by Ca$H
“Y’all already know if a nigga lifts his hand to scratch an itch make it his last act,” Kiam spat.
“You already know,” Lissha concurred.
Kiam turned to walk out of the room with Lissha right behind him.
“Hand me my shit,” JuJu said, pointing at his Nine on the dresser.
Bayonna picked it up then walked over to JuJu and kissed him on the forehead. “I love you, bae.”
“I love you too. I’ma be mad as hell if you don’t bring my pussy back safe and sound,” he joked.
“You so nasty,” she kissed his lips.
“On the real be careful and keep your eyes open.”
“I got it, baby. I’ll be right back,” she said then turned to leave the room. The smile dropped from her face and was replaced with tight lips and a creased brow.
Outside, Kiam walked over to Dirty's car and instructed one of the boys to stay there with JuJu. There was no way he was going to leave his right hand unprotected.
**********
When Kiam pulled up to the small house on St. Clair he deaded the engine and scanned the area. “This nigga been holding out. I know he knows what happened to the twin. I need that nigga alive and talking, is that understood?”
“Got you,” Lissha said.
Bayonna just nodded her head but she was not sure if she would be able to comply.
They each exited the car and pulled their heat out. Slowly they approached the steps to the house keeping a stern eye up and down the block. Kiam approached the porch’s window and peeked through the small crack to see Sonny sitting in the living room smoking a cigarette, watching television. Kiam tried to look around the room to confirm that what he was told about ole boy being alone was true.
He moved back and whispered in Lissha’s ear then stepped to the side pulling Bayonna next to him. Lissha pulled back her hood, purposely messing up her hair then she rung the bell and started banging on the door.
Sonny looked out the window with his face balled up. “What the fuck you knocking on my shit for?”
“I need that shit,” she started scratching and moving around.
“Go the fuck up the block,” he yelled back.
“Ain’t nobody out there. Please just let me get a hit real quick,” she begged, pulling some money from her pocket.
“Bitch, get the fuck on.” He yelled through the window as he watched her scramble to get the money straight.
“Please. Please. Please. I’ll even let you get your dick wet real quick.” She dropped to her knees and put her hands together.
Sonny looked into her pleading eyes, sucked his teeth then closed the curtain. When Lissha heard the locks clicking she reached around her back and rose to her feet.
As soon as the door cracked Lissha kicked it open and put her gun in his face. “Put your hands up and don’t you muthafuckin’ move. Stupid nigga ain't nobody giving yo dirty ass no pussy.”
“Bitch, you must be crazy,” he said, backing up with his hands in the air.
As he got ready to hurl some more venom in her direction his eyes grew wide when he saw Kiam and Bayonna coming at him with their heat drawn. Bayonna kicked the door closed as Kiam and Lissha backed Sonny up to the couch.
“What the fuck is this about?” he asked, falling back onto the sofa.
“Shut the fuck up, nigga, you ain’t asking the questions,” Lissha barked, lowering her weapon to point right at his chest.
Kiam stepped around her and looked down at Sonny menacingly. “Before I begin, look in my face nigga.” He forced eye contact then continued. “Do I look like I came here to play games?”
Sonny didn't respond.
Kiam chuckled then cracked his head open with the butt of his gun. “We're gonna try this shit a different way, but if you fuck with me you'll get the same result.” He stared down at Sonny's bloody face. “I want that nigga Chino and you're gonna deliver him to me or your pastor is gonna deliver your eulogy.” Kiam spoke low but demanding.
“I ain’t got shit to tell,” Sonny mustered the resolve to answer calmly, ignoring the blood that leaked from his busted brow.
“You hear this muthafucka?” Bayonna looked over at Lissha.
“Yeah, I think this nigga’s memory needs to be jogged.” Lissha smirked, knowing that all niggas talked once that steel touched that dome.
Bayonna moved past Kiam and smacked the shit outta Sonny with her gun, busting his mouth and loosening two of his front teeth. “Muthafucka, lie again.” She grabbed him by the throat and pressed the gun against his nose.
“What the fuck is wrong with you,” he spat, looking up into Bayonna’s eyes.
“Where the fuck is Chino?” Lissha yelled out then fired a shot an inch above his head.
Sonny jumped high enough to dunk a basketball. When his ass touched back down on the cushion he had lost some of his bravado. “Hold up. Please. I ain’t got nothing to do with this shit.” Amazingly, he looked from the girls to Kiam for mercy. “Bleed, you know I do my own shit. What's going on between you and Wolfman ain't my business.”
“Nigga, you made it your business when you let him duck off at your crib for a few days. Now where is he?” Lissha turned up the heat.
“You right. You right. I saw him. But I swear to God I don’t know where that nigga at.”
Lissha’s blood started boiling, she stared him in the eyes hard then slapped him with her steel. “You think we playin’ nigga?” she growled then gave Bayonna the nod.
Bayonna pulled a knife out of her pocket, knelt before him as she drew her arm back and drove the rigid blade into the plate of his kneecap.
Sonny’s body jolted mid-way from his seated position but the jammed blade enabled him from standing at full range. His arms flailed as he jerked backwards and forward from the intense suffering. He balled his hands into fists and bit down on his knuckles breaking his own skin. “Fuck.” Sonny cried out.
“Talk nigga,” Bayonna barked back as she pulled the blade out of his knee and pressed it against his throat.
Sonny kept still despite the urge to punch one of them in the fuckin' mouth. The sharp razor reminded him not to move though. His lips were tightly repressing his reply of any kind and silence wasn't the right recourse. Lissha double slapped him. “Bitch nigga, start yapping,” she demanded.
“What the fuck is wrong with you bitches.” He blurted in distress.
“Oh, I’ma bitch?” Lissha asked then shot him in his dick. “Well, now you’re one too,” she mocked.
Sonny fell to the side grabbing the crotch of his pants as blood poured between his fingers. An animalistic sound escaped his lips and his body began to shake uncontrollably.
“Do this muthafucka dirty,” Lissha ordered Bayonna.
An evil smile formed on Bayonna's lips as she raised the knife over her head. “Where. Is. Chino?”
Blood poured from Sonny's wounds and his eyes rolled up in his head as he tried to form a lucid thought. The vicious bitches standing over him had turned him softer than tissue.
“He’s staying on East 114th and Kinsman.” Sonny mumbled out defeatedly.
“Who helped him snatch up my mans?” Kiam asked.
Sonny's answer came out on low breath strained by the excruciating throb in his groin. He whimpered and groaned with each word. “Two brothers,” he panted, “Doral and Hawk from The Valley.”
The names didn't register with Kiam but he stored them in his memory.
“That’s all you had to say in the first fucking place. Bitch ass nigga,” Lissha spat as she aimed the gun at Sonny's head.
“I gave y'all Chino. Why I gotta die?” he squeaked. Blood gushed freely through his hands as he tried to staunch its flow from between his legs.
Bayonna stepped back breathing heavily. She looked down at the blood dripping from her blade and her coochie got wet. To her the kill was better than a full blown orgasm. “Let me finish him LiLi,” she said as her chest heaved up and down.
“Make this nigga respect yo
u, Bay,” Lissha stepped back.
Bayonna moved to where his head lay in blood, sweat and tears. She grabbed him by his short 'fro and stuck the knife into his throat, dragging it from one side to the other. Blood gushed out onto the carpet as he gurgled and gasped for his final breath. She dropped his head back to the sofa and looked on with low eyes and flared nostrils.
“Punk muthafucka,” she spat then wiped the blade on his shirt.
“He should have spoken up sooner,” Lissha said, looking at Bayonna with a proud gleam in her eye.
They both watched his body twitch one last time and their hearts jumped widely in their chests. The smell emanating from Sonny's pants filled their nostrils with a scent that was satisfying due to what it confirmed. His bowels had released and the sorry muthafucka was on his way to hell with a one-way ticket.
Kiam looked on as the murderous glint in Lissha's and Bayonna's eyes defied their femininity and beauty. He was elated that he had real riders on his team but he sensed that what he had just witnessed wasn't new to them. They had to have killed like this before and obviously their specialty was torture.
As they rode across town to follow up on Sonny's lead, Kiam’s thoughts were fully on his adversaries. If they found Chino tonight, he was going to cut off that nigga's head and hang it from a light pole by that prissy ass ponytail. As for Chino's boss, Kiam was going to make him and his family's next generation feel his wrath.
Chapter 16
Losing It
Kiam didn't find Chino where Sonny said he would be. Wolfman's ponytailed assassin was as smooth as butter and he never remained in one spot too long. Being a certified body snatcher himself, he knew how important it was to change your habits when trying to stay a step ahead of the enemy's guns. By the time Kiam kicked in the front door of Chino's last known whereabouts that night, he had seemingly vanished into thin air.
Weeks went by with no word on Isaac's whereabouts. His body hadn't turned up anywhere frozen and Wolfman hadn't called demanding any type of ransom for his return. But Kiam wasn't under the false illusion that Isaac would suddenly appear unharmed. He knew that the other side was just as ruthless as his team and that they would never snatch a nigga up just to set him free later. He figured that Isaac's body wouldn't turn up until the snow melted and the ice thawed. All he could do was hope that his souljah hadn't suffered much before he died.
Isaiah and JuJu had accepted the bitter truth too. But Isaiah wasn't the same since losing his other half; his hustle had slacked tremendously and every night he tried to wash away his pain with liquor and cocaine. And his hate of women became damn near misogynistic overnight. He had murdered a girl that he'd been seeing for the small transgression of not being able to account for an hour of her time.
“For all I know she could've been somewhere planning to set me up,” he had reasoned.
Kiam and JuJu tried to understand, though neither of them knew about his recent indulgence with cocaine. What caused discord was that now Isaiah was suspicious of Lissha and Treebie too. And for some reason that he couldn't explain, other than a hunch, he absolutely didn't trust Bayonna as far as he could throw her bony ass.
“Cuz, let's take that bitch off somewhere and split her muthafuckin’ wig before she ends up crossing you,” he'd urged JuJu.
“Bleed, is you crazy, nigga?” JuJu snapped.
“Nah, you are if you trust that ho.”
“Hold the fuck up, fam!” said JuJu. “My bitch is official. If you can prove otherwise I'll be the first to send her ass up out of here with slow music playing. But if you're just talking out the side of your neck, you can kill that noise.”
Sitting at his kitchen table Isaiah recalled that conversation as he shoveled more coke up his nose. He had been snorting all day and a half empty bottle of Jack sat at his elbow next to his fo-fo. Plies One Day played on repeat on his cell phone.
God give me my nigga for twenty-four hours
So we can ride and laugh at these pussy ass cowards
Hit the liquor store, park, and just talk for hours
Show him half the niggas die when they lose they power
Nigga forget about you dog after they give you them flowers
After another toot Isaiah pinched his nostrils together and leaned his head back. The coke rushed to his head at the same time that he felt a drain from his nose trickle down his throat.
I'm sittin’ right here homie, eyes full of tears
Never thought that pain last these many years
One thing I learned from all this shit, life real
Rep yo name ‘til I die homie dats how I feel
Watched how everything changed since u got killed
Isaiah closed his eyes and thought about his brother, they had been together since the womb and now he was disoriented without him. What hurt him most was that he had introduced Isaac to the bitch that ended up crossing him out.
“Fuck!” He slammed his fist down on the table sending the coke and the small silver spoon that he used to shovel it up his nose flying in different directions. “Why the fuck did I hook him up with that ho?” he lamented.
He covered his face with both hands and felt the tears wet his palms.
After a minute or two Isaiah put both palms on the table and pushed himself up, toppling over the chair in the process. He stepped over it and went and opened the refrigerator door. Peering inside, he found what he was looking for on the top shelf. He carefully picked it up, carried it back over to the table and sat it down.
Blood trickled from Isaiah's nose from the damage that the raw cocaine had done and fresh tears poured from his eyes. He grabbed his gun and stared at the human head that he had placed on the center of the glass table. The eyes were gauged out and with the passage of weeks, the features barely resembled the dirty bitch that had crossed out his brother but the head was definitely hers.
“You lowdown trifling ho,” Isaiah spat as he raised his gun and fired two shots into the severed head. It flew off of the table and rolled around on the floor. He went and retrieved it and hurled it against the wall as memories of him and Isaac as far back as the cradle came rushing back in amazing clarity.
The head hit the wall, fell to the floor, and bounced around before settling up against the bottom of the stove.
Isaiah aimed his gun down at it and was about to squeeze off more shots until he felt someone grab his arm.
“Yo, what the fuck are you doing?” JuJu asked, looking at him like he had lost his mind.
Isaiah snatched away from him and walked over to where the head laid. “Fuck that shit, cuz. I hate this bitch.” He drew his foot back and kicked the head, sending it flying across the kitchen floor into the pantry. Boc! Boc! He fired two shots in that direction. “Punk ass bitch,” he cried out from the depths of his soul.
“Cuz, you gotta pull yourself together,” JuJu said from the doorway where he watched on, feeling a pain in his chest.
“Man, she didn't have to do my brother like that. He was a good nigga, he would've gave her sheisty ass anything she asked for,” Isaiah spewed.
He walked over to the table, looked down at the evidence of what his brother's disappearance had done to his psyche and he let out a pained cry that sounded like a wounded animal. “Argh.”
The sound rattled the dishes on the counter. Isaiah bent down and flipped the table over with one hand. It crashed down on the floor with a bang and the bottle of Jack landed next to it and wasted on the tile. Isaiah looked down at the mess at his feet, amongst it laid his cell phone. The music coming from it wrung his heart and sunk him to his knees in a flood of tears and deep sobs.
Wish I could bring my nigga back for one day
Take him by the daycare to see his son play
And go to show him how his baby mama done went astray
And how the fuck niggas claimed they loved him walked away
As JuJu stood in the doorway painfully looking on, he didn't take the lyrics to heart because he knew that there was no way
Isaiah believed that he or anyone else in the crew had forgotten about Isaac. Bodies were being left around the city in record numbers as they avenged what they all knew had happened but no one wanted to come out and say.
He understood Isaiah's pain for what it was. It was grief like none he had ever felt in his lifetime. There was no words that could ease his hurting, only time could do that. And perhaps if they could find Isaac's body and send him away properly.
Isaiah's sobs rung in JuJu's ears and squeezed his heart like a pair of vise grips, but JuJu could not break down. This was street war at its unforgiving cruelest and the only way to avenge him was to remain strong in the face of all casualties.
JuJu was powerless to erase Isaiah's pain or to give him his unbreakable strength, but he did what family does for one another in times of sorrow. He went and sat down beside Isaiah and held him until his cries subsided.
Chapter 17
A Touch Of Comfort
JuJu's head was fucked up after seeing Isaiah like that. He had begged him to come home with him but Isaiah wouldn't bulge. All he wanted was to be left alone with his liquor, cocaine, and that bitch's head.
Walking out of there and leaving Isaiah sitting on the floor wallowing in grief was one of the hardest things that JuJu had ever had to do. When he got home Bayonna noticed the stress on his face as soon as he walked in the house.
“You okay?” she asked, meeting him at the door with her piece in her hand.
“Not really, shorty.” He walked straight back to the bedroom, removed his banger off of his waist and sat it on the nightstand. Sighing heavily, he sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall.
Bayonna slid her gun under the pillow then sat down beside him and wrapped her arms around him. “What's wrong, bae? Did you find him?” she asked.
JuJu couldn't respond.
“Talk to me,” said Bayonna, rubbing his neck.
He removed her arms from around him and laid back with his hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling. The words came out slowly. “This shit has Isaiah real fucked up and I don't know how to help him. He has started putting that shit up his nose and drinking all night and day.”
