by V Vee
“Here, let’s go downstairs,” Parker suggested.
I frowned at her. “Why?”
“Because I talked to Kyra, she agreed with me, it’s time for you to—if not join the crew—then at least know how to protect yourself,” Parker informed me, before taking my hand and leading me to the stairs that led down into the basement.
“What crew?” I asked.
Parker looked at me, shook her head, and laughed softly.
“Oh, man… I have so much to teach you.”
And with that, I followed my sister-in-law down the stairs, where she taught me how to shoot a gun, how to throw ninja stars, and all about the powerful, underground organization of women, led by a woman I knew quite well, who’d joined with the local Irish mob, the Italian mafia, and other criminal organizations through relationships, babies, and marriages, to not only run their enterprises, but to take over and run the country, and eventually the world.
“Kyra Barham-McCarthy?” I gasped at one point.
Parker nodded. “The one and only.”
“Wow,” was my only response.
“So, what do you think, Heaven? Want to join the Crew?”
Chapter Eleven
Eddie
Unboxed Gym
Baltimore, MD
I pulled up outside of Unboxed Gym and frowned at the phone I held gripped in my hand. I had been waiting for Heaven to send me a message ever since she’d stormed out of our home earlier that day. However, hours had passed, and she hadn’t come back. In fact, the only person who had shown up was my older brother, Logan.
I touched my eye and winced.
It had been years since Logan and I had engaged in a knockdown, drag-out fight, and neither of us was as young as we used to be.
When I’d opened the door earlier, I’d expected to see Heaven standing on the other side, with my daughter held in her arms, or standing at her side, her belly protruding in front of her, and her eyebrow quirked as she waited for me to apologize. I’d practiced my speech. Knew exactly how I would let her know how sorry I was for being so jealous and so stupid that I would suspect, much less believe that she would cheat on me with my brother.
It involved her leg over my shoulder, her pussy in my face, hands in my hair, screaming my name.
However, when my wife was not standing there, waiting to cuss me out, to call me all kinds of names, but it was my older brother, his face red with rage and disappointment. Before I could ask him what he wanted… before I could tell him to go away… he punched me.
Hard.
I was on the ground, looking up at him, surprise rolling through me, only for it to be replaced by rage.
With a roar, I jumped up from the ground and hit him back. I ranted, raved, yelled, screamed, cursed, all while my brother and I fought up and down the hallway and the entryway of our childhood home, and the home I now shared with my wife and child. Long moments later, when we were both simply pushing each other back and forth—weakly—I knew we’d both processed and worked through our anger.
“Dude. What. The. Fuck?” Logan panted, wiping the blood from his lips.
I merely grunted at him. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Logan snorted. “I wouldn’t understand? Need I remind you that I have a wife and children as well? I came back from serving and the woman I was in love with had another man coming to her house all the time. You think I didn’t want to kick his ass? That I didn’t want to shake her, and him? Ask her how she could cheat on me? But I didn’t.”
I shook my head. “See? You just don’t get it.”
“What the fuck don’t I get, Ed? Because let me tell you something…” He pointed at me. “Right now? Your wife, your daughter, and your unborn sons are at my house, crying, talking, and complaining to my wife, while you’re here, doing… what?” He gestured around us. “Fighting with your brother. The one man you know would never sleep with your girl?”
I watched helplessly as Logan pushed to his feet and gave me a look of such intense disappointment that I lowered my head as shame choked me. I winced when Logan slapped me against the back of my head before heading towards the still-open front door.
“Get your shit together, little brother. Before you lose the woman you love.”
I’d grunted at Logan’s words, but they’d had a serious affect on me. To the point that I’d been sitting at the table thinking over them, figuring out what I could do to make it all up to Heaven when my phone had started vibrating from a text message. I looked over at the device and for a moment I couldn’t process what was happening. Then, thinking it might be my wife, I jumped up and grabbed my cell before it could shake its way off the table onto the floor.
When I checked the messages, I’d fully expected to see a terse, profanity-filled message from Heaven, but one that gave me a semblance of hope that we were going to be okay. However, all that had been in the message from: A Friend, were coordinates.
My initial reaction had been to smash the tiny, rectangular, black object in my hand, however, there had been an unsettled feeling which sat curdled in my gut. Knowing, from my time spent in the Marines, that to ignore one’s gut instinct was to risk the entire mission going tits up and having good Marines die, I headed out to my car. Texting the whole way.
I’d sent a message to Logan, letting him know about the text I’d received and where I was heading. Sent one to Heaven, telling her that she didn’t need to speak to me on the phone, or come home, or even have a long talk with me, but to please let me know she was still alive.
Wifey: I’m alive.
Me: Thank u, Baby. I luv u.
Wifey: …
Me: U don’t have 2 say it back. Just wanted 2 remind u.
Wifey: …
Me: Sorry 4 being an asshole n being insecure. Not ur fault. All on me.
Wifey: I know.
Me: Luv u. Talk soon.
Wifey: Be careful. We… love you too.
Those words had eased any lingering fear and doubt that I had inside of me about my marriage. I knew that Heaven and I would work through our issues—my fuckup—and we’d come out stronger on the other side. It was something I would forever be grateful for.
Especially since I was pretty sure I was heading into an ambush.
I breathed out a sigh and wondered who would want me at Unboxed and why.
But before I could ponder over things any longer, I noticed a body laying out in the parking lot.
I jumped out of my car and ran over, thinking that perhaps I’d been contacted because someone—maybe one of the owners—had passed out. My number was on the board for them to give me a call if something happened at the gym, not because I was a doctor or anything like that, but because there were a lot of people who worked out there who had ties to the underground and I’d become the liaison of sorts between them all. Not exactly sure how it had happened, but I wasn’t going to complain about having a job that didn’t require me to get my hands too dirty.
However, the person in the parking lot wasn’t merely passed out, there was a hole in their chest, and one in their head, blood pooling beneath them.
But it was the letter pinned to their chest which troubled me the most.
Hello Master Gunnery Sergeant Steele,
You failed your first task.
So here’s your first body.
Are there more?
Perhaps you should check inside…
Sincerely,
A Friend
I frowned. What task? What the fuck was my first task. I couldn’t remember receiving a letter telling me to do anything. I looked around in frustration, then at the dead body below me. I recognized the face after I stared at it for a while.
The mailman.
It was the man who delivered our mail.
Someone who had handled every letter and package which had been delivered to my home.
A sick feeling began to turn and spread in my stomach. I turned my gaze towards the doors of Unboxed. Taking a deep breath, I he
aded to the front door. I was unsurprised to find it unlocked. But what did cause me to freeze were the three bodies—all dead—which sat in the middle of the room.
Two of them had been shot in the head. Both of them the husbands or partners of the two women who had been in Dr. Hierro’s clinic when I’d shown up for Heaven’s appointment. The day we’d been shot at. They were lying on the floor of the boxing ring, head-to-toe, surrounding the last corpse.
But it was the third body that had me dropping to my knees, my heart breaking into pieces, those pieces shredded and burned, to blow away in the wind. Nausea burned its way up my throat, and I turned to vomit. Tears, snot, and eventually bile, all mixing together to drip its way down my face onto the ground beneath me.
Cage.
My fellow brother in arms, one of my best friends.
He’d been decapitated. His hands were bound together. His body bound by rope and affixed to a pole in the center of the gym. He held his head in his hands, his eyes open, wide, fear still in his now unseeing gaze. From the marks on his body I could tell that he’d been tortured before being killed and beheaded.
“NNOOOOOOO!”
Someone was screaming, and I looked around for a moment before I realized it was me.
I jumped up to run over to him, to go help my friend, but there were arms there, holding me back.
I fought against them, pushing them away, not aware of who was around me. What they were saying.
Nothing mattered except getting to Cage.
“Cage! Cage! I’m coming!” I promised, my voice going hoarse.
“He’s gone,” I heard in my ear, but I shoved whoever was talking away.
“No! No. No. No.” I shook my head. Finally breaking free, I rushed forward, shoving away the other men who stood in my way.
Where the hell did all these people come from?
I got to the edge of the boxing ring and went to climb up when I felt a hard hit to the back of my head, and as I fell back into awaiting arms, the last thing I saw before the darkness took me were Cage’s eyes, staring at me.
With disappointment.
With fear.
With resentment.
With accusation.
I’d failed to keep my brother safe.
Would it be the same for Heaven and our children?
Chapter Twelve
Anya
Outside of Unboxed Gym
Baltimore, Maryland
I watched him cry.
I watched as he sobbed over his best friend’s dead body.
I watched as he fought his brother and their friends in order to get to the dead man.
I expected to feel… something. But I was numb.
Except for the sense of satisfaction that rumbled through my body and filled my veins with warmth.
Vindication.
I grinned.
This had gone better than I could have ever hoped for.
When Zander had initially sent me to sleep with his “best friend” I’d been a little hesitant. Even when he’d told me it was the O’Sullivan name, still I hadn’t been sold. I’d been attempting to distance myself from my grandfather, my father, Patrick, and my uncle: Aidan, and aunts: Sinead and Orla’s criminal shenanigans. Really, there had been only two people in my family who had been “upstanding” members. One was my aunt: Maebh, who’d gotten pregnant from a black man, and had been disowned for years until she got sick and my grandfather allowed her to return home.
Then there was my uncle Carrick.
Carrick was only a little older than me, but he’d found some of the things my grandfather did, distasteful. So much so that he’d gone to work in McCarthy’s Bar, the one owned by Andrew McCarthy, who my grandfather hated.
A part of me had intended to follow my uncle and to walk away from the O’Sullivan name and their criminal enterprise.
Then Zander had shown me a picture of Eddie.
Hot damn.
I’d been entirely up for sleeping with the Marine after that. I’d even intended to make him mine. To get pregnant by him. Make him marry me. All while using him for my own plans.
But only one of those things happened.
Eddie only wanted to sleep with me once.
I’d gotten one night, then he’d sent me some lame-ass message about how he was still in love with his high school girlfriend and that was it.
I’d found out I was pregnant six weeks later.
I’d been all ready to tell him.
But I miscarried the day after the doctor confirmed the pregnancy.
I hadn’t expected to feel so… devastated by the loss but I truly do think it wrecked what was left of my mental sanity.
It was why I’d intended to go after Andrew McCarthy and his black whore of a wife.
Andrew McCarthy who had gotten my cousin Charlene pregnant after sleeping with her for an entire weekend years ago.
Andrew McCarthy who had disappeared, leaving my cousin to raise her son on her own, or rather, leaving my grandparents to do it.
Andrew McCarthy who had betrayed his Irish heritage by sleeping with, marrying, and having babies with a black bitch.
Just like Eddie.
I snarled.
I’m coming for you, “Irishman.”
Chapter Thirteen
Eddie
Funeral Home
Baltimore, Maryland
I hated funerals.
I hated the clothes I had to wear.
I hated the sad music that was played.
I hated how religious leaders and uber-religious friends and relatives used them to try and “save the souls” of those they thought were lost.
I hated the preaching.
I hated hearing people who barely spent time with the deceased person, talking about how much they loved them.
I hated the crying.
I hated watching the family walk down the aisle to go view the body.
I hated viewing the body.
I hated being a pallbearer.
I hated that I was a pallbearer for a man who was a brother to me.
I hated hearing the harsh sobs of Cage’s fiancée, Harmony.
I hated hearing the cries of his two-year-old son, CJ, who didn’t completely understand why his daddy was gone.
But the worst thing about funerals?
That moment when the dirt is being thrown onto the casket.
That moment the pastor says: “Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. From dirt, we were created, and to dirt, we shall return.”
Fuck that shit.
Cage wasn’t “dirt”. He wasn’t “dust.”
He was a man.
He was my friend.
He was my brother.
He was a mother-fucking person.
And he’d been murdered… because of me.
So I would find out who had taken my brother away from me. Away from his fiancée and his son.
Then I was going to rip their fucking intestines from their body.
Slowly.
Through their ass.
Whoever this “friend” was… they had better enjoy their last few hours of living, because I was coming for them.
Glancing over at Harmony, I sighed. After squeezing Heaven’s hand, I headed over to the grieving woman.
I was so thankful for my wife. Heaven had immediately shown up at Unboxed when Logan let her and Parker know what had happened. She’d held me as I sobbed in her arms. Murmured words of comfort. Cried with me.
And she hasn’t left my side.
I didn’t deserve her, but she was mine, and there was no way I was letting her go.
Harmony
Gravesite of Cage
Baltimore, Maryland
I wiped my tears, hoping against hope that no one could tell that I wasn’t just crying due to my grief, but also due to my guilt.
It’s my fault that Cage is dead.
While I’d been reassured by almost everyone, telling me that it wasn’t my fault, I knew it was.
I�
��d been the one who talked him out of taking the job with the Irish man.
Not Andrew McCarthy.
Cathal O’Sullivan.
He was the patriarch of the O’Sullivan clan. He’d been one in a long line of criminal leaders, politicians, and governmental heads who had approached Cage and me, trying to get Cage on board to work with them. Each time, Cage and I would discuss it and I would talk him out of it.
“I just got you back from serving over in Afghanistan. In a dangerous war that is, for some reason, still going on, and you want to… what? Serve in a war over here that ain’t got shit to do with us?” I asked angrily in a harsh whisper as I put CJ: Cage Jr., to bed.
“How can you say this war ain’t got nothin’ to do with us? This is our country ain’t it?”
I spun around to stare at Cage, pointing at his chest.
“I mean… if you want to be technical and real about it? This is the country of my people. The rest of you showed up here on boats. Either voluntarily or not.”
Cage grinned at me, rolling his eyes. “Hey, you had people that were brought over on them damn boats too, Har.”
I waved my hand. My father is Paiute, my mother is Nigerian and Malian. While my mother’s family had been slaves, my father’s was indigenous to North America. My mother had died when I was only fifteen, and she’d been sick for seven years before that. The cervical cancer she had been diagnosed with when I was a little girl had metastasized and spread throughout her entire body. I knew a part of me clung so fiercely to my father’s heritage because my mother’s family hadn’t accepted her marriage to an Indigenous man, whereas my father’s family had welcomed her—and me—with open arms.
“Still… and don’t try to change the subject. The plain and simple fact is, you don’t need to take this job, Cage.” I walked up to him, wrapped my arms around his neck, shivering internally at how much taller than me he was—I loved a tall man—and kissing his chin. “Just say no, baby. For me.”
And he had.
And now he was dead.
Which was what I told Cage’s best friend, Eddie.
