Gods & Gangsters 2 Page 8

  Don glared at Othello. He had never hated another living being with such immediate intensity, but he knew people. You didn’t get to where he was in this life without knowing people. Looking the big man in the eye he knew he could be trusted.

  Slowly, and still reluctantly, he let go off his wife’s hand.

  She got up and led the goons into the bedroom.

  Once they were out of the room, Don rasped, “You know you fucked up coming here, right? You kill me, The Commission will hunt you down like a fuckin’ dog and put you down. So fuckin’ stupid, man. How you think you can come into my home, threaten my wife, and just walk away? If it ain’t me coming after you my connect Miguel will, and believe me, ain’t nowhere in the world you can hide if he’s looking to hunt you down.”

  Othello yawned.

  “Donny, you need to read the more than just the headlines. The world’s changed, and nigga, it’s changed fast. Let me do the whole CNN thing for you: Miguel’s dead. His whole family, from the kids to the grandmothers, dead. That’s tonight’s headlines read for you by O.”

  Don stared in disbelief at Othello.

  Miguel’s dead? His whole fucking family wiped out?

  “You feel me, Donny? This shit, me being here, it ain’t no mistake. It’s a respect thing. I have Vanessa, I have your daughter, I have your money. I have every fuckin’ thing. I wanted you to be able to look me in the face when you finally understood life was over. We both men of the world, Donny. We know.”

  “I’m next,” Don said flatly. He was ready to face death. He wasn't about to beg. No piss running down the inside of his leg. None of that shit. If it was his time, it was his time. He wouldn’t give the rat bastard the satisfaction of seeing him as anything less than a man.

  The goons came back into the room with Angela and a large duffel stuffed with money.

  “Goddamn big brah, it must be a million dollars in here, easy,” The goon marveled.

  Othello looked at the money with disdain.

  “Chump change. Y’all niggas split it up.”

  Don and his wife sat on the couch. She was crying, but Don was hard as stone, staring into the abyss where his future should have been.

  “Do what you came to do,” Don said, bracing himself for the bullet.

  Othello shook his head. “It’s already done.” He stood up, walked over to where Don sat, and put two bullets in him, one in each knee. No way he was walking out of this place. “Burn it down.”

  His people did their job.

  As the house burned, Don sat on the couch, feeling the heat rise. It wouldn’t be long before the fancy fabric Angela had taken weeks to pick out began to fuse to his skin. He couldn’t walk away, but he was fuckin’ damned if he was gonna drop onto his belly and try and drag himself out of Hell by the fingernails. Fuck that. His blood boiled like the heat of the flames gathered around him.

  He took a deep breath, then closed his eyes and waited.

  Don sat back in his brand new Porsche, top down, allowing the worries of the city to wisp away in the wind as he raced toward the countryside. There was a metaphor for life in these seconds, rubber burning away on the road, wind battering his face, music pounding out beats only he could hear.

  He lived twenty miles outside of the city, deep in seclusion, isolated. No one knew the exact location. A man like him needed a retreat, a fortress away from the grind of the streets. It was a safe house.

  Or so he thought.

  Don took every precaution. Fuck, he was paranoid when it came to protecting his family from his street life. He took the whole two worlds must never collide idea to heart. He never drove straight home, never took exactly the same route. Some nights he’d go the opposite direction for several miles, switching lanes, taking detours through half a dozen slices of pastoral America, before finally making the turn that would send him in the right direction.

  He was beyond cautious.

  But he still made mistakes, because he was human, and every fucker makes mistakes. It’s the unwritten law. His was not vacuuming his Porsche. The GPS still pulsed out its signal that pinned his whereabouts on Google Maps for all to see, so it really didn’t matter how many twists and turns he took. Big Brother was still watching.

  Don pulled into his sprawling estate, following the driveway as it wound its way up to the six-car garage. He parked and got out.

  He slammed the door behind him.

  First thing hit him—not oil, not garage smells—the whiff of a man’s cologne. It wasn't his smell.

  But just like that, it was gone again, and maybe he hadn’t smelled it after all. Maybe it was his imagination. It wasn’t like his girl would step out on him.

  Had he been in his other life, he would’ve been more alert, but the problem with building your fortress of solitude is that right along with it you build complacency. Those walls of ice will rock you to sleep.

  Don learned this the moment he set foot inside the kitchen.

  Six dudes stood around his kitchen island, eating sandwiches, cooking, drinking and laughing, their guns on the counter as if they didn’t have a care in the world. It took a split second for the scene to register in Don’s mind.

  “What the fuck?” He spazzed, reaching for his gun.

  The men eating just stopped and looked at him.

  None even went for their guns.

  That should have triggered a thousand alarms, but he was off his game.

  CLICK!

  He felt the steel against his temple a second before he heard the silky smooth words tell him, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  Don stopped, his hand on the butt of his .45.

  “Okay, you got it. Easy, man. This don’t have to go to Hell,” Don said, compliant, calm, and conciliatory.

  The gunman took his pistol. “I got somebody here who wants to meet you,” he said, pushing Don into the living room.

  When he entered the living room, his world fell away from him, the ground opening up beneath his feet.

  He saw his wife, Angela, sitting on the couch. She looked a mess. Tear stains on her cheeks, skin pink and puffy.

  Across from her, in his own armchair, was the man he had been looking for. The man sat cross-legged, his gun resting on his thigh.

  “I’m Othello. I heard you were looking for me,” he smirked, as if to say: Well, here I am.

  Seeing the terror in his wife’s eyes, impotent rage washed over him.

  “Have a seat. We need to talk. Best we do it like men, eh?” Othello said, keeping his tone light. He didn’t need to waste swagger, the gun on his lap did all that for him.

  Don sat next to his wife.

  He took her hand.

  “The safe’s in the bedroom. There’s money in there. Take it. I won’t stop you. It’s a lot of money. It’s yours, but you better use it to get you to the other side of the world,” Don said, still thinking he had some sort of power in this negotiation.

  Othello chuckled, like he really didn’t have a care in the world and wasn’t about to waste good money running when he’d just made himself at home. He said to one of his goons, “Take the wife up there, open the safe. Bring all that lovely money out here.”

  Don squeezed his wife’s hand. “You’re not taking her anywhere.”

  “Donny, Donny, Donny, I know you’re used to giving the orders, but tonight, you’re the bitch, comprende?” Othello growled, looking Don dead in the eyes. “Now, there’s something you should know about me. I’m a man of my word. If you don’t have that, you got nothin’, right? So, believe me when I tell you, you have my word. You play fair, we’ll play fair. Nothing’s going to happen to her. Nobody will touch her. But we’re going to do this my way. Understood?”

  Don glared at Othello. He had never hated another living being with such immediate intensity, but he knew people. You didn’t get to where he was in this life without knowing people. Looking the big man in the eye he knew he could be trusted.

  Slowly, and still reluctantly, he let go off
his wife’s hand.

  She got up and led the goons into the bedroom.

  Once they were out of the room, Don rasped, “You know you fucked up coming here, right? You kill me, The Commission will hunt you down like a fuckin’ dog and put you down. So fuckin’ stupid, man. How you think you can come into my home, threaten my wife, and just walk away? If it ain’t me coming after you my connect Miguel will, and believe me, ain’t nowhere in the world you can hide if he’s looking to hunt you down.”

  Othello yawned.

  “Donny, you need to read the more than just the headlines. The world’s changed, and nigga, it’s changed fast. Let me do the whole CNN thing for you: Miguel’s dead. His whole family, from the kids to the grandmothers, dead. That’s tonight’s headlines read for you by O.”

  Don stared in disbelief at Othello.

  Miguel’s dead? His whole fucking family wiped out?

  “You feel me, Donny? This shit, me being here, it ain’t no mistake. It’s a respect thing. I have Vanessa, I have your daughter, I have your money. I have every fuckin’ thing. I wanted you to be able to look me in the face when you finally understood life was over. We both men of the world, Donny. We know.”

  “I’m next,” Don said flatly. He was ready to face death. He wasn't about to beg. No piss running down the inside of his leg. None of that shit. If it was his time, it was his time. He wouldn’t give the rat bastard the satisfaction of seeing him as anything less than a man.

  The goons came back into the room with Angela and a large duffel stuffed with money.

  “Goddamn big brah, it must be a million dollars in here, easy,” The goon marveled.

  Othello looked at the money with disdain.

  “Chump change. Y’all niggas split it up.”

  Don and his wife sat on the couch. She was crying, but Don was hard as stone, staring into the abyss where his future should have been.

  “Do what you came to do,” Don said, bracing himself for the bullet.

  Othello shook his head. “It’s already done.” He stood up, walked over to where Don sat, and put two bullets in him, one in each knee. No way he was walking out of this place. “Burn it down.”

  His people did their job.

  As the house burned, Don sat on the couch, feeling the heat rise. It wouldn’t be long before the fancy fabric Angela had taken weeks to pick out began to fuse to his skin. He couldn’t walk away, but he was fuckin’ damned if he was gonna drop onto his belly and try and drag himself out of Hell by the fingernails. Fuck that. His blood boiled like the heat of the flames gathered around him.

  He took a deep breath, then closed his eyes and waited.

  Everyone around the table wore the same somber expressions, like they were at a wake.

  They couldn’t help themselves, eyes went toward the empty chair where Don used to sit. Every one of them experienced a different tide of emotions brought on by his absence and what it meant for The Commission.

  Malone was the first to speak.

  “They killed the fuckin’ children. Ten little kids. Fucking animals. That little girl didn’t even get to blow out the candles on her fuckin’ cake. What kind of man does that?”

  “Truth time? This is the life we signed up for,” Joe reminded them. “Everyone at this table knows the risk, knows the kind of people whot would take out ten little kids, and probably fuckin’ well calls them a friend. That’s the grim reality.”

  It was a truth none of them could deny.

  “The question is, what are we going to do about it? Malik questioned, ever practical, guided by his own warped sense of justice.

  “Murder every fuckin’ body we find in the streets, torture the fucks until somebody gives Othello up!” Rome barked.

  “And spark a war?” Joe said, coldly, still trying to be the voice of reason.

  “Fuck the streets, man. Look out the window. They’re already at war with us!” Rome raged, and he wasn’t wrong.

  Anger fumed the room like the fragrance of that bitch named Revenge.

  “The way I see it, us and the streets have the same enemy. If we bring in the street leaders and incorporate them, we can isolate this fucking piece of shit. We still got the power here. We can destroy him,” Malone reasoned.

  Joe shook his head. “You never give up, do you? You won’t be happy until we expand The Commission.”

  “This ain’t about what I want, it’s about what we need,” Malone shot back.

  Joe sat back, taking it all in.

  He thought about his own dilemma and inner guilt. He had killed Othello’s father and in doing so had created this problem long ago. He wasn’t about to tell the others at the table these were his chickens coming home to roost.

  “We can at least arrange a sit down,” Malik seconded.

  Joe was a lot of things, and one of them was smart enough to know when the tides were turning against him. With Don gone, the vote to expand The Commission was tilting to his disadvantage. The irony, which he appreciated right now, was the fact that it was only Rome’s rage that kept it from being three to one. He needed to keep Rome simmering without letting him boil over. As long as he did, it was deadlocked.

  “Okay,” Joe conceded. “Set it up.”

  And with that concession, the meeting adjourned.

  Joe was out of there without a word to anyone, headed to his car and on the road before he put a call through to his lieutenant, Black Sam.

  “How’d it go?” Sam wanted to know.

  “As expected. They’re all scared they may be next,” Joe replied.

  “They may be.”

  “The tide is turning,” Joe agreed.

  “Maybe it’s time we turned with it,” Black Sam suggested.

  Joe sighed.

  “Not you too, Sammy.”

  “Hear me out, boss. I may be off base, but we both know this is Malik’s desire. He wants to expand in order to dilute your control of The Commission. He wants more than just a seat at the table, but the fact is he doesn’t have the connections we do. If we don’t steal his thunder, then he might be the one who strike lightning,” Black Sam surmised.

  Joe still wasn’t convinced.

  “Just sit tight. The traitor thinks he’s winning. He will be looking at what just went down and see the boulder rolling down the hill, gaining momentum all the time. It’s now he makes a mistake.” Joe responded.

  “We’ll see,” Black Sam answered, skepticism coloring his voice, then he hung up on the boss.

  He tossed the phone in the passenger’s seat just as he turned into the parking lot of the motel. It was a shithole, chosen for a reason. Even the roaches turned their nose up at the place.

  He drove around back, where Room 136 was located, concealed behind the motel pool.

  Black Sam killed the engine and clambered out. He was on edge. He looked around half a dozen times as he approached the room. Anyone watching would think he was a spinning fuckin’ top. He skipped up the three concrete steps, stepping into the shade of the overhang from the walkway above. There was a half-deflated pink flamingo up against the wall. He couldn’t imagine anyone actually using it to paddle in the pool.

  Before he could knock, the door opened.

  “I take it everything went according to plan?” Black Sam asked, as Milk closed the door behind him. She crawled back up on the bed, making herself more than at home in this shithole. Maybe he’d gotten it wrong. Maybe the roaches did make this place their home after all, he thought.

  Othello sat in the corner. He was at the small table that looked like a children’s furniture set next to his hulking frame.

  “Of course.”

  Milk was laying across the bed clad only in a tank top, her nipples perked and protruding, pressed provocatively against the silken fabric. Her boy shorts fit more like a thong on her dangerous curves. She would’ve been sexy if she didn’t have that AR-15 between her thighs like a big, black dick ready to bust a nut all over Black Sam.

  She stared him down coldly.
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  She was one fucked up bitch.

  “And the money?” he asked, not looking at her.

  “You’ll get your cut,” Othello assured him.

  Black Sam smirked.

  “You mean, I’ll get what you want me to have. No matter what, when it’s all said and done, we’ll be sitting on a fucking goldmine! You killed ‘em all, right?”

  “Why? You writin’ a book?” Othello shook his head. “It’s on a need to know, nigga, and you don’t need to know.”

  “No, I just… nevermind.”

  Black Sam glanced over at Milk.

  She was still staring him down.

  “Bitch, you know me? Fuck you keep starin’ for?” Black Sam gritted, more out of nervousness than bravado.

  Milk didn’t say a word. She just stared him down, expressionless. The atmosphere was way beyond tense.

  Black Sam turned to Othello.

  “Why the guns, O? I thought we were friends?”

  “No, we’re closer than friends, Sam. We’re allies. But, you know it’s a dog eat fuckin’ dog world outside this door. Can’t be too careful, huh?” Othello replied, blatantly disrespecting Sam. The thing he didn’t realize was, the only thing you keep closer than friends are enemies.

  “Well, just don’t forget who found you rotting in that prison cell… old friend,” Black Sam spat, offering a sour smile.

  Othello returned the expression, just as sour. “I won’t. Anything else?”

  “I’ll be in touch for the final phase. Until then, lay low,” Black Sam instructed him.

  Milk slithered off the bed, ass jiggling as she went to the door and held it open for Black Sam.

  As soon as he left and she watched him walk off, she turned to Othello, “We’ve got a problem.”

  “You think?”

  “I know, baby. That dude, he’s the police.”

  4

  When Mac got home, Kandi was on the couch watching Love & Hip Hop. “You handle that?” he asked her, heading for the kitchen.