The Syndicate 3

by Brick

  Blood spewed like a faucet as the man twisted and turned, trying to get Ella off him. He grabbed her hair and flipped her onto the ground. She jumped back up. Hair wild and teeth bared, like she was a goddamned she wolf. The man’s eyes were wild as his gun fell to the ground, and he clutched at his neck.

  Ella attacked again. She was quick. She went low and attacked his legs with her switchblade, hitting pressure points and main arteries. She came back up. A stab to the chest. Then one to the abdomen. She ran around him and jumped on his back again. She stabbed him in the neck until he went down on his knees. Then she sliced his neck with a surgeon’s precision. The girl stood over his body; the shooter’s blood had decorated her clothes and face.

  She looked at me, wild eyed. Claudette’s training could be seen by the way the girl’s eyes roamed. She was taking inventory of how many men were still out. She grabbed the felled shooter’s gun and rushed to kneel beside me. After she handed me the gun, she helped me to sit up and then kneeled as she looked over the hood of the car we were hiding behind.

  “There’re seven more men in the yard,” she said. “Manuel took out three behind the house. But I see more cars coming.”

  “I—I told you damn kids t-to stay in the fu-fucking attic,” I fussed.

  Ella looked at me. “If the patriarch dies, it leaves the women and children unprotected.”

  I stared at the young girl. “Only if the matriarch is weak. Our . . . our matr-matriarch is anything but we-weak,” I said.

  “Our matriarch isn’t here,” Ella said. “The queen isn’t here to protect the king.”

  Just as she said those words, a loud explosion lit up the night. Ella screamed. I grabbed her and pulled her close to me to protect her from whatever was coming. I turned when I saw a shadow approaching us from behind the house. I lifted the gun to shoot, but then I saw it was Manuel.

  He baseball slid next to me and Ella. His knuckles were bloody, and his shirt had been ripped. It hung haphazardly on his upper body. His face also had a few bruises, which showed he’d been in a fight. I handed Ella off to him.

  He said, “Lily’s here.”

  I chuckled. Of course she was. I told Manuel to help me up. Once he did, I stood as best I could. There, in the middle of the street, was a little white woman, still dressed as if she was going to church. On her shoulder was a rocket launcher that looked as tall as she was. The cars that were approaching flipped as she shot another missile toward what looked to be a motorcade.

  Lily dropped the rocket launcher. She pulled the gun strapped to her back in front of her and started dropping gunmen like dominoes. The woman had to be out of her damn mind to be out in the middle of the street, in the open, shooting. But there she was, laying niggas out like it was a sport to her.

  “You and Ella have to get to the rez,” I told Manuel.

  “Never leave a man behind,” Manuel said.

  “When at war, who are the two most important beings to keep safe?” I asked him.

  “The women and children.”

  I looked at Ella. “Then as soon as me and Lily clear a path, get Ella out of here. Don’t fight me on this.”

  Pain caused me to blink rapidly and grit my teeth. I handed Manuel my Desert Eagle. I pointed to the clip on the ground, knowing he knew what to do with it.

  “The recoil is a motherfucker, but you can handle it,” I said. “Stay here until I give you the signal to run. Hear me?”

  He nodded. I stared at the two kids, who had tried to beat the shit out of one another earlier, and gave a pained smile. I glued their faces to my mind, alongside Claudette’s. They, along with all the other children in the neighborhood, had become my children. Claudette and I couldn’t have any, so we took in the kids who came from broken homes or those who didn’t have fathers. They came to us for any and everything. I licked my dry lips, feeling . . . knowing my time had come.

  As unshed tears clouded my vision, I moved out. Through the pain, I used both hands to aim the Glauberyt submachine gun and took out three of the men still in the yard with ease. I heard a scream behind me and looked over to see Manuel fighting with a man, while another dragged Ella by her hair.

  The distraction was costly. A bullet to the back staggered me. The impact was so hard, I did a full 360-degree spin, the gun in my hand firing haphazardly. Even still, I took out another two shooters.

  “King!” Lily yelled.

  “Get the kids, Lily!” I yelled back, staggering.

  She came running, gun blazing, and took down anything in a robe. Another bullet to my back damn near took me down. The gun fell from my hand. I refused to fall. The man I was, the fight I had in me, the need to talk to my wife again kept me on my feet.

  “The kids, Lily.” I staggered again just as she reached me.

  She ignored me, threw my arm over her shoulder, and half dragged me—the bullet in one of my legs making it hard for me to run, but not impossible—back toward the house.

  “Manuel, Ella,” she called out.

  I looked over to see Ella straddling a man and using her switchblade with ease to cut the man’s face and neck. Manuel had another man on the ground and was pummeling him. Once Lily called their names, they jumped up and followed her as she helped me up the front steps. Once we were inside the house, Manuel closed the door as best he could. He and Ella quickly pushed a bookshelf in front of it.

  “More are coming,” Ella said. She looked frightened. No matter how proficient she was at fighting, the fear in her eyes made her look every bit of the child she was.

  I was drained. I felt paralyzed. My wounds made me feel as if my body was caving in on itself. Blood trickled down my face from where I’d jumped through the trees to get behind the car. I was barely able to sit up in a chair.

  “Get them out of here, Lily. Get them to the rez,” I said.

  “Claudette would kill me if I left you here—”

  I looked her square in her eyes. “I’m going to kill you if you don’t get Manuel and Ella to the rez safely, and I’ve always been a man of my word. Don’t test me, Lily.”

  The headlights of fast-approaching cars caused me concern.

  “Go now, Lily,” I said.

  Before she left, Lily went to the weapons room, retrieved two Glock 18s, and handed them to me. I motioned with my head for the duffel bag that was behind my flipped desk.

  “Grenades,” I said.

  Lily’s face had reddened. Her eyes were red. “Let me stay. I can help.”

  “You have to stay alive for Claudette. She’s going to need you.”

  “She needs you too, King. This neighborhood. The Syndicate. Nothing will be the same without you.”

  “Keep in . . . in mind, I am . . . the man I—I am because the right woman loved me,” I said, my body shivering as chills set in. “The queen can always move any-anywhere she wants on the board. Take care of my woman, Lily.”

  Once I’d gotten what I asked for, I watched Lily and the kids run to the back door. Ella and Manuel turned to look at me, with tears in their eyes.

  “I’ll be fine,” I lied. “Go.”

  I could tell they knew I was lying, because through tears, Ella said, “Thank you, Mr. McPhearson, for being the father I never had.”

  I winced and nodded at the girl. Manuel gazed at me for a long time.

  “Until next time, sir. May the great spirit keep you well rested,” he said before he grabbed Ella’s hand and disappeared into the night.

  I sat in that chair and waited for the grim reaper to take me. When the men finally made their way into the house, a face among them somehow didn’t shock me.

  I looked up into the man’s face and chuckled weakly, then asked, “Why doesn’t this surprise me?”

  He was dressed in a bespoke Italian suit, with expensive loafers to match. He was what many women considered tall, dark, and handsome. I aimed my Glock 18 at his head.

  “I knew you’d be a hard kill, but by God, man, just go down already,” he quipped, then blew the
smoke of his Cuban cigar in my face.

  “If I go, you’re going with me,” I said.

  He gave a smirk, one similar to mine. “I figured you’d say that. So, I brought some incentive to get you to change your mind.”

  He grabbed the other chair that had fallen over before sitting and crossing his ankle over his thigh. I studied him the way he studied me. We had many similarities. People just didn’t look hard enough. If they did, they’d have stumbled across the truth.

  My eyelids fluttered, trying to stay open, but my body felt heavy. My head was getting lighter. My breathing staggered. The hand I was holding the gun with fell by my side.

  “Just like you fucking spear chuckers to keep fucking fighting. That’s the nigger blood in you, I suppose. You just have to keep beating a fucking dead horse until you just can’t beat it no more. However . . . ,” he said, then held up his finger.

  My soul shook when I heard a blast in the distance. It came from the direction of an orphanage Claudette and I financed. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, praying to God. . . .

  “Ahhh,” he said. “You heard that, huh? I have several more men positioned at different houses. Give up, King, or I’ll take this whole piss-poor-ass town down. Light this bitch up like it was Black Wall Street all over again,” he said with flair, then flicked the ashes of his cigar at me.

  I tried to kick my leg out to topple his chair, but I was too weak and my leg was injured.

  He laughed. “I told the old man that one day this would happen. He didn’t listen to me. At the last summit meeting . . . to bring your black ass in there and parade you around like I didn’t mean shit. You got too cocky, brother.” He said the word brother like it singed his tongue to do so, then spit at my feet. He was taking a shot at my blackness. “Got too big for your breeches. Who the fuck are you to form a syndicate and then fashion it after the Commission, brother?”

  I laughed. Well, I tried to. The sound that came out was more like that of a stalling train.

  “We . . . we could have ruled this shit,” I whispered. “But you couldn’t get past my blackness. I trusted you,” I croaked out.

  “Trusted me? Ha. I guess what you’re saying could have been true. We could have ruled the underworld, but what makes you think I don’t already rule it? I sit at the table of the Commission.”

  “But for how long? That was what you were afraid of. Afraid I’d come after that seat,” I said, then coughed erratically. “But what you d-don’t get is . . . I never wanted it. I—I created my own path. I didn’t need the pull on the old man’s coattail.”

  The man in front of me turned his lips down at me. Before I could take my next breath, he drew back and slammed his fist into my face. It stung. I couldn’t lie, but because bullet wounds had me damn near delirious, anyway, I laughed. I had to. Had we been on equal footing, I’d have beat the shit out of him, and he knew it.

  I looked up, then hawked up a wad of bloodied mucus and spit in his face. I got a second wind from somewhere. I pulled myself up in the chair and glared at him. “Fuck you. I trusted you!” I yelled, and he used a handkerchief to wipe his face. “I gave you my loyalty, and you would betray me like this? And for what? Because I exist?”

  My throat burned, and my vision blurred. I was teetering on the edge of death. Claudette . . . my baby. My life. My world. There was a secret I’d never told her. I didn’t tell her, so I could keep her safe, and now it had come back to bite me in the ass.

  My baby was smart as a whip. Some of my best moves had been because of her quick thinking and business savvy. I thought about that time in Vegas when because she was quick on her feet, the Syndicate solidified their status in the underworld. Baby had always been on her shit.

  That move garnered us a lot of enemies, but in no way did I think the man in front of me would be one of them.

  “Black piece of shit,” he spat angrily. “How dare you walk around like you’re not just another black bastard from the ghetto? Like you walk the same path as me? All your fancy suits, expensive shoes, and proper speech doesn’t change that. You learned nothing from the man who claimed you as his. Nothing. We took that monkey down, and we’re going to take you down and that piece of shit organization you call the Syndicate.”

  I thought about Claudette again. People had always underestimated her. That pretty face, round ass, and mesmerizing smile. I knew in my heart she wouldn’t allow my legacy to go to waste. She wouldn’t allow all our hard work to go to hell. Not with what I’d left her. Not with all the precautions put in place.

  Quiet as kept, we had contingency plans, because she had always said that a black man with as much power as I had was, and would always be, a problem, no matter how many different white men we’d done business with.

  “King, honey . . . baby, you walk in any room and shut shit down. With a fine brother like yourself melting the white women’s drawers and having all that power, these white men may respect ya business savvy, but don’t ever get it twisted, love. They will always keep their best interests at heart,” she had said one night, as we lay in bed.

  I had taken her words to heart, and the very next day, I had started journaling everything about the ins and outs of the Syndicate. Not a day passed that I didn’t document the day and the business happenings. That was in tandem with just documenting my everyday life. Who knew? Maybe one day, one of the youngsters we had taken in would run my empire better because of said notes. But just as sure as I knew I was going to die, I knew the Syndicate would live on. Claudette would have it no other way.

  Still, anger had me riled. I saw red spots in front of me. Before I knew what I was doing, I lunged forward and tackled the man in front of me. We went flying into the bookcase that had been pushed in front of the door. Like rams locked in a battle for dominance, I fought with the man whom I’d come to think of as a friend and brother.

  His thick fist caught my cheek and sent me flat on my back. He laughed. It matched the madness in my laughter earlier. We were more alike than we were different. The only difference between us was the light golden hue of my skin. My mind screamed and told my body to move, but the bullet wounds from earlier kept me from moving as fast as I would have liked.

  I cursed and scrambled to my feet as best I could with one leg wounded. My legs wobbled, and my vision turned bright red. He plowed into me like a raging bull. I drove my uninjured elbow into the back of his neck and dropped him to one knee. I used my good knee to attack his face. He grunted and growled, trying to get away. His anger from the blow had him lifting me into the air. I went airborne and slammed down on the floor hard. Whatever wind I had in me flew out.

  I tried to crawl to my Glocks, which had fallen when he punched me in the face. I felt as if I was moving fast, but only at a snail’s pace could I travel. Pain. More pain than I’d ever known attacked my body. I no longer gave a fuck about the guns. I used my arm to try to pull myself to the phone. I needed to hear my wife’s voice more now than ever. Just her saying hello would do me good.

  Tears burned my eyes. A foot came crashing down on my spine. My stomach knotted as I yelled out and flipped over.

  “Where’s your wife?” he barked at me before kicking me in my side.

  I grabbed ahold of his leg and tried to upend him, but to no avail. My body was weak. His smile was malicious. I saw my reflection staring back at me, though it was mixed with a snarl. All the people I’d killed flashed before my eyes. Then the night I’d met my wife. I’d met the twenty-year-old spitfire, who was as beautiful as the day was long, at a juke joint. Tall and built like a brick house, she was mine as soon as I laid eyes on her.

  She’d been there with another man. It had been a meeting my father had taken me to. At thirty, he was finally handing over the reins of his business to me. But, damn, what they had been talking about. The beautiful woman, with legs, hips, and thighs that had to have been handcrafted by God himself, smiled at me.

  “Son, I want you to meet someone,” Daddy had said.


  I’d nodded, not giving a damn, really.

  “This here is Luciano Acardi,” Daddy said. “The man you gone be doing business with from now on. His daddy is the Commission’s lead chair. Luci here set to take over soon.”

  I stopped staring at the woman with Luciano long enough to pretend I had some kind of sense. I shook hands with the man in front of me, a smooth-ass Italian dude who looked like a playboy more than a mobster’s son.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Acardi. It’s going to be a pleasure doing business with you,” I said.

  Luci looked at me, then glanced at the woman next to him. He chuckled, then said, “I’m sure the pleasure will be all mine.”

  Daddy said, “Son, that there is Big Daddy Haynes’s youngest daughter. She name Claudette. People call her Detty or Cece.”

  She smiled at me. “You can call me . . . whatever you like,” she said.

  I licked my lips, then smiled. I took her hand, then kissed the palm of it. “Name’s Kingston. You can call me . . . anytime.”

  Her smile widened. Lush lips covered in ruby-red lipstick drew attention to her white teeth. I gave her the once-over. The black sequined dress she had on sparkled in the lighting of the club. Platform heels made her already statuesque frame even more appealing. Her hair had been pulled back into a puffy ponytail. I wanted to run my fingers through it. She was mine from that moment on.

  My senses finally brought me back from the past when the heel of a shoe came crashing down on my face. I lay there as the man in the room with me stomped me until I stopped moving. A thousand shivers and cold chills crawled over my body. My wedding band burned on my finger. I focused the last of my energy on sending all my love to the woman I’d leave behind. I’d told her that I’d always be there for her, that I’d always be here. I’d failed.

  “Fucking mook bastard,” was the last thing I heard him say before he ordered someone to light my office up and before bullets from his gun ripped into my body.