Chapter 16
Over the next two weeks, we hit Rich nonstop.
Trap houses got robbed before sunrise. Drug shipments disappeared from the highway. Money runners were going missing with entire duffel bags full of cash. Every spot Rich rebuilt after Booda and my disappearance slowly began to fall apart again, and the city felt it.
So did Rich.
By the time we found his biggest spot on the west side, paranoia had already started eating him alive. I heard he was really looking for me now, so I figured there wasn’t a better time to pay him a visit than the present.
Our black trucks rolled to a stop a block away from the house with the headlights off.
Rainwater from earlier still glistened across the pavement while music thumped faintly from somewhere inside the neighborhood.
The west side trap looked nothing like the abandoned spots Rich usually worked out of. This place was tucked behind iron gates inside one of the nicer subdivisions in the city. The house was huge, the driveway was full of luxury cars, and everything about the property screamed money.
I climbed out first with Karma and Pressure already in my hands while the others moved around the trucks, loading rifles and checking clips. Everyone was quiet as they worked. There wasn’t shit left to say.
Booda walked beside me as we crossed the street toward the property while Twan and two other soldiers circled toward the back.
The gate wasn’t locked, which let me know how comfortable Rich had gotten. I pushed it open, and all six of us slipped inside.
Music vibrated more strongly the closer we got to the house. Somebody laughed from somewhere on the right before the front door opened.
A man stepped out holding a drink, and the second he saw us, his entire body locked up.
Before he could yell for help, Karma barked, and the Desert Eagle kicked hard against my palm. The bullet ripped through his face and sent him crashing backward through the doorway.
Then all hell broke loose.
Gunfire exploded from inside the house almost immediately. Bullets tore through the walls, shattered the front windows, and sparked against the iron gate while my soldiers returned fire from both sides of the yard.
“Move!” I shouted.
We stormed the house together.
Glass crunched beneath my boots the second I stepped inside. Smoke swallowed the living room while people screamed and scrambled in every direction. Somebody overturned a table trying to run, and another man popped up near the staircase with an assault rifle already raised.
Pressure barked twice.
Booda opened up beside me at the same time, and the man’s body jerked violently before flying backward across the banister.
Another shooter burst out of the kitchen doorway, spraying bullets wildly.
Twan caught him in the neck before I finished putting two more in him anyway.
The house erupted into complete chaos after that.
Niggas started running from every direction. One jumped over the couch trying to reach the hallway, but I caught him before he made it two steps. Karma thundered again, and blood splattered across the wall behind him.
Another one appeared near the dining room with a handgun.
Booda hit him first.
I finished him second.
Bullets ripped through the drywall above my head, forcing me behind the living room wall while pieces of plaster exploded across my shoulders and hair.
“Back room!” somebody shouted.
I spun toward the hallway just as two men rushed out, shooting at me.
The first bullet missed my face by inches.
Pressure roared in response.
The bullet tore through his throat and dropped him where he stood.
The second man stumbled backward trying to run, but Booda chased him down, shooting while I walked forward, still firing beside him. Bullets ripped through the entertainment center, shattered the mounted television, and finally dropped him across the hardwood floor.
Smoke hung thick inside the house now.
Blood covered the walls.
Shell casings littered the floor.
People screamed downstairs while my soldiers tore through the rest of the property looking for money, drugs, and anybody stupid enough to keep shooting.
And through all of it, Booda stayed beside me.
Like we had done this a hundred times before.
A woman screamed upstairs, and my eyes immediately cut to Booda.
Then we moved.
We rushed upstairs with guns raised while another burst of gunfire exploded downstairs behind us. My heartbeat pounded violently against my ribs as we cleared room after room.
All were empty, and we were down to the last one. I kicked open the door, with Karma and Pressure raised, ready to blow a muthafucka’s face off. But the second I saw a woman curled on the bed holding a little girl, I froze.
The child couldn’t have been older than five.
Tears streamed down the woman’s face as she shielded the little girl with her body, trembling so hard the entire bed shook beneath them.
“Please,” she cried. “Please don’t hurt my baby.”
I aimed one Desert Eagle at her and the other at the child, so she’d understand exactly how serious I was.
“Where Rich at?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she sobbed. “He ain’t been here in two days.”
The child buried her face deeper into the woman’s side, crying hysterically.
A moment later, the gunfire ceased. Footsteps thundered up the stairs a second later, and three of my soldiers rushed into the room with rifles raised.
“House clear!” the one I now knew as City Boy said, his eyes focused on the bed.
“Take them with us,” Booda ordered.
The woman’s face drained instantly. “Please—we have nothing to do with what Rich has going on. I—”
“Yeah,” I cut in while lowering my guns. “If the bitch and the kid come with us, we really gon’ have that nigga where we want him now.”
Her face crumpled with panic, and she clutched the little girl tighter. “Please don’t do this.”
When I looked at my soldiers and saw them still standing there, I snapped. “What the fuck y’all standing around for? Grab them.”
One of the men moved toward the bed while the woman started screaming. The little girl cried hysterically as her mother held onto her with everything she had.
“Bring the car around back,” I ordered, watching as the soldier grabbed the woman’s arm.
She fought him hard and tried to pull away while the little girl screamed bloody murder.
The woman’s desperation reminded me of something I couldn’t quite grasp, a memory just out of reach that made my jaw clench.
“Move,” I said coldly, turning away from the bed.
Booda headed into the hallway, and I followed him down the stairs, where my soldiers were loading bags of money and kilos of coke into duffel bags. The smell of gunpowder and blood hung thick in the air, mixing with the acrid stench of spilled liquor.
“We got at least three hundred thousand in cash so far,” Twan said, holding up one of the bags.
I nodded. Three hundred thousand was solid, but it was nothing compared to what Rich had been moving before we started hitting him. The real victory was the message we were sending. Money could always be replaced. Fear was harder to recover from.
“What about the pills?” I asked.
“Whole operation,” City Boy replied. “Scales, bags, everything. We’re talking major weight.”
I moved through the living room, stepping over bodies.
The woman’s screams from upstairs had stopped, which meant they had her secured.
Even with my memories still broken in places, I knew taking a woman and child crossed a line I’d never crossed before.
But another part of me, the part that understood leverage, knew this was necessary if I wanted to get to Rich.
He could replace the money. He couldn’t replace peace of mind.
City Boy dragged another duffel bag across the floor before tossing it beside the others near the doorway.
“We need to move,” he said. “Neighbors definitely heard all this shit.”
“They heard it,” Twan added while checking the magazine in his rifle. “Question is how long before police start flooding this side.”
I looked around the house one more time.
Bodies were scattered across the hardwood floors and furniture. Blood streaked the walls near the staircase, and shell casings covered almost every room downstairs. Rich spent a lot of money turning the place into a fortress, but now it looked like a war zone.
Good.
I wanted him sick when he saw it.
A loud crash echoed upstairs a second later, followed by another scream from the woman.
“She tryna fight again,” one of the soldiers yelled down the staircase.
“Then tie her ass up,” I shouted back.
Booda stepped beside me while watching City Boy zip the last duffel bag shut.
“You know Rich gon’ crash out after this,” he said.
“That’s the point.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened the camera.
The flash lit the living room, and I snapped pictures of the bodies, the blood, the destroyed walls, and the empty drug tables we cleaned out.
Then I typed Rich’s number.
Koko: Checkmate, bitch!
I attached the pictures.
When the message showed delivered almost instantly, a slow smile spread across my face.
“That nigga gon' lose his mind when he sees that.” Booda chuckled, and I laughed with him.
“Good. He wanted war, so now he got one,” I replied as Booda slipped his arms around my waist.
Around us, my soldiers were taking things out of the home to load in the truck, while others cleared the last rooms upstairs.
“Load everything up,” I ordered. “Time to go.”
Footsteps pounded down the stairs, and two soldiers dragged the woman behind them. Another carried the little girl, and she was kicking and screaming in his arms.
The woman’s wrists were tied behind her back now, and tears soaked her entire face.
“Please,” she begged again the second she saw me. “Please just let my baby go.”
The little girl reached toward her mother frantically. “Mama!”
I stared at them for a second without answering.
Then I turned toward the front door.
“Bring them.”