Tariq “Reek” Horton
By the time we crossed into Indiana, all the shit talking and joking had ceased.
The town was busy enough that we blended in, while riding in the trucks we’d borrowed from a chick we knew that ran the warehouse in the city. We were parked blocks away, spread through side streets and empty lots. Every truck was filled with the best Cartier and Street King soldiers we had.
Before anybody stepped out, Jamir made us go over the faces of our targets again.
We had already studied them, but he wanted them fresh in our heads.
Matías De La Cruz came first. Then the men closest to him; brothers, cousins, lieutenants, drivers, shooters, and every face that mattered to him.
We passed the photos around until every man in that convoy had them locked in.
I held Matías’s picture in my hand a second longer.
Then I handed it back and thought about Ava and Cairo.
Thoughts of them kept me on point. I kept thinking of the woman that morning with tears in her eyes asking me not to die, of my son breathing against my chest while I fed him bottles in the middle of the night.
Everything in me knew exactly who I was out there protecting and ensuring I made it back to.
Wise got out first once the last truck was in place.
He stood there scanning the block, the church, the parked vehicles, and the spread of our own men like he was reading a chessboard the rest of us were only looking at.
Then he pointed at one of the Street Kings’ SUVs and said, “Move that truck two storefronts down. If anybody comes out that left side door shooting or trying to run, your truck is going to be in our way instead of giving us room to move.”
The driver did it immediately.
That was the kind of time Wise was always on. He was the sort of man who corrected problems before they turned into dead men.
Vega glanced toward the church and said, “This looks like light work.”
Big A adjusted his strap and muttered, “That’s usually when it’s not.”
Prodigy looked up the block and said, “Looks like a small funeral. So, they think they’re safe.”
Lux and Lowe checked their weapons side by side, and I kept finding myself watching them because them niggas were interesting. Lowe was louder by nature. Lux was a quiet storm. He said less, but when he did speak, it was useful. They moved like they already knew what the other was thinking.
Legend and Icon stood off to the side going over the last angles with Jamir, while Saint had that wicked smile on his face that always meant he was about to get his rocks off with some violence.
Icon finally looked up and said, “We go in to do what we gotta do and get the fuck up outta there. Nobody freelances.”
We started closing distance in pieces. Nobody rushed. We started closing in on the church and taking control of the area around it.
The church looked so pure with its white stone and red doors and floral arrangements outside.
Cars were lined up all along the curb. Men from the Crown were posted where we assumed they would be.
Some stood near the side steps. Some watched the hearse.
A couple posted up like grieving family when they were clearly security.
The first soldiers we sent ahead took care of the outside threats.
Silencers did the work quietly. One man folded against the hearse before he could pull his piece.
Another one near the side door caught a round and dropped into the bushes.
A third took two steps like he refused to go out like this, then hit the pavement.
We were almost at the side entrance when two kids came through the church doors. A little boy and a girl stepped out in funeral clothes.
Vega got to them first. Watching him shift was something to see. One second, he was a walking, murdering beast. The next, he was crouched down in front of those kids with his voice soft enough to be convincing. “Hey, I saw an ice cream truck down the street. Want some ice cream.”
They both nodded quickly.
Vega reached into his pocket and handed them a few bills. “Here. Go down there and stay until your parents come get you, okay?”
They ran off, excited. Then Vega stood back up, and every bit of softness dropped off him so fast it almost didn’t look real.
The charm was still there, but it hardened into something colder the second he turned back toward the church.
That was what made him magnetic. He could be sweet one second and ready to spill blood the next.
Once the kids were clear, we went in. One of our men threw a smoke bomb through the front of the church right before we pushed in.
It rolled across the floor between the pews, then started coughing out thick gray smoke so fast it swallowed the center aisle and blurred the mourners’ sightline.
By the time the Crown realized what was happening, the air was already cloudy, and their visibility was gone.
Men started reaching under coats and toward pew corners. People screamed. Somebody yelled God’s name. Many people hit the floor.
We went to work. That was where the link between the Cartiers and the Street Kings looked like it had existed for years instead of days.
One man covered while another advanced. One noticed what the other had already anticipated.
Lux crossed left while Lowe stayed half a beat behind and to the right, and they worked like two pieces of the same weapon.
When a man rose from the fourth pew with his hand halfway to a pistol, Lux dropped him before he could pull it.
When another man came out of the side chapel, Lowe dropped him before he knew what was coming.
Big A came up the center with Saint. Saint stayed on his shoulder, and when one of Matías’ men lunged from behind a column with a gun up, Saint shot him so fast he dropped where he stood.
Saint stepped over him, taunting the dead, “Damn, you didn’t even know today was your funeral too, my boy.”
Legend cleared his side of the church with the kind of efficiency that made it obvious why he was who he was.
Even with smoke, screaming, and gunfire bouncing off the walls, Icon was still controlling the hit.
He called out orders, corrected pressure points, and kept us from being sloppy.
“Push altar side!” “Back hall clear!” “Do not let him break right!” He never stopped being the eye over the storm even when he was in the middle of it.
I knew I was deadlier than usual. Every time I pulled the trigger, I saw Ava and Cairo in my head.
Every time another Crown body dropped, all I could think was that if we didn’t end this now, these niggas could breathe in my family’s direction later.
That made me merciless in a way the other men clocked it.
“Gawd damn, Reek, save me some bodies,” I heard Saint joke over the noise.
Then I saw Matías.
He was exactly where Jamir said he would be, up front near the family section, trying to sneak out through the confusion with two of his men around him. His face matched the picture so perfectly that I got happy the second I locked on him.
I drove harder toward the front. Wise and Prodigy were already closing from the side aisle. Vega came in from the back right. Legend held the center. Icon stepped up behind the smoke like he knew exactly where the escape would be before Matías did.
Matías figured it out too late. He tried to pivot toward the sacristy door, probably thinking the side exit would buy him time.
One of his men peeled off to cover him, and that was when I pushed too hard.
I broke forward chasing the finish, and one of his shooters came out from a pew angle I had not personally cleared.
He came up with his gun aimed right at my chest from maybe ten feet away.
It was close enough that I knew I was too late.
And in that half second before he squeezed the trigger, my life flashed before my eyes exactly how people always say it does.
But I didn’t see my childhood. I didn’t see the streets.
I only saw Ava in our bed that morning with tears in her eyes telling me not to die. Then I saw Cairo.
It was happening so fast that I couldn’t react, but it was as if his trigger finger was squeezing in slow motion.
Then Wise’s round caught the shooter through the side of the head before the trigger pulled. The shooter’s body folded sideways across the end of the pew.
Wise never even looked at me afterward. He was already tracking the next move, and I got back in it.
By the time I reached the front again, Matías had nowhere left to go.
Prodigy had cut the sacristy lane. Vega forced him off the wall.
Legend held the center. Icon stepped into the open and closed in on Matías who clawed backward on his elbows, face twisted in panic, suit torn and soaked red from a graze on his shoulder.
Icon lunged, seized Matías by the hair and yanked his head back hard against the wooden altar rail, then drove his knee into Matias's balls with a wet crunch that made him howl, doubling him over before Icon flipped him face-down and stomped his spine, grinding the heel until vertebrae popped.
“You had the nerve to try to take my wife, you motherfucka!” Icon bellowed, voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling as he jammed his knife into Matias's lower back. He twisted it slowly to sever nerves while Matias bucked and screamed, shitting himself in agony.
Blood bubbled from his mouth when Icon hauled him up by the collar and rammed the blade through his cheek into the jaw, sawing side to side to shred tongue and teeth before yanking it free in a spray and plunging it deep into the gut, pumping in and out so many times I stopped counting.
Loops of intestine spilled onto the altar amid Matias's gurgling pleas that faded to wet rasps as his eyes rolled back lifeless.
Once Matías dropped, it stopped feeling like war and more like cleanup.
A few more men went down trying to return fire through smoke they couldn’t see through.
Women and children screamed as they took cover on the floor and under pews.
A couple men tried to break through side doors and got caught there.
The church belonged to us by the time the last real threat stopped moving.
I stood there breathing hard, gun hot in my hand, and understood something clear as hell. Ava’s love had softened the parts of me that needed softening. But there was still something lethal in me strong enough to be a killer if it meant I got to come home to her and my son.
Icon looked over the church and said, “We’re done here. Let’s roll.”