Hood Misfits, Volume 4 Read online

  “Already had her, nigga,” Lu taunted him, then shrugged. “Sweet, tight piece of pussy, too. So good gotta introduce my old man to it.”

  Before I could blink, my pops had taken a fist to the bad man’s face, rocking him backward. My mama was yelling for my father not to do it. From my window I could see people staring on in shock at my father, who dared to go up against an Orlando.

  “No, Michael, no,” my mama screamed and tried to run outside.

  “Stay in the house, Mena,” he yelled back at her as she opened the front door. “Go in the house and stay.”

  She backed into the house again. “Michael, please come in the house, please,” she pleaded as she closed the screen door.

  “Daddy, no,” Erica cried when she realized our father wasn’t listening to our mother.

  Lu found his balance and then reached behind him. When he brought his hand back around, in his hand was a silver gun, the biggest gun I’d ever seen. I knew what was about to happen before my pops had any idea. I knew I should have said something or even run downstairs, but I couldn’t move. Fear had me glued to where I was. While my father’s back was turned, the man in the white suit walked up to my father and pulled the trigger, hitting my pops in the back of the head. My mama’s screams blended with Erica’s as she fell backward. Erica’s eyes were wide with fright as she screamed louder and louder.

  “Daddy,” she cried and then, in a hurried crawl, made her way over to his limp body.

  I could tell she hadn’t been expecting that to happen. I could see that by the wild look of panic in her eyes. I heard my mama running back down the stairs in a frenzy. As Erica tried to pull our father into her arms, the man walked over to his body and emptied more of his clip into my father’s back. With each shot that rang out, Erica’s body shook and trembled like it was she who was being ripped apart by bullets. My eyes widened. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t even breathe. My throat swelled as I watched my mama rush outside then fall to her knees as a shot to her chest from the same gun hit her. Her body slumped over and fell next to my father’s.

  As Erica tried to run back into the house, the man grabbed a handful of her hair and tossed her back down the front steps. He snatched Erica up from the ground then shoved her into the back of the car despite her struggling. I finally was able to move my feet and I rushed outside. I knew I was running fast, but it felt as if I was moving in slow motion. It took me forever to make it to my parents. By the time I made it outside, all I could see were the taillights of the car driving away. Tears streamed down my face as I watched my mama struggle to breathe. Nobody did anything. Nobody came to help.

  Even though my mama survived, she was never the same. She ended up dying six years later of a drug overdose. I’d been orphaned long before then anyway. Rumor had it they found my sister’s body weeks later. My mama refused to go even identify the body and I was too young to do so.

  I never forgave myself and I never forgot the Orlandos. Maybe if I had just eaten the rice and bacon my sister would have never walked to the store. Then maybe, just maybe, my family would still be alive. A few hours later, I sat in the locker room of the Nightwings, dressed to impress in a suit that would always tell my role of being the team manager for the Atlanta Nightwings. My PR rep had already been working in the media to explain my absence. There was nothing like a serious car crash to explain my injuries and sudden disappearance. I looked around at the players in the room. They all had a look of greed in their eyes.

  “So what’chu saying is all we need to do is either fuck this nigga up in practice or let him get fucked up on the field and the dough is as good as ours?” a player asked.

  Just that quick I was back to being Micah Tems, the Nightwings’ manager. I took on the persona I’d been playing for years and smiled even though the pain in my face was almost unbearable. I casually pulled some Vicodin from the pill bottle and popped three, then slid the bottle back in my pocket.

  “I’ma say it like this: whichever one of you motherfuckers take this nigga’s legs from under him and make sure he never gets back up gets all the dough you see in this silver suitcase,” I answered. “I want this nigga to never think he has enough fame and power to walk away from the Nightwings, you feel me?”

  I could see money signs flipping in all those niggas’ eyes as they greedily eyed the suitcase. I knew the ones who were on my team and I knew the ones who needed a little convincing. That brought my attention back to the one tied down to the gray folding chair in the middle of the room. Dragon was sitting there surrounded by the men on the team who were in my back pocket. He and Enzo were the closest on the team. You could tell by the way he protected the boy when he ran the ball. If Enzo got the ball in his hand, he was end zone–bound and part of that was thanks to the man blocking for him: Dragon.

  “So, you rethink my proposition, my man?” I asked him as I tilted his bloody face up to look at me.

  I wasn’t surprised that he spit in my face.

  “Fuck you, nigga,” he barked out. “You still on your own.”

  I chuckled then shook my head. “Nah, see, anything I do or ask, I always have a backup plan for if niggas like you get to having a conscience and shit, feel me?”

  I snapped my fingers and the back door opened. In walked a little girl with long plaits and eyes of the man who sat tied to the chair. She slowly walked over and tried to run to her father, but I snatched her up before she could make it to him. The little girl started to cry and toss and turn in my arms as she reached for her father. One look at his daughter, and it took about five men to hold Dragon down in his chair.

  “She’s beautiful, like her mother,” I said with a wicked smile. “But check it, if you don’t move to allow what I want done to happen, I’m going to sell both her and her mother to the highest bidder. I mean, after all, the man you protect on the field has ties in human trafficking, right? I’d get a pretty penny,” I teased him, as I looked at the little girl who’d started crying after seeing her father, “for this one. And oh, yeah . . .” I said, snapping my fingers like I’d just remembered something.

  The girl’s mother’s naked frame was shoved into the room. She, too, had been beaten up. Blood covered her beautiful dark skin. One of her eyes had swollen shut as blood dripped from her bottom lip.

  “Oh shit, Lenika, I’m sorry, baby,” Dragon growled out.

  “That one is a fighter,” I commented. “You know she took down two of my niggas by herself?” I asked like I was really impressed.

  The dark-skinned beauty lying on the cold floor looked up to see me holding her daughter. She took one look at her daughter’s crying face, hopped from the floor, then rushed at me. I backed away knowing my men would stop her.

  “Give me my baby,” she shrieked out, jumping at me as two guards held her back.

  While they were busy eyeing her shaved pussy and bouncing tits, I kept my eyes on the man she lay with every night. Being naked did nothing to deter the fight in her. The wild bitch clawed at the eyes of one of the players and wildly swung at the other one before they let her go. She came at me again. I calmly pulled a Taser from my waist then lit into her. Dragon’s baby mama fell backward, shivering and shaking as the high voltage of the gun assaulted her. The woman’s hair spread out behind her on the floor like black silk. Their daughter’s wails lit up the room as she cried for her mama.

  “Now, Dragon, your answer?” I asked him again.

  That nigga was foaming at the mouth, bursting at the seams to protect his girl and daughter. I smiled when the man dropped his head and gave in. As I smoothed the lapels down on my suit jacket, I walked with a renewed purpose. Even if I died trying, the Orlandos would pay for what they had done to my family. I wouldn’t stop until I had erased the whole bloodline.

  Chapter 2

  Angel

  “I need to talk to you,” Tino said as he grabbed my arm when I walked out of the Bounce Girls’ locker room.

  All had been quiet on the home front for me. In the past th
ree weeks, I’d seen Enzo in passing when I had practice or when I had been helping his aunt with her treatments, and even then I could tell that no love had been lost or gained between us. I was angry with him. Pissed the hell off that after all I’d tried to do to show him I wasn’t who he was perceiving me to be, he still treated me as if I was. After all the plotting and scheming to get that nigga Micah off our asses, he still saw the worst in me. For that I would always be angry at him.

  “About what?” I asked, noticing the urgency in Tino’s voice.

  He walked at a fast pace, pulling me with him as he did so. Tino was one of the three male dancers on the Bounce Girls dance team. He was as flamboyant as the night was long. He had some shiesty ways about him, but had proved to be an ally when Enzo decided he wanted to take Micah down. Tino had a way of getting information and making dudes talk. A lot of those niggas in the NFL were on the DL and Tino could get all the dirt in exchange for whatever he was offering at the moment.

  “Girl, ya boy Enzo has been put on the chopping block,” he told me once we had bent a corner and no one could hear or see us.

  I wanted to pretend that I didn’t care about Enzo. In my head I told Tino that I didn’t give a fuck about what would happen to Enzo, but I couldn’t. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, I . . . I was deep in my feelings when it came to Enzo.

  Still, I nonchalantly shrugged and asked, “Put on the chopping block? What’s that? They’re cutting him from the team?”

  “Nah, bitch. Micah done put a bounty on this nigga’s career. So you know we play the Angels in two days and shit, right? Well, a few of the players are on my roster, if you know what I mean, and I heard the bounty has even been extended to them. Micah wants them to take this nigga legs clear from under him. You feel me?”

  Nervousness made the muscles in my stomach clench and my heart rate speed up. I tensely brought a hand up to scratch just above my right brow and switched my weight from one foot to the other as I adjusted my Bounce Girls bag on my shoulder.

  “When did you hear this?” I asked him as we both looked around to make sure nobody could hear us.

  “Just left the players’ locker room.”

  He was about to say something else until his cell rang. He quickly looked down at it and his face fell. He held a finger to his lips telling me to be quiet as he answered the phone. Just judging by the way Tino’s whole body went rigid I knew who was calling him.

  “This is Tino. If you paying, I’m playing,” he answered casually.

  For a few seconds he just stood there with the phone to his ear then he passed it over to me with a look that I couldn’t read. I didn’t even have to say hello.

  “I’m going to kill you, bitch, but before I do, I’m going to make sure you feel every kind of pain imaginable,” Micah said coolly into the phone. “All you had to do was make the right choice, Angel, but like the whore you were bred to be, you chose wrong.” He chuckled low, hissed like he had burned himself, and then I heard him swallow. “I had big plans for you, Angel. Would have made you an honest woman. Okay, that part would have been impossible since you like to sell your pussy to the highest bidder, but still. You would have at least been more than another Orlando’s whore.”

  I frowned because I knew Micah had cameras trained on us from somewhere. Even still, I was more confused about what he had meant by calling me an Orlando’s whore. But there was something like defiance that arose in me in that moment. I was no longer going to let Micah turn me into a victim. I was sick and damn tired of being the victim. So if this nigga wanted me, he was going to have to fight to take me.

  “Fuck you, nigga,” I responded to him causing Tino’s eyes to widen. “You walk around like you run this shit and we both know with one word from me I can end you,” I threatened him.

  I didn’t even have to tell him what I was talking about. His silence on the other end of the phone told me he knew exactly what I meant.

  “So you bucking the system now, Angel? Think you can rumble with the big dogs? It’s one thing to join an alliance with a nigga such as Enzo to go against me. It’s another one altogether to think your pussy fat enough to rise up against me alone. Don’t you see?” He chuckled and I heard something crash, sounding like he’d thrown something. “I’m motherfucking unstoppable. That nigga tried to kill me and I’m still here. If Enzo couldn’t take me down, what the fuck make you think a two-bit whore can?”

  “I may be a two-bit whore, but I’m the two-bit whore who’s going to ruin you. I’m the whore who you were so obsessed with that when she was just sixteen you bought her. You fucked her in your condos and hotel rooms. The pussy had you so gone that you slipped up and told her a few secrets. Let’s see how all the underworld bosses in Atlanta will feel once they know a snitch for the Feds is in their midst.”

  I pressed the end button on the phone and shoved it back in Tino’s hand. His almond-shaped brown eyes were so wide that they looked as if they were going to pop out of his head at any moment.

  “Bitch, Micah a snitch?” he asked. I could tell he was fizzing from the mouth for the gossip.

  I shrugged, feigning ignorance. “I don’t know. But since he wants to keep fucking with me like I’ve personally done something to him then I’ll do the same to him.”

  “This nigga was fucking you when you were sixteen?” Tino asked again.

  I looked at my watch and then back at Tino. I knew players were on the field and whether I wanted to or not, I had to get to Enzo.

  “I’m going to tell you something I never wanted anybody to know: I was snatched up by Damien Orlando at the tender age of fourteen. You know who that nigga was and you know what he specialized in. You do the math in your head.”

  That was all I said to him as I headed down the long corridor to the field. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I’d learned to always go with my gut. When Tino called out behind me frantically, I looked behind me to see Micah coming around the corner at the other end of the hall. The way his face was bandaged with a patch over his right eye made him look every bit of the madman he was. As soon as he saw Tino, he swung on him and with one punch put the flamboyant gay male on his ass. Tino was out cold. Sucker-ass nigga had to catch him when he wasn’t looking. I knew he was coming for me. When I saw three other players with him chasing after me, I knew what time it was. I had to get to that door and onto the field where I was sure cameras, other sponsors, players, owners, coaches and, more importantly, Enzo were there.

  “Let me school you right quick, baby girl, because you seem to have shit all wrong. The women I take under my wing, I don’t allow them to be victims. I don’t allow them to play the ‘woe is me’ game. Understand? So, you tell me right here, right now, if you’re ready to stop being a victim and start being a survivor.”

  I’d never forget those words Anika spoke to me as Shy looked on. Even as I ran full speed ahead, those words echoed in my mind. It was a day after Enzo had damn near beat me down in his condo because he thought I’d been trying to have sex with his thirteen-year-old brother. I’d called Anika that night scared and crying because I’d found myself, once again, on the receiving end of an ass-whooping from a man. The same man I was running to. He and I had yet to talk about what had happened between us: the sex, the bad, and the ugly. Ain’t shit really ever been good between me and Enzo. From the moment we found ourselves thrown into the abyss of the psycho Micah and his need to rid the earth of Enzo, me and Enzo always found ourselves on the opposite ends of friends and foes.

  That night, I was hurt, physically, emotionally, and mentally, and beyond distraught. Couldn’t believe that after all had been said and done, Enzo still saw me as an enemy. I didn’t even know why I had been trying so hard to make him see differently anyway. I would never willingly try to fuck Drew. He was only thirteen years old, for crying out loud.

  “You can only play the role of a victim for so long before I start to call bullshit and allow you to start fending for yourself. I only help thos
e who help themselves. I’m telling you the same thing I told my niece, Diamond, or Ray-Ray as you may know her. Dame’s dead. While what he did to you was beyond low, I won’t allow where you’ve been to dictate where you’re going,” Anika told me.

  “She’s right, Angel,” Shy chimed in. “I know you and Shawn kind of got some issues with one another, but he, too, has to get that monkey off his back. That nigga, his brother, and his soulless father are all rotting in hell as they should be. So don’t you let another nigga like Micah come and try to turn your lives upside down because he has an agenda. Every nigga got an agenda and now it’s time that you and Shawn come together and have one too. No bullshit, just business,” she said.

  “Grab that bitch,” I heard Micah yell behind me.

  I almost made the mistake of looking behind me, but something made me look to the left of me. If I hadn’t, I would have surely been football tackled by the meaty player charging at me from another entrance in the hall. I did a quick step and slammed into the wall. The beefy player ended up going into the wall head first. I yelped out and by instinct alone, kicked him in his dick for good measure. The pain in my elbow made me inwardly curse, but I didn’t stop moving. I was a few inches away from the door, and could hear the commotion on the field.

  My breath was caught in my chest. I felt as if it was hard for me to breathe and even though everything in me said to keep running and keep fighting, there was still that modicum of fear riding me. I was so blinded by trying to get out the door that I didn’t see a few of the Bounce Girls dancers running for me. By the time I realized it, two of them had grabbed me. If I had learned anything from Enzo, I learned to always have a weapon on my person. I struggled with the two dancers, head-butting one and then sending an elbow to the face of the other. Another one of the dancers came from behind me, grabbing the bag I had on my shoulder. The force of the pull took me down to the ground as the strap from the bag choked me. I fought my way out of the entanglement, saw Micah closing in on me, and hopped to my feet.