. Fifteen years old and I was bringing in several G's a month, easing the burden on my mother and dropping way too much cash on bullshit like shoes and watches and shit. Young and stupid, that was me.
Terrell caught a charge for possession with intention to distribute and was put away for a dime. It didn't take more than an afternoon for someone else to step into his place, a much bigger guy by the name Darius with a rap sheet longer than my forearm. By all accounts, he was a better leader. As such, he was much more violent, much more paranoid and ruthless. You scuffed his shoes, you were eating through a straw for the next three months. You took a cut you didn't earn, you weren't heard from again.
So when someone started roughing up the whores, thereby stealing money from him 'cause no one wanted to pay to fuck a chick with a busted face, he was itching for some bloodshed. And who did he choose to go mete out that punishment? Yeah, just-turned sixteen year old me. With very little choice, that was exactly what I did.
I was never a violent person by nature. If you fucked with me or mine, I handled it. When pushing came to shoving, I was a mother fucking fighter. But I didn't enjoy it. I didn't get off on it like some of the other guys did. Maybe that was why I was picked, for my control. And as addicted as I was to the money lining my pockets, there was no way I was fucking up my standing in the gang by refusing an order. That and, well, roughing up a woman who had very little control over her own safety in the first place, that was some pussy-ass shit and the fuck deserved what he got. Which included eight stab wounds and a busted jaw. He lived, just barely. But he never went anywhere near one of our women again.
I moved up in favor, given power over the new bloods on the street, despite being the same age or even younger than some of them.
During this time, me and Enzo, we started drifting. He was the good kid. He kept up his grades; he kept his head down and his nose clean; he respected his mother's wish that he never fall into the streets. He had his jock friends and wanted nothing to do with his drug-dealing, pimping, fist-fighting, knife-wielding half brother. It was a wish I understood, even as young and cocky and money-hungry as I was, I got it.
I graduated at eighteen, just barely. Enzo recovered from his surgery and went to work at some pathetic nine-to-five that was eating away at his soul little by little. Each time I saw him, he seemed just a little bit more run down and hopeless.
I had a top of the line Mustang and a five-thousand dollar watch on my wrist. I also had a reputation and a squeaky clean rap sheet.
When Darius took three to the chest during a drive-by and bled out right at my feet, I decided it was my time. I was stepping up. I was calling the shots.
It didn't happen as effortlessly as it had for Darius. I was young. I wasn't as experienced as some of the other guys in the gang. But I was power hungry and still headstrong enough to think I was untouchable. Anyone who questioned me got a reminder of why Darius used me to handle his problems. If they didn't bend, they were broken.
Older, wiser, I didn't look back on those days fondly. I didn't look at the things I had to do to hold my power for as long as I had with a smile. It was cold, brutal, and lonely at the top. I understood why Darius was so paranoid, why Terrell turned to the drugs. You lived your life under the weight of the constant realization that you were always one backstabber or one police raid away from a coffin or a cell.
So I became hard.
I ran shit with an iron fist and a loaded gun. My women were kept clean and safe. I traded in crack for heroin when the time came and the demand switched. I got contacts from South America. I brought the operation to a whole other level. My men were smart, discreet, and ruthless. No one stepped in on our turf. All things considered, it was one of the bloodiest reigns the Third Street gang had since the early nineties. The power struggle in Navesink Bank was a delicate balance of respecting the right organizations: The Henchmen, The Grassi family, The Mallicks, and Richard Lyon. Later, Hailstorm, V, and Lex Keith; but also knowing who needed to be tamped down before they got too powerful. The Mexicans, the small time MCs, the Irish. They weren't full blown wars, but only because I got wind of something I didn't like the smell of, I attacked hard and early. No one got the chance to dig in their roots and threaten our control of the streets.
Ten years. Ten years I called the shots. Ten years I spent lining my pockets, tagging women, growing my empire, listening to my mother and aunts and sisters and grandmother lecture me about not wanting to bury me or visit me at the penn.
Eventually, they all moved in together, pooling their money, and refusing one cent of my 'bloody money'.
Just shy of our twenty
-ninth birthdays, an old shadow darkened my door. I wasn't sure how long it had been since I'd seen Enzo. Annie had died of cancer three years before and I had covered the cost of the arrangements and been present at the funeral. He had too, but I didn't pay him any attention, too wrapped up in myself at the time.
The last time I got a good look at him must have been a good five years before.
If his eyes and face weren't the same as what I saw in the mirror, I wouldn't have recognized him. He'd dropped a good fifty pounds he didn't need to lose, making him look sickly.
"Fuck don't tell me you're on rock or ice," I said, shaking my head as D let him in my office which wasn't an office at all but a ostentatious living room inside a housing project that was our headquarters. I could have afforded a nice place in a decent part of town, but when you ran the streets, you had to live in them too.
"Call off your boy," he said, jerking his head toward D.
"Take a walk," I agreed and D excused himself.
"I want in," he said, taking a couple steps into the room, not even bothering to look around at the TV that took up most of the wall or the sound system that cost the down payment on a mid-size car.
"In on what?"
"This. What you got. I want in. I'm fucking over slaving away to make pennies. I'm sick of swallowing the shit men feed to me just because they have a salaried position. I'm done. It's over."
"Annie wouldn't want..."
"Mom's dead. Mom has been dead a long time. I respected her wishes when she was around to care. She's in the ground and all I got is myself. And I want better."
"She ain't all you got. You got me too."
From that day on, he did.
He worked his way up.
He got his own reputation. If possible, somehow meaner, bloodier, and crueler than mine. He had, after all, ten years of feeling under-appreciated, overlooked, poor, and weak to draw anger from. Not to mention the loss of what looked like a promising career in basketball. He threw every bit of disappointment and rage into earning and keeping the respect of the men. He put in hours that made everyone else in the organization look like they were slacking; he made it possible to rise up in the ranks in under a year. He put on sixty solid pounds of muscle. He protected the girls. He watched over the new blood on the streets. He helped balance the books. He went with me to meetings.
Savages Series Boxed Set Page 54