6. Priest
SUNDAY EVENING
“Repent, muthafucka,” I commanded in a dark tone.
“I didn’t do it. I swear that it wasn’t me.”
“You telling me my eyes muthafuckin lyin’? That ain’t you on that video footage getting out that car and snatching that kid up?”
“I swear I had nothing to do with that. I was just following orders.”
“Yo’ punk ass had everything to do with it. You snatched him up, and you delivered him to the dock on Fifty-First and Candler. You signed off on that shit. You had funds deposited into your account. That was all your bitch ass.”
His shoulders hunched as he shook his head and insisted, “It wasn’t me.”
I smacked him in the mouth with my gun and snarled, “I want a name,” as blood flew from his mouth.
“I don’t know it.”
I hit him with my fist.
“Lie to me again.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll give you a name.”
“Three… two…”
“Christopher Morgan.”
“What did they do with the kid?”
He sniffled and shook his head. “I swear that’s all I know. I don’t know anything else.”
“Where does he usually send his victims before they’re shipped out?”
“He keeps them in a house on Vanguard, a brick house with a green door, but that’s all I know. After that, someone else takes over. I’m not the driver who takes them from the house, and I have no idea where they go after the house. That’s all I know.”
I was assured that he was finally telling me the truth.
“How many others of you are there?”
“It’s just three of us.”
I looked at Keeper, who shook his head.
“Stupid ass. Three as if one of you ain’t enough evil running around.” Keeper mumbled, chewing on the wad of tobacco in his jaw.
“Descend to the pits of hell, muthafucka,” I declared.
I released the trigger as the adrenaline flowed through my body and filled me with an incomparable high. The man’s body rocked and fell backward onto the concrete floor. I stepped closer and stood over him with my feet planted on either side of his body. Too many homeless teens had come up missing over the last three years, and I wanted to bring that shit to an end. I couldn’t combat evil across the world, but I could do it in our community.
Releasing two more bullets into his heart, I moved aside and looked at Keeper.
“I gotcha, Prez,” he replied, spitting the tobacco on the dead man’s body.
I nodded and turned back to the door of the crypt, which was a concrete bunker on the outskirts of town that we’d built underground.
I climbed the ladder and pulled the rusty ring hanging above my head. It pulled the door open, and I stepped out into a small trailer. Heading for the front of the trailer, I climbed out and into the bright sunlight.
The outside world looked vastly different than it had underground in the cold, dank dwelling that my MC had created for the souls who needed to be terminated from the earth. Soulless bastards who preyed on young, homeless kids and runaways.
I had been looking for the asshole Keeper was preparing to dispose of for the last two months. Sunny called me this morning saying that the kidnapper had been found. When one of the teens, Jeremih, who my MC protected, came to me a couple of months ago and told me about his missing friend, I promised him that I would find the kid and get vengeance against whoever had taken him.
Sunny had been in charge of the MC for the last three days. Three days when I hadn’t left the house or attended club business. I didn’t trust September to not escape. Her ass had been overly chatty and friendly lately, and she was too costly for me to lose her or let her go. But on the third day, when I received the phone call, I knew it was time for me to make my presence known.
I hadn’t trusted September alone in my house, although I had every square inch of my house and the surrounding acres covered with camera footage and my dogs.
The night that I picked her up in the woods, she didn’t know how I had located her so easily. All I had to do was tap into the app on my watch, and it would sync with the sensors on my property. It could easily detect if there was another presence on my property aside from myself and my dogs, and it distinguished between human and animal.
“What about the kid? Did you find out anything?” Jagged asked.
Jagged, Chainz, Knuckles, Road Rage, and Ox all jumped on their bikes when they saw the urgency of my rapid steps.
“We’re heading over to Vanguard.”
Birds flew out of the trees, and squirrels scampered into the trees as the sound of our straight pipes cut through the serene afternoon. We took off with only one bike remaining in our rearview, Keeper’s. He would be here for the next three hours to dismember the man I had just killed, cook up the solution to dispose of his remains, pour them into the vat, and then clean the crypt and himself before he would return to our clubhouse.
My thoughts wandered to September, and frustration grew inside of me. I would only keep her around long enough to make Christopher Morgan suffer. I wanted him to feel the pain that he had inflicted on others, and I wanted to know that he was suffering before his days came to an end. I needed him to know that it was me who would bring about his demise, and he needed to know why.
Our drive took just over twenty minutes before we pulled into the seemingly quiet and peaceful neighborhood.
“Surprise, Mr. and Mrs. Jones. You have no idea who your next-door neighbor is. And we’ve come knocking because it’s time to pay the price, muthafucka.” I muttered and rolled up on the lawn of the house with the green door.
I rotated my finger in the air to signal to my men to go around back and cover the sides. Ox and I climbed off our bikes and bounded up the steps of the front porch.
Ox peered into a window while I stood to the side of the door with my Pit Viper at my side. Ox shook his head and took my place at the door. I peered into the other window and saw a slight movement. I moved back to the door and gave Ox a brief nod.
He tapped out the “Shave and Haircut” tune on the door. I could hear feet scrambling inside. Nodding again, I kicked in the front door, and Ox rushed inside with me right on his heels. I pointed to the rear of the house and canted my head twice in that direction.
Ox headed for the back of the house, and I headed upstairs. I could hear my men’s bikes out back where they waited for someone to come out the back door. I slowly moved up the stairs and froze when I heard the fifth step creak.
I waited several seconds and listened to hear anything at all, but I heard nothing. I hated these situations because I had no idea what the fuck I was walking into. But it was a risk that I was willing to take if it might save one kid.
When I came to the top of the stairwell, there were four doors—three on one side and one on the other, and all of them were closed. I didn’t like the odds of that, and my only reassurance came in knowing that my men were out back and that Ox would be up here once he cleared the bottom of the house.
I slid along the wall and reached my hand out to the first doorknob. I twisted it slowly and carefully, knowing that if someone were in there who might see it move, they could very well have a gun and shoot first and ask questions later.
I quickly peered inside when the door flew open. There was a large king-size bed, a dresser, and nothing more. The bathroom door, like the closet door, was open, and I could see there wasn’t much room for hiding inside of there.
I moved along to the second room and did the same thing. Where the fuck was Ox, and why was it taking him so long to appear? By the time I made it to the fourth room, he finally crept up the stairs. He pointed at the other three rooms, and I shook my head and pointed to the final room on the opposite side of the hallway.
Ox met me and took up his position on the other side of the door. Just before I reached out to grab the doorknob, a spattering of bullets hit the door, causing both Ox and me to jump back. We waited for several seconds before Ox kicked the door but remained out of harm’s way.
Another round of bullets came through. I pressed a finger against my lips because I knew that, in a moment, whoever was on the other side would run out of ammunition unless they had a fucking arsenal in there.
I beat the door with my fist, and nothing happened. We still weren’t in the clear yet, so I waited for a few more seconds before I went low and Ox went high, and we rushed into the room.
There was nothing in the room except for six mattresses, the same as I saw in rooms two and three. My best guess, based on the empty plates on the floors of each room, discarded clothing, and trash that this was where the victims were kept until they were transferred somewhere else.
I had nothing linking Morgan to this brothel except for a dead man’s word. Now, there was someone in the room waiting to take out Ox and me, and I had to take them out first. Although Ox was a shoot first, and ask questions later kind of nigga, I didn’t always operate that way. As the president of the Immortal Descendents, there were times when I had to exercise discipline, and that shit wasn’t always easy. This was one of those times. A deep instinct was telling me to tread lightly.
We both stepped around the mattresses as we carefully made our way to what we presumed was a closet door. I jerked the door open and looked inside. It was empty except for a tiny frame huddled in the corner.
“Hey,” I stated as I lowered to my knees.
I couldn’t tell if the person was male or female or how old they were. The gun hung loosely from their fingers. I didn’t reach out immediately to take it because although the perpetrator’s arms were wrapped around their knees and their knees were pulled to their chest, I didn’t want to underestimate them.
“I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to help,” I explained.
When they didn’t move, I looked at Ox, who shrugged.
“I can help you if you let me.”
There was a subtle shift in movement before the person’s head slowly turned our way. Large brown eyes stared into mine out of a troubled, sandy brown face. He was a child, barely a teen.
“I’m Priest,” I announced.
The kid frowned at me in confusion, and I pointed at Ox. “This is my friend Ox. We’ve got other friends outside, and I swear that I just want to help. I’m not here to hurt you or take you anywhere that you don’t want to be.”
“They’re not coming back. We ran the bad guys off,” Ox offered.
The kid’s eyes widened in their head.
“Do you have any family that we could call to come and get you?” I asked, knowing the answer to that question already.
To confirm my suspicions, his shoulders slumped, and he rested his head on his knees again, but he didn’t turn his back to ours.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
I nodded. “I promise. They aren’t coming back.”
“ICE?”
“We’re not calling any Feds either. Trust me, I don’t trust them bitches. What’s your name?”
“Gael.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. That was the name Jeremih had given me.
“Where are you from, Gael?”
“Here.” Gael replied proudly and thrust his chest out and dropped his knees.
“Yeah, you’re from here. As much as President Claudia Pardo,” I replied, referencing Mexican president.
Gael dropped his head to his knees again.
“Seriously. Where are you from, little man? I’m not trying to send you back.”
“San Simón Zahuatlán. It is in Oaxaca in Mexico.”
“How long have you been here? Your English is pretty good.”
“Four years.”
“How old are you?” Ox asked.
“Sixteen.”
Damn, someone had brought the kid here when he was just twelve. Probably a victim of sex trafficking or some shit like that.
“With your family or some men like those who run this house?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” Gael stated and eyed me suspiciously.
“Just tryna help. I swear.”
“My mother and sister. We came for a better life with some men who promised her a job and good schools for my sister and me. We were separated after two days of being here. They sent my sister to one place and my mother somewhere else.”
“What about you?” I asked.
“Left me at the docks over on River Street. I was taken off the truck with everyone else and taken into the warehouse. When they separated us, it was in the early hours of the morning. I fought and begged them to keep me with my sister or mother, but they would not listen. They left out and left me behind.”
“You’ve been living on the streets since then?” I asked.
He nodded.
“What happened that brought you here?”
“I was trying to get some cash. This man told me he could help me get some and told me to come ride with him. When I changed my mind at the last minute, I was thrown into their car, and they brought me here.”
“How did you manage to get left behind?”
“They got word that dem boys was coming,” he stated. “Dem boys” was the cops. “They cleared everyone out, but I pretended to be seizing from a drug I’d taken.”
“They’ve been giving you drugs?”
“Pills. I stash ’em,” Gael stated and handed me a plastic baggie.
“X,” I muttered.
He shrugged. “They left me ’cause they thought I was having a bad reaction from the drugs.”
“Come on,” I commanded as I stood.
I met Ox’s inquisitive gaze before I ordered, “Tell the men to stand down.”
He nodded and looked at the kid again before he looked at me.
“Gael, hand me your gun, please.”
The kid jumped up and held it tightly at his side.
“Listen, I know that you don’t know us and don’t trust us. I’m not gonna sit here and bullshit you like we’re saints because we’re not. I’m not a good man, Gael, but I promise I don’t mean you any harm. My friend here ain’t gonna leave my side with you still holding that gun.”
Gael looked at the gun and then at Ox before looking at me defiantly.
“Listen, li’l nigga. If I wanted to take that shit from you, I could easily do that. But I’m trying to establish some form of respect and trust here.”
“’Sides, you ain’t got no more bullets,” Ox stated.
Gael’s shoulders slumped again before he handed the gun to me.
I passed it to Ox, and he left the room.
“Come on. We’re gonna get you out of here and to a safe place where you can eat and sleep. I know your ass hungry.”
His shiny eyes widened in his coppery skin, and he looked hopeful, yet there was still that distrust there. I knew what that was all about. I’d experienced it myself, and he was right to maintain his wariness. There wasn’t a nigga on this Earth who could be trusted.
Six hours passed before I pulled my bike into my garage at the cabin. Gael would be useful in helping us figure some shit out.
Gael informed us he stayed in the house for almost ten minutes when he heard us pull up. He’d grabbed the gun that one of the men had stored when he thought no one was watching. Apparently, they hadn’t had time to clear everything out before they left. Gael recognized the sound of the Immortal Descendents long before he saw us.
I was still pissed at the knowledge that we’d missed those muthafuckas by minutes, according to Gael. I returned to my cabin at the end of the evening with that frustration built up inside of me.
For the last three days since I had brought September to my house, she had become compliant, doting even. I saw right through her bullshit. I knew there wasn’t anything that she wanted except for me to break my walls down so I would trust her. I trusted no bitch, and she wasn’t an exception. I trusted her less than any woman on this earth because she was the spawn of Satan. That was how I viewed Christopher Morgan.
I’d left her in the guest bedroom, chained to the bed. I had given her just enough slack in the chain to move from the bed to the mini refrigerator, to the bathroom, and back to the bed.
Thinking about the squalor that those women and Gael had been living in and knowing that Christopher Morgan was responsible for it all had me on edge. I wanted to eliminate everything associated with his ass so that the earth had no reminders that he ever existed.
I unlocked the door to her room and froze. What the fuck?