Chapter 28
Angry was an understatement. Mayor Norman was fuming.
Every step he took toward the elevators caused his heart to drum harder and harder in his ear, threatening explosion.
He was in the middle of cleaning up the streets.
He used the overdose death of his colleague’s daughter to sweep up drug dealers left and right.
Anything other than that, he wouldn’t be able to face full on without being drenched in shame.
Yes, he had his own habits – young, impressionable women. One he’d paid for and never had the opportunity to inhale her scent. However, that was a fight for another day. His previous fight was in the penthouse, refusing to come to an event that’d been on her schedule for months.
His wife hadn’t stayed in the mansion since his second year in office. They couldn’t see eye-to-eye on basic things. The things they enjoyed while he climbed the ladder of political success seemed to become heavier to enjoy once he took the oath of office.
The women and the drugs they used to indulge in together until she started liking the drugs more than she liked him.
And for him – desiring the women more than he desired his wife.
What they had now was convenient. Her willful appearance and beautiful smile kept the donors willing to open their wallets, and that cash flow kept her happy and him in his seat.
As the elevator doors chimed open, Mayor Norman stepped in, surrounded by his security detail.
The ascent to the top was ominous. Heavy.
While he’d always been a man to follow his gut, he’d ignored it for the sake of his ego.
A dinner with high-paying donors present and a wife who refused to show up or even answer the phone.
Lying was easy when everyone was on the same page, not scrambling to make her absence make sense.
He settled for telling everyone she was under the weather.
She was under another nigga or on top of him with a coke-brimmed nose.
A drug-dealing, slick-talking nigga who hadn’t yielded to the promises of the mayor.
Everyone around him, but a few hustlers he didn’t see fit to touch, was getting swept up.
But Luciano thought he was untouchable. Tonight was going to change that. He was fed up.
Mayor Norman stood at the door awaiting one of the members of his detail to open it with the keycard they were given by the front desk.
A tap of the card and his hard bottoms crossed over the threshold.
He’d thought about how this was going to play out over and over.
How the untimely overdose death of his wife would grant him another term ruling over Majestic Heights.
Those sympathy votes would flood in. He could have Luciano paraded and plastered as a monster while his sins stayed closeted.
Scanning the area, everything seemed to be put together.
While his men searched the two thousand-plus square feet, he roamed toward the room.
His wife was tangled in the sheets in a post-sex slumber.
Naked, and if he didn’t know better, at peace.
While he was alone, he covered his hand in leather gloves and removed the unregistered Glock from the breast pocket of his trench coat.
He never thought that the body he added to his list would be his wife’s.
But his ambition surpassed his love for her.
There was a shot. One, he fired himself into his sleeping wife’s body, and the other, he felt a rip through his chest, causing him to collapse; gun still in his hand.
Silent and deadly. He was still driven by an ambition that he would never fully realize.
Luciano hovered over him. Security didn’t appear because they were on assignment.
“You bitch,” Mayor Norman grunted as he attempted to roll over.
“You thought you were going to bring your ass in here and get me, huh? You think you run this muhfuckin’ city, nigga?” Luciano taunted, anticipating Mayor Norman to be alone.
He coughed up blood and wheezed. Hope flashed in his eyes, seeing one of his men at the door. “Fuck you.”
“Nah, Norman, fuck you. You used to be my boy, my nigga. But you violated. Took my bitch, tried to bring me down. I’ve told you,” Luciano gritted, pressing his gun into his temple. “I run this shit.”
With his finger still on the trigger, Mayor Norman laughed. “See you in hell, bitch.”
The top of Mayor Norman’s security fired a shot through Luciano’s skull. Another death they weren’t counting on. Now that all the men were in the room and Mayor Norman was bleeding onto the carpet, there was a decision to make: save his life or be free of him.
“Don’t,” the head of security spoke up. He’d seen too much, knew too much, and knew that with him dead, their lives could go back to normal and they could salvage what was left of their souls. “Don’t call yet. There needs to be a uniform story.”
“What? He’s the mayor,” the other guard spoke.
“Think about how that nigga is now. He survives this, he’s going to be untouchable. Were you not at the same party last week?” the first guard spoke, striking thought into the other men.
“So, what are we going to say?” the third man asked.
“We came in, and she was shot. Luciano shot him in a rage. I fired to protect the mayor, and he succumbed to his injuries,” the first spoke. “You got it?”
“Y-yeah,” the third spoke as the first reached down to grab the gun off Luciano’s dead body. The mayor, mere feet away, was struggling to breathe.
Six silent shots were let off, three into the mayor’s wife, three into the mayor, putting him out of his misery, although his top security guard thought it better to let him suffer.
For the sake of the crime scene, it needed to be done.
For a moment, he reflected on what got Mayor Norman elected in the first place – a dead opponent, shifting his mayoral campaign from wholesome to a war of gun violence.
There was always a catch with him. Now he was dead, and the men were free.
Once the prints were wiped off and the gun was back in Luciano’s dead hands, the first man fired one more shot into the back of him. Turning, he looked at the two men. “Now, call them.”