The man carried me out of the room in the abandoned warehouse, and I tried to stay conscious to see exactly where we were going. I didn’t want any surprises. I had no reason to trust them, especially with the feud that was going on. The man was accompanied by one more Dominican man, and they spoke to each other quickly.
Stay with me, Sadie, I thought to myself when my eyes closed.
I forced my eyes to stay open, and suddenly the bright sunlight evaded my eyes and I felt the sticky heat on my bruised body. I saw that the door to the limo he was carrying me to was open before we reached it, but that was as much as I saw before I lost the energy to keep my eyes open. The trauma to my head was taking its toll on me, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before I lost consciousness.
“She needs to get to the hospital,” I heard the Dominican voice say. “She was not supposed to be here. He beat her pretty bad.”
I was confused. Why would the Dominicans take me to the hospital? The hospitals nursed a person back to health. I couldn’t understand why Don Rivera would want to save my life.
“He did this to her?” I heard a muffled voice say right before I passed out. “A’ight.”
Everything went black.
Chapter 23
Khiron stood on one side of the room with his goons, and Don Rivera stood on the other side with his. Khiron’s arm throbbed, bent in his manmade sling, and the fist that he used to punch Sadie repeatedly was sore.
Where the fuck is Tyreek? What the fuck kind of time is this nigga on? Khiron thought, knowing that his right hand should have been there by now.
“That was very unfortunate for you to do,” Khiron said to him.
“My apologies,” Don said with a small smile. “But, once again, you and I have bigger matters to deal with than you killing her.”
“You saved her,” Khiron glared at the man before him, uncertain about his next move.
Khiron knew that with Sadie surviving again had just put his own life on a count down. He knew that she would not stop coming for him until he was dead. He cursed himself for not lighting her body up with clip after clip when he left her in her grandmother’s house. He should have sent a bullet through her head, instead of her chest, just like he had done her grandmother. She died instantly.
“It was in your best interest,” Don told him.
“She killed your men on the rooftop,” Khiron said to Don, trying to convince him that he was making a mistake by letting her survive. “She’s a liability if she is allowed to still have breath.”
Don just stared at Khiron and started to laugh.
“Let us continue business, shall we?” Don said. “You will have plenty of time later for all of that.”
Don waved for one of two of his men to come forward, and they placed two suitcases in front of the chair that Sadie had just been cut free from. Khiron was confused. One hundred kilos couldn’t fit in two suitcases. Don stared at Khiron and let the hate in his eyes show at that very moment. Khiron furrowed his brow, but before he could even inquire on what the look was for, the Dominicans opened fire on all of Khiron’s goons behind him.
“Shit!” Khiron yelled, dropping to the ground, throwing his good hand up to protect himself from the bullets.
He felt blood splatter on him, and just as fast as the gunfire had started, it stopped. Breathing heavily, Khiron whipped his head behind him and saw that all his niggas lay in their own blood. He saw Brandon laying on his back, staring into the air blankly with a single neat bullet hole in his head. Khiron saw the deep red blood running toward him on the floor and took several steps away from it. They had been caught off guard, and not one of them had a gun drawn. Khiron tried to reach for his waist, but he was too slow. He felt a sharp kick on his injured arm and he instantly saw red due to the pain.
“Tie him up,” he heard Don Rivera say.
Khiron felt somebody take his gun from his waist and hoist his body up into the chair.
“Yo man, what the fuck are you doing? Ahh!” Khiron yelled in pain when his arm was ripped from the sling to be tied to the arm of the chair.
He tried to struggle against the Dominicans and managed to break one arm free, but that was no use because he was just grabbed again. His efforts were futile. Once they had him tied to the chair he fought against his restraints, but it was no use, all he was doing was moving the chair around the room.
“Man, I ain’t set you up on top of the roof!” Khiron shouted.
He had never been in such a position in his life. He was sure Don was retaliating because Dominicans were killed on the rooftop. Don must have thought Khiron was a set-up nigga, and if that was the case, Khiron knew he only had a few seconds to clear up the confusion. Khiron knew what he was capable of and he was not ready to die.
“That was that bitch you just set free! You got the wrong nigga.”
Don walked slowly away from his entourage toward Khiron and stopped when he was directly in front of him looking down.
“I know that was not you,” Don sneered. “That mission was carried out too smoothly. It was thought out and planned to a T. It was almost flawless. That is something I am sure you are not even capable of doing. If your dead friend over there wouldn’t have come at the right time, then the mission would have been completed.”
“What are you doing this for then?” Khiron snarled, trying to contain his fear. “I thought we were supposed to be conducting business.”
Don Rivera just stared directly into Khiron’s eyes, furrowing his brow.
“You are scared of death,” Don said, not ever blinking. “You take lives daily, live a lifestyle that death follows, but yet here you are strapped to this chair, afraid to die.”
Khiron said nothing; he just returned the look of hatred back.
“You have already lost, but yet you have not accepted your fate,” Don took a step back. “The thing that you still don’t realize, however, is that you sealed your fate away a year ago.”
Don saw that Khiron still was not catching his drift, so he figured he would show him. He walked over to the first suitcase and picked it up. Opening it, he pulled out the contents, placing the suitcase back on the ground.
“She was a very beautiful woman,” Don said, looking at what he had in his hands. “Your mother was.”
He threw each of the pictures he was holding down on the ground before Khiron, and Khiron couldn’t breathe looking at the images.
“Ma,” he said, his chest heaving. “Ma!”
The images vividly showed his mother laying naked, tied up to a bed on top of all white sheets that were now stained red. Her whole body was full of deep gashes and her throat was slit ear to ear. Each picture was a different angle of his mother’s gruesome murder. His screamed got louder and louder.
“You don’t like my art work? I call it ‘Chop Shop,’” Don laughed at Khiron’s attempts to break away from the chair he was bound to. “You shouldn’t strain your shoulder, you do have a bullet in it, you know.”
Khiron fought the tears in his eyes. His mother had died in the most painful way. The woman that had given him life was dead.
“Bitch!” Khiron yelled. “I’m going to kill you, mothafucka!”
Don laughed again.
“I don’t think so,” Don said, shaking his finger. “I’m a firm believer in ‘what goes around, comes around.’”
Don grabbed the second suitcase and opened it up. From that one he pulled out one single photo. He held it in his hands and just stared at it.
“I was in love once,” Don said, his voice quiet as he stared at the picture. The iciness in his tone was so cold that Khiron almost shivered from where he was bound. “She was an amazing woman. I loved her with all my heart. Much like you loved your dead mother there. I made one mistake. I chose the world of drugs over my family. I was not able to keep her happy because of my infatuation with money. I thought that I would be able to buy her happiness. I was wrong.
“She tried to love me, even through her unhappiness, but eventually she couldn’t
take it anymore. She packed her bags and our children . . . and left me. I was too proud to chase after her. That was my biggest mistake. She raised our children here by herself, and they turned out horrible. They were rich but were raised poor because she didn’t want anything to do with me. My son was killed, and my daughter is somewhere strung out probably dying too. I came back to the states a year ago to find my wife . . . nobody could replace her. I was never happy with anybody else. She was my soul mate. We came from two different worlds but were perfect for each other.”
Don looked up from the photo, and if looks could kill, Khiron would have been dead right then and there. Don placed the photo on Khiron’s lap.
“I found her address and I was too late. The paramedics were wheeling her body out . . . the back of her head was blown off. She was murdered and I wasn’t there to protect her. But what she left me was something more valuable than my cartel itself. She gave me a second chance to make things right within my family.”
Khiron took that moment to look down at the photo and his eyes became saucers on his face. His mouth opened wide and he inhaled sharply. The picture was a family portrait, and in it was an older black woman; she was beautiful for her age. But that isn’t what had caused him to gasp. Standing on either side of her was a beautiful young woman and a young man who had growing dreads. They both had the same matching, sharp brown eyes.
“Get it now?” Don said. “You killed the love of my life. She didn’t deserve to die, but you still took her and any chance we had away from me. The funny thing is, her life wasn’t the only one you took that night.”
Khiron saw the men behind Don clear out the way.
“It’s time for you to taste your karma,” Don smiled sinisterly at Khiron. “I’d like to introduce you to my grandson.”
Everything was quiet and seemed to go in slow motion, and Khiron heard the footsteps of someone walking toward the entrance to the room before he saw him. The man who entered the room was tall and muscular, his brown skin had some light patches on it, and he no longer had dreads. Instead he had a brush cut, but his face didn’t really look very different besides the light patches on it, and his lack of facial hair.
“Remember me?” the man said, smirking, raising his gun and aiming it directly at Khiron. “I told you kings don’t die, nigga.”
“Ray,” Khiron spoke the name like he had seen a ghost, just before Ray fired his weapon.
Chapter 24
Tyler was almost to the warehouse when he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. Fearing that it was Sadie, he quickly grabbed it from his pocket.
“Hello?” he answered, not looking at the caller ID. “Sadie?”
“Change of plans,” he heard Vinny’s voice come through the other end of the phone. “Sadie is okay, the Dominicans have her.”
Tyler was alarmed.
“What the fuck?” Tyler yelled through the phone. “What the fuck do you mean they have her? Where the fuck is she at?”
He couldn’t lose Sadie. He had already had the fear of losing someone he loved once, and now that he knew she was safe, he couldn’t feel that pain again. He was pissed at Vinny for not moving on them if he knew they had Sadie.
“I have somebody following their car. I believe they are headed to the hospital. Go. Now!”
“Where will you be?” Tyler asked as he busted an illegal U-Turn on the interstate.
Cars honked and cursed him, but he didn’t give a fuck. Fuck them.
“I will be there soon,” Vinny said and disconnected the call.
“Aye, man!” Devynn yelled from the backseat. “What the fuck is up?”
“The Dominicans have Sadie, they’re on their way to the hospital.”
“They’ll kill her,” Adrianna said. “If she’s not already dead.”
“Why the hospital, though?” Lace asked.
“Just drive!” Legacy barked from the backseat. “Shut the fuck up with the questions. Niggas have already wasted enough time.”
Tyler sped the whole way to the hospital. He couldn’t believe what was happening. He kept having horrible daydreams of walking into the hospital and seeing Sadie’s dead body sprawled on the floor with several bullet holes.
“Nah, ma,” Tyler said under his breath. “Don’t die on me.”
Adrianna grabbed his hand as a gesture to let him know that everything would be okay. She knew what it felt like to lose the love of your life, and she didn’t wish that on anybody.
“I’m going to dead each and every one of them Dominican mothafuckas if they touch a hair on my baby’s head,” Tyler growled. “I put that on my life.”
* * *
Mocha and Tyreek made it to the airport with looks of determination on their faces. They were so close to freedom they could taste it. Tyreek helped Mocha out of the car and went to the back to grab their bags. Dressed in a floral romper and gold gladiator sandals, Mocha was making her way to the revolving doors and didn’t think to look back at Tyreek to see what the holdup was.
Tyreek turned around to follow Mocha with the luggage, but when he turned around, he crashed into somebody and dropped the luggage.
“My bad,” Tyreek said annoyed.
“It is okay,” he heard somebody say, and the accent he heard was one he was familiar with.
Tyreek looked up into the face of a young Italian man with jet black hair.
“I have a message from Vinny,” Victor said with a sharp knife in his hand.
Before Tyreek could reach for his gun, Victor had already stabbed him repeatedly four times, the last time putting the knife so far in Tyreek’s stomach that blood expelled from his mouth. Victor placed his mouth close to Tyreek’s ear as he staggered back to the car he had just exited.
“Vinny said he wouldn’t kill you. He never said I couldn’t.”
Victor quickly opened the back door of the vehicle and laid Tyreek along the backseat before shutting the door. He put the luggage back in the trunk then pulled off, checking his surroundings. Everyone was too busy bustling around trying to make sure they were on time for their flights to even notice the murder.
Mocha had gotten a ways away, and when she realized Tyreek hadn’t caught up to her yet she turned around, expecting to see him coming up behind her.
“Where this nigga at?” she asked aloud, stepping on her tippy toes to see over the big crowd of people. “That nigga got all my shit and we gon’ miss our flight!”
She started to go back the way she came when she felt a hand grab her arm.
“Baby, I thought I had lost you!” she said, turning around smiling, but instantly the smile was wiped away when she saw the person who had grabbed her arm wasn’t Tyreek.
She had never seen him in person but she knew who he was. Vinny eyed her for a few moments before shaking his head at her. Everything that had taken place was because of her. If only she had stayed true to the code of every hustler before her.
“Tyreek is dead, and it is time for you to come with me.”
His request wasn’t up for discussion, because he grabbed her arm to lead her toward the exit. She obliged without fighting it. She didn’t know why she thought she was going to be able to get away without having to face her past sins.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked once they were settled inside of an empty limo.
Vinny said nothing, instead he grabbed two glasses and poured two shots. Handing one to her, he held his in the air waiting for her to clank her glass with his. She saw what he wanted her to do, and she did so reluctantly and threw back the shot of Patrón.
“Mocha,” Vinny started as the limo drove. “I have been watching you. Mostly I have been watching those around you. I noticed Tyreek’s growing infatuation with you. And the fact that he would even allow himself to catch any type of feelings for his best friend’s girlfriend put a big question mark on his loyalty to Khiron. I knew that if I came at him he would break and give me the destination of the meeting with Don Rivera, and I also knew that if I offered him money he
would try and skip town. Most cowards share the same traits, so he was very predictable. I guessed that he would come to you and ask you to come with him.”
“All this to get to me?” Mocha asked. “If you had been watching me like you claimed why not just come get me from my house?”
Vinny chuckled.
“What fun is that?” He smiled at her.
They were silent the rest of the way to their destination, and when Mocha saw that they had reached the hospital she looked curiously to Vinny.
“Why are we here?” She asked him.
“Room 851,” was all Vinny said, looking the other way. “Get out.”
Mocha feared him having to ask again, so she did as she was told. She looked back at him, but he was already pulling away. Unsure of why she was there, she made her way to the inside of the hospital. Trying not to think about Tyreek, she walked toward the elevator, making sure to check every corner. Knowing the people she was dealing with, she didn’t put anything past anybody. Niggas weren’t scared to pop off on top of a hotel roof, so she for damn sure knew they weren’t afraid to do it in a hospital. The majority of the patients were dying anyway. So much had happened that day she didn’t know what to expect. After the whole hotel fiasco Mocha had no idea what had gone on with Sadie or if they were even still alive. Sadly, she couldn’t say whether she cared or not. Mocha wanted to cry because of how close to freedom she was. The longer she stayed in Detroit the bigger the target on her head got.
Once she was inside of the vacant elevator she closed her eyes and let it take her eight stories up. She thought back to the day she sold out The Last Kings to Khiron.
“Bring that ass here,” he bit his lip at her and she smiled, sashaying his way.
“Mmm, you ready for me already?” Mocha said seductively, straddling him.
“Nah, chill, ma,” Khiron placed his hands on her waist, stopping her from grinding on him. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stop her once she got going. “I just wanna kick somethin’ to you right quick.”
Mocha cocked her head at him and eyed him with her light brown eyes, curious as to what he had to say.
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