Savage

by Tiana Laveen

  “Grigor.” Savage spat blood out onto the floor. “You’re makin’ me think you don’t really want my help. What happened to the welcome wagon? I feel like you may just want to take the money and run, end our happy family reunion. I thought we were семья (family)?” Grigor cocked the gun against his head and the click of the trigger echoed in the room.

  “I kill you. Open case. Final time.”

  Savage finally nodded. “I definitely don’t want to rattle your chain.”

  Snatching his chain belt off, he hooked it around the gun and swung it across the room, hitting the wall. Then, in a flash, he lassoed the chain around the big fucker’s neck with one hand and grabbed one of his guns with the other.

  “AHHH! FUCK!”

  Suddenly, two other guns were pointed in his direction while the guys hurled threats in Russian.

  “I will snap his fuckin’ neck! Did ya get that, fam? I’m certain you understand those words loud and clear! Now, put the motherfuckin’ guns down and kick ’em towards me or I will rip his head clean off his shoulders, and give a whole new meaning to a ‘head start’!”

  The fuckers did as instructed, fear and confusion on their faces. He yanked on the chain wrapped around the bastard’s neck and spun him around to face the crowd, causing him to turn a deep shade of purple and choke as he kicked the guns behind him.

  BAM!

  The big man fell back, causing pandemonium in the room as he yanked him then shot him three times in the back. Savage grabbed his two Glocks from his jacket and began to blast everything in sight. It took no time for the place to be bathed in splashes of red. He killed everyone before they even had a chance to process what was happening.

  He checked inside the bathroom, ensuring no one was waiting to pop out of there and surprise him. The coast was clear, minus a porno magazine and a bottle of lotion lying by the sink across from the stopped-up toilet. He found a middle-aged man cowering in the corner in the kitchen, his face bloodied, shaking and waving his hands in surrender. Savage stepped over the bodies, one by one, riddling them with bullets as he walked past, making it rain…

  “There’s the insurance policy, motherfucker. I just made sure all of you got dead as doorknobs,” he muttered under his breath.

  When he reached the sole survivor, the one with chattering teeth, he looked down at him and shook his head. Stooping low, he brought his face closer until they were at eye level.

  “Maxzeemus… I know nothing, my friend… nothing!” the man blubbered.

  “Shhh, it’s okay…” He patted his head. “Antonjo, just listen,” Savage stated quietly, placing a finger up to the man’s dry and cracked lips. “For forty years, you’ve destroyed a woman. That’s my fuckin’ mother!!!”

  “Ahhhh, no, no, no!” the man cried out.

  “A woman who in desperation reached out to her family. She forgave you, but forgiveness should never be free. That’s a lesson my mother has to learn and she will once I let her know how her fuckin’ family tried to kill me. That’s the funny thing about death, ya know? Her parents are dead, the grandparents I never met, the same ones who sold ’er, so she clung to her sisters and brothers, once she found them. Really, anyone who’s in the family over there she held tight to… Even though I suspect deep down she became skeptical of you all sometimes, her need to be wanted and loved by you all overshadowed that doubt. Once she told you all that she was living in the States, had food on the table, a decent home – your interest was piqued.

  “You would get a bit of money here and there from her, just enough to take the edge off. It was a good deal. For forty years, you’ve lied, tormented, manipulated, stole, guilted, and robbed from her, her son, and her husband. My parents never had a whole lot of money, but they had way more than you all. You’ve robbed her of her hopes, her dreams, and replaced them with silly fantasies. You’ve caused friction between my parents because my father is a realist, and my mother has bought into a delusion that you convinced her was real but was actually fool’s gold. You played on her insecurities.” He leaned over and flipped on the radio then removed the silencer on the gun. The tune of ‘Get Throwed’ by Pimp C was playing.

  “I wanna hear this shit… Not the song, but your screams from my gun rippin’ you to pieces. You ever think about how good fucking sounds a lot like someone losing their life?” Savage laughed. “You know, when you’re really drillin’ a chick, right? Giving it to her, pumping that pussy until her back busts out, and she’s screaming her head off and begging, pleading, but she loves it so fuckin’ much, right? It feels so fucking good and her yells just turn you on… I love that shit, and I love it when people like you beg me to not do it… to not kill them… You scream and yell, beg for your life. I love the sounds of a good kill and fantastic fuck. It’s a beautiful thing.

  “I want everyone to hear me fuck you all the way up. I don’t give a shit about anything else right now… Gotta get my fix. I’m addicted to murder.” He winked at the man. “Anyway, as I was saying.” He snatched a cigarette out of the bastard’s shirt pocket and jammed it in his mouth. “For forty years, you motherfuckers plotted, schemed, and planned to destroy my mother, to take all she had. The final blow would be slaughtering her son.”

  “No! We weren’t… we weren’t going to kill you, friend!”

  “I’m not your fuckin’ friend. I’m not your family. I’m your foe, and don’t you forget it. See, you’d earned my mother’s trust, did and said just the right shit to get her to believe in you. Then, by the time she got my assets, she’d slide you all some, give you a bunch of my money because you’d trained her well.” Savage placed the gun under the bastard’s chin and forced his face upward, eyes towards the ceiling, then lit the cigarette and blew out rings of smoke in his face.

  The man’s eyes sheened over and he swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He appeared to be hanging on to his sanity by a slippery thread. “See, though my maternal side of the family is very resourceful, I’m actually quite impressed with what you all managed to accomplish. You guys forgot though that your blood runs through my veins, too. I’m just as calculating as you, times one hundred. I’m just as ruthless and dangerous as you, times one thousand. I have no conscience, too, like you, times one million… See? You played yourself.

  “Guess what? I do have investments, but my main ones aren’t properties, shit like that. I’m an assassin.” The man shut his eyes and winced, knowing damn well it was a wrap. There was nothing he could say or do. “I’m not bragging when I tell you that I’m one of the best ones in the country. Hell, the world. No one can shoot faster than me, motherfucker, or think as fast on their feet and cover their tracks in seconds. I’m like a damn cat with nine lives. In your own way, you all created me. It was the perfect recipe. I’m a trained and sanctioned killer runnin’ rogue, this time on a mission of my own.”

  “No… No!”

  “Oh, yes, yes!” Savage cackled. “It’s true, loved one! See, I can make all of this disappear, this little blood bath here. It’ll be like none of you ever fucking existed and if for some dumb ass reason any more of you decide to harass my mother, pay her a visit or seek revenge for my having to wipe out this entire rotting branch of the family tree, then they’ll get worse than you, as hard to imagine as that may be. When the bough breaks, the fuckin’ cradle will fall…” Savage shrugged. “I have special connections, people you have no clue about who know a whole lot about you, and they’ll keep tabs on every one of you people back in Albania that decides to get any crazy ideas. Forty years of bullshit, my man… And now, the time is finally up.” He jammed the gun harder against his chin, ready to pull the trigger.

  “Please! Please, my friend!” The man shook as he lifted his hands in the air. “I did nothing. I promise you! Never receive money, I just came! We’re family, you’re my friend! I’m small, small piece, small man. Small fish! Not worth it. I will go away, never come back! Please!”

  “Well.” Savage stood to his full height and sighed. “As the A
lbanian saying goes, I’m a great man. Peshku i madh ha të voglin. (Men are like fish; the great ones devour the small.)

  BAM!

  Savage stared at the semi-decapitated head, the thing split open like a pelican’s mouth swallowing down a frog. The skull was fractured like a walnut, all the brain matter falling out. He stepped away from the bastard and stood in the middle of the room, the floor littered with dead blood relatives. He’d wiped them out so quickly, they probably never even felt it – their lifeforce sucked out before their brain and heart had a chance to catch up.

  Blood on the wall…

  Blood in the carpet…

  Blood on the ceiling and furniture…

  Blood sprayed on the television…

  He checked each and every pulse. All gone.

  He casually pulled out his phone and dialed Harlem.

  “Wanna hear a bedtime story, Harlem?”

  “Tuck me in…”

  “Did I ever tell you the tale of a White trash Vagos MC murderous convict who fell in love with a beautiful, cold-hearted Albanian whore and bore a son of a bitch who dreamed of spilling blood, morning, noon, and night? They were Savages… This time, it has a happy ending…”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Big White Snake

  Savage sucked his teeth as he sat wide-legged in the living room, the San Francisco 49ers game in session on the tube at his parent’s home. He played with a pair of Feng Shui silver and black balls that helped him pass the time. The metal spheres clicked and clacked together like chimes and tinkling wedding bells whistling in the wind. Mom sat across from him in a gray loveseat, her back straight, like a board. Her long legs crossed, hands clasped around her knees, her expression was ordinary, but there were tears in her eyes.

  “And after today, to never speak of it again. Settled,” she finally said in a somber whisper after several minutes had passed.

  Savage nodded lazily and vaguely shifted his attention to the game. The balls in his hand kept rotating back and forth, back and forth, until he’d had enough and placed them beside him on the gray couch. Reaching for his dark sunglasses atop his head, he snatched them off and relocated them onto the coffee table. He was getting sleepy. The day had been rather mundane with the exception of his mother trying to keep herself together after being told of the fate some of her family members had faced.

  As weariness took the reins, he heard his mother’s breathing, so hard yet contained, as if she were trying to keep from hyperventilating. He shot her a glance from the corner of his eye, making certain she didn’t suddenly go completely bat shit.

  She made loud inhales and exhales, but then she calmed down, to the point he could no longer hear her breathing at all. For all he knew, the woman was fighting a now silent panic attack. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Mom remained quiet for several minutes, then broke her silence with a bang.

  “Сволочь! If he comes my way, I will shoot him between the eyes.” She said it so casually, calling her brother a jerk, the sound of her voice like a feather fluttering in the air.

  The man, she’d found out, had masterminded this entire fiasco. She’d never met him when she was still in Armenia. In fact, she’d never known he existed until her sister told her about him. He was a well-known criminal in their home country, a thief and swindler, and as his mother now knew, a double-crossing bastard. Savage would do anything to take away that pain, the sense of devastation she was experiencing that had little to do with money.

  “So, did Dad tell you all who were involved?” She nodded. “It goes deeper than the ones that were in Miami. They’d been planning this for probably over a year.”

  “But there’s more. Always more…They know what you do now, your work, Maximus.” Her hands shook as she raked them through her hair. “They’re afraid. They call me, ask me to not do anything. Say that I got what I wanted… They say, many of their sons dead, some first born. I tell them to fuck off… I tell them, what about my son?!” Mom’s voice trembled as she pointed to herself. “Max, they say they’re scared you will come again, after them.”

  “As they should be.” He kept rotating those balls, back and forth, and a mean heat frothed from his cool core.

  Mom withdrew into her shell again.

  “I have the tickets for the pawn shop. T.V., jewelry… I get my things soon.” She lifted her chin high as she stared absently at the television.

  “I’ll give you the money to get them out.”

  “No. I must do myself. My fault. All my fault.” She hung her head for a brief spell. “Your father come to me in the night. He say, ‘Karina… our son, our boy, go down to Miami just like he tell you. They wanted to kill our boy…’ Your father take his two hands, he tear the house apart. Broken glass everywhere… anger, never seen him so angry. Not like this. He say to me, ‘If they had killed our boy, I never forgive you, Karina. I love you, but I never forgive you if they did that…’ And I know he meant it. You and he, so special.” She smiled sadly. “Your father have a connection with you… different than with me. Your father laugh. He sing. He dance. He fight, and fight some more. He party and drink. He kill. Such passion. That’s why I love him, my dear Maximus. He lives out loud. Like you.” She turned to him and smiled ever so slightly.

  Maximus nodded as he watched tears quietly fall down his mother’s cheeks. He’d seldom seen her cry. It had to be a culmination of things bubbling forth within her. She’d already lost so much, and almost lost more than she’d bargained for.

  “I look like you; I act like Dad. The best of both worlds.” He grinned, making her laugh then. She swiped her knuckle against the side of her eye, mopping up the tears.

  “Yes, true.” She slowly got to her feet. “I have the food ready, and plenty of drinks, too. But, it’s early.”

  “Yeah.” Maximus glanced at his cellphone on the coffee table, noting the time. “I don’t understand why you made all of that though for just the four of us. Anyway, Eva should be here, soon. She’s excited to meet you both. When do you think Dad will back?” he asked as she walked away into the kitchen.

  “Very soon.”

  Savage drifted off to slumber on the couch, only to be awakened by Zaire who’d made it to his parents’ home. She had on a green jumpsuit with a white shirt beneath it. Her hair was pulled back in a taut ponytail, draped down her back, and she wore black Mary Jane high heels. She looked smart and sexy at the same time, like a librarian who was secretly sporting edible panties. He grinned at her, rubbed his eyes, and attempted to get to his feet to give her a hug and kiss. She pushed him back before he got a chance to move and kissed him on the lips. She shook a finger at him.

  “Relax. You must be tired.”

  “How’d you get in here? I’m calling the police,” he teased.

  She laughed and playfully slapped his shoulder.

  “Your mother let me in, silly. For the record, she and I have been talking for a while. We let you sleep.”

  “You couldn’t have talked long. I’ve only been asleep for like, five minutes, ten tops.”

  “You must’ve had been in a coma then, boy, because you’ve been asleep for over an hour! I have been here for a minute.”

  He looked around, amazed. He’d truly lost track of time.

  Damn… I really was exhausted.

  “That’s crazy. I need some real sleep tonight then.”

  “You were out like a light, snoring and all.” She laughed, tickled so. “Your mother, oh my God, Max. She’s beautiful!” Zaire added in a whisper, her expression serious. “You two favor, you know that? What a physically stunning woman. She seems nice, too.”

  “Yeah… to this day she makes a lot of guys half her age do double takes. My Dad always jokes she must’ve been drunk when she let him take her home. All right.” He yawned, getting to his feet at last. “Moooom!” he called out. “Is Dad here yet? I don’t hear him so he must not be.” He yawned again and scratched his head then stretched.

  “He’s not here yet.
” His mother’s voice was faint, as if she were at the back of the house.

  “We need to call him then. He’s late! Probably got arrested again for some bar fight. I swear he goes looking for guys to fuck with.” He worked out a kink in his neck. “Get comfortable and have a seat, baby.” He pointed to the couch. Several minutes later, they were cuddled up, sipping on wine coolers, when he heard the roar of a motorcycle, then another, and another.

  “Did you hear that? Sounds like someone is outside,” Zaire said.

  “Yeah, I heard it.” Before he could figure out what the hell was going on, the doorbell rang. His brows furrowed as he set his drink down on a motorcycle shaped coaster and got to his feet. “Mooom! Expectin’ anyone?”

  Dad wouldn’t ring his own damn bell. Plus, the car was missing in his garage. He didn’t take any of his bikes.

  “No, I’m not expecting anyone.” He heard the quick pitter patter of mom’s bare feet as she made her way up the hall.

  “Stay back,” he said to the women when his mom arrived in the living room.

  Gun drawn, he cautiously approached the front door. Muted voices drifted through and shadows moved about as he inched the thick curtains back from the front foyer area window. “It’s my uncles! What the hell are they doing here?!” Savage laughed as he quickly unlocked the door and swung it open. On the front lawn stood about twelve Harleys and as many of dad’s MC brethren. The men were rowdy as hell, some flicking joints into the lawn. In moments, they all trudged inside the house without invitation. Of course, they didn’t really need it. They were true family. Abruptly snatched up like a piece of trash from the floor, he was drawn in multiple bear hugs while the smell of sweat, worn leather, and pure fuckery filled the place.

  “Ahhhh! Max! My main man!” Chopper said as he took his turn and grabbed him, putting him in a loose, playful headlock. Chopper had a big, shiny bald head with a dragon tattoo on the side of it. The beast was about six foot seven and his voice was deep and gravelly. Many of the guys stood around high-fiving one another. Removing their sunglasses in a collective gesture, they stored them inside their jacket or pant pockets. Bandanas were tightened, belts loosened, and the atmosphere was bursting with instantaneous jubilation.