Wrath

by K'wan

  “I’m sorry, Wrath,” Ace said, seeing the devastated look in Jonas’s eyes. He hadn’t seen his friend so broken since Sweets died.

  “Don’t be. I brought this on myself,” Jonas told him. He could chase Alex down and try convincing her that this hadn’t been his fault, but it was. He had known what would happen. Had been all but told that there would be consequences for his actions, but he hadn’t listened. It was just as Flair had predicted: When you think you’ve got it all, that’s when it’ll turn to shit, and you’ll realize what kind of monster you’re dealing with. “Help me out of this bed.”

  “Wrath, you’re banged up and only got one good arm. Where the hell are you going?” Ace watched as Jonas struggle to his feet.

  “To discuss my future.”

  Chapter Forty-four

  As it turned out, Ace’s scheming on Jonas turned out to work to his advantage. He had something that in all Jonas’s years of working with the detective he had never managed to uncover . . . a home address.

  Ace wanted to mount up and ride in a small army, but Jonas shut that plan down. He didn’t know what he could potentially be walking into, and if things went wrong, someone would have to remain alive to continue the legacy of what they had built. He didn’t want it all to have been for nothing.

  The detective lived in a one-story house out on Staten Island. It was a modest-looking place with manicured lawns and a small white fence around the front yard. It appeared very ordinary, hardly where he had expected someone as eccentric as Lou Ceaver to call home.

  Jonas made a quick survey of the property. He looked for cameras, motion detectors, and anything else that might announce his arrival before he was ready. He found nothing, not even so much as an ADT sticker on any of the windows. What was more peculiar was that when he went to pick the lock, he found the door already open. It felt like a setup, but he had come too far to go back.

  He crept inside the house, 9 mm held firmly in his right hand. His left arm hung awkwardly at his side. He had popped enough pills to numb the pain, but the arm still wasn’t much good to him. It was no matter, so long as his shooting arm worked. As he made his way through the darkened house, he heard music coming from a room at the end of the hall. He eased up and peered through the door.

  There was Detective Ceaver. The room was dark, save for the light from the fire burning in the fireplace. He had his back to him, hunched over a black piano. His fingers moved expertly over the keys as he played a tune that struck a familiar cord in Jonas. He wasn’t sure, but it sounded like “Crossroad Blues.”

  “Are you going to stand there gawking at me or come in?” Detective Ceaver called over his shoulder. Jonas had no idea how he even knew he was there.

  Jonas looked around the room cautiously, as if he expected someone to jump out of the shadows and ambush him.

  “No need to worry. I can assure you that we’re alone. I gave Willie instructions to stay away for the day, not that he would’ve come even if I had asked him to. He is genuinely quite fond of you.”

  This made Jonas feel slightly better. He had naturally assumed that Willie had been in on the attempted hit and planned to track him down and settle up as soon as he was done with Ceaver. Jonas entered the room. He kept his gun at the ready and eyes still sweeping back and forth for signs of danger.

  “You know, this has always been one of my favorite songs,” the detective continued. “From the first time I heard it in that backwater dive down in Mississippi, I knew that I loved it. It was so special that it deserved to be shared with the world, and so I pulled a few strings and made sure that it was. Did I ever tell you that I was once in the music business, Wrath?”

  “And explain to me why I should give a fuck,” Jonas replied. Then the detective did stop his playing.

  When the detective turned to face him, he looked different. The flames from the fireplace played tricks with his cold blue eyes. They almost seemed to glow. His stare went from Jonas’s angry face to the gun in his hand. “Is this what we’ve come to?” he asked almost sadly.

  “This is what you made it, Lou,” Jonas shot back. “You couldn’t just let me go, could you?”

  “Of course not, and I told you as much, but you didn’t listen. You just had to go and fuck everything up, all because of that bitch who had your nose so open. And where is she now?” The detective stood. “I never liked that girl. She was always messing with your head for her own personal gain. I’m glad she’s gone. Now, Jewels, she was a keeper. She was ambitious, dedicated . . . A perfect princess for my young prince. I would’ve loved to see what you two could’ve accomplished, but I guess that will never be, thanks to Ace.”

  “That girl’s blood is on your hands!” Jonas shot back. “What did you offer Jewels to turn her against me? Money? Power?”

  “We both know that none of those things interested Jewels. I simply offered her what her heart had always desired . . . you. I knew that you still held love in your heart for Jewels, and all it would take was removing a small obstacle so the love could blossom. I was saddened to hear that Jewels had been killed, but even more upset to hear that she had failed to take that bitch Alex with her.”

  “Watch your fucking mouth!” Jonas pointed the gun at him threateningly.

  “What? Your little feelings hurt that I called your beloved Alex out of her name? She is a bitch; a manipulative bitch who only wanted to control you. She was threatening to upset our plans. Now that she’s gone, we can get back to business.”

  Jonas laughed. “If you think I’m going to continue working for you after what you’ve done, you’re crazier than I thought.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. We had an agreement, and where I come from, a deal is a deal,” the detective told him.

  “And where I come from, if a muthafucka shoots at you and misses, you don’t give him a second chance,” Jonas told him and opened fire. The first two bullets took the detective high in the chest, knocking him back into the piano. Jonas stood over him and placed his gun against the detective’s forehead. “Consider our contract voided,” he snarled before blowing the detective’s brains all over the piano.

  Then Jonas collapsed onto the couch. He was so tired that he felt like he couldn’t stand. He was only 20 but felt 40. He was tired . . . so very tired. The game was over, and for the first time, he had actually won. Jonas had closed his eyes for a second—but they immediately snapped open again when he heard the sounds of clapping. He turned white as a ghost when he saw the detective pulling himself to his feet.

  “Bravo, Wrath . . . bravo!” the detective clapped his hands gleefully.

  “What the fuck?” Jonas rolled off the couch, crashing onto his shoulder, sending pain up the side of his body. His eyes had to be playing tricks on him. He had put two bullets in the detective’s chest, and half of his head had been blown off. How in God’s name was he still standing?

  “You don’t look so good, Wrath. Let me help you up.” The detective moved toward Jonas. Jonas opened fire again. The bullets tore through the detective, knocking him this way and that, but he kept coming. By the time he reached Jonas, his 9 mm had clicked empty. “Are you done?”

  “How in God’s name . . . ?”

  “God has nothing to do with this, or haven’t you figured it out yet?” the detective smiled. His once straight, white teeth were now pointed and crooked. A forked tongue danced in his mouth. “When we first met, I told you that in you I would right a wrong from my past. You were my fresh start, and my chance to avoid some of the pitfalls of that idiot Zeke.”

  “What does my father have to do with it?” Jonas asked.

  “Wrath, you can’t be that dense. Do you think that I just came upon you by chance? No. You were promised to me. I watched you grow, waiting for the opportunity to collect on the debt Zeke owed me.”

  “You were the man my father was in debt to?”

  “Bingo! A lifetime of servitude in exchange for riches. Zeke was smart, smart enough to find a way to break our a
greement, and there wouldn’t have been shit I could’ve done about it. Luckily, he didn’t read the fine print . . . There are very few escape clauses in my deals, but they’re in there if you know what you’re looking for. Death can be a deal breaker, but it’s not as simple as you would think. Not about when you go, but how. The devil is in the details. No pun intended. Death would do it, but it had to be a certain kind of death. He thought he was slick by getting that woman’s boyfriend to kill him, but all that did was pass the debt to his children. This is what brought you to me, my Wrath.”

  “Who are you?” Jonas asked, fearing he already knew the answer.

  “I told you what my name was when we met. Weren’t you listening?”

  “You said you were Detective Lou Ceaver.” Jonas repeated what he’d been told when they first met.

  “Right, now say it a little faster and as one word.”

  “Lou Ceaver,” Jonas repeated. “Louceaver . . . Lucifer.” Jonas’s eyes were wide with shock.

  “Smart boy gets a cookie!” The detective kicked Jonas in his gut, sending him sliding across the floor. “Now, I tried going about this the reasonable way, but you want to make things hard, so we’ll play it your way. I own you, boy. For the rest of your days, your black ass will be at my beck and call. One of these days, we’ll even put your unborn child to work. Would you like that, Wrath? Working side by side with your kid?”

  “Nooooo!” Jonas charged the detective and punched him in the face over and over with his good hand, which only seemed to amuse the detective.

  The detective grabbed Jonas by his injured arm, digging his nails into it. Jonas howled in pain. “I love it when they scream,” he laughed and tossed Jonas across the room as if he weighed nothing.

  Jonas violently slammed into the grate of the fireplace. Hot embers burned his back. He had pulled himself into a kneeling position. The detective was standing over him looking down triumphantly. “I’ll do it . . . I’ll come back to work for you. Just leave Alex and the baby out of this.”

  “I’m afraid not. Thanks to you and your daddy, they come as a package deal with this blood debt. For as long as you live, you belong to me. And when the time comes that you are too old to hunt and that trigger finger of yours is too arthritic to work, that bastard Alex is carrying around will take your place.”

  Jonas had never felt more helpless in his life. He had allowed the detective to make him think he was in control, but he had been the one pulling the string the whole time. In Jonas’s foolish quest for power, he had damned himself and his unborn child, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  Or was there?

  The detective watched with an amused look on his face as Jonas grabbed one of the fireplace pokers. They were made from pure iron. “Here we go again. You can’t kill the devil, Wrath. Have you learned nothing during our little chat?”

  “I’ve learned quite a bit, Lou, like you don’t know when to shut the fuck up. Thanks to your big-ass mouth, I know where my dad went wrong and how to void our deal,” Jonas sneered at him. “By your own admission, death is a deal breaker, but it had to be a certain kind of death. My father was murdered, and his debt was passed on, so this got me to thinking.”

  “Now, wait a second, Wrath. Let’s not be hasty.” The detective was suddenly very nervous watching Wrath handle the iron poker. “We can work something out. I was only kidding. You don’t think I’d ever go after your kid, do you?”

  “That’s not a gamble I’m willing to take!” Jonas braced the poker against his chest and fell forward, impaling himself.

  “Noooooooooo!” the detective roared, his voice shaking the entire house.

  “Game over, Lou,” Jonas laughed, coughing blood. As he passed into the next life, his final thoughts were of how he couldn’t wait to tell his dad how he had beaten the devil at his own game.

  Epilogue

  Ten years later . . .

  Seven months after Jonas’s death, Alex gave birth at a hospital in London to a beautiful baby boy. She named him Jonas, after his father. When news of his death reached her, Alex took it extremely hard. Contrary to what everyone may have said about the way she left Jonas, she truly loved him. She also knew that the chances of him changing were slim. He had lived too long as Wrath. It was as much a part of him as Jonas had been.

  Ace made sure that the proceeds from Jonas’s and Prince’s venture went into a trust that baby Jonas would have access to when he turned 21. It was the least he could do for his friend. Jonas had always been there for him, so Ace felt like it was his duty to be there for Jonas’s kid. He played the role of the good uncle . . . but it was short-lived. Ace was gunned down one night while coming out of Sweets. They said the killer was little more than a kid. The description given to the police was that he had a badly burned face and one milky-white eye.

  With her new baby also came a new lease on life. Alex was doing so well for herself in London that she decided to stay. Her parents had recently died when a fire broke out in their apartment. They never even got a chance to see her new son. They were the only ties she had left to New York, and with them gone, there was no reason to go back.

  For the first few years of Jonas Jr.’s life, Alex had been an excellent mother. Then tragedy struck on the boy’s fifth birthday. They had been riding in a car, coming from the bakery picking up the birthday cake when they were involved in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. Jonas Jr. survived, but Alex had not. With no other family, Jonas Jr. ended up in the foster care system where he would remain for the next five years.

  * * *

  “Today is your big day, J. J.,” Mrs. Tully said, fixing Jonas Jr.’s tie. She was the woman who ran the home he had been living in. “You’re finally going to be adopted. Isn’t that special?”

  Jonas Jr. didn’t respond. He hadn’t said more than a few words here and there since his mother died.

  “Come on; let’s go meet your new family.” She took him by the hand and led him from the room. Mrs. Tully took the child into the office where the woman who was to be his new mother was waiting. She was a white woman with red hair and kind eyes. “Sorry to keep you waiting for so long, Mrs. Jones. This is little Jonas; we all call him J. J.”

  “My, but aren’t you a darling little one,” Mrs. Jones smiled.

  “I thought your husband would be joining us,” Mrs. Tully said.

  “He should be along shortly. He stopped to pick something up for Jonas from the gift shop,” Mrs. Jones said. As if on cue, a man walked in. He was tall and white with a shaved head. Atop it, he bore a scar that looked like it had come from major surgery. “Look at him, honey! Isn’t he just perfect?”

  Mr. Jones knelt in front of Jonas. It was then that you could see his cold blue eyes. “Yes, perfect indeed. I’ve been looking for you for a very long time.”