Baby Brother

by 50 Cent

  The sharp slice of metal moved like a blur. It cut deeply into the withered old flesh: chest, neck, cheek, penetrated an eyeball.

  The body fell, and the Monster moved on.

  They were here. He could smell them. Hiding.

  He stomped through the old house, moving from room to room, following the scent of fear. He tracked them to a back bedroom. Huddled in a tiny closet. His prey was deep in the back, his woman boldly protecting him like a shield.

  The Monster stared into her dark, defiant eyes. No fear. She had some beast in her too.

  They moved at the same time. Her gun coughed as he slapped it from her hand, snapping her wrist. She screamed, and the Monster bit her.

  With his eyes trained deep in the darkness of the closet, he lifted her with one hand and hurled her behind him, across the room. Bone on wall rang out, but he never looked back. Instead he reached into the pit of the closet and grinned as his rock-breaking hand closed around hard flesh.

  “Yo,” Acqui cried. “It wasn’t me, man! I swear to God. It was that niggah Rayz and ’em. I wasn’t even there when it went down. Don’t do this shit, man. I wasn’t even there!”

  Setting his gat on the ground, the Monster swung. Acqui screeched. Teeth flew, bones shattered, blood spurted. Fury raged and the Monster swung again. And again. And again, and again, and again. Crushing a nosebone, tearing flesh from a skull, bringing darkness down on his prey.

  “Not yet…” he muttered as the battered lump on the floor moaned and shuddered, close to death. Taking a knee, the Monster reached into his back pocket. A wrist-flick later a curved blade glinted in his hand.

  “You like makin’ smileys, huh?”

  In a flash the knife sank into his prey’s bloodied flesh, laying his cheek open to the bone. The Monster paused momentarily to study his work. Dissatisfied, he went back for more.

  “Not deep enough,” he determined, then retraced his first slash. This time he carved a deep line in front of the ear and swung under the chin, then aimed the tip of his blade and pressed it deeply into Acqui’s naked throat-meat.

  The Monster didn’t stop until his knife scraped neck-bone.

  CHAPTER 10

  War was being waged and Tony Santos’s coordinated attack was hard and swift. Borne Reynolds was thought to be huddled in an apartment somewhere, naked and vulnerable. Two days earlier his Blake Avenue headquarters had been raided by the narcs sent by Malik, and a dozen of his top capos had gotten knocked and locked. That oily ass Borne had cut out and slipped through the net, but with key bricks missing from his wall of protection, his street game and his defense were pretty weak.

  Death was in the air and residents huddled behind locked doors with their shades drawn. For such a crime-ridden area, there wasn’t a police car in sight. Malik had called in a favor, and the detective he’d helped out of a jam with a white drug suspect one night had instructed his night patrol to go on an extended break until further notice.

  They’d split up into fifteen- to twenty-man elements. Kadir headed one, Raheem another, and the three others followed the lead of Tony Santos’s most trusted capos.

  “Your shit straight?” Farad asked Tony, checking his load. Him and Finesse were accustomed to being generals, but tonight they were playing the soldier role. Instead of leading their own crews on a mission to annihilate Borne’s low-level pawns, they’d chosen to ride out with the main element and go straight for the jugular. This was one night he didn’t mind taking orders. Tony’s loss had caused their loss, and their vengeance would be shared.

  “Yeah,” Tony answered. His men were armed to the max and positioned strategically along the border between Brownsville and East New York. Their orders were simple. Find Borne Reynolds and take him down. And wipe his crew out too.

  For the next two hours back-alley war raged in East New York. Tony and his crew, accompanied by Farad, Finesse, and twenty of their most trusted Gs, split into factions and moved through the streets. Tenements, storefronts, and project apartments were invaded and cleared. They slumped every Borne soldier they rolled up on, having mercy on no one. The area surrounding the transit bridge between Brownsville and East New York became an urban war zone with bullets spitting through the air and blood spilling out onto the streets.

  Pushing farther east, they cornered Borne hiding in the back room of an Arab-owned candy store off Pennsylvania Avenue. The terrified owners lived above the store and had been dragged downstairs out of their apartment when Borne’s crew commandeered the joint, seeking refuge from the overwhelming gunfire raging outside. The husband and wife were in their nightclothes, trembling behind the counter and checked by three of Borne’s goonies holding big gats.

  Farad fired through a window, and the cat he hit went down hard. The Arab couple screamed and ducked down behind the counter, seeking cover. Flanked by Finesse, Tony, and members of his crew, Farad charged inside, spraying lead across the entire room. Tony’s boys pumped crazy shots, the noise deafening in its volume. But shit changed in a split second and Farad cursed out loud. One moment they were in control, aggressing their common enemy, and the next moment they were under attack, Borne’s men rising up and swarming from a doorway concealed on the other side of the counter.

  Behind him, Tony’s boys opened their shit up on spray. Bullets whizzed past Farad’s ears and he lunged for cover, the acrid gunpowder searing his nose.

  He was caught in the cross fire. Targeted by stray bullets with no name on them. He rolled down an aisle and slid on his stomach, firing his piece with his arms extended in front of him. He was reaching into his holster for his second gat when a blinding heat seared across his back, and his gun fell from his hands.

  “Finesse!” he tried to scream, but only a whisper escaped him. Farad rose up on his elbows and tried to drag himself across the floor, but another round tagged him in the shoulder and he went down flat on his face. For a moment the pain was almost unbearable. He bit his lip and tried to fight the waves of agony that threatened to swallow him, and for the most part it worked because seconds later darkness fell upon him and suddenly he felt no pain at all.

  Borne got served.

  Tony’s crew regrouped and pushed forward. Clearing the front room and leaving piles of bodies behind them. They found Borne down in the storage cellar. Him and two of his boys had rushed up a short flight of concrete stairs and were pushing desperately against the iron delivery flap-door that would allow them to emerge outside and onto the sidewalk.

  It was gonna be a slaughter.

  They were so outnumbered. Borne’s goonie turned around and fired in fear, and one of Tony’s right-hand Gs took a fall. The others began shooting in retaliation, but Tony silenced their weapons with a raised hand.

  He walked right up on the three gangstas and popped two of them.

  The last man standing trembled under Tony’s killer glare.

  Borne was filled with fear. He would have preferred the gun. Could have withstood that with honor. But the knife was a whole nother thing. Especially clenched in Tony’s hand.

  Tony moved in close, then mugged him, gripping his whole face. He mushed him down on the steps, then straddled him and pressed one knee into his throat. Tony stared into the eyes of his sister’s killer, and rage washed over him in pulsating waves.

  He had no words. Nothing in his vocabulary to describe the depth of his fury. So he did what he did best. His self-expression was an art form in itself. It required skill, heart, and a total lack of compassion for his victim.

  Tony held Borne by the throat and gazed at the rock he was about to sculpt. He’d create a masterpiece. A canvas. He examined angles and curves, the rough skin and uneven terrain. He held his knife like a paintbrush and prepared to make his first stroke.

  And trapped in the bowels of the beast, Borne screamed.

  The sight of his brother lying in a pool of blood sent Finesse running. The floor was littered with bodies. Some were moving and moaning, others were still.

  “Farad!”
he shouted, slipping in blood as he ran down the aisle. He had stormed down into the cellar room without realizing his twin was down. It was only when Tony went to work on Borne and the torturous screaming began that he’d looked around for his brother.

  Finesse wasn’t letting Tony take it all. That muthafuckah knew to save some of that niggah for him and Farad too. But when he looked for Farad so they could get a piece of Borne’s ass before Tony completely disfigured him, a sinking feeling had slammed into him as he realized his brother was nowhere in sight.

  He’d bounded back upstairs, ignoring the Puerto Rican cat who was watching the door, his eyes scanning the store for Farad.

  He found him lying facedown. The back of his shirt was soaked through with blood, and he wasn’t moving.

  “Farad!”

  Finesse turned his brother over and stared down into his still face. A moan of pain, fear, and rage ripped through him, as he slid his arms beneath his brother’s body and sat him up, then lifted him. He staggered from the store. Feet sliding in blood, banging into display shelves and pumped with adrenaline.

  “I got you, man,” he muttered as Farad’s head lolled on his neck, the full weight of his twin in his arms. Finesse stepped over bodies and crunched shards of glass under his feet, then stood on the sidewalk looking toward Brownsville.

  Brookdale, was all he could think of. I gotta get him to Brookdale. If there was a hospital that was closer, he couldn’t think of it. There wasn’t a soul in sight. The people who lived nearby were smart enough to stay down when gunfire erupted, and Malik’s man had all the cops out getting doughnuts. Farad moaned, and Finesse boosted him up. The warmth of his brother’s blood dampened his clothes, and Finesse looked toward the avenue and braced himself for the long journey ahead.

  EPILOGUE

  Antwan paced the floors of Brookdale Hospital, wondering what was taking so long. He glanced at his watch every few minutes, then again at the closed doors at the end of the hall.

  At seven minutes past two the hydraulic doors whooshed and swung outward. A young black nurse appeared, pretty dreadlocks flowing around her heart-shaped face.

  “Hey,” Antwan said, grinning widely.

  “What’s poppin’?” asked the younger man being pushed toward him in the wheelchair.

  The men shook hands briefly, then Antwan reached down and put his arms around Farad and held him close.

  They’d almost lost him. The bullets he took had ripped through his spine, nearly demolishing his intestines on their deadly path through his body.

  Antwan had barely understood what Finesse was telling him when he called from the emergency room. When he realized Farad had been shot, shame immediately overtook him. Instead of watching out for his brothers, he’d become a monster. Invincible. Impenetrable. He’d been so consumed with exacting wrath that he had allowed rage to rule him and put the lives of his brothers in the path of vengeance.

  Farad had endured hours of surgery, and each of his brothers were at his bedside when he opened his eyes.

  “Bad?” he’d asked in a hoarse whisper.

  Antwan had nodded as Finesse touched his twin’s arm and Malik moved closer to his side.

  “You’re paralyzed,” Antwan told him simply, giving it to him all at once without any pretenses. “From the waist down. Could be permanent, might not be. The doctors said it’s day to day. We gotta wait and see.”

  Farad had closed his eyes momentarily, and when he opened them again Antwan saw real strength there.

  “Borne?”

  Kadir made a noise in his throat and Finesse shook his head and answered the question. “Murked. Slumped. Cheese, my niggah. Shredded cheese.”

  “Yeah,” Raheem added, “that kid Rayz gonna get his too. He’s getting sent to Elmira. Tony got a crew of Puerto Ricans runnin’ shit up there and they already planning his welcoming party.”

  Farad nodded, satisfied.

  And now, two months after his shooting, the pretty black nurse smiled as Antwan moved behind his brother’s wheelchair and grasped the handholds. Farad had endured several weeks of physical therapy, and today would be the first time he felt the warmth of the sun since being wheeled into the hospital flat on his back.

  “Where’s the posse?” Farad asked as they rode downstairs in the elevator.

  “They’re all here,” Antwan told him.

  Farad nodded, then spoke again. “Where’s the Monster?”

  It took Antwan a long time to answer, but when he did his voice came out strong and sure. “He’s gone, man. He died the night they brought you in here.”

  Thirty minutes later Antwan and his five brothers were riding through the gates of Evergreen Cemetery. Finesse was behind the wheel of the custom van they’d purchased, and when they arrived in the Gibron section he pulled over and helped Raheem unfold the wheelchair and settle Farad down into it.

  They walked together over to the plot that had been in their family for the past eighteen years. Standing at the grave site in silence, they stared down at the headstone that read simply, “Father” “Mother” “Baby Brother.”

  “Pops was a crazy cat,” Antwan reminisced, the fall sun warming his face.

  Farad chuckled in his chair. “Yeah, he was. He was a wild dude who did his thing regardless…but he dug his little cats, though. We was his lucky seven, remember? He used to say he could bet his last dime on his seven boys.”

  “I miss Mama,” Malik blurted out. “If she was here she would be mad as hell with all of us.”

  Antwan agreed. Each of them had stood around her bed on that last night. They’d put their bonded word on her soul and sent her out of this world with some bone-deep promises that they had all failed to live by.

  Finesse looked down at his twin and put Antwan’s thoughts into words.

  “We failed her, man. We swore we would keep her with us. Swore we wouldn’t let the streets suck the life outta us.”

  He put his hand on his twin’s shoulder.

  “We still some hard niggahs, bruh. Soldiers. But we outta this shit, man. Cool?”

  And when Farad nodded, Finesse turned to Antwan. “Your offer still good, man? You still thinkin’ on expanding them barbershops and breaking off a few franchises?”

  Antwan grinned. They said God worked in mysterious ways, and this change of heart was one mystery he was gonna roll with and not question.

  “Yeah, I might wanna get down on summa that too,” Kadir spoke up. “It’s getting hot in A.C., man. I gotta find another hustle. Mama would turn over in her grave if the same thing that happened to Daddy ended up happening to me.”

  Still battling his guilt, Raheem gave his younger brother some love, then gazed toward the grave and spoke for the first time since they’d arrived. “We didn’t watch out for Baby Brother like you wanted us to, Mama. But we loved him. You know we did. And even though he’s gone, the rest of us are still here swinging, and that means we can still make something outta what we got left.”

  Antwan gathered his brothers in his arms and agreed.

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  from 50 Cent

  THE SKI MASK WAY

  By 50 Cent and K. Elliott

  The fruit-punch-red Impala had gold Dayton rims. The car gleamed so much, you could see your reflection in the hood. The interior was cream-colored leather. The car had been totally restored. The Impala was the only one that Butter owned and he cherished it. He and Seven sat on the hood of his car, smoking purple haze, listening to Mobb Deep’s “Shook Ones Part I.”

  “This was my shit back in the day and those niggas was from round my way,” Seven said.

  Butter puffed the blunt. “You knew them?”

  Seven reached for the blunt. “Well, not exactly. My manz in’nem used to hang with Prodigy; but, naw, I ain’t know them, but I seen them a few times.”

  “I listen to them, when I’m about to do a lick, you know?” Butter pulled out a .380 and cocked the hammer. “It gets my adrenaline going,
you know?”

  “Man, put that gun away,” Seven said.

  “What, nigga? You scared of guns? How the fuck is you from New York and you afraid of guns?”

  “Naw; I ain’t afraid of guns—just high, careless niggas with guns.”

  Butter put the gun on safety.

  “I didn’t know niggas in the South was into that Mobb Deep shit.”

  Butter looked confused. He didn’t say anything, he just puffed. Finally he couldn’t control his thoughts or his tongue.

  “You know what? Y’all New York niggas always think that we slow down here. I can relate to Mobb Deep.”

  “I feel ya,” Seven said. “Calm down, son. I mean, I ain’t mean it like that.” Seven did think southern niggas were slow, once upon a time, before he’d gone to Virginia. He’d met some real gangsters in Virginia. Butter seemed to be through. He’d met him at a temp agency where they both were applying for a job and started talking. After a fifeen-minute conversation he realized they had a lot in common: They both were street niggas and ex-cons.

  “So what your all-time favorite gangster movie?”

  “Dead Presidents.”

  “I expected you to say King of New York, New Jack City, Menace II Society. Never did I expect you to say this.”

  Butter inhaled the haze and then coughed. “Yeah, I liked that movie.”

  “I liked Paid in Full, myself,” Seven said.

  Butter coughed again. “Yeah, that shit was crazy; those mufukas was making a lot of money.”

  “You know what my favorite scene was?”

  “What?”

  “You know the scene where Mitch calls Rico and tells him he has coke and Rico flips and kills his man for the work?”

  “Why is that your favorite scene?” Butter asked.

  “Because the lesson learned is niggas will kill you for life-changing money. My daddy always told me two things: Your friends will kill you for the right price, and every bad guy likes to think of himself as good,” Seven said.