The Family Business 3 (16 page)

“That's it, baby. Give Momma that dick! Give Momma that big dick!”

I was bent over the desk in the office where Larry and I had ended up after our “convenient” trip to the bathroom at the same time. Larry was pounding me like it was the last pussy he'd ever have, when suddenly the building started rumbling. That shit was shaking so bad it damn near knocked me over. At first I was impressed. I'd done my share of fucking, but Larry was definitely the first man who had made the world shake like that. Then that fantasy died about a second later when I heard gunshots and knew that there was more to my earth-shaking experience than the skills of my well-hung lover.

“Did you hear that?”

Larry pulled his dick out and reached for his assault rifle, pulling up his pants. He was about to run out the door when I grabbed his arm.

“Hold up. Let's evaluate this first. I don't know if you want to go out there.”

My training told me that, according to the variety of sounds I was hearing, there were at least thirty guns being fired out there, and most of them sounded like Uzis. That was bad news for us, because our men were strapped with Tech-9s and assault rifles, not Uzis, which meant that someone was firing on them pretty hard.

“Evaluate my ass. Our people are in a firefight. I'm going to help my men.” I had to give it to Larry. He was about his business.

He pulled his arm out of my grip, but by the time he reached the door, the shooting had suddenly stopped. Whatever had happened, it had gone down that quick. I was just praying they hadn't killed everyone. And by everyone I meant Paris.

“That's not a good sign,” I whispered to him.

I heard someone yell, “This way!” and then the sound of doors slamming as they checked every room in the hallway. Larry and I shared a worried glance. It was only a matter of time before they reached us.

“Hide,” he said as he locked the door.

I squatted underneath a desk, while Larry stood by a filing cabinet, ready to blast the minute X's men burst through that door. The doorknob jiggled, and he gave me a nod to assure me that he was ready to handle it. I wasn't the least bit worried. Hell, so what if it was only two of us against twenty or thirty of them?

The knob jiggled again, and this time a man's voice said, “There's someone in there.”

Automatic gunfire left a trail of holes in the door, but it remained closed.

Larry let loose a spurt of gunfire, and we heard someone drop outside the door. He'd hit at least one of them, but it was clear that there were more right behind him to pick up the fight.

I watched as another volley of bullets tore through the door. When there was a brief pause, I let off some rounds myself. Another thud and a loud “Fuck!” and I knew someone else was down.

Their return fire gained in intensity, and the windows in the room were blown out. The sound of shattering glass was accompanied by a large
Crack!
as the door splintered and one of X's men tried to Rambo his way into the office. Knowing it would only be a matter of seconds before the others came charging in, I raised my gun and pulled the trigger, expecting to see a hail of bullets coming out of the muzzle. My heart dropped when all I heard was a clicking sound.

I heard Larry cry out in agony.

I looked over to see him lying on the ground. The Rambo dude was lying dead next to him, but Larry had obviously been shot in the process of taking him out.

Acting purely on instinct, I threw my useless gun in Larry's direction and dove back under the desk just before two more soldiers burst into the room, weapons drawn.

I placed my hands over my ears and began crying. “Please, don't shoot me! Oh, God! Please!” I forced tears out of my eyes.

One of the men turned sharply in my direction, his finger on the trigger of his weapon.

“Wait! Hold up.” Had his partner spoken up one second later, I would have had a bullet through my head. Even as the shooter lowered his weapon, he looked disappointed, like a shark who'd just missed a bloody feeding frenzy.

“Who are you?” the man who'd saved my life asked.

“I'm Sasha,” I answered quietly. The fear in my voice was only partially an act at this point.

“Sasha who?” he asked.

“Duncan. Please, what's going on? Don't hurt me.”

The men eyed each other, and the one with his gun on me smiled like he'd caught the big fish of the day.

That's when a man in fatigues wearing schoolboy glasses appeared. “What's going on?”

“She's a Duncan,” the shooter said with a sinister grin, raising his weapon and aiming it at me. “Elijah, man, you gotta let me do her.”

“A Duncan, huh?” Elijah said. “Go check her out.”

The shooter walked over and snatched me up off the ground. “You got anything on you?”

I sniffed and choked back my tears, willing myself to keep up with the damsel in distress act. My life depended on it.

“Woman, I said do you have anything on you?” He flung me around like a rag doll as he started patting me down to look for weapons. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my gun lying next to Larry, and I thanked God I'd had the impulse to throw it away before I hid.

“Yo, careful, man,” Elijah said to him. “She's just a woman, not one of the Duncans' thugs. No need to manhandle her like that.”

I looked over at Elijah and made eye contact with him, wanting him to understand my gratitude. Obviously my tears had an effect on him, so I knew he was the one I needed to play up to. He could keep me safe in the presence of this thug who was itching to shoot me.

“She's clean,” the trigger-happy one told Elijah, backing up and pointing the gun at me again. “What now?”

Elijah stared at me for a minute, then pulled out his phone and hit a couple of buttons. He kept his eyes on me as he placed the phone to his ear and waited for whoever he was calling to answer.

I shivered for added effect.

“Hey, Xavier,” he said into the receiver. “I have a Duncan.” He paused briefly to listen, and then ended the call with “Okay.”

“What did he say?” the gunman asked.

“Just what I thought he would,” Elijah responded. “He said to bring her to him now.”

WE'VE GOT THE PLACE SURROUNDED AND WE'RE ABOUT TO GO IN. I'LL CALL YOU ONCE WE HAVE THIS WRAPPED UP.

I read the text from Captain Marks right before I entered Pop's hospital room, so I had a smile on my face as I walked in. God, I wished he was awake to hear the good news. It was only a matter of time before Brother X would be taken care of. I leaned in close, running my hands along Pop's arms to warm him. All the machines in the room required the temperature to stay cool, but it also meant that he was colder than he should have been.

“Hey, Pop, I just want you to know that I'm about to have this whole Brother X thing handled. Trust me, him and his people are gonna pay. You'd be proud. It's exactly the way you would have wanted it to go down.”

Now that I felt some control over this big situation, the smaller one nagging at me reared its head. I was going to have to sit down with Orlando and work things out. We were going to have to find a happy medium, like Pop and Uncle Lou had when they were younger, because this infighting was not what we Duncans were about. I knew Orlando couldn't see it, but in the long run, it would ultimately tear us apart.

I took a seat next to the bed. “Pop, you know I don't ask for much, but I'm begging you, please come back to us. Come back to me. I know we're getting older and you trust us to run things—and Orlando is doing a good job, so you were right to give him the reins—but we all still need you. There is so much that we don't want you to miss. Hell, I haven't even had a kid yet.”

“Hey, man. You see Junior?” Orlando entered the room looking exhausted. I guess we were all tired. None of us had had a decent night's rest since X escaped from prison.

“Yeah, he just left to get something to eat with Ma and Aunt Donna.”

“How's he doing?” he asked.

“About what you'd expect. He blames himself.” We both looked down at Pop. “I swear sometimes I think Pop's just testing us. Seeing if we can handle a crisis or if we'll fuck it up.”

“Yeah, that would be just like him to put us all through this,” Orlando said with a sad laugh.

“I just want him to come back,” I said.

Orlando fist-bumped me, showing mad brotherly love. He obviously knew I needed it at the moment. Hell, who wouldn't need some comfort sitting beside Pop's bed? The closer you were to all those machines and tubes, the more you had to confront the possibilities.

“You and me should talk,” I told Orlando. I wanted to fill him in on the solution I'd come up with involving Captain Marks.

After we left Marie's brothel, I had given Marks X's location. Obviously the NYPD would have some interest in taking out the most wanted man in New York. The cops could take the place of our muscle, so that we wouldn't have any losses on our side. It also meant we could avoid taking on partners like Tony the Pimp or Popeye Wilson, who would come looking for a piece of the pie when it was all said and done.

The real beauty of the plan was that X had basically given himself a death sentence when he took out the two corrections officers. I wouldn't bet against the possibility that some cop would find a way for X to be caught in the line of fire before he ever made it into handcuffs.

At least that was the way I expected the plan to fall into place now that I knew Captain Marks and his people were making their move—until my phone rang and that fantasy came crashing down.

I looked down at the caller ID and saw Marks's number. “Hey, O, you might want to hear this call. I might have just ended the war.” I pressed the speaker on my iPhone.

We heard police sirens and lots of shouting in the background. I could picture the chaos, and a smile came across my face as I imagined Brother X laying in a pool of his own blood.

“Hey, Conrad! How'd it go, man?” I said.

“To fucking shit!” he yelled back. “That's how it went. I don't know what kind of fucking game you were playing, Vegas, but I fail to see the fucking humor in it!”

This was definitely not what I expected to hear. Two days ago he was singing my praises after getting laid. Now he should have been ready to name his firstborn after me, because he was probably going to be promoted to deputy chief after this bust.

“Conrad, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Twelve dead cops, that's what I'm talking about, and just as many injured, you motherfucker.” He barely took a breath before he continued yelling into the phone. “I sent my men in that warehouse on your word, and those sons of bitches had the whole fucking place booby-trapped. We were fucking sitting ducks, and it's all your fucking fault!” He sounded like he was going to have a coronary.

“Get the fuck outta here!” I grabbed my head in frustration. Shit was not supposed to go down like this.

“Conrad, I don't know what to say. I checked that place out myself. I'm sorry, man. I swear I didn't know. We'll take care of each of those officers' families.”

“I'm gonna hold you to that. Those were good fucking men.”

“I'm sure they were.”

“I've gotta go, Vegas, but before I hang up, I'm putting you on notice. I want the man who did this. I want that fucking Brother X, and I want him brought to me alive!”

“I understand.”

I hung up the phone and looked up, expecting to see Orlando hovering over me with a million questions. Instead, he was sending a text. He hit send and looked at me with an expression somewhere between confusion and rage.

“What the fuck did you do without talking to me?” he asked.

I glanced over at my father. I didn't know if he could hear us, but if Orlando and I came to blows, I didn't want it to be in front of Pop. “Come on,” I said. “Let's go out in the hall and I'll explain.”

Outside the room, I gave him all the details about what I'd set in motion with Captain Marks. “So as you can see,” I said as I finished up, “in theory it was a great plan. I just don't know what the fuck went wrong. Marks said the place was booby-trapped. I mean, how the fuck did X get wind that something was about to go down at his place?”

Orlando was about to say something, but we were interrupted by Paris, who came flying off the elevator looking like she had been taken through a meat grinder. Her clothes were torn, her hair disheveled. Paris would never be caught dead in public looking like that, but it was the haunted look on her face that caused me the most alarm.

“What?” Orlando shouted, getting to her first.

“They took her. We got separated and they took her. There was nothing I could do. They just took her!” she yelled.

“Who?” I didn't even know that she had left the hospital. “Who was taken?”

“Sasha! They took Sasha.” She was crying, but underneath the tears I could see her fury, and worst of all, I could see fear in her eyes. The sister I knew was fearless—or at least she used to be. “Oh, God,” Paris cried. “Momma's gonna kill me. We gotta get her back.”

“Slow down. Who took Sasha?” I questioned.

“Brother X's men. The Muslims. They took her.”

“Wait, this doesn't make any sense. What do you mean they took her? Took her from where?” In the corner of my eye, I noticed that Orlando had started pacing nearby.

“Yo, O,” I said. “Any reason you're over there instead of over here asking questions to help me figure this out?” He stopped walking, but he couldn't look me in the eye. Bad sign.

I turned back to Paris. “Where were you?”

“We were just about to leave for Rosedale to raid Brother X's spot. Then his men showed up at our warehouse and took out all of our guys, plus Popeye Wilson's twelve men. Vegas, it was a fucking bloodbath!” She broke down sobbing, and I pulled her in close and held her as her tears soaked my shirt.

“Popeye's men . . .” I said, looking over Paris's head at Orlando. “And what were you going after X and his men for anyway?”

She didn't answer, but turned to look at Orlando, which told me everything I needed to know.

“What did you promise Popeye, Orlando?” I asked him.

He finally made eye contact, but remained silent.

“Answer me, dammit! What did you promise Popeye Wilson?”

Orlando's shoulders slumped as he admitted, “I gave him the distribution rights to Virginia, Maryland, and parts of PA.”

“You did what?” I asked, seething. “Those weren't your rights to give away. They belong to the family.” I was trying to remain calm because we were in a public place. Lucky for him, because my instinct at the moment was telling me to pump a bullet into my stupid, stupid brother. “How the hell could you do that?” I shouted at him.

“It was my call. Not yours,” he yelled, matching my volume with his own. “I'm the one Pop left in charge, so I made an executive decision. It didn't go as well as I planned, but I had to do something.”

“Paris, go check on Pop.” I shooed her toward the room. When she was out of sight, I lit into him. “What the fuck were you thinking? Do you have any idea how long it took us to get those rights? How many people had to die? For you to just give them away.”

“I did what I thought was right for the family,” Orlando fumed, holding his ground in a martial arts stance. Just the idea of my little brother challenging me set me off. I snatched him up by the collar before he could blink.

“No, what you did was sell this family down the river. Same way you sold me out when you revealed X's location. You and I were the only ones who knew where he was holed up, O, and yet somehow X knew we were coming for him, and he had time to set a trap. Now we're gonna be beholden to twelve NYPD widows because of your fucking mouth. How many folks did you tell about his warehouse in Rosedale?”

Orlando remained tight-lipped.

“How many?” I asked again, tightening my grip on his collar.

“Just Paris . . . and Popeye and Tony.”

I shoved him against the wall. “You stupid ass.”

Orlando shook his head, still not putting the pieces together. “No, man, Popeye and Tony were helping us. It wasn't them.”

“Did Tony send any of his men for this raid you had planned?” I asked slowly.

“No.” He still wasn't making the connection, so I spelled it out for him.

“That's because he didn't want any of his men killed—after he told X you were coming. That booby-trap wasn't there for the cops; it was there for our men,” I said, slamming my hand on the wall just inches from his head. “You better hope like hell that they don't kill my cousin, Orlando.” I stormed off, leaving him to think about the shit storm he'd just created.