by Keta Kendric
Death was a poetic beast, and I had given the man a glorious one filled with excitement and vigor.
He had been set free to descend from this living hell and start anew. Maybe his soul would be washed and purged of the sins of this world or maybe it would be bathed in fire until his flesh melted from the bones, and pain became his blessing. Maybe he had been cast away into nothing but blackness—a world with no sense of being. Most people feared not knowing what waited beyond, while I believed it was the best part.
I stood atop the perch, peering down, committing another completed task to memory. His eyes, though dead of life and bulging from their sockets, pierced the distance to curse me. His remains would be cleaned away and gone before the early birds arrived to start their workday.
This was one of the reasons they called me ‘The Kannibal.’ I consumed the act, the sight, and the smell of death like one would a gourmet meal. Francisco was now a part of my art collection, a portrait that would never be duplicated by another.
My task for now had been completed. However, I believed finding the answers I sought would require more analytical work than physical, and I was set to do my job with a level of seriousness and pride that many others would forego.
One last peek at the portrait I had painted, and all I could think was, who’s next?
1
Desiree
“Wait one damn minute. You want me to what?” I yelled at my father; my face pinched in a deep frown. His absurd request had sped up my heart rate and spiked my anxiety. Raymond Evans had lost his natural mind. My eyes bucked, and my ears perked like a bloodhound’s at the prospect of what he was preparing to say to justify his proposal.
“I need you to marry Arjen Vallin,” he repeated. His wry grin did nothing to ease my tense expression as my brows pinched tight enough to make my forehead ache. My father had asked me to do some crazy shit through the years, but this was where I was drawing the line. No way was I going to marry a Vallin. The name was often brought up in sentences referencing a bunch of ravenous animals, trained to kill without remorse.
I raked my anxious fingers through my shoulder-length locks, attempting to make sense of my father’s request. His illegal activities had sent me to the best private schools, paid for my graphic design degree, and paved the gateway for me to live comfortably. Whenever he called in a favor, if it wasn’t something that would land me in jail, I would oblige. Not this time. No way. Hell no!
“Dad, you know I don’t mind helping, but this is too much to put on someone.” Although I wasn’t dating anyone, it didn’t mean I was free to be cast off as a criminal’s future wife.
My father didn’t even bother with a reply. He just sat there staring expectantly. The daughter of the infamous Raymond Evans. It was something I was once proud of until I began to understand that I was no more than the child of a high-profile thug.
Evans. By the time I was sixteen, I had been snatched twice, shot at on multiple occasions, and knifed in the back because of that name. My brothers, Raymond Junior, and Rayland Evans were perfectly content living their non-working lives off the scraps my father gave them. Neither had the heart to do any of the dirty and gritty work involved in the drug game. My favorite cousin, Mecca, however, had embraced the life like it had been breathed into her blood as a baby. I had accepted the bigger picture and preferred to live without deathly shadows chasing me.
My father had worked his ass off, been shot, stabbed, dethroned, throned again, robbed, kidnapped, tortured, and back around the deathly circle again. He had gone through all the drama to climb to the top of a metaphorical throne that labeled him kingpin of the Black Saints, our criminal organization. To my father, the title may as well have been president.
His throne covered territory throughout the state of Colorado, as well as areas in Nevada and Utah. He had garnered enough power to have earned the respect of other crime families and organizations in the country. He also had the power to form alliances with other powerhouses in the crime world.
Now forty-four, Raymond had become a father to Raymond Junior at fifteen, two years later Rayland came along, and me a year after that when he was eighteen. Three kids before he was twenty, and we all had different mothers.
Two of those mothers were dead, taken by the life. My mother overdosed before I was three months old, and Rayland’s mother was killed in a drive-by walking home from work when he was two. Raymond Junior’s mother resided in an asylum for the criminally insane. Being involved in the life had driven her to drugs, and a bad batch of PCP-laced crack had driven her over to Crazytown, USA, and she had never returned.
Running my small online art and design company kept me busy. Able to set my own hours, I worked from home designing a variety of cover art, logos, and producing designs for magazine advertisements. I also sold my designs on my online store and nurtured my love for painting. I had been lucky enough to book a few showings for my gothic-inspired pieces, and a few of my original designs that I had converted into prints.
There were days when I would find the most unexpected places to explore and create: off the side of a dead-end road, the bus station, or train station. Abandoned buildings and structures were my favorite places to visit. They oftentimes offered tossed away treasure more valuable than a sea filled with sunken gold.
I enjoyed creating art from things left behind, things that had been discarded by the world. When shoppers purchased my art, I saw it as the world reclaiming something they were unaware that they had thrown away. My Unclaimed Death pieces were usually my most profitable and first to sell. People embraced the darkness and mystery inscribed in death.
My status as an entrepreneur allowed me to spend time with my friends, the few I had, which included my friend of eight years, Patrena Davis, and my cousin, Mecca, who I had grown up with.
“Desiree, baby, you know I have a plan.” My father’s words weren’t reassuring. “In this business, family can mean the difference in staying alive and staying in business. An alliance with a group like the Vallins will give us a strength of force that could make us untouchable. Unfortunately, the only way to become family with the Vallins is to create it. You’re my only way in, Des,” my father briefed, attempting to make his proposal sound appealing.
I laughed, my chuckle dripping with the high level of sarcasm flowing through me. Surely, my father wasn’t losing it this early in life.
“What about me staying away from the life? You said yourself that it was best that I stay clear of our family drama. I agreed, which is why I keep my distance and help you on the low if I need to.”
He bit into his lip, his gaze fixed on me but staring right through me. There was something major he wasn’t telling me. Something was off, and I sensed it wasn’t a problem that could be solved with conversation. It was likely an issue that could only be fixed with a high body count.
“So, I’m just supposed to walk up to Arjen Vallin and ask him to marry me? And, he is going to magically say, ‘Yes, of course. I’ve been waiting on you all my life.’”
“Actually, he was the one who made the suggestion when I proposed an alliance with them.” This revelation deepened my confusion, and had me massaging my forehead in the hope of rearranging and putting order to my jumbled-up thoughts.
“Turns out he’s in the market for a wife and is convinced that you would make a good one.” His words continued to twist my confusion into a knot.
“That makes no sense. I’ve only seen the man a few times. Why the heck would he think I would make a good wife?”
When I recognized the game Arjen was running, my eyes fell closed. Marry the black daughter of a well-known drug kingpin, and he would be opening his organization up to a new market. Same was true for my father. His daughter, the wife of one of the top arms dealers in the country. The men saw dollar signs, but I saw disaster.
“No. Absolutely not.” I waved my father off when he flashed a set of pleading eyes. “I’m not about to play pawn in the Evans-and-Vallin chess match a
gainst the rest of the illegal world.” The statement was made with firm conviction that I was sure my father would find a way to pick apart.
“Please, Des, I need this right now,” he continued as the desperation creasing his face was like none I had seen before. What had my father gotten himself into now?
“You would have me subject myself to a bunch of gun-running killers so that you can get a foot into more illegal activity? You love me that much?” The question finally made guilt rise on his face. He dropped his head, his chin touching his chest.
“I’m in trouble, Des. So deep, you may be the only one who can get me out. I haven’t even told your brothers or your cousin everything yet,” he stated. The deep creases of stress in his expression and the depleting tone of his words hyped up my apprehension.
“Our last two big shipments were seized, and you know how careful I am. I used the money I was saving to pay off the first shipment. When this last one was taken, I knew we had a real problem.”
He paced, shaking his head, as I sat on his living room couch in his moderate three-bedroom home. My father should have been far richer than he currently was, having been in the drug game for so long, but he had a major vice. Gambling. It was nothing for him to lose millions a year betting on horses, playing high-stakes poker games, casinos, you name it.
Numerous times, he had laid down the titles of houses and cars to cover his outlandish bets. Any advice from us urging him to get help was met with anger and hostility. I had even set him up on a date with a shrink. He didn’t know she was a shrink, but the moment she attempted to psychoanalyze him, he dumped her.
A deep sigh escaped when his troublesome words sank in. Shit! I knew what kind of trouble followed seized drug shipments. It meant that dealers and the streets weren’t getting fed.
“You know the Cardenas Cartel don’t care that it was the law that seized the shipments. They are going to want their money next month. The streets don’t care either. They are going to want drugs. The whole system falls into chaos when shit like this happens. I couldn’t afford to let the streets dry up, so I had to crack the safe on the money I’ve been stashing and cop like a low-level to keep things going until I figure this mess out.”
The Cardenas Cartel, one of the most notorious in the country, was my father’s supplier. He had been dealing with them since he was in his teens and had built a trusted rapport with them.
This was the first time I’d seen him shaken. He was one of the most confident men I knew, but that confidence had been replaced with a hollow gleam in his gaze, constant pacing, and dark circles under his eyes.
“I have a few million left in the safe, but the last shipment was worth over ten million. Arjen Vallin is willing to partner up with me. He offered to invest the money if I added you to the deal to solidify the alliance.”
“What about Mecca?” I asked. “She’s the most involved Evans woman in this lifestyle, and she would give her left tit to improve her status in this world, no matter the background, nationality, or job title of the husband.”
No guilt surfaced at serving my cousin up on a silver platter because she would have high-fived me if she were here. She was my father’s brother’s daughter. She and I were both twenty-six, and although we differed in lifestyle choices, we got along like sisters.
Mecca’s father, my Uncle Calvin, had died serving under the Evans name when she was four, and she had come to live with us. It was because of Mecca that I was lucky enough to stay on the outskirts of the illegal activities my family was involved with. She loved the lifestyle, believed she had something to prove to the men and often did so with unrelenting force.
My father shook his head. “I already made the offer. Vallin requested you by name. He wants Mecca for his brother. I didn’t think he would remember you,” my father mused, eyeing my simple jeans and fitted T-shirt with a critical eye. His pinched expression revealed that he was as perplexed as I was about Arjen’s choice.
I had danced with Arjen once six years ago at a function my father had asked me to attend. Was it possible he had been planning to pimp me out even back then? My father had a ruthless streak in him that I would be foolish to overlook.
Men like Arjen Vallin weren’t concerned with remembering women because he could have any one he wanted. How the hell did he remember who I was? Or had my father put me in his head?
2
Desiree
Thinking about what my life was about to become, sent fear knifing through my psyche and had me stress working to combat the internal ache. Sleep hadn’t lulled me fully under since my father’s request a week ago. My buzzing phone broke me out of my tiring thoughts.
“Hey, Des,” Patrena’s reply sounded after my quick hello.
Despite my father warning me not to, I had called Mecca and given her a heads up on what was about to happen. As I suspected, she embraced the idea of marrying into another crime family. She hadn’t met the Vallin men, but that didn’t stop her from being ready for an alliance.
Mecca had been complaining about my father making poor decisions for the Black Saints for years, so she saw the alliance as a much-needed improvement. Her only concern was that I had been thrown into the mix.
I hadn’t had a chance to get together with Patrena to give her the full story. So far, she knew my father had asked me to marry Arjen Vallin, and her initial response had been dead silence with crickets chirping in the background.
“I was calling to check on you. Are you all right? How’s the situation going?” Patrena’s questions pulled me deeper into the pressing conditions riding my shoulders.
“I’m okay. I’m trying not to think how all this is going to turn out and praying it will all just go away. I don’t want to do this, but my father could be in real trouble if I don’t. Besides, the deal has been struck—men shaking hands on the sale of my life.”
My voice spilled into the phone, the words a low stutter as they squeezed past the lump in my throat. “My future husband didn’t waste any time calling to inform me that I’ll be living with him, and we will be married by next Friday.”
Patrena’s loud gasp sounded. “Desiree,” she dragged out my full name, though she usually called me, Des. “I’m so sorry.”
Although I had grown up in the game, I had managed to wiggle free of it somewhat. Now, I’m being thrown back in headfirst with a vengeance.
“What are you going to do? My offer still stands, you know. You can work from anywhere, and I can help you get to another country.”
“It’s a tempting offer, but I can’t leave you and Mecca. I can’t even abandon my father, even though he’s about to throw me to the wolves.”
“You always put everyone before yourself, Des. It’s okay to look out for you, especially in a situation like this one. You don’t have to sacrifice yourself to that life.”
“I honestly don’t know how to feel about this indecent proposal. Anger, resentment, fear, and anxiousness are constantly swirling inside me. Mecca has been fighting hard for me, attempting to talk my father into pulling me out of the deal.”
However, I knew better. You don’t back out of a deal struck with the kind of organization my father was about to connect us to. The same could be said about the Black Saints, but having intimate knowledge of the members, somehow made us seem less hostile.
“My boss just stepped into my office, giving me the evil eye. I’ll call you back in a little bit,” Patrena whispered. She worked as a domestic abuse counselor at our local clinic. She was working on her doctorate in the hopes of someday opening her own clinic. She had chosen the field because her mother had been a victim who had died at the hands of her father because her mother had been too afraid to leave him.
Patrena had witnessed her mother’s murder and at five had gone into foster care. She worked tirelessly, helping women the way she wished someone had helped her mother.
“Okay. Love you.”
“Love you too. We’ll chat later,” she replied, her words rushed.
The situation wasn’t sitting well. My stomach rolled into a queasy knot at the notion of being the subject of an arranged marriage, although I had agreed to it. The Vallin name was a popular subject of street whispers that would have you believe they were blood-thirsty savages.
I wasn’t opposed to dating outside my race but marrying outside of it was a whole different type of beast. I’d heard some of what was said behind closed doors and had been witness to the unfair treatment to some mixed couples in some public places.
I knew nothing of the Vallin’s opinions on race relations, and I couldn’t help thinking the worst. The last thing I wanted was to arrive at Arjen Vallin’s place and have the wrong person see brown skin and mistake me for the help.
I considered myself an even-tempered woman, but I didn’t tolerate people talking down to me. The temper I inherited from my father would come shining through if stroked by the cold hand of disrespect.
After tackling and overcoming self-hate a long time ago, I refused to tolerate it from someone else. I had rested too long in my own immaturity when I was younger and now believed that I deserved to be treated with the same respect I was finally learning to lavish upon myself.
This situation was a direct attack against the respect I desired, but when it came to family, I tended to tolerate them due to blood ties and blind loyalty.
A loud knock on my door jolted me behind my desk, kicking up my heart rate. I directed my glance past my open office door towards my living room. Making the decision to ignore the knock, I continued working on my latest design. Anyone who wanted access to my apartment always called ahead of time. It must have been someone that lived inside the building because you weren’t getting into the apartment complex or the building without access codes.
