Gods & Gangsters 2 Read online

  Gods & Gangsters 2

  An Illuminati Novel

  SLMN

  Kingston Imperial

  Gods & Gangsters 2 Copyright © 2020 by Kingston Imperial 2, LLC

  Printed in the United States of America

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved, including the rights to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Kingston Imperial 2, LLC

  Rights Department, 144 North 7th Street, #255 Brooklyn N.Y. 11249

  First Edition:

  Book and Jacket Design: Damion Scott & PixiLL Designs

  Cataloging in Publication data is on file with the library of Congress

  ISBN 9780999639016 (Trade Paperback)

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Epilogue

  Thank You

  Kingston Imperial

  1

  Rubber burned.

  The air filled with tar and fumes.

  The MPV rode straight up onto the curb, coming out of the night like the shadow of death, blacker than black. The five guys hustling on the corner didn't see it coming until it was beyond too late.

  “Don’t fuckin’ move!” Othello barked out of the minivan, before it came to a stop. He had a chrome nine in each hand. The gleam, razor-sharp, sliced through the black air. He was vengeance and wrath wrapped in one, ready to strike down.

  The five dudes were all high on that Wet; none of them were in any shape to react, guns tucked into their waistbands or not.

  Cash hopped out of the backseat with a Draco while Mac, the driver, rounded the car with a Desert Eagle to play with.

  “Yo! The fuck wrong wit’ you niggas?” one dude bassed, not bothering to raise his hands, making like he wasn't about to be intimidated by the show.

  Buck! Buck!

  Two head shots silenced his bullshit, dropping him where he stood.

  The other four got the message real fast, drugged up or not, and started reaching for the sky like they were trying to grab God’s robe to haul their asses up out of there.

  “The money’s in the alley,” the second dude blurted out, hating the feeling of the warm piss running down his leg. He was smart enough not to flinch, as Othello got up in his grill.

  “Fuck that short shit. I came to ask y’all one question: whose block is this?” Othello growled, his gun barrels as black as the abyss, staring them down.

  The second dude scowled, confused by the question. He told Othello, “Ours.”

  Buck!

  A single-head shot red dotted him like an Indian at 7-11. He slumped to his knees like he needed to pray.

  Othello turned the gun on dude number three.

  “Ima ask you instead. See if you got the right answer: whose block is this?”

  “Don’s,” three answered without hesitation, sure in his truth.

  Buck!

  He died with another dome check.

  The smell of blood had the block reeking like a pig farm. The mist settled like a red fog over the night air. Othello turned his guns onto the fourth dude. He didn't need to ask. “Yours!”

  Othello laughed.

  “Smart nigga. Too bad your friends didn’t get it before they got it! Bottom line, I’m Othello, but my friends call me O. Another question for you: You wanna be my friend?’

  “Yeah yo, I do,” the fourth dude stammered.

  “Then call me O. G’head, let me hear you.”

  “O.”

  “Whose block is this?”

  “Yours, I mean, O. It’s O’s block.”

  Othello smiled.

  “You catch on quick. What’s your name?”

  “Benny,” he answered.

  “And what happens to muhfuckas who violate, Benny?” Othello questioned him.

  Before he could answer...

  Buck! Buck!

  Two more shots blasted through the fifth nigga’s brains into a dash for the back of his head, like a moneybox waiting for some little kid to put his dimes and nickels in, and splattered against the window of the store.

  “Oh God!” Benny exclaimed.

  Othello got up in his face real close, and spat, “Exactly. O is God, got me? And I don’t forgive. I’ll be in touch.” With that, the three-man team got back in the MPV and disappeared just as quickly as they came.

  Two days later, they struck again.

  In the daytime, to the naked eye, the nondescript building in the back of an even more nondescript alleyway, was nothing. Nowhere. A small garage. Just big enough to fit two cars side by side, but anyone paying attention when they walked past would’ve noticed that the guys in there seemed to be working on the same two old ass Buicks every day, one red and one brown.

  It was at night that it came to life for anyone in the know.

  It wasn't some backstreet chop shop. It was a private gambling spot frequented by some major hustlers, primarily from the Southside. This was an area that fell under the control of Rome’s clan, who unlike Don, were feared in the streets.

  So feared, that no one ever dream of hitting his gambling spot…

  Until Othello, Mac and Cash walked in.

  There were six hustlers shooting craps on the pool table that night. Their lucky number. Usually, there would be upwards of twelve. The pile of money in the middle of the table was a small mountain. Serious money. With some hands, that pot would grow as much as fifty thousand. A few, it would scale higher.

  To the naked eye, the stack looked to be at least that much.

  The music blared in the background, pounding out the beats relentlessly. Two butt-naked bitches danced, grinding their asses, teasing their lips open like wet smiles, flirting, fucking and bringing drinks to the crowd. Both females were top choice, one Cuban and the other white. The white girl was every bit as nasty as Amber Rose, but her ass was much juicier. And it was real. None of that implant shit. The Cuban girl would’ve put Black Chyna to shame. They had the whole place smelling like money, honey and lust, which was about as heady a mix as any liquor. The white girl had a trick that the guys loved: she squatted over a beer bottle, sinking down on it until her pussy lips gripped the bottle top, then she flipped forward into a handstand and her pussy guzzled the whole bottle. It was right up there with a Thai ping pong show.

  “Goddamn that bitch got a grip!” one hustler laughed.

  He would be the first to die.

  They were all so captivated by the bitch and her thirsty snatch, they never heard the three-man team enter.

  BBBBBRRRRRRRRAAAAAAPPPPP!

  They announced themselves with the fully automatic Mac-11’s. That got their attention. The laughing dude went for his gun.

  BBBBBRRRRRRRRAAAAAAPPPPP!

  The bullets made him twerk like the Cuban stripper, until the quarter ran out on his jukebox called life.

  “Anyone else got the urge to dance?” Othello quipped, ice cold.

  Everyone in that room knew just how fucked they were the second they realized the three gunmen weren’t wearing masks. It was a bad sign in any robbery. Nothing to lose, another dude decided to say to himself, fuck it, I’ma die anyway, and reached for the piece laying on the edge of the table. Maybe he was psychic. He was certainly right.

  BBBBBRRRRRRRRAAAAAAPPPPP!

  Mac laced him from navel to neck, the bullets splitting him as precisely as a surgeon’s scalpel.

  He was
dead before he hit the ground.

  “Y’all niggas think this a game? Serious?” Mac barked, waving death back and forth, like he was its master. The smell of fear had him amped on 1000.

  No one spoke.

  Othello eyed the money on the table.

  “What’s the pot?”

  The four remaining dudes looked from one to the other, no one eager to open their mouths and invite a whole new set of lead fillings. Reluctantly, the shortest hustler in the room, Lil’ Mike, answered, “Forty large.”

  Othello whistled, then added, “What’s point?’

  A beat.

  “Six,” Lil’ Mike replied.

  Othello smiled.

  “You a gambling man? What am I saying, you're here, ain't you? Course you a gambling man. Okay, so here’s the deal. Roll the dice. You crap, you die.”

  Lil’ Mike looked down at the dice, sweating bullets. He picked up the dice.

  “You gonna kiss 'em for luck?”

  He was shaking so bad, he didn’t have to shake the dice, he just rolled them.

  He rolled a four.

  “Shit out of luck, nigga.”

  BBBBBRRRRRRRRAAAAAAPPPPP!

  Cash gunned down the dude standing next to Lil’ Mike.

  The blood splattered all over Lil’ Mike’s face and mouth. He couldn't help himself, he swallowed some. He gagged. Retched. Bile and puke and blood spat up.

  “Come on, bitch ass nigga, you wastin’ my time,” Othello huffed. “One thing I hate is wasted time.”

  “Please man, just take the money,” Lil’ Mike begged, blood flecks on his chin.

  “Roll!”

  Lil’ Mike was crying real tears. He was thinking about the baby daughter he knew he’d never see. He was thinking about the fact that before he left, his girl told him to stay home, and how different it would have been if he'd just listened. But most of all, he was thinking, like a prayer: don’t crap out.

  He rolled double fives.

  No hesitation.

  BBBBBRRRRRRRRAAAAAAPPPPP!

  Cash gunned another dude down. This one melted like hot butter as those slugs tore through him.

  “Point, nigga!” Othello demanded.

  Lil’ Mike didn’t even shake the dice.

  He was past the point of caring.

  He rolled a six.

  “Lucky you,” Othello smirked, then blew the last dude into the next life.

  The two naked bitches held water the whole time, looking on in amazement, but not fear. This wasn't their fight. They were just the decoration. As long as they kept the place looking good, whoever ran the joint would keep them around. Such was life.

  “Now. Call Rome,” Othello instructed him.

  With shaking hands, Lil’ Mike speed dialed Rome.

  “Put it on speaker,” Othello said.

  The ring of the phone amplified, filling the room with anticipation, over and over, until the other end was picked up.

  “Yo.”

  “Nice to hear your voice. It’s been awhile,” Othello didn't bother to mask the sarcasm.

  A beat.

  “Who this?” Rome asked, but he knew exactly who it was. Of course he did.

  Othello chuckled.

  “Nigga, you know exactly who I am. Needless to say, I’m baaaack!”

  Mac, Cash and the bitches laughed like it was the funniest fucking line in the world. It wasn't. But fuck them.

  “Where the fuck is Mike?”

  “R-r-right here,” Lil’ Mike stammered.

  “What the fuck is goin’ on?” Rome thundered, his voice filing the room like the voice of God, only it was twice as fucking useless. “They dead. Everybody, the whole team.” Lil’ Mike blabbered, not caring that Othello got to see the bitch under his gangsta facade.

  Othello’s laughter boomed like James Earl Jones going full Dark Side.

  “Nigga, fuck you askin’ him for? You know what the fuck is goin’ on. Don't need to be no psychic to see I’m here to take back what’s mine!”

  “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

  “The streets, muhfucka!” Othello bassed, then put the gun to Lil’ Mike’s head and blew it all over the iPhone in his dead hand. Lil’ Mike slumped on the table, blood slowly spreading like one of them Rorschach blobs looking for context.

  “O! O!” Rome exclaimed, but Othello didn’t answer.

  He picked up the phone and smashed it against the wall.

  He turned to the two bitches.

  “Ladies, help yourself,” he nodded subtly toward the pile of money. “Consider it a reward for all your hard work. Can't be much fun riding that pussy.”

  The two bitches looked at each other, greed clouding their vision. They stuffed the money into their over-sized bags hand over fist. It was more money than either one of them had held in their lives. It was life-changing money for a couple of basic bitches like them. Not that they'd change. Their kind never did.

  Othello chuckled, then turned for the door.

  He took a few steps then realized Mac and Cash weren’t with him.

  When he turned back, they each had one of the bitches over their shoulders.

  “What the fuck y’all doin?”

  “Shit, did you see what this bitch did with that bottle?” Mac exclaimed, shit-eating grin plastered across his face.

  Othello laughed and they all walked out.

  A week later, they struck again.

  This time, the whole city bore witness to their wrath.

  The anchor, one of those beautiful talking heads they like to employ to make the bad news seem more bearable, looked earnestly at the screen. “Yes, Bob, I’m here on the scene of what police are already calling a mass murder. Behind me you will see firemen and the rescue squad battling desperately to put out the blaze raging through what was, until tonight, a popular nightclub. Reports are already coming through that the front, back and emergency exits were chained from the outside, condemning everyone inside the inferno a hellish death.” She let that sink in for a moment, the camera silently watching the men beaten to their knees by the sheer heat of the blaze behind her. “I'm hearing reports that Leroy Austin, known in certain circles as Big L, is among the victims. He may have been the intended target. At this moment, it is too early to know. Police have no suspects, but—”

  Black Sam snapped off the TV.

  He wanted to slam the whole set through the floor.

  “You seeing this shit? You see what I’m saying? No respect! No goddamn respect!” Sam fumed.

  Joe Hamlet sat at the bar. He nursed an expensive cognac. He had been nursing it for the last hour. They were in one of Joe’s legitimate businesses, a bar on the Southside named Sharkey’s. Joe loved to hold court in this place. It was his Carnegie fucking Hall. Tonight, the place was closed. He and Sam were the only people in the place.

  Black Sam was his lieutenant. He has been with Joe Hamlet for over twenty years. Joe trusted him implicitly. Joe was an old school gangsta, a towering muscular black man, with a shaved and oiled scalp. His clan was by far the most respected and well-established within the infrastructure of the city. In other words, they might vote-in the politicians, but he had the real power.

  Joe shrugged, “Don’t complain. Play the game.”

  “I’m tellin’ you, Joe. We can't let this shit slide. It’s time we start cleaning house. You want my wisdom? It's pretty simple; all these gangbangin’ ass niggas, we just kill ‘em before they become a problem.”

  “Think for a moment, my trigger happy friend. Just say we did that. Just say we went to war. What would happen? No, let me tell you…we’d drive the murder rate sky high. And what would happen then? Again, it's a rhetorical question, Sam. The mayor would come down on us so hard we'd be shitting blood. We’d lose business. And, that, my friend, is the real problem.”

  Black Sam walked back over to the bar, refreshed his drink and replied, “Fine, then what do you suggest?”

  Joe thought for a minute, rolling the cognac around the glass and watch
ing it stick to the sides, then slide slowly down the glass. “It’s obvious that this nigga, whoever he is, ain’t moving on his own. Somebody on The Commission is backing him. He’s a piece of shit. A pawn. A knight a best. He ain't no fucking king. So the question is: who is behind him? Because that's where shit gets interesting. Not in this show; all this violence is just theater.”

  Black Sam nodded.

  “Okay. I can see that… But that don’t change the fact that if we don’t get to the bottom of this, shit in this city is gonna explode!”

  Joe downed his drink.

  “That it is. What did you say his name was again?”

  “Othello. Othello Moore.”

  Joe’s brow furled and he looked in his empty glass, mind turning, as if he could find the answer in the last teardrops of cognac.

  “Moore… Moore… It feels like I should know that name from somewhere.”

  Black Sam chuckled.

  “Damn nigga, you getting old.”

  Joe laughed. “And if I am, you gettin’ older! Shit, you got two years on me old man.”

  “And fuck you for remindin’ me,” Black Sam returned.

  The two men were like brothers in a war that never ended. The Street Life. They'd come up together, and now, both in their fifties, they were at the top of their games. So many of their generation hadn’t lived to see the way the game had changed, but Joe and Black Sam hadn't just survived, they were the originals, the ones who changed the game.

  “Get the clans together. The Commission needs to meet. I want to look each and every one of the bastards in the eye and see who’s behind this bullshit,” Joe instructed.

  Black Sam nodded, then downed his drink like a shot.

  “Consider it done.”

  Joe’s phone rang.

  He saw Mona’s picture on the screen and smiled as he answered, “Hey, babygirl.”

  “Hey, Daddy,” she sung in a syrupy sweet voice.

  Joe laughed. She wanted something.

  “Spill it.”

  “What?” she replied, feigning innocence.