The Pleasure of Pain

by Shameek Speight

  “We can make Tess come to us and then kill her. We damn sure had no luck sending our people after them,” Jose stated. “We make her come to us and anyone that was a part of Hector’s murder.”

  Vanessa looked up at Ricardo and their eyes met, in one swift move he closed in on her and placed a knife on her neck and whispered in her ear. “If you say a word, you’ll die sooner than you’re supposed to.”

  “Fuck you,” Vanessa said in between tears. Vanessa had no idea that Ricardo was behind his own brother’s death, but Ricardo didn’t know this. Vanessa thought it was best to stay quiet and not push her luck.

  “Carlos,” Jose yelled. “Call some gunmen and get this place ready and then make a call to Tess.”

  Jose and Ricardo walked upstairs to a back office. Jose sat down on a black couch in the room and looked at Ricardo. “I don’t know how you let this happen,” Jose said.

  “Let what happen,” Ricardo replied.

  “Let your own fucking hit team run wild and kill our baby brother!”

  “What you’re trying to say I can’t handle my business,” Ricardo said with hate in his eyes.

  “Si,” said Jose.

  “You know what fuck you,” Ricardo yelled and with that Jose jumped up and punched his brother in the jaw.

  “Now, listen here baby brother. I’m the boss of this family and these streets and you don’t disrespect me ever and don’t let me tell you again. Now, go help Carlos get ready for tomorrow before I really get mad.”

  Ricardo left the office holding his jaw. Tomorrow will be the last time his brother will breathe air. “I promise that,” he said to no one in particular. “I’ll kill Jose, Tess and Carlos all at the same time and place killing three birds with one stone,” he said to himself and smiled.

  The Meeting

  Chapter 30

  Across town in Brooklyn in Kings Plaza Mall, Tess, Bless and Iris sat in a back row in the movie theater in the dark next to Young. Resident Evil 3 was playing on the screen, but none of them was paying any attention to the movie. This meeting was about business. “So, what are you saying?” Tess replied.

  “Just what I said, Tess. Jose has Vanessa and the truck came back to his name. It came back to some warehouse in the lower eastside. My cousin from the FBI put me on. So, I’m putting you on. You know you’re family to me. You, your Uncle Thomas, Bless and Iris,” Young said with a grin. “But listen the FEDs is watching you. That’s why I ask that we meet in the movie theater. They know you will go after Jose and they’re waiting for the war. They’re hoping they can charge you with something because they never had any evidence on you for the last three years you have been running the business. If they can’t get you, there hoping Jose will kill you and Bless off anyway and they pick up the pieces. Anyway they win.”

  “Shit,” Bless said not almost believing the FEDs wanted him and Tess dead.

  “No one likes to see a rich black person or black man and woman doing these things good or bad. They want to keep the blacks and Latino down in poverty. Alright, I wish the three of you good luck. Here’s the address to the warehouse and take these keys they go to a blue Lincoln LS. It’s parked between 19th street and Church Avenue. You three won’t see me for awhile. I’m heading out of town. I’ll keep in touch,” with that Young hugged Tess and Iris and gave Bless a handshake and walked out the theater.

  Bless, Tess and Iris stayed behind in the theater till the movie ended. Just in case they were being followed by the FEDs. They wouldn’t know about Young coming to see them. It just looked like the three of them went to the movies.

  As Young walked through the mall’s underground garage, he had a bad feeling about it all like the tape. He just came from his cousins about the person who blackmailed Jose. The voice sounded like Vanessa, but he had to listen to it once more there were a lot of questions unanswered. When he figured them out he’d let Tess know everything. As he opened the car door to his black Infiniti G 32, his instinct told him to turn around and grab his gun from his waist. He turned around with his gun in his hand and faced the person that was behind him.

  Once he realized who the person, “Oh it’s you,” Young said. As he calmed down, “You scared the shit out of me,” he said with a smile. Out of nowhere a bullet slammed into his stomach. “AAHHH,” Young yelled. “What the fuck are you doing?” He tried to raise his gun. A bullet tore through the flesh of his face blowing four holes in it. He lay on the ground next to his car as his blood flowed out on the ground his body was shaking and jerking violently. He was still breathing when his killer stood over him. “Why?” was the last word to escape his mouth before four shots ripped through his chest from the silencer of the 3.80 automatic.

  His killer then picked up his body and placed it into Young’s car and shut the door and walked away without a care in the world. No one saw or heard anything. All was going as planned as far as the killer was concerned.

  Getting Ready for War

  Chapter 31

  Bless, Tess and Iris were having a meeting in their Brooklyn townhouse in Crown Heights with their three lieutenants they had running the drug spots in the streets, Damou, Layla and Tyler.

  “Yo Damou, I want you to go to Church Avenue on 19th Street and pick up a blue Lincoln LS inside are the guns I want you to get some soldiers,” Bless stated.

  “How many soldiers do you need?” Damou asked.

  “I need thirteen of your best.” Bless demanded.

  “I got you,” Damou replied. He was eighteen and coming up in the game fast. He was dark skin and grimy and had the streets scared to death of him. He was quick with his gun and had a gang of young wolves to back him up. He was sure he’d go to the top of the game. And ever since Omar’s death he’d been running all of the Brownsville spots and some of the other spots. Damou looked up to Bless and wanted to be just like him or even better. He would put any work in for Bless. He would kill anyone that Bless asked. He loved Bless for his own reason.

  While Bless was giving Damou the run down on the plan, Tess’s cell phone rang, “Who’s this?”

  “Como esta bitch?”

  “Who the fuck is this,” Tess yelled into the phone.

  “Oh, you know who this is Tess.” Tess went quiet and pressed the button for the speaker phone so everybody could hear the call. “Listen carefully bitch, I’m only going to say this once. You killed my brother and now I’m going to kill you.”

  “Fuck you Jose,” Tess yelled. Everybody’s eyes were on Tess. They didn’t want the caller to know they were there, but they were all getting madder by the minute.

  “No fuck you Tess and your team. I have your girl Vanessa and if you want her to stay alive, you meet me when I call you again.”

  “How I know she’s still alive,” Tess said. Just then Jose slapped Vanessa making her scream and put a gun to her head. “Talk bitch, your friends want to know I didn’t kill your ass yet!”

  “Tess! Tess! Don’t come for me!” Jose hit Vanessa in the jaw with his gun, “Shut the fuck up, bitch!”

  Carlos stood by and watched hating the fact his cousin was beating on a woman.

  “Okay Jose,” Tess said. “Stop it. I’ll come. I’ll come,” she yelled into the phone.

  “I want all of you, Bless and Iris too.”

  “Okay, so where do you want us to meet you?”

  “I’ll call you four in the morning and tell you,” and with that Jose hung up the phone.

  “Layla, I need you to get your team ready. Bring about fifteen gunmen.”

  “I got you,” Layla replied. Tess put Layla into the game. She was eighteen, light skin, beautiful, and as dangerous as they get. She grew up in five different foster homes that made her a fighter. She was raped in every foster home. This made her heart cold. Tess found her wandering the streets when she was sixteen. She had the same clothes on for a month. She had run away from her last foster home a month ago in Bushwick after cutting her foster father’s stomach while he tried to rape her again. Tess saw the g
irl walking and took her in, gave her food, clean clothes, and let her use the bathroom to take a shower and asked her questions about her life. She was the first and only person Layla met that cared about how she felt.

  After telling Tess what she did to her foster father and why, Tess made her jump in her car and they drove to her foster father’s house. Once there Tess made Layla follow her to the door. Layla didn’t know what was going on all she knew was she was now feeling bad. This nice lady who fed her and clothed her was now making her go back to the place she ran from.

  Tess knocked on the door and an old fat brown skinned man came to the door. He looked at Tess and her voluptuous body and licked his lips and then he looked behind her to see Layla standing there.

  “I see you brought back the slut, thank you. I’ll deal with her,” he said while grabbing his dick. Tess pulled out a pink pearl handle baby 9 mm handgun from her thigh holster and hit the fat man in the nose then she hit him again in the mouth making him fall back into the house on the floor.

  Tess walked into the house. She pointed the gun at the fat man on the floor. “So, you like raping women and little girls,” and she hit him again.

  “No, please stop,” he cried, but Tess didn’t. She repeatedly hit him with the gun over and over until his face looked like a bloody mess then she pulled out a razor from her purse. Layla was standing there shocked as hell. She was enjoying her foster father getting his ass whipped.

  “Layla, come here.” Layla walked over to Tess. “Take this,” Tess passed Layla the razor. “Cut this fat motherfucker,” with a devilish grin. Layla swung the blade down on her foster father’s face.

  “AAHHH,” he cried. “Please stop!”

  “You didn’t want to stop when I asked you to stop raping me,” Layla said cutting him again and again.

  “Alright that’s enough,” Tess said while grabbing the girl’s hand because she was lost in rage. Tess looked down at the fat man, “Listen and listen to me good, if you tell the cops or anybody else about what happened today, you’re death will be a painful one more painful than what happened today.”

  The fat man looked in Tess’s eyes and knew she was serious. “I won’t tell,” he said between crying and sobbing from pain.

  “Oh, I know you won’t,” Tess replied. “I’m going to take care of Layla from now on and here’s what I want you to do every time the social worker comes over here. You call me and I’ll bring her over. You tell them that she still lives here and you’re going to do this until she is eighteen and can legally live on her own. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” the fat man said.

  “You can keep the money they give you for taking care of her every month. That’s what your ass was doing anyway and if I ever find out you take in another girl and do the same thing to them me and Layla will pay you a visit. Here’s my card with my number. You call me a day before that social worker get here or else. Come on Layla.”

  And with that Layla was the happiest girl in the world. Tess took good care of her. She taught her the drug game and the business game and gave her an apartment to live in one of her buildings when she turned eighteen. Layla would go to the end of the earth for Tess and back.

  Bless pulled out a map. “Listen, everyone they don’t know that we know where they’re keeping Vanessa. That’s the reason why they want to call us at the last minute and tell us where to meet them so we don’t have time to be ready.”

  “Yo, I have the team ready on the lower eastside,” Iris said. “Tyler had the lower eastside projects on lock so that will be where some of us will use for an escape and we have some Chinese connects down there to hide if need be.”

  “I’ll have everything ready,” Bless said and with that the meeting was over, sending the three young lieutenants to handle their part of the plan.

  “Yo, this shit is real fucked up,” Iris said. “How do you think Jose know we was behind his brother’s death. You think Ricardo sold us out?”

  “I don’t know, but if he did he’s dead too,” Tess replied.

  “Shit, if you bitches didn’t do the hit on Hector, we wouldn’t have this problem in the first place, but no ya’ll wanted to run around on some female hit man shit like Kill Bill. None of this shit would have gone down if you just sold drugs and stayed to yourself,” Bless said with anger in his voice. He now knew who had put a bomb in his car and had all type of people trying to kill him. To him, it felt like every time he was close to getting out of the drug game some bullshit stuck him back in and he once again had to become the beast he so badly didn’t want to be anymore.

  “Listen Bless, I know you’re mad, but we did what we did there’s no turning back. I’m upset over this shit too. I lost one of my closest friends and the next one has been kidnapped,” Tess said.

  “Any man that’s grimy enough to order a hit on his own flesh and blood is a person not to be trusted or to do business with. If he’d be grimy enough to kill his own family, what you think he’d do to his friends or business partners or better yet you! The two of you already know this after all the shit we’ve been through together,” Bless said while looking at the two women with disgust in his eyes.

  “Like Tess said we did what we did and know we fucked up. Are you going to keep throwing this shit in our face,” Iris said.

  “No Mami, you two are my heart and I’ll do anything for you. I’m just fucked up in the head over this shit.”

  “We’re sorry,” Iris said and then got up.

  “I have to go get some more things ready, but don’t think for a second I’m not fucked up in the head over this shit too.” Bless said.

  Iris bent down and kissed Tess deeply and passionately on the lips. “Mmm,” Iris moaned. “Damn, I miss that,” she said as she looked Tess in her eyes. Tess looked at Bless giving him the ‘I didn’t know she was going to do that look.’ Then Iris walked to the end of table where Bless was sitting and used her tongue to slowly move around his neck an inched its way to his chin and then his lips. Their tongues danced in each other’s mouths and her hand went down slow to feel his hard dick through his jeans. Iris bent down and started to unzip his jeans.

  “Stop Iris!”

  “What,” she replied.

  “I’m not feeling this. I can’t keep doing this. I love you, but my heart and body belongs to Tess. I have to put a stop to this. It was alright when we were younger, but this has to stop!”

  Iris got up off of her knees. “If that’s how you feel, I’ll respect that! You feel the same way Tess?”

  Tess looked Iris in the eyes. She didn’t really want to answer the question. She loved Iris and didn’t want to hurt her, but just like her man said, she wasn’t in love with her and Bless and she would be married. They couldn’t continue to do the things they did when they were younger. “Yes Iris, I do feel the same way.”

  “Alright,” Iris said. “I don’t have a problem with that. You two still love me, right?”

  “Of course we do,” both Tess and Bless said at the same time and got up and hugged Iris tight. “We’ll always love you no matter what.” Iris hugged them back feeling the same way.

  “Okay guys, I got to go get shit ready for this morning. Holla at me if anything else comes up,” she said while her eyes were locked on Bless’s jeans to let him know she was talking about his dick. She left the house and jumped into her Benz and headed to her house on the other side of Brooklyn to get things ready.

  Pray It Won’t Be Our Last Night

  Chapter 32

  Tess was breathing hard and out of air. Bless had just got done fucking the shit out of her. ‘Damn, that’s some good dick,’ she thought. She laid there out of breath next to Bless who was looking up at the ceiling with his hand behind his head.

  “Baby, what are you thinking about?” Tess said. She moved closer to him and put her head on his chest. She felt so safe in his arms, always had.

  “Yo Mami, I’m just thinking about all the crazy shit that’s going on and trying to shine s
ome light onto the situation.”

  “What you mean,” Tess replied.

  “Baby, it seems like every time I come to getting the fuck out I can’t. I wish we could just get up and leave all this shit behind us, but the man and gangster in me knows we can’t leave yet without getting Vanessa or killing Ebony and Omar’s killer.”

  “I feel what you’re saying daddy and I am sorry baby.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I don’t blame you. If it wasn’t this shit, it would’ve been something else in these streets keeping us from getting out.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Tess replied.

  “Tess sometimes the only way I see out of this shit is death or jail. Shit, I’m laying here with my wife to be, fucking and making love, praying it won’t be the last time.”

  Tears ran down Tess’ face and soaked Bless’ chest. She knew what he meant. What if he died or she died in this war that’s about to happen? Bless felt his woman’s tears running down on him. He lifted up her chin and kissed her lips softly and then kissed her eyes, wiping away her tears. “I love you too, baby,” he replied.

  Tess spread her body across him and sat up to ride him. She guided his dick into her warm pussy and slowly grinded her hips enjoying the sweet sensations she could only feel with him. “Baby, am I going too slowly for you,” she moaned.

  “No boo. Do your thing,” Bless replied while grinding her hips and forcing her all the way down on his dick. She let out a moan. To Bless there was nothing better than making love to her. Yes, he loved to fuck the shit out of her, but there was something special they shared when they made love or the slow grind as he liked to call it. It felt as if their souls were making love too, not just their bodies. Tess’ pussy became wetter and wetter with ever slow grind and she felt his dick go deeper and deeper with tears in her eyes. She moaned, “I love you.”

  “I love you too, boo.” They continued to make love for hours.

  Hours later Tess and Bless stood fully dressed in all black. Bless had on his new bullet proof vest tight under his black shirt, Tess did the same. It was only 12am and Jose wouldn’t call until 4am, but they couldn’t sleep so Tess thought it was best that they get ready. Bless picked up the small machine gun and put the extended clip full of black talons bullets in the AR15 then he put his twin 45 desert eagle handguns in his shoulder holster. Tess did the same with her twin 40 Cali handguns on her ankle holster that was strapped under her jeans.