43. JUSTICE
JUSTICE
The hot as hell July day Monica and I brought her home from the hospital, my world changed.
In an instant I grew older. I grew into a brand new man.
Having a daughter shifted something in me I didn’t know could be shifted.
I held her tiny body in my two hands and I made her a promise.
I would protect her from any and all harm that ever came her way.
Today I was keeping that promise. Even though she couldn’t see the harm. She was too young and too naive to understand what an older man like this really wanted from a girl her age. So I was going to understand it for her. I was going to remove him from the equation.
My daughter made protecting her hard these days. But I have never once in my life backed down from a hard thing. I was built for exactly this.
I stood in the middle of an empty warehouse with a pair of pliers in my hand, looking at Tron.
He was tied to a metal chair in the middle of all that concrete and nothing.
His bottom lip was split and swollen from where Bryce cracked him when he brought him in.
His eyes were already wet, already darting around the room looking for a door, a person, anything.
There wasn’t anything. There was just him, and me, and my two brothers.
Prime leaned against a support beam in one corner with his arms crossed.
Quest stood in another, quiet, patient, watching me how he does when he knows I need to do a thing and he’s just there to make sure it gets done clean.
Neither one of them said a word. They didn’t have to.
When it comes to my kids, my brothers don’t ask questions.
They just show up with a chair and a quiet building.
I walked a slow circle around Tron and let him hear my shoes on the concrete.
“Look, man, I’m sorry.” The words tumbled out of him fast and wet. “I ain’t know. I swear to God I ain’t know how old she was.”
“That’s not what the messages in your phone say.” I stopped in front of him. “You knew she was fifteen. She told you herself. I read it. Every word. You knew exactly how old my daughter was, and you didn’t care. That was the part you liked.”
“Man, please. Come on, man.”
“You looked me in my face at that mall.” I crouched down to his level so he had nowhere else to look but at me. “Hands up, blood on your mouth, and you swore to me you thought she was grown. You lied to my face about my own child. You had a plan for her. You put that plan in writing.”
His body started to shake.
“I got money,” he said. “I got money, whatever you want, I can get it, just please don’t do this.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“Please. Please, man. I’m begging you.” He was crying now for real, the tears cutting down through the dried blood. “Please.”
He begged for his life.
He should’ve thought about that before he ever came into contact with my little girl.
After digging through her phone, I discovered that they met online.
He commented on one of her TikTok videos, then fell into her DMs. I don’t know what her intentions were when she decided to talk to him.
Was she doing it to get back at me for some reason?
Or was it some teenage rebellious streak?
“Listen… please! No!” Tron cried as I neared him, pliers clutched in my grasp. Ready to pull out every tooth in his head.
This wasn’t just about my little girl. He had a pattern of preying on teenagers. We discovered that when Bryce captured him. I went through his phone and found he was talking to several other little girls. I was saving them too.
I yanked back his head and began to pull every tooth out, tossing them on the ground like they were trash. He cried and howled for me to stop. But I wasn’t letting up.
When it was all over, blood and tears were everywhere. I dropped the pliers to the ground and looked around at my brothers and Bryce.
“Proud of you bruh, you gotta protect what’s yours,” Prime said.
“I guess this might be me in about fifteen years,” Quest added, thinking about his own baby girl.
“GAHHH!! MOMMY! MOMM!” Tron wept through his ruined, toothless mouth, calling out for his mama like a child himself.
I crouched back down in front of him so he’d hear every word clean through all that crying.
“Now listen to me good, because I’m only gonna say this one time.
” I said it slow. “Your mama stays at 4412 Wheeler Road. That little yellow house with the leaning porch. Your granddaddy and grandmama, they’re over on Barnaby Street, the brick one with the flag out front.
Took my people about an hour to put all that together. ”
His crying stopped. That got through where nothing else had.
“So if you ever think about running to the police, remember I got police. If you ever think about coming back around my daughter, remember I know where everybody you love lays their head at night.” I patted his cheek gently, and he flinched like I’d swung on him.
“I’m letting you keep your raggedy life today.
You do one wrong thing, I take everybody in it first, and I make you watch. We clear?”
He nodded so hard the blood flew off his chin.
“Good. And that new mug of yours? You won’t be pulling any more little girls with it.” I stood and rolled my sleeves back down. “Bryce. Get him gone.”
I washed my hands at the utility sink in the corner and watched the water run pink down the drain.
Driving home in the dark down 495, I waited on the weight to hit me.
The turn in the stomach. The little voice that tells a man he went too far.
It never came. I felt good. Clean. Settled like I hadn’t been in weeks, since before that mall, since before I knew what my baby had been trying to get into.
A man came for my child, and now that man would spend the rest of his life flinching at his own reflection, remembering exactly why.
That sat just fine with me. Better than fine.
Some men need killing. This one needed to live a long, ugly, careful life remembering what he almost did.
It was the kind of punishment I would give to whoever scared Skye. To the man who left her for her sister. To the man who damaged her to the point where she was afraid to tell me her secrets. Even though I was close to learning them.