Wrath

by K'wan

  * * *

  Jonas’s mood had gone from mellow to pissed off just that quick. When Jewels chose to hang out with Ace instead of leaving with Jonas, it made him angry, though, technically, he had no right to be. He and Jewels had had sex, but they hadn’t officially established what they were. They hadn’t expected to sleep together. It was something that had just happened, and neither of them thought past that point. He had said it himself that they weren’t anything, but it was said out of embarrassment more than him actually meaning it. He reasoned that to Jewels, it was probably just sex, but to him, it was much more. She was the girl he had given his virginity to. The thought that she could lie with Ace that night hurt him, and Jonas cursed himself for being such an emotional sucker.

  If he had been mad before, he became even angrier when he found Drew outside his apartment door. He was leaning against the doorway, talking to Sweets. From the way she was smiling from ear to ear, he must’ve been laying some serious game on her. He was just leaning in for a kiss when Jonas announced himself by clearing his throat.

  “Oh, what’s good, Raf?” Drew flashed a guilty smile.

  “Sup?” Jonas shot him an accusatory look.

  “I better get out of here. I got a move to make. See you later, Sweets.” Drew winked and trotted down the stairs.

  “Bye, Drew.” She batted her eyes at his departing back.

  “Bye, Drew,” Jonas mocked Sweets and pushed past her into the apartment.

  “You’re such an evil little boy.” Sweets gave him a playful shrug. “How was the funeral?”

  “A shit show,” Jonas said angrily.

  “Language!”

  “Sorry, I just had a real rough time.”

  “I saw the twins earlier, and they told me a little bit about it. That woman had no right to put her hands on you. I started to go over there and kick her butt,” Sweets said honestly. It was true. When she heard about Mrs. Hightower slapping Jonas, she put on her sneakers, intent on going to her house and punch her in the face. The only thing that stopped her was Yvette and Anette barred the door until she calmed down. Sweets didn’t play when it came to any of her siblings, but Jonas and Jo-Jo held special places in her heart.

  “Let it go, Sweets,” Jonas said, pulling off his button-up shirt.

  “You okay?” Sweets asked, noticing that something was troubling him.

  “I’m fine,” Jonas lied, pulling on a sweatshirt. When he went to throw his dress shirt in the laundry hamper, he felt the switchblade. Keeping his back to Sweets so that she wouldn’t see, he slipped it into his pants pocket.

  “Don’t give me that. I’ve known you since you were born. I can tell when something is bothering you. What’s wrong?”

  Jonas was silent for a while. He wanted to talk to somebody about what was going on with him . . . anybody. Sweets was a girl, so she probably wouldn’t understand, but she was all he had. “You ever give somebody something that you wish you could take back?”

  “All the time,” Sweets laughed. “Look at it like this, if it was that valuable to you, then you wouldn’t have given it away in the first place.”

  “But I thought I wanted her to have it.”

  “Well, Jonas, at least . . .” Her words trailed off. “Wanted her to have it? Jonas Rafferty, are you in those streets fucking?”

  “Language, Sweets.” He ran her own line on her.

  “Boy, don’t play with me! Are you having sex?” Sweets demanded to know.

  “I’m not having anything, but I’m not a virgin anymore,” Jonas said with a hint of embarrassment. From the way Sweets was reacting, he wished he hadn’t told her.

  “Oh my God! My baby brother done got his little thing wet,” Sweets teased him.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have said anything,” Jonas said angrily.

  “I’m sorry, Jonas. I don’t mean to sound like I’m making fun of you. I’m just shocked. I know Yvette is out there having sex, and Anette is curious about it, but I didn’t think I’d be having this conversation with you for a very, very long time.”

  “What? You think I’m too ugly to get a girl to sleep with me?” Jonas asked defensively.

  “No, I didn’t mean it like that at all. You’re handsome as all get out. I’m sure these little girls are out there throwing themselves at you, but I also know you ain’t like the rest of these little boys. I always thought that when you finally decided to take that step, the person you took it with would be special.”

  “I thought she was special,” Jonas said, thinking on all the nights he and Jewels had lain in his bed talking about what they would do with their lives when they got older.

  Sweets saw sadness in his eyes. Her little brother was suffering from his first heartbreak. “Let me tell you something, Jonas. You are a special child, and you will grow to be an even more special man. You’re going to do great things in life. Any woman who you decide to lie with should feel honored, and if she doesn’t, then that’s her loss. Never let no woman have you walking around with your head down; do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Sweets.”

  “Good, now go set the table. Dinner will be ready in a few.”

  Jonas felt better after talking to Sweets. Because she was a girl, he thought she wouldn’t be able to understand, but she had actually given him a different perspective to look at it from. He really liked Jewels, and if she couldn’t see that, then it was on her.

  Suddenly, there was a loud banging at the front door. The first thing Jonas thought was that the police had found a way to put him at the motel scene and were coming back to lock him up. He peeked around the corner while Sweets and Anette rushed to the door. There was some murmuring before the door swung open, and Fat Moe came in. He wasn’t alone, though. Janette was with him. Her face was bruised on one side, and her lip was split. Her arm was slung over Moe’s shoulder for support as if she were unable to walk on her own. There was also blood running down from between her legs and over her feet.

  “Ma!” he gasped and rushed down the hall. “What happened? What the fuck happened to my mother?”

  “I don’t know. I was about to chain my grill up behind the building, in the yard, and I found her out there like this,” Moe explained.

  “I’m fine; stop making such a big deal,” Janette said as if it were nothing. She tried to push off of Moe and stand on her own and almost collapsed.

  “You are not fine. Moe, help me get her to the bed.” Sweets took control of the situation. Fat Moe helped Anette and Sweets get Janette onto her bed, then excused himself from the room to give the girls some privacy while they attended to their mother.

  Jonas was pacing back and forth in the hallway. A million thoughts were running through his mind. He wasn’t sure what had happened to his mother, but when he found out, he was going to make all parties involved pay the ultimate price. “Fuck did this happen?” he was thinking out loud.

  “I don’t know, young blood.” Fat Moe assumed Jonas was asking him a question. “Like I said, I found her like that in the backyard when I was going to chain my grill up. Don’t you worry, though; we’re gonna get all this squared away.”

  Jonas stopped his pacing. “What did you just say?”

  “I said I was chaining up my grill and—”

  “No, not that part. The last bit.” Jonas’s mind had hooked into something, but he hadn’t quite reeled it in yet.

  “I said we’re gonna get all this squared away,” Fat Moe repeated.

  That was it . . . squared away. The pieces of what had happened to Janette and who was behind it now fell into place. “Muthafucka!” Jonas cursed and rammed his fist through the wall. The sudden noise brought Sweets out of the bedroom.

  “What the hell is going on out here, and why did you do that to the wall?” Sweets looked from the hole to Jonas.

  Jonas was too choked up to respond. When he opened his mouth, the sound that came out was akin to a wounded animal. He pushed past the confused Sweets and ran out the front door.

&nb
sp; “Jonas!” she called after him, but he never looked back. “What did you say to him?” she turned angrily on Fat Moe.

  “I wish I knew, Sweets . . . I wish I knew.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The universe must have picked up on how Jonas was feeling at that moment because it had started drizzling when he got outside. Rain was good because the water would wash away the tears that were now flowing freely down his cheeks.

  How could this have happened? How could he have let it happen? To think, while he was in front of the building getting drunk with his friends, his mother was in the back being violated. To make matters worse, her attacker had strolled right past him.

  “We’re all squared,” was what Eight-Ball had said to him earlier that night. At the time, Jonas wasn’t sure what he meant, but then he saw his mother, beaten and broken. His thoughts went back to the night in the hallway Eight-Ball’s threat about getting what he was owed one way or another. And he had. Slick’s debt had been paid with his mother’s flesh. Slick was going to die for the evil he had brought down on the Rafferty family, but first, Jonas intended to take care of Eight-Ball.

  The gangster wasn’t hard to track down. When he wasn’t on the block getting money, Eight-Ball frequented a bar called Pops. It was a watering hole on 145th Street that was mostly frequented by killers, thieves, and other underworld types. Jonas was familiar with the place because he’d had to collect his mother from there on more than a few occasions when she had gotten too drunk and became unruly. The owner, Pops, was cool. When Janette got that way, he would call the kids to come get her instead of having one of his bouncers toss her out on her ass.

  There was a homeless man outside, begging for dollars from the people who passed. “Spare some change, young blood?” he asked.

  “I ain’t got it,” Jonas said and kept it moving. Generosity was the last thing on his mind at that moment. He was hunting big game.

  Jonas crept up on the bar and peered through the window. It was teaming with people, but he was looking for one in particular. He spotted Eight-Ball at the bar, talking shit and throwing back drinks. It looked like he was celebrating something—likely the conquest of Jonas’s mother. His first thoughts were to run inside the bar and attack Eight-Ball, but that was a shitty plan. Even if he managed to make it past security at the door, Eight-Ball’s people would likely beat him down before he got within spitting distance of the man. He needed to draw him out, but how? Then it hit him! It was a long shot, but it was all he had.

  Jonas walked to 146th Street, near Jimbos, and found what he was looking for. With the invention of cell phones, pay phones were becoming extinct, but that was one of the few in the neighborhood that still worked. He fished around in his pocket until he found a quarter, dropped it in, and punched in a number that he had seen Sweets use awhile back. Drew had given her the number once when he needed Sweets to page Eight-Ball from their house phone when he needed a re-up. She had made the mistake of dialing the number in front of Jonas, and he committed it to memory. The only reason he memorized the number was to pass it along to Ace so that if and when he decided to step up his game from weed into something heavier, he could cop from Eight-Ball. He had forgotten he even knew it until then. He figured that Eight-Ball had a cell phone, but hoped that he was too paranoid about talking business on it. With hope in his heart, Jonas posted up across the street and waited.

  After ten minutes had passed, Jonas was becoming discouraged and started brainstorming another plan, but then Eight-Ball emerged from the bar. When Jonas saw Bruiser come out after him, his heart sank. He wasn’t certain that he would be able to take Eight-Ball by himself, but there was no way he would be able to get both of them. Then his luck turned. The two men exchanged a few words before Bruiser went back into the bar and Eight-Ball started in the direction of the pay phone.

  Jonas’s heart thudded in his chest as he watched Eight-Ball draw closer. He thumbed the edge of the bone-handled switchblade in anticipation. He was the spider waiting for the unsuspecting fly to land in the web he’d spun. Suddenly, a sharp pain shot through his thumb, and he realized that he had cut himself. Blood dripped over the knife, soaking into the blade. “Soon,” he whispered softly to his weapon.

  He waited until Eight-Ball had reached the pay phone before he started making his way back across the street. The blade hung loosely at his side, screaming for another helping of blood. Eight-Ball had his back to him, cradling the phone to his ear when Jonas stepped on to the curb. His hands were sweating, and his stomach lurched a bit. What he had done to Black had been a reaction, but this was premeditated. There was a moment of uncertainty about what he was setting out to do . . . commit murder. He hadn’t yet come too far to go back.

  And then it was too late.

  Eight-Ball turned around and spotted Jonas standing behind him. He was startled at first, but when he realized it was just Janette’s kid, an amused smirk touched his lips. The smirk faded when he noticed the knife in the teen’s hand. “I see what this is,” he nodded in understanding. “Before you try some dumb shit and get yourself hurt, ask yourself a question, Raf. You ready to die because I took something that your whore of a mother sells every night anyhow?”

  Jonas didn’t answer. Not because he didn’t have a million things he had wanted to say to Eight-Ball, but because he couldn’t find his voice. Terror had stolen it. If it had been a movie, this would be the part where he gave him some cool line about revenge . . . but this wasn’t a movie. It was real life. The moment he had fantasized about was at hand, and all he could manage to do was stand there like a deer in headlights.

  “Just what the fuck I thought,” Eight-Ball laughed mockingly and started back toward the bar.

  Jonas stood there feeling like a total sucker. He was supposed to be the protector of his family, yet when the opportunity presented itself to step up, he had stood there like a scared little girl. Jonas hated Slick because he was weak, but Jonas was worse than weak . . . He was a coward. “That’s right, li’l bitch,” he heard Slick’s mocking voice in his head . . . and then something snapped.

  The sound of rubber slapping on concrete caused Eight-Ball to turn around. There was the flash of something shiny under the glare of the streetlight, followed by a sharp pain exploding in his chest. Before he could even register that he had just been stabbed, another pain exploded. This one was on his side.

  Jonas stood before Eight-Ball with a crazed look in his eyes. His hand was wet with blood as he shoved the knife as far as it would go, then began to twist. “That whore is still my mother,” he growled, before yanking the knife upward and opening Eight-Ball’s belly.

  Eight-Ball staggered backward, eyes wide with shock. His mouth opened and closed as he gasped for air. One hand dropped to his stomach, trying futilely to stop the blood from pouring out, but it was no use. He took a step toward Jonas, but his legs wouldn’t support him, and he ended up falling facedown to the concrete.

  Seeing Eight-Ball bleed out into the street filled Jonas with something akin to a high. He thought he had gotten a rush off caving in Black’s skull, but it was nothing compared to this. He kicked Eight-Ball over onto his back and straddled him, ignoring the blood soaking into his jeans. He was almost giddy when he placed the knife to Eight-Ball’s throat. One stroke of the blade and it was done. His mother would be avenged. When Jonas looked into Eight-Ball’s eyes, though, he saw something that gave him pause. It was fear. In all the years he’d known Eight-Ball, he had been a terror in their neighborhood, ruling it with violence, but not now. He was just a scared young man, no different than Jonas.

  “You gonna finish him off or what?” A voice scared the hell out of Jonas. He scrambled off Eight-Ball’s body, looking around frantically. He missed him on the first pass but saw him on the second. A tall white man appeared from the shadows. He was dressed in a tight black T-shirt under a black leather jacket and jeans tucked into shiny combat boots. His white hair was heavily gelled and spiked, which made him look like
a part of a rock band. The shiny gold badge hanging around his neck said that he was no musician. Jonas thought about bolting, but the cop must’ve been reading his mind. He pushed his jacket back, showing the butt of his gun. “You turn rabbit on me, and I’ll put a hole in your fucking back.”

  There went Jonas’s great escape. He stood where he was, trying not to piss himself. He knew he was about to go to jail for a very long time.

  “Now, what do we have here?” The detective began pacing a tight circle around Jonas and Eight-Ball, who was now lying in a pool of his own blood. “You really fucked him up. Must’ve been personal.”

  “He raped my mother,” Jonas said, not sure why he had shared it with the cop. It’s not like he cared.

  “Your mother, and several other women that I know of. Eight-Ball always did like to play rough,” the cop said in a disappointed tone. “I detest rapists, even if their victims of choice are naïve young women and junkies. No offense.” The boy gave the cop a hateful look, to which he smiled and patted his gun. “You’re upset, not stupid.” The cop knelt and checked Eight-Ball’s pulse. It was faint, but still there. “How come you didn’t finish him?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Jonas said honestly. Even if the cop hadn’t shown up, he wasn’t sure he would have been able to go through with it. “So, you going to arrest me or what?”

  The cop measured the question. “Should I? Someone raped my mother, I imagine I’d have had a similar reaction; expect I’d have probably not left the meal half-eaten,” he said in a mocking tone.

  When the cop stood and turned his cold blue eyes to Jonas, something in them rang familiar. It took him awhile for the pieces to click. “I’ve seen you before.”

  “You’ve seen me a few times. We’re old friends, actually. It’s thanks to you that I was given this shiny gold badge.” The cop brandished the chain around his neck.

  “What are you talking about?” Jonas asked in confusion.

  “When I pulled your half-dead ass out of that lake I became somewhat of a hero. Even got me a promotion out of the deal,” he said proudly.