Chapter Six. Asad #3
They’re the greatest motivators for any crime. Especially murder. And the irony would be that I’m finally claiming Ember only to have her gunning for me.
My fingers curl into a fist on my thigh. If Ember is behind this shit, not her gender, her beauty, or my inexplicable obsession with her existence will save her.
Nothing will.
She’ll die screaming and begging like any of my enemies.
But another, cooler part of me scoffs at the idea. Dismisses it. Hell, I just left her house. For one, she didn’t know I planned on turning up at her house today, so her having time to plan this level of ambush is insane. And she for damn sure wouldn’t have been this messy.
And this just isn’t … Ember. It’s not her style. Silent. Unseen. Smart. That’s her. Her failures wouldn’t be caught on iPhones or Facebook live.
Ember Cross just wouldn’t be caught.
Still, neither argument is enough to cross her off the list.
A list that unfurls to include about fifty people who just became my soldiers, the members of my organization. Include the very people who are about to show up on my doorstep for dinner tomorrow night. Shit, include my own mother and brother. No one’s exempt.
The car slows, dragging me from my thoughts.
Tre pulls up to the black iron double gates with elaborate scrollwork, and they slowly open before he can come to a complete stop.
The untrained or unaware eye would only see the security guard in the booth who nods at Tre.
They wouldn’t notice the sensor implanted in the ground that scans the undercarriage for bombs.
Or the high-security weapons detection system installed into the posts of the gate that examines vehicles for weaponry, similar to the technology at airports.
Or the strategically placed guards along the perimeters of the property and on the roof of the house.
Fort Knox don’t have shit on my estate.
Tre rolls down his window and leans out, extending his arm to tap in a code that will cut off the silent alarm our hidden weaponry is triggering. The gate swings open, and returning inside of the car, Tre pulls through.
As soon as the Rover circles the marble fountain with the clear water bubbling from snarling open mouths of a pride of lions, the front door of the sprawling villa-style mansion opens, and Makeda Hannah, one of my street bosses, exits.
She descends the steps, her petite, slim body taut with anger and a frown darkening her pretty face.
She’s one of my hand-chosen inner circle, having been with me for the last couple of years.
Only now, with Marcus gone and me in his place, I can officially bring her on, those archaic, patriarchal mandates a thing of the past.
When the car rolls to a stop, I shove my door open and step out, rounding the rear of the vehicle.
“What the fuck happened?” Makeda demands, approaching the Rover.
Lips pursed, she bends down, running her fingertips over the dented doors.
“Ro called and said there was a shoot-out with a Rover coming from the direction of Brentwood. She accessed the traffic cams from that area and deleted it but not before seeing your license plate number on the vehicle. What the hell’s going on, Prince? ”
“Some muthafuckas pulled up on us on the way here and tried to take us out.”
“Shit.” Turning to face me, Makeda sweeps a hand over the top of her waist-length box braids. “Who? And how did they know where you would be?”
“That’s what I plan on finding out. Bet on that.”
Makeda rocks back on the heels of her black platform boots, shoving her hands in the back pockets of her dark gray jeans.
“I tell you what.” She huffs out a sharp chuckle.
“Whoever did this is bold as fuck. I saw the footage before Ro scrubbed it. Those shooters didn’t care who saw them or who else could’ve been hit while trying to get at you.
Bitches who give zero fucks like that ain’t done.
You got to know whoever sent them gon’ be gunning for you again. This is only the beginning.”
For a moment, the melodic gurgle of the fountain behind us provides the only soundtrack to our individual thoughts. I rub a hand across my jaw, my beard scratching against my palm as I acknowledge what she said.
Makeda isn’t wrong, and she hasn’t said anything that I haven’t already considered.
And now that they not only failed to kill me but tipped their hand about coming for me, most likely they would be coming harder, hit faster.
Hell, it’s what I would do. There’s no bitch in my blood; I’m on the verge of having everything I’ve worked, schemed, and killed for.
Everything owed to me. I’ll be damned if I allow anyone to take that from me.
These streets’ll run red first.
Even if it’s my new fiancée’s blood staining them.
“You right,” I say to Makeda and hike up my chin, shoving off the front passenger door. “Hold that thought.”
Turning, I reach beneath my suit jacket, grab the SIG from its shoulder holster, and shoot Tre point-blank in the forehead. His big body sags against the driver’s door, then drops to the ground, face forever frozen in a mask of surprise.
Eli grunts behind me, and it’s a sound of satisfaction while Makeda flinches.
“Goddamn, Prince,” she shouts. “Why … What—” She shakes her head. “Tre’s been with us for years.”
I shrug, reholstering the gun. “That don’t mean shit to me. Either he was in with them bitches who came after me or he’s a punk ass when under pressure. In both scenarios, he’s a liability and had to go.” I glance at Eli. “Get someone out here to clean this up.”
“On it,” he says, already pulling his cell out.
“You know his father and uncle are both street bosses,” Makeda reminds me. “They’re not going to take his death well. There could be retaliation or worse. And with people already coming for your head, we probably don’t need dissension within our own ranks.”
“Mack, I hear what you’re saying, but I could give a fuck.
They’re bosses, but they’re soldiers first. They know how this go.
Demarcus will get the death payment for his son.
And he’s only receiving that because, at the moment, I don’t have concrete proof that Tre sold me out.
But best believe I’m getting Ro on that shit, and if she gives me that evidence, he’s gonna hand over every last cent of that payment back.
And then both D and Gray better hope that I don’t turn nothing up on their asses.
Now, if they got issue with that or me, we can handle it another way.
But that other way gon’ end up with fish fries and their faces on T-shirts. ”
We fall silent as several men roll up in a black van from the side of the house and park next to the Rover.
Three of them shove open the rear doors and jump out the back.
They nod to me, and within seconds, they stretch a dark gray tarp out next to Tre’s body, hike his deadweight onto it, and then roll Tre up like a pig in a blanket.
While two of them lift his corpse and tote it back to the van, the last man gets busy spraying the blood on the asphalt down with a bottled solution.
The three of us turn around and climb the curved front steps to my house, leaving the cleanup crew to do their work.
“Did you manage to get a good look at the shooters?” Makeda asks me and Eli, entering the house first and waiting until I close the door behind us all.
Her thick-soled heels fall against the black-and-white-checked marble floor, the sound echoing under the cathedral ceilings.
She doesn’t pay any attention to the fireplace against the far wall and golden mantelpiece, continuing past the formal living and dining room and smaller parlor toward the rear of the house.
“Ro couldn’t really tell anything from the video except that they were either Black or Latino.
That doesn’t mean they couldn’t have been hired by damn near anyone. ”
“They were brothas.” Shrugging out of my jacket, I stride to the ruthlessly clean, state-of-the art kitchen.
After sitting there waiting on Ember for hours and that shitshow on the PCH, I’m starving.
Nothing stirs an appetite like murder. “And true, they could’ve been hired out, but the Bratva and the Yakuza aren’t fucking with us like that.
While I don’t put it past the Italians to hire a few of us as hittas to do their dirty work, I just don’t think this is them.
We don’t currently have beef with the mob.
Nah.” I frown, tossing the jacket onto a chair in the breakfast nook. “This was someone else.”
“Not the gangs either. We have an alliance with them, and they don’t want to go to war with us,” Eli adds, jerking a chair from under the table and sinking down into it.
He’s not wrong. The Cross organization and the street gangs of LA have enjoyed an understanding that was forged by me five years ago.
Marcus didn’t see a need in it, same with his father and his father before him.
All of ’em were shortsighted. Yeah, we were a strong-ass family.
But we were still surrounded by the Russians, Italians, and Japanese crime families.
Having the Black gangs who have ruled the streets of LA for decades as allies just makes sense in numbers and dollars.
That’s the problem with us as a community now.
Other races gon’ have each other’s backs.
They gon’ share information, ensure capacity building within their own communities, network, and partnership to safeguard their power and financial success.
Fuck if I’m making that mistake on my watch. Marcus, in his arrogance, fought me on it. Didn’t see past his own house. But shit, I wasn’t asking for his permission; I was informing him. If the largest Black underworld on the West Coast was eating, the table was big enough to feed all of us.
That bred fidelity, faithfulness.