No One in the World (10 page)

“Okay,” Blac said.

“No. I really need for you to understand this shit. Bones,” Cutty said, snapping his fingers at one of the men.

The man who stepped forward was tall, thin, and muscular. He walked over to Blac, pulled a Glock from the front of his jeans, and pressed the tip of the barrel flush to Blac's temple. Blac immediately started to tremble.

“Bones here is a killer, like all my men. If I gave the word, he'd put a bullet in your head and wouldn't blink when your blood hit his face. You hear me?”

Blac nodded, trying not to mess himself, he was so nervous.

Cutty waved a hand, and Bones shoved the gun back into his jeans and backed off.

That afternoon, Blac drove away in Theresa's car with $150,000 worth of crack cocaine in his trunk. Blac hadn't known that Theresa's brake lights weren't working. The cops who had been following behind him for four blocks finally flashed their lights, hit the siren, and pulled Blac over.

Because he was nervous as hell, acting more like he had a dead body stashed in the trunk instead of $150K worth of crack, the cops asked Blac to step out and they searched his vehicle.

Before being sentenced, Blac could've struck a deal—told the cops where the drugs came from—and they would've reduced his sentence considerably. But Blac wasn't a snitch.

A week into his incarceration, Blac was doing laundry with a few other guys. After pulling his clothes out of the dryer, he looked up to find himself suddenly alone. A moment later, three hulking, tattooed men with evil expressions walked into the room and stood around him.

Yes, Blac thought. This was when he'd die for losing Cutty's drugs.

He set his laundry basket down and tried to accept his fate. “Cutty sent ya'll, huh.”

“Yup,” one of the men said. He had a diagonal line of scar tissue dissecting his face.

“Okay. Let's get this shit over wit',” Blac said.

“Cutty sent us to thank you for not rattin' him out. He suspended your
deadline while you locked up,” the man said. “And while you in, you ain't got nothing to worry about from these fools in here. Cutty got your back, 'cause you work for him now.”

“Really?” Blac said, grateful. “Okay, right.”

“But like I said, Cutty suspending your deadline. He ain't wiping that shit away. You lost one hundred fifty thousand dollars' worth of his product. Snitch or not, you still owe him. So you get out, that ten-day clock gonna start ticking again, and you gonna need to get him back his money, or same outcome applies,” the man said, holding his hand as though he were pointing a gun. “You gonna end up dead.”

As Blac lay in the dark on the bunk above Eric's, he was thankful for the man sleeping beneath him. Eric said this newfound brother of his, Cobi, was filthy loaded. Blac didn't know how he would capitalize on that situation, but he was a criminal, a swindler, a manipulating thief. His father was before him, his grandfather before that, and the line could've continued even as far back as slave days. Blac knew Eric and his rich brother Cobi were just about his best and last hope of staying alive.

A
usten stood by the door of her condo, her arms folded across her chest, as a couple of burly men in brown uniforms moved out the last two dining room chairs.

She had posted pictures of the antique table and chairs for sale at $3,000 on Craigslist.

Ten minutes later, the phone calls started pouring in.

The first to arrive was a young couple, a tall, thin, boyish-faced doctor and his pregnant wife. The two walked in and their faces lit up when they saw the table and chairs.

“It's beautiful,” Austen heard the woman say to her husband as she lovingly rubbed her round belly.

“Yeah, it is,” he said, then turned to Austen. “Three thousand, right?”

“Yes. And the price is firm,” Austen said.

Austen shut the door, then pulled the thin wad of thirty crisp one-hundred-dollar bills from her jeans pocket and fingered them as she walked through the living room and dining room. She stopped all of a sudden in the empty space, feeling a chill. She looked up from the money in her hands to see that the room was as completely bare as the day she bought the place.

All she had now was her bedroom furniture and the small flat-screen that sat on the chest of drawers. How long before she would have to sell
that? Where would she sleep after that? On the floor? Would she even have a floor underneath her to consider, or would the bank have taken her place by then?

Austen felt a single tear crawl down her face. She swatted at it angrily with the back of the hand holding the money, feeling as if allowing herself to cry would be admitting that she was defeated. She was up to her neck in it this time, but there had to be a way out.

Austen took a step toward the bedroom when a knock came at her door.

She opened the door, expecting the young couple to tell her they had forgotten something.

Who Austen saw standing in her doorway was a tall, beautiful woman, wearing a sharp, tailor-made business suit. Beside her stood an even taller, well-built man, wearing a chauffeur's uniform and dark glasses.

“Austen Greer,” the woman said. “My name is Sissy Winslow. May I come in? I have an important proposition for you.”

L
oosening the gold diamond-print tie around my neck, I stared down at the criminal file of the young man I would be prosecuting. His name was Ra'Mond Williams. He was twenty-three years old. In his house was found $100,000 of marijuana.

He was charged with possession with intent to distribute. He had no prior offenses, but still, I would make it my business to ensure he served time in jail. If the warden wanted me to walk him to his cell myself, turn the key, and toss it down a sewer drain, I could do it and have no problems closing my eyes at night.

What I knew would keep me up about this case was the fact that the house where the drugs were found was not Ra'Mond's, but his grandmother's. Ra'Mond's mother was in prison herself, had been for some time. Ra'Mond's grandmother allowed the young man to live in her house, the house her late husband had paid off while working on the railroads. Not until police officers wearing armored vests, riot gear, and carrying high-powered weapons busted through her door did she know that her grandson was using her home for drug storage.

Ra'Mond's grandmother had lived in that house for fifty years, but now it was scheduled to be seized by the city of Chicago.

I dragged a hand down my face and flipped the file closed. I was disgusted.

I wondered if I was placing myself in a similar situation welcoming a brother I did not know into my home. I had been up all night battling those thoughts, as well as the warnings Sissy gave me, which played over and over in my head. But I told myself I had done the right thing. He was my brother, and he needed a place to stay, to get back on his feet. It was what I wanted to do.

A knock came at the door.

“Come in,” I said, knowing who it was and wishing I had not interrupted his day by asking him to come over.

Tyler stepped through the door, looking as handsome as ever, wearing a million-dollar smile. Knowing me better than I always thought he did, he immediately walked across the room with concerned eyes and stood beside me.

“Baby, you okay? You look exhausted.” He leaned down and gave me a kiss on the lips. I know he meant for it to be longer, but I pulled away.

“I'm fine. Just tired is all. Didn't sleep much last night.”

Tyler walked back around to the front of my desk and had a seat in the guest chair. “Tell me what's bothering you.”

I looked in his eyes and saw how sincere his request was. It was one of the reasons I loved this man. “This was supposed to be a happy occasion when I told you this.”

“Told me what?”

“I mean, I put so much effort into—”

A wide smile brightened Tyler's face. “You found your brother?”

“In prison,” I said, deflated. “Locked up for a crime he won't tell me about.”

“You spoke to him.”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“He gets paroled tomorrow.”

Tyler sighed, a perplexed look on his face. “How are you going to play it? I mean, Cobi, you have options. You don't owe—”

“He needs a place.”

“Cobi, what did you promise him?”

“I told him he could stay with me.”

“Sissy tore you a new one, huh?”

I couldn't help but smile a little. “Of course. I mean, he's in prison for
a reason. I'm picking him up tomorrow and taking him to my house. I'm actually supposed to go there later today to see him and give him some information he asked me for. Am I crazy?”

Tyler smiled that comforting smile that always made me feel more relaxed. He stood and opened his arms. “Come here.”

I walked around my desk and into his embrace.

“In answer to your question, hell yes, you're crazy. But you're also caring, and thoughtful, and charitable, and if I were him, I would thank God that I had a brother like you. I'm sure you have nothing to worry about, and everything will be fine.”

“Famous last words,” I said.

“Famous last words.” Tyler smiled.

I wrapped my arms around him, smoothed my hands over the back muscles under his suit jacket. “I need to see you tonight.”

“I can't. Taking the wife and girls to Cirque du Soleil.”

I leaned out of the hug without taking my arms from around him. “Tyler, what are we doing?”

“Don't,” he said.

“Don't what?”

“This discussion. You have great news, you found your brother. You have that to deal with. And I have enough work to keep me locked up round the clock, so let's not go back into the ‘What are we doing?' discussion, okay? Can we just leave that alone for a while?”

E
ric stood in the prison's recreation room, leaning on his pool cue, waiting for Blac to take his shot at the eight ball.

Normally, Eric would've whupped Blac and left him with at least five balls on the table, but today Eric had things on his mind.

Wearing a white wife beater that contrasted sharply with his dark skin, Blac leaned over the table, sized up his shot, then looked up at Eric. “This yo' ass. Eight ball, corner pocket.”

“Make the shot, then talk,” Eric said.

Blac held his pose stretched over the table, then stood straight and glanced down at his watch.

“Dude, what are you doin'?” Eric said, agitated. “You takin' the shot or what?”

“Didn't you say your brother was supposed to come here like an hour and half ago?”

“Yeah. So what? You takin' the shot or not?”

Blac laid his stick on the table. “So, what's up? Did he call and say he wasn't coming?”

“No. But what does that have to do with you? Why you so concerned about whether or not this man show up?”

“I'm concerned because I'm your boy, and the other day you was all
tiptoein' on air, singing and dancing about how you got a brother and how you gonna live with him.”

“I wasn't doin' all that.”

“You need to find out what's going on.”

“Maybe he realized he made a mistake by callin' on me, by tellin' me all that stuff and asking me to live at his place. And to tell you the truth, hell, I don't blame him.” Eric turned, ready to walk out.

Blac rushed over, grabbed him by the arm. “So you just givin' up on that?”

“Blac, what the hell you want me to do? Call him? I ain't got his number. Go by his house? I don't even know where that fool live. It's over, okay.” Eric turned again and headed toward the rec room door.

Blac called out to him. “Yo. Just tell yourself he gonna be outside that gate tomorrow, waiting for you in a stretch Mercedes or somethin'. You gotta do that. The power of positive thinking and all that stuff, right?”

“Right,” Eric said, as he continued out the door.

A
usten lay in her king-size cherrywood, four-poster bed, wearing nothing but a short T-shirt hiked up to expose her flat, smooth belly. The Egyptian cotton sheet lay just below her hips. Her right hand was beneath it, the tips of her two fingers pressing on that very sensitive place between her thighs.

She threw out her left hand toward the nightstand and blindly fumbled for the vibrator.

The last time she pleasured herself was two nights ago, and it had been pretty much every other night for the last month. It was all the stress she was feeling from watching her life and all that she had worked so hard for spiral down the drain.

But tonight, she was super stressed because of that woman who had the nerve to knock on her door earlier today.

“I don't know who you are,” Austen said, after hearing the woman tell Austen her name was Sissy Winslow. “What do you want?”

“Like I said, I have a proposition for you. May I come in, or will you have me conduct this business in the corridor?”

Austen wasn't certain of what to do, she thought, looking this woman up and down. If she was a crook, she was a very successful one, because
the clothes and jewelry she wore, Austen was sure, cost as much as some folks' houses.

“I assure you, if you aren't interested in what I have to say, I'll leave. May I come in?”

Austen stepped aside and pulled the door all the way open.

“Wait out here, Harold,” Sissy said to the man beside her.

“Yes, Miss Winslow.”

Sissy Winslow stepped into the bare condo. Austen closed the door behind her.

“Beautiful place you have here,” Sissy said, walking casually through the large, open living room with the high ceilings, over to the glass wall of windows.

Austen watched her, glaring down at the woman's pumps, with their blood-red soles.