Rogue (In the life of the Rogue Book 1)

by KaNeshia Michelle

  And I did. I bared my soul, confessed my sins. I gave everything I had and the more I talked the less I cried. Eddie listened silently and nodded to my words.

  I drank hard on the offered bottle he handed me when I was done - thanking God that I finally felt the burn of the liquor going down.

  “My son is dead, Tristan,” Eddie said.

  I shook my head. “He’s not, he’s just lost. We can still save him. Me and you.”

  “As far as the family, he is,” he said, no tears this time.

  I handed him the bottle and he drank.

  He handed it back and I did the same.

  “I can’t lose him,” I whispered, “If he’s gone then so am I.”

  “You are not my son, Tristan.”

  I argued, “but I am.”

  Eddie patted my knee and stood. He closed his coat, patted his head once more. “You aren’t my son, Tristan.”

  I watched as Eddie slowly walked towards the small guest house, further and further away from the party.

  I leaned back in my seat and chugged the rest of the bottle, the burn getting less and less hurtful with each sip.

  The world had been cruel enough, and it was still dropping in temputure.

  The doors to the compound burst open. One of my father’s men staggered out, his shirt ripped and his busted lip dripped blood. He was pissed and his muscles strained in his neck. The party goers crowded behind him as his eyes met mine.

  He pointed a finger at me. “He’s crying for you.”

  Who he was didn’t matter. Something deep inside told me it was Zander. It was that feeling that most get when bad news is delievered that you already knew just what the hell it was.

  I pushed the through the bodies. Every face was turned towards me but I didn’t see them because they were like a blur, just faces in a crowd. I followed the man out into the front yard, and in that span of me wading through the bodies, it had started raining and it had gotten colder.

  And when it starts to rain, it soon will pour.

  Zander was lying in the mud. A car was behind him, blaring lights down on his broken and crumpled body. He had been crying but the rain had welcomed his tears and masked them with their rain drops. I knew he was barely hanging on but he was fighting strong to the very end.

  He was surrounded by my father’s men. They had done this to them and my mind muddled as I tried to understand why. One of the men stepped forward and landed an ugly blow into Zander’s jaw.

  I pounced and jumped into the mix.

  I grabbed the man that had hit Zander and threw him against the car. My fist pounded into his jaw, his bones in his face broke as I hit him. Hands soon grabbed me, dragging me away from him but I fought them even harder, doing my best to get back to the man who had slugged my cousin – who had no problems hitting a man when he was down and could not hit back.

  Soon I realized I was screaming. It was a delayed moment before I understood I was screaming the word: Why.

  “He’s a rapist!” One had screamed back at me as I was drug away.

  Ally was my fist thought.

  Then Lulina was my second thought.

  The second thought had been correct.

  If this had been because of Ally, there would be no reason for my father’s men. My father stood at the front door while his guest surrounded him. Dominique hung close to his side, laying her head on his shoulder. The look in his face was hard and cold and dangerous as he looked at my cousin who was damned near drowning in his own blood.

  Lulina was beside the happy couple and was staring at me with a crazed smile that no one seemed to see. I stared at Lulina but she stared back. Her left eyebrow cocked up as if to say that I could intervene with the truth at anytime.

  I turned my look to Dominique. She knew the truth. And, she looked back at me with the same look as her mother.

  Feel free to correct the wrong assessment, Tristan.

  I started walking towards my father, my strides long and hard. One of his men stepped in the way, his arm out and his hand pushing me back.

  I took a step back like I was about to back off then I leaned back and let my fist fly. It connected with his jaw and he fell to my feet.

  “I’m the one you want. I did it,” I said.

  My father turned his head and looked down at Dominique. He kissed the top of her head, his small slips smoothing against her skin – reeling in the feel of her.

  I shook my head at this, my eyebrows furrowing as I winced my eyes at the image in front of me. My father, with all that he had expressed about not wanting or needing another wife, and not caring that he had allowed me to take her for my own, he was falling in love with her.

  He was in love with Dominique Lougotti, and she had dug in deep, way too fast and way too deep.

  He turned back to me. “Dominique said you would do this. You can’t protect your cousin, Tristan.”

  “I’m not protecting him.” I’m yelling, my voice raw and ragged as I’m screaming at my father’s calm stance. “I raped my sister-in-law. I’ve been screwing her even when she was married to my brother. I’m sin in the family. I committed the sin. Me. Not him.”

  My father patted me on the shoulder. “You can’t protect him, Tristan. We know the truth.”

  The world shifted, wobbled in front of my eyes. My mouth opened but there were no words to say, at least, not anymore. All I had was the truth and now I did’t even have that.

  I was not absolved; my soul was not even clean.

  I confessed my sins and nobody cared to have them.

  Lulina took control of the situation. “Tristan pulls the trigger,” she said.

  My father looked at her and so did everyone else.

  Lulina kept going, gaining steam, “I still love Alexander like my son and he would want it from the only person he loved more than anything. Give him that,” she voiced the reason and everyone was listening.

  It had made sense to the crowd that I be the one to pull the trigger and a gun was passed to me.

  I was frozen stiff. The blood in my body had drained and I was cold from the rain. The color in the world washed away. I couldn’t remember if I walked to Zander or if Lulina herself had led me to him, but when I could see and when I could focus, Zander laying in front of me.

  He was about to die for something I had did and I couldn’t look him in the eyes, but I knew that he knew that I was guilty of what he was about to be excuted for.

  Zander had deserved better than this.

  He would not get it. What he would get was a hot bullet to the head.

  By now he was wishing for it and I shared the same sentiment.

  I gripped the gun, the cold metal and felt the deadliness in the palm of my hand.

  I did not want this.

  “Do it, Tristan,” someone said to me. I knew the voice but couldn’t remember who it was.

  I could feel the drops of the water running down my face, down my cheeks – I was crying but no one would ever know.

  I wished Zander hated me.

  When he looked at me, I was prepared to see nothing but hatred and betrayal, but he couldn’t even give me that. When stared at me, it was with love – love of a cousin, a friend, a partner in a crime. We were drunks, sex addicts, outcasts from a family that we hated. Years between us, mixed deeply in a pain we both shared.

  Our bond had been sacred.

  He coughed and blood flew from his mouth. The men standing around seemed to grow in numbers by the second. It was dark, but the head lights gave light – a burning glare that seemed only directed at me.

  Zander’s face was barely a face anymore, barely held together from what the men had did to him. How he made it here I would never know, but he made it.

  Zander smiled at me. I saw it hurt him immensely as he did. He knew this was end. “I called this ending a while ago, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, Zander, you did.”

  “And I’m not mad at you for it, just like I told you I wouldn’t be – you ha
ve to do it.”

  “I got I kid on the way, man.” The talking made this much worse but it postponed the inevitable. “And no one will know it. My father is going to raise it as his son, and my son will be my brother as long as the Rogue has anything to do with it.”

  Zander attempted another smile that pain wiped away almost immediately as it came about. “It’s the life we live in, man.”

  He dropped his head and took a deep breath that never fully makes it and he coughed a violent cough. “Won’t be in pain anymore, Tristan. Thank God. If you see Ally, tell her I’m sorry, okay?”

  I nodded slowly. The cold gun started to burn in my hand – now it was time to finish this. I took a step closer and pressed the gun to his forehead and he leaned into it. A sigh of relief escaped his lips.

  “It’s finally over, man,” he whispered.

  Yes it was.

  I pulled the trigger. Never heard the shot; everything seemed to be turned down low, just the breathing from my own mouth and the crunch of Zander’s body when he hit the ground.

  It was finally over.

  My entire life I had felt like I was dead, but I wasn’t. The world around me was very much alive and very much ugly and cold and I was apart of it. Zander didn’t even get a blanket, but what he got was smiles like had been a burden that had finally flew away. My father barked orders of the disposal of the body. It would be a job that I would be excused from. Someone else would have to cut into Zander’s face and pour acid into it. It would someone be else that would bury this secret – a secret that was mine.

  ***

  The party had been over hours ago but the sky was still cold dark. My guess was somewhere between the conga line and a badly beaten man being shot had but a damper on things. The rain had long since ended but I was still soaking wet and cold as I sat in the dark gazebo – it was the second time I had been here and in that time, like had gotten terribly bad, and pain even worse.

  It hurt all over…

  I cried like a man who had no definition of the word pride. My shoulders shook as I huffed into my hands. The sobbing soon burned my throat but I continued. I felt like praying but no longer knew what praying really was or what I would ask for if I started, or be able to stop. Blood were on my hands and I could see it. I could see Zander’s blood splatters all over my suit.

  The reminder only escalated my pain.

  Something moved in the dark.

  It sounded like hushed, careful footsteps.

  “Psst…”

  I looked up and saw a man dressed in black in front of me. It was not one of my father’s men, but a much older and angrier face greeted me. His face was hidden by the shadows but his eyes read clear. He was a murderer and he was very professional about it.

  “You’re Tristan, aren’t you?”

  I had been dulled by the pain so hard that I was past the point of lying. A big part of me knew that the man was asking the question just for shit and giggles. A man with a stare like that don’t make mistakes, they make their paychecks.

  I calmly pointed at him and smirked. “You’re one of Lougotti’s men aren’t you?”

  “You got it. I just wanted to make sure I got the right nigger who knocked up the wrong daughter.”

  The remark had been so funny I actually cracked a smile. I thought of Lulina then. The bitch had been smart with what she had done to Zander, but wasn’t entirely finished yet. She had hit two birds with two very sharp stones and I wanted to congradulate her on how well she excuted her plan. I sure as hell didn’t see it coming.

  Or was this Dominique’s doing?

  Or my father’s?

  Or Papa’s?

  I laughed at how many enemies I had and how they seemed to blur together, but they all still had the same agenda: how to end Tristan Rogue.

  A burst of pain erupted in my head. The strike had been so quick but painful enough that I didn’t lose conscious right away but slowly sunk into a very dark world. I held on long enough for the man to drag me away from the gazebo. He didn’t make not one sound, and that was enough to tell me that he wasn’t suppose to be doing what he was doing, but someone in a high place had called a shot, and no matter who it affect it was going to carried out.

  ***

  The guy who had clocked me was named Tony.

  “Tony?” I laughed though a mouth full of blood. “How fucking cliché can you get?” I laughed even harder until one of Lougotti’s men knocked the laughter right out of my mouth.

  There had been no torture room in the Lougotti’s massive rented home but I was still put into a room that I instantly figured was a room of pain - hardwood floors and no furniture except for a steel chair and table.

  The beating had been personal.

  There were three of them, large older men, who you got the feeling that breaking knees and cutting off thumbs had been their life’s work. They started off slow by choking me until I almost lost concinous then stopped and watched as I gathered my breath before starting again.

  It had been a couple of times that I had gathered enough strength to strike back but soon realized that it was listless and stopped and waited for them to hit me again. They used their hands but soon graduated to clubs and brass knuckles. I had been mauled by the three bears but somehow was left well enough to talk a few sentences and take a few steps. Ribs had been broken and body screamed as I tried to take deep breaths.

  “She was all I had and your family took her away from me but I could deal with it,” Mr. Lougotti said as he limped in after what seemed like days in the room of pain.

  The sun had come and gone and come and gone over and over again as I was left in the room between beatings. The men took their time and gave me enough pain to keep me guessing. They hurt me just enough to keep from going into shock.

  They wanted me alive.

  I was on the floor, sleeping in my own pool of blood and urine. I could feel the men standing over me, watching me and enjoying their work.

  “I want this to last as long as it can,” Mr. Lougotti explained. He took a seat in the only chair in the room. He smoked softly on a cigar as he mustered a pained smile.

  “I could deal with her leaving me but I can’t deal with her getting knocked up by some darkie who was made to do grunt work.” He glanced out the window and stared for a long moment.

  I blinked and felt the dried blood crack around my face as I did it. “Spare me the pleasantries.” The words hurt to speak but I did it anyway. My mouth felt big and sore. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “Oh it’s just starting, Mr. Rogue.”

  I stood and the men stiffen, already ready to jump on me again. Zander’s blood had been covered by my own on my suit. I adjusted my suit and raised my head as high as I could.

  I did it like a man.

  “So am I,” I taunted and waited for another hit that I wouldn’t see coming.

  Mr. Lougotti smiled at me. He may not have liked me by the color of my skin, but he couldn’t help but be proud of me.

  In a life like this, you see a lot of young men hide behind their guns and call scared faces on the other end of their barrel respect, but it took a real man with his back against the wall and a noose around his neck who could still you look you in the eye to show you he wasn’t afraid.

  Lougotti staggered to me, using his cane to carry him. He eyed me with harsh, disgusted eyes. He saw me as the piece of shit that I saw myself.

  Nothing I could do could ever change my mind that I was better than smut.

  “You’ll die when I say you die,” he screamed and spit flew from his mouth. “You don’t tell me when I kill you but I tell you when you can roll over and die. And that filth in my daughter’s stomach will never know who you are. You better pray that child has light enough skin that it won’t ever know that its father was a black man.”

  “You’ll never be a live to know for sure.”

  He took his gun out and pointed in my face. “Neither will you.” He pushed the gun harder into my fore
head. I past the point of pain by now and barely even felt it. “Open your mouth, nigger.” I did as I was told and he put the barrel in my mouth. “Close your mouth around it and suck on it.”

  I smiled. Something in me found the humor in just how personal this shit had gotten and how well I was handling it. My body shook with the laughter until I finally giggled out loud.

  “Go ahead,” I taunted, “Pull the fucking trigger.”

  “Shut up,” he screamed and then he coughed, hard and violent. “Shut the fuck up,” he fought to scream again and still coughed.

  The old man continued to scream at me, telling me to shut my mouth, and the more he did so the more I laughed.

  Life had been on cruel joke and I finally found the humor in it. So many had laughed in my face and I had found the joke. For the first time in my very miserable life, snaked with good times here and there, I wanted to laugh like the world did.

  Lougotti got red in the face as he huffed and puffed. Somewhere in my laughing, he stopped his screaming and grabbed his chest.

  A heart attack and it was vicious one.

  Unconsciounsly I clamped my teeth around the barrel of the gun. I groaned when I heard a tooth crack from the hard, crude metal. Lougottie sagged into me, his chest bumping against my shoulder.

  His hand released the grip and the gun dangled from my lips like a large cigarette I was about to smoke, instead of being smoked by it.

  I shoved the old man off me, watching him crash down at my feet onto his butt first.

  I spit the gun out and it fell into my open palms.

  I could feel the three men in the room lunging for me but I was faster. I managed to catch one in the throat, and another in the head and another in the chest. Lougotti was wheezing on the ground, his eyes opened wide as he realized that he had lost control the situation.

  I stood over him as he shook and whimpered on the floor, waited patiently until he took his last, jagged breath and died with his eyes open.

  In Miami, I had done the right thing by closing the man I killed eyes.

  I did not give the same courtesy to Lougotti.