That was when I noticed Bryce yelling, “Percy, look out.”
But it was too late. ’Cause as Percy inched toward the goon, my husband was inching toward Percy. And he had his gun drawn and aimed at Percy’s head. And he fired, blowing the back of Percy’s head off.
I looked at the hurt look on Bryce’s face. He had lost someone else. His boy. More bloodshed. My brother was gone. Percy was gone. Bryce’s brother and sister were gone. My best friend, Lexi, was gone. All on account of my husband. I knew I could not be weak. I had to be strong and get Bryce and myself out of this. I had to.
“One way or another, you are going to die, muthafucka,” Bryce snarled.
Giovanni laughed and looked at Bryce. “Oh, really? And who is going to kill me? You?”
I took the distraction as an opportunity to pick up the gun near my brother. I tucked it into the back of my underwear.
“’Cause unless there is such a fucking thing as reincarnation, bitch, you won’t be the one pulling any trigger. I’m going to be pulling it on you.” He walked closer to Bryce, aiming the gun as he did.
“No! Don’t shoot him please!” I begged. He had taken my brother, my friend. He was not going to take Bryce from me, too.
Giovanni froze and turned around to look at me, with his gun still aimed at Bryce. I looked at my husband’s horrified face as he raised his gun to Bryce’s head.
Bryce simply sat back, coughing and spitting up blood. My husband looked from me to Bryce, then back at me. The whole time his hand did not lower the gun.
“So what? You’re in love with him, Giselle?”
I swallowed hard and tried to speak, with my arms held wide, but nothing but inaudible sounds came out of me. So I dropped my hands to my sides as moans and sobs hit me.
My husband started sobbing, too. Huge sobs. Because he knew the truth. So why did he want to hear it?
Yes, I loved him. More than I had ever loved my husband, more than I loved myself, and surely, more than I loved my life. Which was pretty screwed up right fucking now! I was staring at the man I had thought I would love forever—a man I now loathed, hated, and wished would die—and fearing that the man I wanted to love forever was going to die.
“With all due respect, tell me, why did you kill my sister?” Bryce muttered.
“What?” Giovanni said.
“I just want to know why you killed my sister, nigga!”
“You really want to hear this shit, huh? Before you die? Okay, fine. Because she couldn’t be paid off. With the other ones, I could do what I wanted and could pay them. That little bitch threatened to tell the police on me and get her big brothers to come after me. Even when I offered her money. So I beat her in the head until her heart stopped beating. This is how she shook.” I watched, horrified, as Giovanni imitated a person having a seizure.
Bryce gave him such a hateful look.
“She was just a little bitch on the way to being a fucking whore, anyway. I did the world a favor. She is one less scum, one less trick, to worry about.”
Bryce’s eyes were watery from what Giovanni was saying.
“Now you’re going to join her.”
“Pull the trigger, mufucka. Get this shit over with,” Bryce said.
My husband yelled out in rage and rushed toward Bryce. “Shut the fuck up!” He started to beat Bryce in the head with his gun. “Don’t make any fucking demands on me! You fucked my wife!”
“Yeah, and it was good, nigga!”
I rushed forward, threw myself on my husband’s back, and pounded him with my fists anywhere I could hit him. “Get off of him! You took my brother from me! You are not going to take him!”
Giovanni easily tossed me off him. I flew and hit the floor with a loud thud, banging my knee as I did. My teeth clenched as pain shot into my leg.
My husband turned to me. He looked so hurt that I was protecting Bryce. “You want him, Giselle? Huh? You love him? Baby, just tell me the truth.”
I closed my eyes briefly. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would find myself in this situation. But it was my husband’s bullshit that got me caught up with Bryce to begin with. Neither of us had planned for this. Too many lives had been lost. Shit, this has gone too far, and I wanted to end it. End the war. All the pain now. If I could. I wished I could tell him the truth and have it be okay. That I did love Bryce, and not him, and that he should just let us go. But I knew that there was no reasoning with him. Because I was looking at a straight monster with a gun. I closed my eyes at this harsh, harsh reality. I knew what I would have to do. But, damn, the shit was so fucking hard.
“Giselle.”
I opened my eyes and stared at my husband. His lips were trembling, and his eyes were red.
“As much as this shit is going to hurt me to hear, baby, I need to know the truth.” He took a deep breath. “Do you love this man?”
I took a deep breath and shook my head.
“Bitch! Do you hear me talking to you?”
“Yes. I love him!”
His whole face crumbled. “You were my baby.” His voice lowered. “Sweet Giselle.”
I started crying again. That voice. The way he said my name evoked so many memories. The first time he made love to me. The moment the pastor made me his wife and he kissed me. When he would hold me in his arms at night and tell me that my ever wish was his command. And it was. It was. He had kept his word. The way he said he adored me when we spooned in bed.... He would whisper it and bite me on my earlobe. Our vows came to mind. How he added at the end so many kind, sweet, endearing words. How much he would protect me and make sure no harm ever came my way. That my brother was his brother, and he had him as he had me. So many memories of what we were. And now ... no matter how good those memories were ... we just couldn’t go back—ever.
I thought my husband was seeing the same things I was seeing. Recollecting all the beautiful moments we had shared. Then something brought him back to the present.
Suddenly my husband turned his focus back on Bryce. He aimed the gun. I tried to stand, despite the pain in my knee, and before I could stop him, he fired.
Bryce used the strength in his body to twist in the chair and make it fall backward, dodging the bullet. But Giovanni continued to fire. That was when I knew what I had to do. I had to end this. So I pulled the gun out of the band of my underwear. As he inched toward Bryce, I raised my gun, and without a moment’s hesitation, I fired bullets into his back. I watched the gaping holes in his shirt. His blood immediately colored the shirt red. But my husband didn’t fall. I started firing more rounds, until my husband turned and looked at me.
His eyes were wide.
I sobbed and waited. Slowly, he dropped to his knees, saying, “Giselle.”
I shook my head as tears poured from my eyes. I kept my gun aimed at him, in case he decided to fire his. But instead slipped from his fingers.
I took a deep breath as he struggled to talk due to the blood spilling from his mouth.
“I love you, baby.”
I raised the gun and fired one more shot into his head. His head split in half. I looked away as he fell forward.
And I didn’t know how to feel. But all I knew was that he was dead.
“Giselle! Get the keys to the handcuffs.”
I rushed up to Giovanni and rummaged through his pockets for the handcuff keys. Once I found them, I raced toward Bryce and unlocked the handcuffs on his wrists and ankles.
Once freed, Bryce stood to his feet.
I looked back at my brother. I ran back over to his body and threw myself on top of him and bawled. I still could not believe my brother was gone. I was supposed to protect him, and I had failed him. It was too much to bear. Bringing forth denial, I shook his body, praying he would wake up, come out of this. “Brandon. Brandon, baby, wake up, little brother.” I shook his shoulders again. Tears spilled off my face onto his. “I love you, little brother. I love you so much.”
Bryce’s hand was on my back. “Come on, baby.�
�
I knew we had to go. But I didn’t want to leave my brother here. I closed his eyelids and kissed him on both his cheeks before Bryce damn near dragged me out of there.
Epilogue
“Ready, Brandon?”
“Ready. Okay, go!” he said.
I laughed at my son as he threw his hands in the air and went down his slide. I had just picked it up from Toys “R” Us with a gift card he got last week for his first birthday. I giggled at all the joy on his face as he raced to the steps to go down the slide again. And again, for the umpteenth time.
I just could not get over how much he looked like my brother, Brandon. It was obvious from the moment he was brought into the world. He had the same skin tone, same eyes, same lips. In fact, he was a replica of my brother when he was brought into the world. So that was why I named my precious son Brandon.
Looking back, I still could not believe Bryce and I were able to escape the horror that transpired almost two years ago. Considering all that we had lost, if we didn’t have each other to help get past it, I don’t think either one of us would have had the strength to function. He became my rock, and I became his. We relocated to Georgia, like Bryce had suggested. And that was just fine for me. All California represented to me was pain and memories. And frankly, I could do without both.... After all, everything that was familiar became unfamiliar because of how it was presented to me. I couldn’t go anywhere without thinking of my loss. I knew Bryce felt the same way.
For example, say you took a simple walk down the street and it evoked memories of the person you last walked down that street with. Or the person you were going to see or you just left. Like visiting Santa Monica Pier and remembering that the last time you went, you were with your love. And now visiting the pier brought you down, because you no longer had that love, that person in your life, by your side. For me ... it always came back to my brother and him not being there. And I ... I just could not deal. I knew Bryce felt the same way. And he had to rid himself of all the grief, or lie down and die to escape it. And I knew Bryce was a fighter, so the best bet was to leave.
We set up shop in a small house in Decatur, on Clairemont Avenue. Bryce had some money to tide us over while he started and finished up plumbing school. What kept us going through all of this was the little life growing inside of me. To this day I still can’t get over how he held on and how God kept that heart of his beating. Shortly after he was born, I was accepted to Agnes Scott College. I decided to study pre-law, and when I graduated, I was going to law school. I figured it was the best bet for me and my family. Bryce decided he didn’t want to work for anyone, so he took the last of his savings and opened up his own plumbing business. For his birthday, I surprised him by renovating the garage and turning it into a makeshift art studio. That way, whenever he wanted to get away and sketch, he could.
We weren’t living fancy. But at the end of the day, we were able to survive and we had everything we needed. Not the riches my husband had given me, the expensive clothes, bags, and jewelry, all the getaways. We had none of that. Yet life without that wasn’t so bad. I loved Bryce. I was proud of the fact that he was able to leave that old life in his past and never reverted back. He came home sweaty, dirty, stinky, and proud, because he had earned his paycheck without causing misery or bringing grief to anyone. I loved it. And when he did come home, he always got a hug, a kiss, and a warm meal. Yep, he earned all of that.
Everything in our world centered on our son. We took trips to the park and the zoo, built sand castles on the beach, and my son had this thing for dinosaurs, so we visited the Fernbank Museum religiously. And once a month my neighbor would keep li’l Brandon so we could have a date night. It was more of a simple life. No Ranges, Prada, or Rolexes. We had no need for those things and no desire to keep up with the Joneses. We aspired to our own reality. And that was our life.
It wasn’t easy at first. One day slipping into the next always brought my mind back to my brother. Crazy thing was that even though we were thousands of miles away from California, his spirit was right there with us in Decatur. When we first settled into our home, I could feel his presence lingering over me. It always felt like he had his arms wrapped around me. Or I heard a voice chanting his nickname for me, Gissy. I knew he was waiting, waiting to cross over, because he was watching over me, making sure I was able to go on without him. Then, after my son was born, I felt the presence no more. And I knew where he was. He had crossed over and had joined my parents. And as much as his death killed a part of my soul, which I knew I would never get back, as much as I missed my brother ... I was okay with it. I really was....
Urban Books, LLC
78 East Industry Court
Deer Park, NY 11729
Sweet Giselle Copyright © 2012 Karen Williams
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior consent of the Publisher, except brief quotes used in reviews.
ISBN: 978-1-5998-3291-3
This is a work of fiction. Any references or similarities to actual events, real people, living, or dead, or to real locales are intended to give the novel a sense of reality. Any similarity in other names, characters, places, and incidents is entirely coincidental.
Sweet Giselle Page 23
