Prologue #2
“Half of this shit wouldn’t exist without me!” Joy exclaimed. That fact couldn’t be debated. The Thibodeaux family had lost their place in the Bayou Mafia until Joy had assisted her father in reclaiming it.
“That’s inconsequential,” Cleve waved her off. “You’re violent, erratic and unpredictable…You’re dangerous.”
Joy scoffed, turning to eye every man in the room. “Yeah, no shit I’m dangerous. My violence built this shit. So I had a little moment but I’m better now. What the fuck is y’alls problem? Daddy? You have nothing to say?”
Byron met her eyes, devoid of any emotion. “We voted, princess.”
“Well, what was the count? Y’all took a vote without me. My vote might skew it.”
“It was unanimous,” Cleve informed her.
When the words hit her ears, her heart crumbled and her head reared back as if she’d been struck. She looked to her father for confirmation that he too had voted her out and found no discrepancy.
Joy felt her anger rise and began the calming techniques she’d learned.
She closed her eyes briefly and took in a deep breath. Her nostrils flared as she tried to pull in fresh air, and her mouth formed into an ‘O’ as she dispelled the old from her lungs.
When she opened her eyes again, she laughed. Lowly at first, a chuckle of disbelief that held no humor. The men around the table watched her warily as the chuckle turned into a hysterical cackle.
Joy stood slowly, clutching her stomach as she continued laughing. Her eyes were closed and her head thrown back. She leaned against the back of her chair for support as she worked to calm herself. Tears were streaming down her face and she walked to her father’s desk to grab a tissue.
Once she’d stopped laughing, the room was dead silent. Everyone bounced their eyes between her, Byron, and each other as they awaited her next move.
“Y’all are deadass? You’re really kicking me out?” she asked, directing the second question to her father, who sat emotionless. She was sitting on the edge of his desk, only a few steps from where he sat at the head of the conference table. “What was I supposed to do? Let that nigga beat on me?”
“We have to do what’s best for the organization, as you should have. Right now, that’s not you,” Byron said. “You understand.”
“Says who? Him?” Joy asked, gesturing with disgust towards Cleve. He glared back at her.
“He proposed the vote, yes, and I trusted that he’s able to put the needs of this organization first without any biases that I may hold regarding the situation,” Byron said.
“Going forward, Cleve will be my right hand and we will reevaluate your role in the family once we’re sure you’re stable.
Marrying the Chapman boy is clearly off the table, but we’ll see how else you can be of use. ”
Joy listened to her father with her jaw slack. She knew he was upset, but he was treating her like a disposable pawn rather than his daughter. Rather than his princess. His words hit her deep in her chest before her shock turned to white hot anger.
The edges of her vision blurred as Joy’s body shook with anger. She vibrated with the need to release it.
Her blood boiled like lava had been injected into her veins as the rage took over her body.
Like an addict, her forehead became slick with sweat and her hands trembled as she warded off the desire to reach for the desert eagle she’d tucked into her pants.
Every man in the room looked down on her with disgust and fear. The same men who had trained her. Gained profit and power off of the back of the violence they all instilled in her.
She was ashamed of herself and that realization only made the rage bubbling under her skin boil hotter.
What did she have to be ashamed of?
He made her this way.
He crafted her from scratch and molded her into the pretty soldier who, at his command, would take back his kingdom by any means necessary. They’d stripped her of her childhood and in exchange, gave her the burden of reviving her father’s legacy.
Her prize for her merit and success was rage and an uncontrollable response to the trauma he’d introduced her to.
She tried to ignore the familiar ringing in her ears, but when her eyes returned to Cleve, she saw the smug grin plastered on his face.
And she snapped.
She moved so quickly no one noticed her motives until she’d hopped over the table and had Cleve knocked out of his chair and pinned to the ground under her shoes.
Water glasses shattering, chairs scraping, and men yelling didn’t register to her as her mind went blank and her body moved of its own volition.
One foot was on his chest and the other was holding his right arm out, away from his body. She slid a large, sharp blade from her boot and, in one motion, brought it down at Cleve’s wrist, severing the hand from the rest of his body.
He let out a blood-curdling scream that was muted to Joy’s ears.
She picked up the severed hand and stood. Tendons and muscle tissue dangled from the cut. With vacant eyes, she tossed it on the conference table in front of her stunned father.
“There’s your right hand,” she snarled.
When Joy’s vision refocused and her soul was present in her body again, her father’s office was empty leaving her alone with blood drenching her hands.
She could hear a commotion in a distant part of the building, but Joy’s body wouldn’t move to go see what was happening.
Slowly, the memories trickled back to her and once again, she was ashamed.
Fuck… not again.
The look on her father’s face would haunt her for the rest of her life.
He was afraid of her.
Disgusted by her.
Joy’s head throbbed as her mind tried to make sense of his reaction.
This was the same man who taught her to fight.
Taught her to shoot. Trained her in his image.
Raised her to be a soldier. Why, now, did he look down on her like her actions weren’t warranted?
Like they hadn’t been praised in similar circumstances.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Byron’s voice boomed as he charged into the office, the door slamming against the adjacent wall.
Joy looked up from inspecting her hands with wide eyes. “Me? What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you? How could you vote me out?”
“Watch your fucking tone when you speak to me, little girl,” Byron pointed his finger in her face.
“You kicked me out! What am I supposed to do?” Joy asked, standing. She knew nothing but the Cartel. Since she was 10 years old, everything she did was for the sake of the family and training her to one day run it.
What was she supposed to do if they kicked her out? Who was she if not her father’s perfect soldier?
“I don’t give a damn,” Byron gritted out. “You’re not about to burn down everything I’ve built because yo unstable ass don’t know how to control that temper.”
Joy reared back, and if her heart wasn’t breaking, she might have laughed. “Everything you’ve built? So, I guess I didn’t do shit huh?”
“You fucked up my alliance with the Chapmans and now you’re acting like Edward
Scissorhands with board members!” Byron carried on, ignoring her. “I warned you, Joy. I warned you to get it under control.”
Joy smacked her lips. “Fuck Cleve. He’s been vying for my spot for years and you know it. And fuck Jermaine Chapman too. No one has ever put their hands on me and lived to talk about it. If you ask me, that motherfucka got off easy. Shit, I can marry someone else to get the connections we need.”
Byron looked at Joy like she’d sprouted two heads. “Who the fuck is going to marry a crazy motherfucker who stabs niggas with her shoes and cuts off hands?”
Joy was pacing now, her mind working a mile a minute to figure out how to right her wrongs. How to get that look of contempt out of her father’s eyes.
“Okay. Okay. Fuck the marriage. I can make my own connections. I took the bar a week before everything went down. I just need–”
Byron cut her off with a slam of his palm on the desk.
The pens rattled, and the framed photo of the two of them at Joy’s law school graduation fell on its face.
“Dammit, Joy. You’re not an asset anymore!
You’re a fucking liability and you need to leave, because I swear to God if you ruin this for me…
that’s yo ass.” His voice was cold and clipped and his eyes were colder.
“Daddy,” Joy nearly whimpered, her voice small. In that moment, she wasn’t the deadly and feared cartel princess she’d grown into. She had reverted to the little girl who would do anything to make her father proud. She hated that she’d been reduced to this. “I can fix this.”
“You wanna fix this?” Byron went to the safe behind his desk and pulled out a canvas bag filled with bills. He stomped towards her and shoved the money into her hands. “Here. Take this. Have Darnell take you to a bus stop and go far, far away.”
Joy’s eyes stung with tears, but she didn’t dare let them fall. “Where am I supposed to go?”
“I don’t fucking care. Anywhere. But you need to leave. I can’t defend you like this. Anyone else would be put down for the shit you’ve done, but you’re still my daughter and you’re clearly not all there, so consider this an act of mercy.”
Joy scoffed.
Mercy.
There was nothing merciful about what he was doing to her.
She opened her mouth to protest once more. To beg and plead if necessary, but Byron cut her off in a harsh tone.
“You’ve embarrassed me for the last time, Joy. I had my empire taken from me once and if you think you’re gonna burn it to the ground, you’re sadly mistaken.”
The door opened and three of Byron’s best and biggest goons entered. One grabbed the bag of money and the other two each took one of Joy’s arms.
She didn’t fight them.
“Get her out of here,” Byron ordered, then directed his icy attention back to his daughter. “I don’t wanna see you in my city. Is that clear? They want your head and if you cause one more problem for me, I’ll let them have it.”
Joy’s stomach dropped, her heart shattering into a million pieces as Byron’s betrayal set in.
Silent tears streamed down Joy’s face as they carried her out of her father’s office.