Moth to a Flame

by Antoinette, Ashley

  Raven was silent the entire ride home. She expected to receive some type of sympathy from Mizan. If she had ever needed a shoulder to cry on, surely today would have been that day. It was the one time she wished they could put their differences aside. She wanted him to hold her, to comfort her, to be her man, but when he pulled up in front of their home and popped the locks she knew that even the death of her mother would not soften his ice-cold demeanor.

  She got out of the car and opened the back door for Morgan. “Be ready tonight. I’ve got a business meeting in Detroit at the Renaissance Center and my man is bringing his wife, so I need you on deck,” Mizan said.

  “Mizan, not tonight. I’m not in the mood to deal with anyone right now. My mother just died,” she argued.

  “And now the bitch is in the ground. I paid for the funeral and the whole nine. There ain’t shit you can do for her now. I need you tonight. So be ready,” he stated harshly.

  Raven slammed the car door and glared at him through the window. If looks could kill Mizan would have been circled in chalk. He pulled away from the house with no remorse. As soon as he was out of sight, Raven ushered Morgan into the house. Once she was settled, Raven hurried to her bedroom and retrieved the note.

  Meet me at my spot in Swartz Creek at three o’clock.There is something you need to know.

  Raven grabbed the keys to her CLK, grabbed Morgan, and was out the door within minutes. She sped through the city streets as she rushed to Ethic’s house.

  “Why are you driving so fast?” Morgan signed. “Where are we going?” Raven was driving so frantically that she could barely look over to see what her sister was saying. She glanced again as she tried to interpret her sister’s message.

  “We’re going to see Ethic,” Raven said truthfully. “You can’t tell Mizan though, Morgan. No matter what, okay?” she asked, sticking up her pinky finger.

  Morgan squinted her eyes so that she could read Raven’s lips from the side and once she understood, she nodded. She interlocked pinkies with Raven, promising that she wouldn’t tell.

  Raven raced toward Ethic like her life depended on it. She could not stop her foot from becoming heavy on the gas pedal. Ethic represented familiarity for Raven. He made her feel safe, and protection was something she had not felt in such a long time. When she saw his shiny new Dodge Challenger sitting in the driveway, she let out a sigh of relief. It seemed as if she had been holding in her fear for years, but the closer she got to him, the more she felt it melt away.

  “Are you okay?” Morgan signed as she looked at Raven curiously.

  “I will be,” Raven responded as she pulled one of Morgan’s pigtails playfully.

  “I know when you and Mizan fight. I know he hits you. I hate him when he hurts you,” Morgan signed.

  The words were like a punch to the gut, because Raven had tried hard to keep Morgan from seeing too much. “I thought you liked Mizan.” Raven said, trying to lighten the mood.

  “I just pretend to like him so he won’t start hurting me too,” Morgan revealed.

  Raven’s chin trembled as she held on to the sob that was building in her throat. She reached over and grabbed her sister’s hand. “I would never let that happen, Stank. I’m always going to protect you,” she promised.

  “But who is going to protect you?” Morgan signed.

  “I don’t know Stank ... I don’t know,” she replied as she pulled into Ethic’s driveway. They got out of the car and Raven kneeled down to face her sister.

  “Morgan, I am so sorry for everything I have put you through. I never want you to be with someone like Mizan, and I haven’t set a very good example for you. Don’t be like me, Morgan. You grow up to be strong and independent. Don’t fall for a hustler. This lifestyle is no good.” Morgan was too young to truly comprehend what Raven was saying but she nodded anyway. Raven gripped her chin and kissed her cheek, then stood up. She inhaled deeply as she approached the front door. She knew that she looked a mess. She had been used as a punching bag for so long that her appearance looked ragged and worn. The stress of an abusive relationship had aged her, and her once vibrant eyes were mere pools of depression.

  She shuffled uneasily from Giuseppe to Giuseppe as she rang the doorbell and waited impatiently for Ethic to answer. Finally he opened the door, and Raven gasped in shock. The handsome man she had crushed on when she was a young girl no longer existed. Before her stood a gruesome sight. Ethic’s face was so badly scarred from the car fire that if she did not have his eyes etched in her memory, she may not have recognized him. While the left side of his face remained intact, the right side was damaged beyond repair. His skin tone was uneven, mixing shades of black and light where the flames had eaten through his flesh. Even his ear was burned and badly disfigured. On one side he was perfect, and on the other side he was hideous.

  “Oh my God ... Ethic,” she whispered as she reached up to touch his face.

  He stopped her, catching her wrists quickly, and turned his head to the side, out of her reach. “Don’t,” he said firmly. Then he stepped to the side and invited them in.

  “Hey, Ethic!” Morgan greeted happily, ignoring his physical change. She rushed him and wrapped her arms around his waist, burying her head in his stomach.

  “What’s up, li’l bit?” he said with a half smile as he rubbed her back gently. The burnt side of his face seemed stiff and barely moved as he held out his hand for Morgan to slap him five. “Let me talk to your sister for a minute. There’s a TV in the basement. We’ll be down in a minute.”

  Morgan obediently raced out of the room and an awkward tension filled the room. Ethic stared at Raven for a long time. The same way she was examining his face, he was studying hers. The dark, healing bruises that covered her neck and the black eye that Mizan had given her caused his left temple to throb in anger.

  “Why didn’t you call me? When you lost control I would have come back,” Ethic said.

  “You left us here, Ethic. I haven’t seen you in five years. I wasn’t just going to call you out of the blue. I thought about it so many times, but I always hoped that things would get better. He was all I had.” She stepped closer to him, closing the space between them. She reached up and touched his face as tears came to her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. He let her hands roam over his burns and inhaled deeply. “You look so different. Everything about you is ...” She was at a loss of words as she stared at his ugly face. It seemed like a sin for a man who was once so fine to now be so damaged. “All I recognize are your eyes.”

  “I can say the same thing about you. You let him break you.”

  “I thought he loved me. I trusted him,” Raven replied, her head hung low in embarrassment.

  Ethic lifted her chin with one finger as his hand gently graced her face. “He used you, Raven. Mizan wanted to take your father’s place and he got to him through you. You gave him the combo to your father’s safe. He emptied it and left one brick. He was trying to set your pops up. That one brick would have been enough to send Benny away for a long time. He hit the silent alarm on the way out. Your father getting killed by the police was just icing on the cake for him. After that it was easy for him to take over. He knocked off your father’s lieutenants one by one.”

  “He put the bomb underneath your limo?” Raven asked, already knowing the answer to the question.

  Ethic nodded, and she doubled over, holding her stomach as guilty pains plagued her.

  Raven grimaced as Ethic lay the truth out in front of her face. Inside she had known all along. She could feel Mizan using her, but the fact that he needed her for something made her feel worthy, as if she were doing what she had to do. The rules of the streets told her to hold her man down, to be the Bonnie to his Clyde, and she willingly obliged. But in the process, she had turned her back on everyone who truly cared for her. She put her hand over her mouth and closed her eyes.

  “Your father loved you. Why would you betray him?” Ethic asked.

  “Mizan made me t
hink I had to,” she whispered as she thought of Nikki. “Oh my God ... she was right. He was behind it all. It was him. This entire time I have been sleeping with the man who is responsible for destroying my life. How could I be so stupid?” she asked herself as her nose began to run and she sniffed loudly. Whenever she felt stressed or overwhelmed she began to get jittery. Her body began to crave cocaine. She wiped her nose as she shook her head.

  “You were young, and I can forgive you for the role you played in all of this. You were dumb back then, but now it’s time for you to grow up,” Ethic said.

  “I just want my life back.”

  “I can give you that, but it’s something you have to choose for yourself. If you’re ready, I’ll take you away from here,” he assured her. “I can help you get on your feet. Set you and Morgan up in an apartment back in Missouri.”

  “Why can’t we stay with you?”

  “The lady in my life doesn’t like to share,” Ethic said with a small smile.

  Raven nodded in understanding and wiped her face. She was tired of crying, tired of being weak. She wanted to start over and take care of her sister. Hatred filled her as she thought of how Mizan had deceived her. From the very beginning, he had been plotting against her.

  “I just have one question. If you knew about Mizan all this time why didn’t you handle it?”

  “Because you were with him and I never wanted to hurt you,” Ethic said.

  Raven jumped to her feet. “But what about all the bricks he stole! What about the fire? You’re just going to let him get away with all of that?”

  Ethic took her hand and led her to one of the couches. “Let me explain something to you, Raven. This isn’t a gangster movie or an episode of The Sopranos. I handle my beef and I don’t have a problem with gunplay, but it’s about the money first. That’s what I’m in it for, to chase a dollar. I never worked for your father.... I supplied him.”

  “What?” Raven asked in disbelief. “My father was a boss ... so you trying to take credit for what he built?”

  “No, I would never do that, but he built his empire off of the work I supplied him. So when your little boyfriend decided to rob your father, he robbed me, but I knew that those bricks wouldn’t last him forever. I put the word out that no one was to supply him because he owed me a debt. He went through every connect in the Midwest.”

  “Mizan’s been getting money for years, Ethic. He cops his weight from some old woman. So you didn’t stop anything. He still ended up on top,” Raven said sadly. She had so many regrets that they were hard to count, but she knew one thing: all of the bad things that had occurred in her life had come from fucking with Mizan. He was a curse.

  Ethic shook his head and replied, “That old woman is my Aunt Dot and she’s taxing him. Mizan is paying double for the product. Over the years he has paid me back my money and then some. The only reason he is still breathing was because of you, and now that I know how he’s been handling you, I’ma handle him.”

  Raven thought of how sweet revenge would be. After all of the degradation and humiliation that Mizan had taken her through, he deserved whatever death Ethic had intended for him. She wanted him to die, but the mustard seed of love that remained in her heart for him would not allow her to let it happen.

  “Please, Ethic. I don’t want you to hurt Mizan. I just want to get away from him. Karma is real and eventually he will pay for all the lives he has ruined, but I don’t want that guilt on my shoulders. If I let you kill him, I will carry that burden with me for the rest of my life. That’s giving him too much power. I just want to move on,” she pleaded.

  Ethic bit the side of his cheek in rage. He had waited a long time to deal Mizan a losing hand and now she was asking him to let bygones be. He sighed, knowing that nothing was going to stop him from settling this beef. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll let it rest.”

  As Raven looked in Ethic’s eyes, she knew that he was lying.

  “Ethic ... please.”

  Ethic looked at the expression on her face. He could not believe she was begging for Mizan to be spared after all that he had done. It showed her level of absolution and made him look at her with a new perspective. She was much different than the seventeen-year-old princess he had met so long ago. She was now a grown woman who had been humbled by life’s hardships, and he respected her for having such a good heart. He fully understood how in the wrong hands she had been manipulated. No matter how big of a front she put on, he knew that she was tender hearted.

  “Okay,” he said simply as he reached into his jacket pocket and removed three plane tickets. “We leave tonight at eight o’clock.”

  “I need to go back to get some of our things,” Raven said as she stood up. Ethic grabbed her upper arm firmly.

  “I can get you all new shit, Raven. Don’t go back there,” he demanded firmly.

  “Some things can’t be replaced, Ethic. I have to,” she answered. “Keep Morgan with you. I’ll meet you guys at the airport.” She saw the look of doubt on his face. “I promise, Ethic. I’ll be on that flight.”

  Ethic reluctantly handed her the plane ticket. “Be careful, Raven. Don’t try to take dumb shit like shoes and clothes. Get only what you must and get out of that house as fast as you can. Whether you make it or not, I’m taking your sister somewhere safe.”

  She nodded, and grabbed the ticket from him.

  Ethic watched her leave the house as his heart filled with anxiety. He wanted to follow her. Everything in him told him to run after her, but leaving Mizan had to be her choice. He could not force her. His gut told him that she wasn’t going to show up, and he went back into the house to get Morgan so they could head out of town. By taking Morgan with him he was saving one of Benjamin’s daughters. He felt he owed him that much. Now he hoped that Raven had enough courage to take him up on his offer and save herself.

  Phase 3

  Chapter Fourteen

  When Raven pulled onto her street, she admired the immaculate house that sat in the cul-de-sac. She had chosen it herself, designed the interior to her liking, and customized every detail. Everything about the house appeared perfect, from the stone exterior to the manicured front lawn. It was her dream home, but if the walls could talk, they would reveal the ugly truth that dwelled inside.

  She took in the opulence of it all as she exited her car and walked inside. She did not want to give it up. With every punch she had endured and every bruise she had tried to hide, she had earned this house. The materialistic side of her wanted to stay and enjoy all of her life’s amenities, but the realistic side told her that if she did not leave, Mizan would eventually kill her.

  She rushed into her room and went into her jewelry box to retrieve the only picture that she had left of her parents. Because of Mizan’s sadistic nature, he had not wanted her to have anything to remind her of her father. He wanted her to worship only him, and she had obliged, putting all of her faith in him. She had depended on him to take care of her and to nurture her, but instead he had demeaned her and made her feel worthless. I trusted him, she thought miserably as she looked down at the photo of her parents. She covered her mouth and muffled her cry as she gripped her stomach in pain. I helped him destroy my father ... my family. He took away every single person I loved. She wiped her runny nose on the sleeve of her shirt and forced herself to keep moving. None of that matters anymore. Just get out of here, she urged herself.

  She tucked the photo inside of her Birkin Hobo bag and began to leave. As much as she thought she deserved everything inside the house, she took nothing else. She did not want anything that Mizan’s dirty money had purchased. All she wanted was what she had come into the relationship with: her self-respect. As her feet graced the polished wooden floors, she felt a sense of accomplishment. She knew that once she walked out the front door she was never coming back. She laughed slightly as she thought of the new life ahead of her.

  Freedom was within arm’s reach as she descended the stairs, but all of that came to a scr
eeching halt when she heard the lock to the front door click. Mizan came walking in. She could feel the invisible chains he had on her being clamped down.

  No, she thought as her eyes widened and her pulse raced. She resembled a deer in headlights, helpless and afraid.

  “Hey, w ... what are you doing back so soon?” she asked. Mizan stared up at her, instantly picking up on her nervousness. She was jumpy and her eyes darted around the room. If she could have fallen into a hole and disappeared she would have, but this was real life and there was no escaping it.

  “Where you going?” he asked as he nodded toward the car keys in her hand.

  Raven thought quickly, knowing that she couldn’t slip up now. She was too close to let Mizan stand in her way.

  “I ... I need to go to the salon so that I can be ready for tonight,” she replied as she descended the rest of the steps. She was so glad that she had not packed any bags, because it would have been a dead giveaway of her plans to flee.

  “Where’s baby girl?” he asked.

  “She’s staying the night with one of her friends from school,” she lied quickly.

  “Friend from school, huh?” Mizan asked as he gave her his full attention. Raven wanted to bite her tongue off as soon as the words left her mouth. Mizan knew that she was lying. In all the years that they had been together, Raven had never let Morgan stay the night at a friend’s house.

  “I’ve got to go, my appointment is in fifteen minutes,” she said as she tried to slide past him. Mizan grabbed her hand and squeezed it tightly until she dropped the keys on the floor.

  “I’ll drive you,” he offered calmly, but behind his cool visage was a volcano of rage, threatening to erupt at any moment.

  Fuck, what am I going to do? She checked her watch. She only had a few hours to make her flight, and with Mizan stuck to her like glue, there was no way she would be able to meet Ethic. She hesitated, stalling for time as she tried to figure out what to do.