1. Staten Marek #3
Sol was right. The situation with Cambrie was fresh.
I needed to give her time to think, but I wasn’t exactly a patient man when it came to what I wanted.
After hanging up, I pushed my car door open and planted both feet in the dirt.
I was still smoking on my blunt when I slipped through the cellar door of a small, worn-out shack.
This land was ours but registered under my grandfather’s brother’s name.
It was his idea to buy the land, allow farmers to use it, but keep a small, closed-off section for himself with this shed and a hidden bunker.
The metal door slammed shut behind me, and I slowly moved down the concrete steps.
The fluorescent lights guided me inside, where I found Brick pacing and Ivo beside him, bent over at the table, scrolling through something on his tablet.
“What’s going on?” I asked, causing them both to glance in my direction.
“Moniece is working on it. She found a hit on this Skully nigga in Omaha. Stanley Skinner is his name. He’s mid-level but tied in with some high-level niggas.” Ivo straightened up and swiped something on the screen.
“The fuck is taking so long?” Brick shook his head.
“Calm down, bro. You know she gon’ work her magic,” Ivo assured him.
“I don’t know what this fuck nigga capable of or what he gon’ do to her! We need to find them, now!”
Ivo squinted at the screen, and his brows dipped while studying something. I paused on the other side of the table and handed him the blunt before placing the palm of my hands on the surface. Brick’s phone lit up, and he immediately swiped it off the counter.
“Niece, what’s good?” he asked, placing her speaker phone.
“Well, for starters, this nigga got a record a mile long for just about any petty crime you can think of. Some drug charges, did a bid about ten years ago, been arrested for disorderly conduct, assault, and fraud. His name is coming across a lot of paperwork. Not only is he connected in the streets, he’s also a CI.
Has been for some time now, which is why he hasn’t had to do any hard time.
Any time he goes down for something, he just brings someone bigger down with him. ”
“How the fuck this nigga still breathing?” Brick sneered, glaring at me and Ivo before looking back down at the phone.
“Whoever’s CI he is must be high level too, more than likely federal. But I was able to trace the car since it’s a rental. I hacked into their GPS tracking system.”
“Did you find him?” Brick asked anxiously.
“Not only that, I got visuals from some surrounding cameras,” Moniece declared, keyboard clicking away in the background.
“They got off on Route 10. Looks like he’s about an hour away from the bunker at some old mansion.
I cross-referenced the address in the system, and apparently, it’s used for parties, mostly masquerade style.
A lot of people secure it for Halloween or New Year’s.
It costs a grip to even rent it out, and it’s very exclusive, some invite-only type shit.
But you know ya girl is plugged into the dark web too, so I poked around with some heavy hitters I know like to party like that and came across a flyer for an auction tonight. ”
“What kind of auction?” Ivo queried.
“The kind that involves young, beautiful women and girls. They even have a catalog with descriptions, and about thirty minutes ago, a girl matching Six’s description was added.”
“Muthafucka,” Brick growled, nostrils flaring as he squeezed his phone in his hand.
“I can tell you now, security is going to be ridiculous. I’ve seen the guest list, and it’s nothing but heavy hitters attending, and all of them have their own security. But I can get one of you on the guest list, let me know now.”
“Add me,” Brick quickly replied.
“It’s a masquerade. So you’ll need to dress up. The auction starts in two hours,” Moniece concluded.
“Bet. Send me all the info I need.”
“Copy that. Be careful and call me if you need anything else.” Moniece hung up, and Brick lifted his eyes to me and Ivo.
“I’on like this shit.” Ivo shook his head.
“Me either. We ain’t got no eyes on you in there and we don’t know the layout.” I handed him the blunt.
“So wire me up. Either way, I’m going in there. Call Gas, tell him to suit up. I’m heading to the house to grab my suit and shit.”
“What’s the plan, Brick?” I probed.
“The fuck you mean? Six is in there. My only goal is getting her out. I don’t give a fuck what it takes!”
“We can’t just go in there guns blazing. We don’t know what we up against.” Ivo put his two cents in.
“And I don’t give a fuck!” Brick yelled. “You need a plan, fine. Wire me up with a mic and camera if you need to. I’ll give y’all the signal when it’s time to move, you cause a diversion somehow to disrupt everything, and I get her the fuck out of there.”
Ivo and I glimpsed each other across the room.
There was no talking Brick down on this.
Six was his only priority. The shit kind of made me proud because aside from family, Brick didn’t give a lot of people his time or energy.
The social media shit wasn’t who he really was.
Maybe part of it was, the comedy and confidence for sure, but he could also be very introverted too.
“Aight,” Ivo agreed, shrugging.
“Yeah, that works. I’ll hit Gas.” I dug my phone from my pocket and Brick strolled past us to the door.
“Be ready when I get back!”
“That’s your brother,” Ivo said, taking his phone out and tapping away at the screen.
His phone rang but his heavy sigh told me he wasn’t in the mood. He rejected the call before going back to his text thread. It rang again, and this time he reluctantly picked up and brought the phone to his ear.
“What’s up, Jay?” He paused then frowned.
“You tripping, mama. I’m in the middle of some real-life shit.
You need to calm down. I don’t know when I’ll be home because this shit ain’t got no time stamp, aight.
I ain’t got time for that shit right now.
I’ll talk to you later.” He quickly hung up, and stress lines wrinkled his forehead.
“Trouble in ya little paradise over there?” I chuckled, going into my pocket for my weed and blunts so I could roll up again.
“Fuck you.” Ivo’s eyes drifted back into his phone. “You don’t know shit about me or my wife.”
“I know you defensive and she uptight as fuck. And . . . you ain’t ever escaping Justus’s shadow if you don’t start figuring out what the fuck you want.” My words got his full attention, and his eyes lifted to mine.
“You don’t know shit about me or what I want.”
“I know you ain’t happy with your wife.”
“The fuck that got to do with anything?” Ivo sneered.
“Shit, you tell me. You got married because you thought it’s what you should do, it was also a knee jerk reaction to Emerald leaving all those years ago.” The mention of his teenage crush sent something flickering behind his gaze. “Yeah, I know you better than you fucking think.”
Flicking the tip of his nose, Ivo bobbed his head and backed up to lean into the counter behind him. He crossed his arms over his legs and stared at me.
“Did you know she was back?”
“Who? Emerald?” I checked, cocking a brow and dumping the guts from the wood I was rolling.
Ivo nodded. “Been back for months, and I didn’t know shit about it until the day she walked into the surrogacy clinic as a candidate for me and Jordan.”
I froze, not ready for that revelation as my hands slowly lowered to the table. Ivo swiped his beard and pensively studied the ground. He’d never been open to sharing how he felt or what he was going through. Usually, he kept it bottled up until everything spilled over in some emotional ass rant.
“I didn’t realize y’all was having problems having a baby. I just thought y’all wasn’t ready yet.”
“Jordan’s had like three miscarriages. The last one did so much damage she had to have a hysterectomy,” Ivo admitted.
“Her eggs aren’t viable. So we also need a donor.
We’ve been using this agency and went through all kinds of tests, they even had to make sure I wasn’t the problem.
We considered adoption, but Pops made it clear I have to have an heir. So surrogacy was our next step.”
“And Emerald just happens to be a candidate?”
“Crazy.” Ivo blew out a harsh breath. “What’s even crazier is since that first day she showed up, I’ve been fucking with her,” he confessed. “It was like I saw her, and everything made fucking sense again.”
“And what about Jordan?”
“I love Jordan. I married her. It’s just not the same.”
“So what you gon’ do?”
“I don’t know. Emerald ain’t the same girl she was when she left.
She been through it, and she’s raising and taking care of her brother.
The only reason she’s doing this is for the money.
Her pops lost everything, he killed himself, and she has a daughter that she lost custody of.
I’m trying to be there for her, but she’s giving me push back because of Jordan and this whole situation. ”
“Sounds like you got some choices to make.” I resumed rolling the blunt because it was damn sure needed after this information dump.
“Ma tried to pay her to back out. Shit is messy.”
“You think that’s a good idea? Maybe you should find somebody else.”
“Jordan’s already set on using her,” Ivo conveyed, clearly stressed the hell out by the entire situation.
“Jordan don’t know you fucking her,” I pointed out with a shrug. “I’m sure if she had all the facts, she would feel the same as Ma.”
“I want to be with Emerald and I want to give Jordan a baby.”
“That shit don’t even go together,” I noted, shaking my head.
“Nigga, you walking around out here with three baby mamas, the fuck you mean?”
“That’s different. You married to Jordan. You actively using Emerald to give your wife a baby, then what, you leave Jordan and go be with Emerald, co-parenting this baby? Why not avoid that altogether and just keep it a buck with Jordan?”
“Because I love her and I don’t want to hurt her.
I feel like if I just leave her after everything and we don’t have this baby, it just might break her.
You wasn’t here, but that last pregnancy took her through it.
It was the furthest she’d gone in any pregnancy and we was both hopeful about it.
We even knew the sex this time. It was a little girl.
I had a daughter and then she was just gone. ”
I empathized with that. Although the situations with my baby mothers wasn’t ideal, I wouldn’t trade my kids for shit.
One thing they knew for sure was Daddy was gon’ step behind them regardless of my relationship with their mamas.
They all needed to know and recognize that real men stood ten toes and did men shit.
“I can’t tell you how to move in this situation. I can give my opinion and say I think it’s a bad idea because in the end, that child you bringing into this world will also be affected. I also know how you felt about Emerald.”
“How I feel about her,” he corrected me. “The minute I laid eyes on her, all that shit came back like I was sixteen again.”
“’Cause you soft,” I tittered.
There was a moment of silence between us while I rolled up and Ivo pulled out the artillery and ammo we were going to need for this mission. He sat checking every clip and counting bullets before loading them into duffel bags for transport.
“I know I ain’t say it before, maybe because I wasn’t sure how I felt at first, but . . . I’m glad you home, bro.”
I hadn’t expected that from him. Ivo and I were thick as thieves when we were kids, right before Brick was born. We were closer in age but also competitive at the same time. Basically, we could talk all the shit we wanted or square up with each other, but the next mothafucka could never.
“Shit ain’t been the same since you left. I think that broke something in Pops too. He tried to cover it up, but we all knew.”
The mention of our father got me thinking about our meeting and what Lathan brought up.
Little did that mothafucka know, but he was on my list. He’d already shown and proved with Chino that he had no control over his crew.
We couldn’t afford to sit around waiting for the next nigga to be disobedient.
Only reason I was biding my time is because I wanted things to calm down first before we moved.
Taking Lathan off the board opened up territory, and there would no doubt be a scramble for it.
I was about to let the other families know how this next movement was going to go.
The time for all the hustling and traps was done.
I was ready to build a more sophisticated network, and I needed everyone to fall in line with it.
“What was going on before he died? What happened?” I questioned.
“He was ready to step down and hand it over to me. Said he was done and wanted to spend his time with Ma traveling and shit. Said it was time.”
“What about surveillance? Do we know who all was in the building that night?”
“We went through the footage. There was nothing out of the ordinary. There was a cleaning crew two floors down and two guards. One in the lobby and one walking the perimeter. It was late too.”
“You checked out this cleaning crew?” I asked, stuffing the blunt to wrap.
“Yup, everybody was legit.”
“You send the footage to Moniece? Just to make sure it’s not doctored?”
Ivo frowned. “I didn’t even think about that. Everything looked normal.”
“Something ain’t right about this shit. Somebody got close enough to him to take him out, and it had to be somebody inside.”
“I’ll send it to her when I get home tonight and have her look at it.”
His phone lit up in his hand.
“Brick is on his way back and Gas just pulled up,” he announced after glancing at the screen.
“Let’s rock.” I tucked the blunt between my lips and sparked it.
I was my brothers’ keepers. I didn’t have to always agree with them, and the same was true when it came to me.
I was just happy that all of us were still here considering the life we were born into.
Ivo and I were going to drive ahead of Brick and try to scout the area to where this mansion was located.
After dropping the bag of guns in the trunk, Ivo and I loaded up in one of the old schools and drove off into the night.