Hood Misfits, Volume 2 Read online

  Although her words were pleasant, there was something about the way she closed the gap between us that said even if I pulled the trigger it would be me that ended up laid out on the floor. But before that thought could resonate within me, the man I knew as Phenom came through the door and snatched the gun away from me so smoothly I didn’t know I had it.

  He tossed the gun to Trigga who stood and caught it midair. “Keep this away from her before she accidently shoots herself,” he told him.

  I glanced back at Trigga who gave a slight head nod like they were all communicating about something I didn’t know. Phenom’s British accent was rich. The black suit he had on put me in the mind of Idris Elba if he was to ever play James Bond. I could easily see some of Trigga’s features in him. He was tall like Trigga but slimmer. Haircut was tapered and lined to perfection and although that nigga was fine, he moved slowly and stealthily like he could kill you quicker than you could blink.

  I didn’t like how they had just tried to play me. That whole head nod and “get the gun before she shoots herself” thing made me feel inadequate, out of the loop.

  “Don’t be snatching shit outta my hand,” I snapped.

  I didn’t care who he was. I didn’t want to be put back in the mind frame that I had to lie down and take shit from niggas anymore just because they thought they had the upper hand.

  Phenom’s gaze found me. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t smile or nothing. I couldn’t read that nigga. A look passed between him and Trigga again, pissed me off some more.

  “Children shouldn’t play with guns unless they are going to use them, Diamond. Is what I’m saying comprehensive to you?”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid either.”

  I may have been a child according to him, but if Anika had been any other nigga, they would have been dead, no questions asked.

  “Diamond,” Anika called my name softly as she stepped between me and Phenom. “It’s okay. We’re not the enemy. Phenom is a bit overprotective when it comes to me is all. One day, you’ll have a man who will feel the same way about you.”

  “It’s okay, Ray-Ray,” Gina said as she stood and took my hand. “We ain’t gotta be all angry all the time now and defensive. Dame is dead. We safe now.”

  I turned to look at Gina. If it hadn’t been quiet in the room, we wouldn’t have been able to hear her that well. Her voice went in and out mostly. At times she had to clear her throat to speak. I shrugged. I guess she was right though. Wasn’t a need for me to be up in arms about anything with Dame dead. Guess I was still paranoid.

  “You’re not safe,” Phenom spoke gruffly.

  That nigga’s voice carried a lot of bass when he spoke. I didn’t even know his whole story, only what I had read in that text that said he was Trigga’s uncle and Anika was my aunt. I had so many questions but none came to mind at the moment.

  I shook my head. “Huh? Trigga killed Dame. I saw him do it.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” he continued. “Dame is the least of your worries.”

  I was still confused and looked to Trigga for some sort of sign that he at least knew what Phenom was talking about. There was a scowl on his face where a smirk had been just a moment earlier.

  “Dame has a brother,” Trigga stated coolly.

  My face frowned. Chest got heavy. “What?”

  He repeated. “He has a brother. Here in London.”

  Ghost had recoiled on the couch. She’d balled her little self up with her knees to her chin, arms wrapped around her legs, like she was trying to disappear. Gina turned to look at Big Jake trying to figure out if someone was playing a joke on us or like me, trying to see if anyone would break out into a smile and tell us they were joking. But there was no smile on Jake’s face or Trigga’s. I looked at Anika and that all-knowing smirk was gone. Phenom’s face was something akin to a frown and looking like he had walked into a room full of decomposing bodies. Everything about what had been said was confusing me. If Dame had a brother who was in London, why the hell would they send me there and leave me all alone for three months?

  “If he has a brother here, why y’all send me here by myself?” I asked, voice slightly raised and shaking.

  I had asked that to everyone in the room, but my eyes were trained on Trigga. I was two seconds away from slapping that nigga. It was him who had told me to board that plane no matter what. If that nigga Dame had a brother over here, Ghost and I had been in more danger than I had thought. My gaze was unfocused when I looked around the room again. Posture slumped as my neck bent forward. I was feeling like I was about to pass out from exhaustion.

  “I didn’t know until last week,” Trigga voiced like he knew the answer I was looking for.

  “Doesn’t matter anyway. I had you protected. All of those niggas you see out there every day protected you and the little one. No one was coming in or out of here without getting past them,” Phenom explained.

  That still didn’t make me feel no better. I kept thinking about all the shit that could have happened to me and to Ghost.

  “I don’t know them niggas.”

  “Doesn’t matter, Diamond. Nothing was going to happen to you,” Anika told me as she stepped forward and laid a hand on my shoulder.

  I shrugged it away. “It does fucking matter because if it didn’t none of you would be in here looking and acting like something was about to pop off. So if the shit didn’t matter and nothing was going to fucking happen to me or us then why y’all telling me now that he has a damn brother?”

  “Because the rules of the streets are different here in London,” Phenom said. “Dante has done his homework. He’s nothing like his brother. They’re only alike in looks. Dante is wiser, more cold and calculating than Dame was. Dame was a saint compared to Dante. If Dame was a killer then Dante is Hitler. I’ve been watching and waiting to see if he would make a move. I got word he went to the States doing some talking and looking around, finding out things on his own. He wanted to know who offed his demented-ass brother.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care about none of that shit,” I screamed. I was beyond belligerent. “Why am I here? Why did you niggas leave us here?”

  “Because it was the safest fucking place for you to be,” Trigga finally spoke up with a little too much bass in his voice. “All you’re thinking about is this nigga retaliating, Ray-Ray. There was other shit that had to be handled. Like our names and faces being shown around. Did you forget that nigga Dame had cops on his payroll? Did you forget they know what the fuck we look like, li’l shawty? Did you not think they were going to question why we weren’t found dead or alive? I know you’re pissed about being left here alone. Damn, I was pissed when I found out too, but shit is what it is.”

  As Trigga talked he briskly walked up to me and got in my face forcing me to take a small step back.

  “Come on, Ray-Ray. You gotta start using your head. You’re no longer the little girl you used to be. You can’t get that shit back. It’s gone,” Phenom added in. “You’ve had your fun, your relief.” He clapped his big hands twice. “It’s game time.”

  “Fun?” I repeated looking between him and Trigga. “You call me being scared shitless for the last three months fun? That shit wasn’t fun for me, nigga. Every day I had to live in fear—”

  Phenom cut me off, grabbed me by my arm, and started pulling me to the door. It was nothing for him to snatch me up because he was way taller than me and a helluva lot stronger than he looked. I tried to struggle against his hold and was surprised that as soon as we left my flat the outside of the building was lined with Anika’s female guards and black males, young and old all armed to the nines, weapons very visible. Some were the dudes I had seen every day since I had been in London. Some were complete strangers. Phenom kept yanking me forward until we got to the parking lot.

  It was a gated area, but just outside that gate sat cars lined all up and down the street. Males of all races and nationalities hung out of the windows and s
tood by the cars. Loud reggae and rap music drowned out my breathing. Baggy jeans, durags, and bandanas were displayed on male bodies. When they saw Phenom emerge from the walkway they all stepped outside of their cars, music was turned off, and it was all hands on deck. At first I thought he was just showing me that he had me surrounded. Thought he was trying to calm my nerves, but it was when the steel gray door opened to the Mercedes that I realized what was going down.

  The first thing I saw were the red bottom male dress shoes and the bottom of the black wide-legged dress slacks. Then as the man exiting the car stood at his full height my heart started to hurt. The world and time stood still as I watched in horror. His hair was like Dame’s. Skin tone the same color as Dame’s. Same height as Dame. Only difference was his build was thicker. Instead of a red cane, the one on his arm was a platinum one. There was a smile on his face that contrasted with the murderous intent in his eyes. A scar was on the right side of his upper lip in the shape of a cross. Just like Dame, he had light eyes and was heaven to look at even to my young eyes. But I knew from experience with his brother that the looks were only to draw you in for the kill.

  “Nice of you to bring dinner, Phenom.”

  When Dame’s twin, Dante, open his mouth I swear the air around me chilled. The hairs on the back of my neck and arms stood up. His voice was deep making him sound way more man than Dame could have ever been. His accent was rich and told that he had been in London for a long while. It was a mixture of old world English and Caribbean dialect. Smooth like it could talk you into doing anything he wanted. He kept his eyes on me and in that moment I was back in Dame’s control scared to look at another man for fear of what he would do to me. I looked away and down at the ground.

  “You’re on the wrong side of the codes, Dante,” Phenom coolly told him.

  “Eh, I am?” Dante shrugged. “And yuh on di wrung side of di war, my man. Where is di boy that murder mi brudda?”

  Phenom casually shrugged. “Don’t know which you speak of.”

  “Is that the game we’re going to play, bruv?”

  “I ain’t cha brother, nigga. It is what it is.”

  “I don’t believe in turning the other cheek, Phenom.”

  “An eye for an eye, Dante.”

  “Vengeance is mine and that bint yuh holding is mine.”

  I ain’t know what bint meant but I knew I had just been insulted, called out my name.

  “Cut the bullshit, yo. You’re on the wrong side of the fucking codes. I suggest you pack up your bloody nancy boys and get the fuck off my block, bruv.”

  Phenom’s voice told that he wasn’t in the mood for playing games. The way some of his boys hand flanked him with weapons drawn said he wasn’t going to tell Dante to leave again. Next time he would show them the way out. Phenom’s men and Anika’s guard didn’t hold their guns like the thugs in the movies. No, their shit was aimed like they were the cops or military. I felt like I was standing in the middle of a movie theater watching a movie while everyone else watched me.

  My palms started to sweat, fingers were moving fast because someone else was controlling my nerves. I felt like a puppet whose strings were being pulled every which way but loose. I didn’t know why Phenom had dragged me outside for that clearly delusional nigga to see me. I made the mistake of looking directly into Dante’s eyes and I swear his straight-faced, unblinking gazed chilled me to the bone. I didn’t want this shit again. I thought we were done. Thought this shit was over and there I stood looking at my worst nightmare manifested. Dante’s lips eased into an amused smirk as he stared at me dead on.

  I hadn’t even realized Trigga was standing next to Phenom until he chuckled like something was humorous to him. He stood wide legged with his arms folded across his wide chest, hoodie up over his head. The look on his face was the same it had always been. That nigga was never afraid to die. For some reason that scared me more than knowing Dante knew who we were.

  “I didn’t come here just to make noise,” Dante spoke sternly. “Ah come fa mi just due. What’s more important to you? That bitch you holding? The killer of my brother? I hear it’s yuh fam, innit? Me and yah fam get real close these days, yeah, bruv?”

  Dante stared Phenom down then laughed manically like he knew something that Phenom didn’t. I looked over at Phenom and the saw the slight tick in his jaw.

  “Yo, son, I don’t even know whose fam you’re speaking of, bruv,” he said then chuckled. “So, once again”—Phenom gave a hand signal and I heard guns click—“get the fuck on or you’re about to be fertilizer just like your punk-ass brother, nigga.”

  Sirens could be heard coming closer, but I didn’t have time to think about that. Phenom was pulling me back toward my flat.

  “I wanted you to see that this shit wasn’t a joke,” he growled out at me. “Wanted you to see that the shit was real. This is your life now and you gotta live that shit and play this fucking game to survive. No need to run from that shit until we’ve wiped out every enemy. If you keep running they keep coming and gunning for you. That nigga will kill you and eat your fucking heart, I swear down, yeah?”

  As he talked he lightly shoved me back inside. Gina had sat down on the couch and started rocking back and forth shaking her head.

  “I ain’t going back to that shit. Never fucking going back so y’all gotta tell me what to do because I ain’t going back,” she whispered.

  She tried to talk louder but it wasn’t happening.

  “You ready?” Phenom looked at Trigga and asked him. “This nigga is a part of the reason my sister and brother-in-law is dead. I been waiting years to take this nigga out. Started in prison when I popped his pussy-ass daddy. I took a bloody case just to take that nigga out. You did your pops justice with that nigga Dame. Dante is a different breed, which is why he’s survived for as long as he has. It’s war and it’s now. You down?”

  Chapter 2

  Trigga

  Was I down? Clearly he still had a lot to learn about Trigga. The fact that I was there was answer enough.

  “If I go make me a mask no one see who boyed off the ting. Run up on man I’ll boy off the ting. Hop the railings and boy off the ting. Woyyyy! Make me a mask. No one see who boyed off the ting. Run out the bush and boy off the ting. Your screaming please don’t boy off the ting!”

  Some new type of music I was jiggin’ to blasted all around me as I rode my BMX bike through the borough of Hackney with my skull-printed black hoodie hanging low over my head thinking about how my unk came at me. Like I told that nigga, don’t question me about my fucking loyalty, fam or not. Nigga, you new to me. No new friends feel me? We came London to get away from those niggas in the A after lighting that shit up. We didn’t come here for some new shit, but I’m a hood nigga and I never back down from a fight. So like I told him, I’d educate myself because I was in a new area, like anyone with brains would do and I did. I bashed some niggas heads in first day I landed in London.

  I cut up some palms, faces and stomped niggas, just to see how real this place was. Just by doing that I learned a lot, but shit wasn’t always how it was supposed to go. Just like the States, London was on some straight hood shit with parts of it trying to gentrify just like how they did South Chicago or every borough in NYC that rich cats wanted to take over. Shit like that got people mad. Shit like that put people out of homes, works, and community, and shit like that was what bred us Hood Misfits.

  Check it, let me hit the rewind and come correct. Three months ago a nigga had planned to die and take down all those who had wronged me and mine, and eventually those who wronged my fam. ENGA was the motto. ENGA was what took down a foul nigga name Dame who thought the world belonged to him simply because he had the power and money to make people bow to his demands. Yeah, fuck that Scarface wannabe nigga because in the end, he was dead and no amount of money and power was going to bring him back..

  At the same time though, Jake and I got roughed up mad hard. Niggas came out like roaches, from all levels of the
streets and law sweatin’ us, trying to take us out. Jake got lead through him, and I got lead in my side, shoulder, and thigh. I had a feeling that shit was going to happen which was why I sought out Phenom. Turned out Phenom was my blood so that shit worked out like heaven, feel me?

  Like Sun Tzu said, hit them with annihilation, and then they will survive. Drop them into a KOBK (killed or be killed) situation and then they would do all they could to live. Reason for that was, when we fell into danger, we then aimed for victory. ENGA. That’s what happened to us. Wasn’t pretty, wasn’t simple but the plan did what it was supposed to, and on some real shit, it also revealed more players to the game. That was how my mind worked. For every objective, there was a reason and a countermeasure.

  London was my life for now. Figuring out the streets, the codes, the people, and me and my fam’s place in it was my MO. That shit included hashing out a new plan to finish up this blood vengeance with this new nigga, Dante, Dame’s older brother. No lie, when my unk hit me with that knowledge, I spazzed out. Like where they do that shit at?

  We came out of death, only to get our freedom snatched away again when hitting up London? Fuck my life, feel me? Was a nigga scared? Naw, but a nigga was definitely tired, know what I mean? A nigga was also not feeling that fear that was put into my fam ’cause of that nigga Dame and now his Darth Vadar returning from the dead–looking twin, Dante. I had my last week at the hospital to get my mind wrapped around that Dame had a twin brotherwhere I had sent Diamond and Ghost. I had talks with my uncle who helped me accept that this shit was what it was. Like who would have fucking guessed that the demonic spunk would spread overseas and grow into massive evil? The devil sure as fuck knew what he was doing and was one step ahead of even my own uncle.

  Shit got real. Especially when I got to see that nigga. Before stepping to Diamond, letting her know we were alive, Phenom had us checking his endz, where his legit business was and how the gangs were coded in London. When we pulled up outside of Dante’s codes, shit got really real for me and took me back. It was like staring Dame in the face all over again, except for that cut on that nigga’s upper lip. Seeing him up close like that had my finger itching. Nah, it actually had me squeezing my Glock and aiming to pump lead into him, but Phenom stopped me before I could. Something that would come back to haunt me later.