The Syndicate 3 Read online

  “Y’all have a floor to yourselves, with staff like before,” he said as our guards opened the car doors. “Welcome back to NYC. We always got something to throw at cha.”

  “So tomorrow, after breakfast, we all do this again?” I said jokingly, causing everyone to laugh.

  In the end, we had lived for another day. That shit with Lucky made me think of Mama and what I knew. Telling him was still up in the air. However, saving the Commission was our priority. We just now had to find out who those niggas were. What the hell had we just stepped into?

  Chapter 4

  Uncle Snap

  It had been three hours since we’d touched down in New York. Despite Lucky wanting us to get to the safe-house location where the Old Italian was being doctored, Javon wanted to lay low for a few hours. So, Lucky had left to make sure everything was still in order with his uncle.

  “We need to reassess how we move here. I didn’t think we would get off the plane and step right into the Wild West,” he’d said.

  I agreed with my nephew there.

  “Shit was crazy,” Cory said. “Whoever is after these old heads is trying to take out every and anyone close to them too.”

  “A king’s descent,” I said as I poured some moonshine into my favorite mason jar.

  “A what?” Cory asked.

  “A king’s descent,” I repeated.

  “It’s something like a queen’s gambit,” Javon said, causing me to nod. “Only with a descent, they’re not aiming to take out one leader. They’re aiming for the heads of the entire organization.”

  I took a sip of my moonshine, then wiped my mouth. “Right, right. They start with the most powerful and work their way down the bloodlines, trying to make it so no new blood can step in and claim the empty seat,” I said.

  “Just so we’re clear,” Cory added, “this shit has nothing to do with the Syndicate, but everything to do with the Commission?”

  Javon nodded. “As far as we know, right now, yeah.”

  I looked around the luxury high-rise. I had to say one thing—the Acardi men knew how to live in style. They’d spared no expense with this place. There was little doubt in my mind that the doorknobs were real gold. And since Lucky had jokingly bragged about the Italian marble on the floor being Botticino, I knew that was just as good as walking on gold. The curtains and shades had been hand sewn by the best. I was sure the cows used for the leather sofas had been handpicked by Luci himself.

  For some reason, that shit annoyed me. Everything annoyed me. I’d given Javon King’s journal. It had taken me years to get through it myself. There was one thing in it that had always bothered me. One thing that was going to make Javon see me in a different light, and I wasn’t ready for that.

  “Hey, Unc, you cool?”

  I snapped my head around to stare at Cory. I saw him, but I didn’t see him. It was as if I was looking right through him, seeing another time and place.

  I frowned. “I didn’t mean it,” I said.

  “You didn’t mean what, Unc?” he asked, dipping his head to get a better look in my eyes.

  I glanced around the room. I knew Javon was looking at me, but I focused my eyes everywhere but on him.

  I slapped a hand on Cory’s shoulder. “Nothing, nephew. Nothing. Was thinking on some old shit. Got caught up in memories and shit.”

  I gave his back a pat, then moved out of Javon’s line of vision. While Cory and I were close, Javon and I were closer. He was able to read me and call me on my shit quicker than Cory was.

  “What time did Lucky say he was coming back?” I asked while walking into the kitchen.

  “Should be back in here in a minute,” Cory answered.

  The fact that Javon hadn’t spoken up yet wasn’t lost on me. It meant that nigga was inside of his head, thinking shit. Trying to piece shit together. I didn’t need that. I needed to keep him from that part of the truth for as long as I could. Some shit not even Mama needed to know. It had been for her own safety. But I was sure nephew would have seen it as a betrayal. It was just the way he viewed things. I grabbed a glass of ice, then got some paper towels to wipe the sweat from my forehead. I walked back to where I’d set up shop next to the window. I poured some moonshine over the ice, then took a sip.

  “Yo, Unc, you behaving mad weird right now,” Cory said. “You drinking ya shine out of a tumbler with ice and shit, my nigga.”

  “Yeah, I know, nephew. Being up here got me anxious. Some shit just don’t feel right, is all. Forgive me.”

  I glanced at Javon, and nephew had a gaze fixed on me that told me he had peeped game. Cory laughed and said something about me needing to chill out, because I was making him nervous. I didn’t really pay attention to what he was saying. My heart rate sped up. Javon stood across the room, next to the expensive piano, arms folded across his chest, feet planted wide.

  “How far you done got in King’s journal, Javon?” I asked him.

  “I haven’t,” he responded, his tone on the verge of being cold.

  I took another sip of the moonshine on the rocks. “You gone probably want to go ahead—”

  Before I could finish what I wanted to say, the locks turned on the door. All three of us drew our weapons and aimed them at the door. Luckily for Lucky, we weren’t paranoid and trigger happy. Otherwise, he’d have been a dead man.

  Dressed in the same driver’s attire that he had been in earlier, Lucky told us it was safer to move now.

  By the time we made it to the undisclosed location where the Old Italian was, my nerves had somewhat calmed down, as we had other shit to worry about at the moment, and I needed to be on my Ps and Qs when watching Javon’s back while we were out.

  Lucky pulled up to a building that looked like an abandoned hospital. It had no more than seven or eight floors. Many windows were broken. Some were boarded up. The front doors hung from their hinges. It really didn’t look like a safe space to be hiding anybody, but knowing what I knew, it was safe to bet that there was more to the building than met the eye.

  I knew we were in upstate New York, but since Lucky had driven in a maze pattern, I couldn’t readily say where exactly.

  “Y’all got the old head up in this quarantine-type-looking joint?” Cory asked as we exited the truck. “Looks like we about to step into a zombie apocalypse or some shit.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” Lucky said. “Follow me.”

  The inside of the building was just as shabby as the outside. It looked as if we had just stepped into an area from a disaster movie. Tables were strewn about. Heart monitors that no longer worked were turned over on the floor. Old hospital beds and gurneys looked as if they’d been pushed aside in a rush and just left wherever they rolled. The smell was rancid. I was half scared that the syringes we were stepping on would pierce the bottom of the expensive-ass shoes we were wearing.

  “Nigga, you should’ve gave us hazmat suits or some shit. It’s a fucking mess in here,” Cory said. “Y’all can’t be trying to save that old nigga in all this filth. I’m sure that nigga can die from the germs in this bitch alone.”

  Lucky chuckled. Javon and I walked in silence. Lucky led us down several flights of stairs until we made it to a set of double doors that stood out in stark contrast to the rest of the building. The brass doors had a security panel, which Lucky waved his hand in front of. Locks and latches could be heard whirring and ticking, and then a loud buzz caused the door to open. As soon as it did, heavily armed men and women dressed in all black greeted us.

  “At ease,” Lucky said. “It’s me.”

  The lights were bright. The hall was clean, and it looked more like the hospital it was supposed to be. We walked past several rooms before Lucky finally stopped in front of one. He pulled off the chauffeur’s hat he’d been wearing, then took a deep breath. It was only then that I was able to see the stress on the boy’s shoulders.

  “The old man may not be lucid when we get in here,” he said, glancing at all of us before looking at Javon.
“There is something I didn’t tell you before.”

  I took a step back, then looked at Javon. His face was stoic when he responded. “I’m listening.”

  “I told you how Cavriel was killed, but it was where he was killed that gives me pause. Same as where my uncle was shot. They were in their homes. If you know anything about these old heads, then you know they are very particular about who they let in their homes.”

  Javon nodded. “So you’re thinking this is internal.”

  Lucky frowned. “That would be the logical thing to think, right? But it’s just too obvious. Feels like some shit is missing or that the killer or killers would want us to think that, right?”

  “Have you talked to the other families?” Javon asked him.

  “That’s the plan once we leave here. Uncle Luci specifically asked for you to be brought in. This wasn’t my call.”

  “What was his reason?” Javon asked.

  “He said you owe him one.”

  “That old man knows that’s not how our relationship works. I made that clear to him last time I was here,” Javon said.

  “Well, you’re going to need to get over whatever loyalties you have to Claudette and her ever-present dope boy—you know him as Snap—and come to terms with the fact you do owe Luci a favor.”

  My eye twitched and my soul turned to frost when I heard the voice of the woman I detested more than life itself. I turned my head to look at her, and my soul broke into a million little pieces. She looked like my woman so much that for a second I was drunk enough to want to grab her and hold her. Tell her how much I missed her . . . But she wasn’t. She could never be, no matter how many times or how many ways she tried to be.

  She was even dressed like my woman. From her long pressed hair, which was parted down the middle to curtain her diamond-shaped face, to the way she was dressed in a form-fitting black dress. Her body was shaped like an hourglass . . . just like my woman’s. And she had breasts and hips that made any man take notice, no matter his race or sexuality.

  I remembered the pain she’d caused my woman over the years. Remembered Mama’s tears and her angry rants about why and how her own flesh and blood could turn into such a cruel and evil-intentioned human being at times. Even after all the shit Mama had tried to do to ease the waters.

  “Shut up, bitch,” I shouted before my sense of decorum could catch up to me.

  My voice didn’t even sound like my own to me, so it wasn’t a surprise to me that Cory and Javon looked at me as if I’d grown two heads.

  Lucky tilted his head, then scowled at me. I shot him a look that mirrored the one I’d given his nothing-ass mama.

  “I’m going to need you to never in your life disrespect my mother like that again, or it will be the last thing you do,” he threatened.

  “Nigga . . . fuck you and yo’ gutter-ass mama,” I replied, slurring my words.

  And just like that, a line had been drawn in the sand. Javon and Cory drew down on Lucky just as he pulled his piece on me. My gun was in my hand, but I had mine aimed at his mother.

  “Okay, now I need everyone to calm down,” Javon said, his voice calm—too calm. “Lucky, you know I’ve always come into their space with absolute respect.”

  “Then you forgot to give that nigga the memo,” Lucky spat.

  “Uncle Snap,” Javon called out to me.

  My eyes never left my woman’s blood-related doppel-gänger, and neither did the aim of my gun.

  “You’re feeling guilty, huh, Ralph?” she taunted me. “Your demons coming back to haunt you now? I told her she was too good for you. She could have had everything—”

  “She did have everything,” I yelled through clenched teeth.

  “But she chose to live in the slums with you and these vagabonds she called her children.”

  “Vagabonds,” Cory repeated. The tone in his voice said he was offended.

  “Shut up, Deedee,” I snapped.

  “Lucky,” Javon said, “I’m going to put my gun away, and then I’m going to instruct Uncle Snap and Cory to do the same. Once that’s done, and after we go in to see the old man, we can sit down and discuss some things that would better explain what just happened and why it happened. You know I’m a man of my word. Give me that.”

  For a few tense seconds, nobody moved. But like always, I felt Mama somewhere close to me. So, I dropped my hand, then tucked my gun away.

  “Sorry, nephew,” I said to Javon.

  “I know, Uncle Snap.”

  Chapter 5

  Javon

  “Who is Deedee?” I heard Lucky ask while I headed to Luci’s room.

  “I don’t know what a Deedee is, sweetheart, but my designation is Giovanna Acardi, and that tacky vagrant will address me respectfully.”

  A harsh laugh came from Uncle Snap as he said, “You dress a backwater pygmy rattlesnake up in Versace and gaudy diamonds with pearls, and she forget she got the same dirty moonshine in her blood as I do.”

  Clearly, we all were in a stressful situation, and it had those of us with a more restrained mind-set chilling, while others, like Uncle Snap, were flipping the hell out. On some real shit, it didn’t surprise me. He was grieving still, so this made a helluva lot of sense. I just needed him not to be sipping on that Devil’s piss and to be reining in the chaos for a bit. We had shit to do, and I already was on edge about being shot at and chased, along with finding out more of Mama’s secrets.

  So, with an inward sigh, I added Uncle Snap to my mental list of people to watch. Before that, it was Cory’s wild ass, but now it was the old man. Especially, since our “aunt” had hit us with some bougie-ass code word for “thug.”

  When I walked past him—after he apologized to me—I let him know that I understood where he was coming from. Grief was hard to move past, especially when it was wearing the face of the one we lost and talking like she was better than the sun and the moon.

  Inwardly, keeping my thoughts in check, I glanced at Cory and said, “Keep them cool, bro. Mainly Uncle here.”

  “Got you,” he said as he walked up on Uncle Snap and wrapped an arm around him. “So, she really called us vagabonds, huh?”

  “Don’t start it again, man, please,” I said behind me.

  When I walked toward the room, I heard Uncle Snap say, “Bitch gotta new name and some rocks on her fangas, and she think she’s a black Sophia Loren.”

  “Shit!” I heard Cory add, which had me shaking my head.

  I had chosen the wrong one to keep an eye on the OG. Damn, I hoped they didn’t turn the place out. As I moved down the pristine, clean ward, I heard the sound of an air pump churning. Luci’s people made every effort to make this area sterile, and that meant sending in clean, sterile air, keeping the place clean, and then some. An abandoned, creepy, and disgusting hospital was above, but under it was a high-tech ward worthy of a government operation.

  Once outside of Luci’s room, I rolled my shoulders, then walked in. The room was cozy but hygienic. On a small table next to a window sat a family portrait of a younger Luciano, his father, and siblings. Beeping from the monitor made me anxious. It put me in a place that had me reflecting on Mama Claudette. Another elder was on the cusp of death, and the shit was unnerving. I could hear Luci sucking up air. When I walked to his bed, which was next to a recliner chair, the scene made me turn my back on him for a moment.

  The old man had a breathing mask on his face. His chest slowly rose up and down with each breath that he took. It was clean shaven and covered in bandages. I could see where he had been shot. I could see the bruises, and it fucked with me. Mama had been left on the concrete in the alley where she had been shot to bleed out and eventually be taken to the hospital.

  By then it had been too late. By then, there was nothing in her dead shell that could be saved—nothing. All light had been snuffed out. Any hope and chances gone.

  I fisted my hands, and the sudden hate that I had for Melissa made me clench my jaw. A nerve on the side of my face began to t
witch. Cords and tubes connected to the machines and IVs branched out from the old man. A thermal cover and sheet kept his body temperature in check, while his haggard face was covered in a five o’ clock shadow.

  “Javon?”

  I turned at the sound of the old man’s exhausted voice. “Yes, sir. It’s me.”

  Luci clicked a button on the side of his bed that made it rise. His other hand was holding the oxygen mask, and he moved it.

  “Come sit, son,” he grunted, then looked toward the chair.

  As I moved to sit, he coughed, then spoke again. “Thank you for coming here. I know this is a difficult moment, for us all.”

  Liquid involuntarily spilled from the corners of his bloodshot eyes. He looked dehydrated. His lips were cracked, and it annoyed me. Motherfuckers couldn’t do the smallest thing like get the old man some grease de la shards of glass, aka Carmex?

  After undoing the button of my blazer, I sat and ran my palms against my thighs. “Of course, when one of our own need help, then that’s what we do. We come to help.”

  “Yes, that’s what I was counting on. . . .” Luci took a deep breath. “But my main thing is that I was hoping family can help each other above all other things.”

  I sat quietly. I wasn’t sure why he’d say that to me. There was no way that I had revealed my knowledge about Lucky’s true parentage, so I kept my poker face on and just sat back. But a moment later, I told him, “You said that we owe you.” I couldn’t help myself. That shit still sat in the corners of my mind and bothered me. “Per my last visit, all debts had been voided.”

  “Yes.” Luci took a deep breath. “However, sometimes there’s addendums that cancel that out.”

  “We were already on our way in good faith and as allies to you, Luciano.” I shifted to lean against my knees while looking him in his eyes. My voice stayed at a mellow level out of respect. “You didn’t have to go there to get me here.”

  “Think of it as you and Lucky’s final lesson. I need your complete help in sniffing out the truth and finding Absolan. Whoever did this was several steps ahead of all of us on the Commission and close enough to us that it is almost as if we were bedfellows.” Luci coughed, took a breath, then closed his eyes. “It is as if this person went into the old codebook of the past. This is a classic underground hit, and in order for you new generations to effectively carry on for us older goons, you must take a walk in the past. If you recall our conversation about honoring the elders . . .”