Rogue (In the life of the Rogue Book 1) (27 page)

Something told me to turn away. To walk away now because what was on the other side would be something I didn’t want to see. My cousin wasn’t a strong man, but he wasn’t broken.

The man who had answered my relentless door pounding sounded
tired and broken
.

The visit had been a long time coming. I had not seen him since the day at Sam’s two months ago. Inside my jacket pocket was another bulky envelope with more money for him to support his habits and to keep his distance. I had been warned off from my cousin, and even I had to admit it was for good reasons. Bringing money to a drug addict was like taking gallons of diseal fuel to put a gas fire, but I just couldn’t let my cousin drown.

I put my ear back to the door.

“Go away, Tristan,” he said, his voice growing lower than the first time he spoke.

And I agreed with his words. My stomach was churning, preparing itself for the gut punch of what my cousin would look like now.

I went to hit the door again, but stopped when I heard Ally’s door open instead. I stepped away from Zander’s door, walking to the middle of the hallway. It had been months since I seen or heard from her. The last time it hadn’t been a good meeting; Lulina had crushed and dismissed her.

Now, Ally looked like something else had crushed her.

Her hair covered most of her face. She looked pale and shaggy. Her eyes were red and her lips looked nawed but no blood was around her mouth.

“Why are you here, Tristan,” she asked, her voice hoarse from crying and weak.

I took a step toward her, but she took a step back into her apartment, her arms hugging her body.

I dropped my head and looked at my feet. “Don’t worry, I’m not staying.”

“Leave that piece of shit alone,” she screamed at me, “Don’t you dare stop him from killing himself.”

I was walking towards her, taking long strides. My hands wrapped around arms and I shook her, squeezing my fingers until I felt muscles part and I was squeezing bone.

“Don’t you dare talk about my cousin like that,” I was yelling back at her, no idea why but I had to make her understand that Zander wasn’t shit, that he was my cousin and I was just as much the same as he.

Ally struggled in my grasp. She managed to yank an arm loose and slapped me. I let go of her and stumbled back.

“How could you leave him here with me,” she whispered.

I rubbed my jaw, feeling the heat from her surprisingly strong hit. Ally refused to give me time to recover.

She stepped back into her apartment and slammed the door in my face. I shook my head, confused at what had just happened.

What
had
happened here?

There was a joke in the air somewhere and I was missing out on the laugh.

Behind me, I heard Zander finally opening his door.

“Leave her alone,” he said as he poked his head out, “she don’t need to be bothered by any of us again.”

His hair was long and dirty. His usual five o’clock shadow was now a full grown grundgy beard. His eyes were red and bloodshot.   

“The fuck?” I croaked out, exasperated.

He scratched his arms. There were tiny needle marks there now. “You here with more money, man?”

“You shooting up again?”

“Did you bring me some money, Tristan?” He stepped further out into the hallway. He wore sweats and nothing else. He looked like he had lost weight. His broad shoulders still looked strong but everything else seemed to have lost its definition.

A broken man can never hide.

And he was broken. His face looked like it had aged so much. He touched his hair, moving it out of his eyes. He carefully looked down the hall to Ally’s closed apartment door then back to me.

“She was a nice girl, man. You should have never messed with her.”

I blinked long and hard, trying to get the nightmare to end. “What happened to you?”

And it was the wrong question.

“Ya’ll did this to me!” He screamed. His mouth was open as he yelled at me, spit flying. His teeth were stained and two of his front teeth were missing. “My ex-wife and my damned kids did this to me. Do you know that my ex marrying that fucked up boyfriend of hers? She said that he turned himself around, and now my own kids are calling him daddy!”

By now I was thinking of how to clean this up quietly like Zander was already a rotting corpse. I briefly thought of the clinics the family could send him to. Surely we couldn’t let him live like this. He needed help and we couldn’t just turn our backs on him.

Zander had dabbled in drugs, touched his tippy toes in the puddle of fixes and syringes, and fallen in. 

Then the next thought entered my mind and I didn’t like it.

ALLY…Ally…ally…

Zander was no longer talking. He was looking at me with his red, expectant eyes that any moment I would reach inside my leather jacket and hand him another brown envelope and be on my way. I looked at him again, really looked at him.

Then I looked back towards Ally’s closed door, feeling her stare on me from the peep hole, and if I closed my eyes and disregarded my heartbeat in my ears, that I could hear her crying from the other side of the door.

“Tell me you haven’t been messing with Ally, Zander,” I whispered.

“I was in your apartment when she came looking for you, man. We talked for awhile but she didn’t want to stay if you weren’t coming so I told her I would call you and she could wait with me.”

The spit in my mouth evaporated.

Where he was getting at had painted a clear enough picture for me, but I still took a long moment to process just what he was saying.

“I just wanted what you had,” he said, “she didn’t want to stay unless you would be there.”

My chin hit my chest as the words painted another clear picture that was way too ugly to look at. “She’s just a girl, Zander.”

“She wasn’t no girl, T. You made sure of that.”

I staggered back until my back touched the wall. I slid down the wall to my ass, my head falling into my hands. It was too much, a ball of confusion, sorrow, anger, rage and hurt. I looked up at my cousin, looking deeply into his eyes and seeing absolutely nothing.

If you seek a soul from someone, look into their eyes.

And there was nothing there. If I knocked on his head, I would hear an echo like I just knocked on hollow wood, and I would most likely hear the same if I knocked on his heart.

Zander’s eyes watered and he bit his bottom lip as if he could hold the tears. “I thought you got her on the pill, Tristan.”

“Don’t tell me what I think you about to tell me, man.”

Zander leaned against the wall next to his apartment door. “I waited till her parents left and tried to apologize for, you know. That’s when she told me. She said that if I ever came near her again, or you, that she would get the police involved. She said that all they had to do was test her, test the baby and I would go to prison.”

He scratched his chest, leaving marks after he finished. “You think your father will tell me to handle it like he told you to do with Katie?”

“She was a kid,” I said, denying the fact that none of it mattered to him, like it hadn’t mattered to me.

“We aren’t good men, Tristan.”

I felt like shit – right back to the usual feeling of unwanted dog that pissed on everything nice in someone’s house, but this time it had been her life. If there was no me then there would be no Zander, and she wouldn’t be pregnant.

I felt so responsible. It was not my kid, I had been too careful, but in a way it was still my responsibility.

Be a man, Tristan, I said to myself.

Clean this up just like I had with the bodies I was paid to dismember and make sure it was lost forever. I had dealt with so much dark family secerts, and I was well prepared to do it again. I took a deep breath and it was ragged and forced.

I stood up, fully intent on making this right.

I glanced back into my cousin eyes and it felt like I was leaning my head over an empty hole.

The confidence after the pep talk had fallen on deaf ears. I didn’t have the stomach for this and I knew it. The sad part was that Zander didn’t know that his little cousin, a bigger and better man than he, had finally hit a very solid wall and decided to run for cover.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, man,” I say to him, “We aren’t very good men at all.” And as I’m telling him this, I’m taking my roll of money from my pants pocket.

I counted out a few hundreds then pulled a few more bills just for extra measure and tossed it at Zander’s feet. Like a junky, he forgot about me and lunged for the bills. I made my getaway then walking quick and fast to the exit, too scared to turn around.

***

Walking back inside the compound had felt like I had waded through a murky swamp that had pulled my shoes and socks right off my feet. The world was happening, moving, Rogue criminal activity was happening somewhere, Lulina was probably planning out my assignation, and I trudge through it, trying to crawl my way to the bar where I could see the world through a fish eye lense and find it funny when it should have made me cry.

I managed to down six drinks of pure vodka before I felt anything that resembled a burn. It had been so long since I had drunk like this. It was the type of drink that man would do just to forget enough to be happy for a moment. 

The bartender was too well paid to react to the fact that I was trying to drown myself. I figured I would tip him just for the privacy as I figured things out in my head.

Another motion for a refill and I was swimming again with vodka. I liked the burn, I remembered, and took an even longer sip of the drink. My head swirled and my body burned and I was now smiling because I loved it.

By the time I had lost count of the drinks and the world around me was swimming, did I actually feel like drinking wasn’t enough – it would never be. I used drinking as an escape, so I could run and now I just wasn’t sure if I was running away or running to.

What was I running from?

Or what I was drinking from?

I took another longer swig and emptied the glass. “It just seems like the end, Tristan,” I said to myself.

My lips trembled then as the tears burned my eyes. Lying would have been great but I could not. There wasn’t anyone to lie too. The bartender didn’t care and no one in this house would have listened. I swallowed hard and finally reached my limit with the drinking when I could no longer remember how to set the glass down on the counter. I moved to get off the stool and missed the floor somehow and hit it instead.

You can hate me now, I hated myself enough.

You’ve realized that you’ve woken up in hell when your eyes open and you’re no further than the torment you had closed your eyes too.

A construction worker leaned down and roughly nudged my shoulder. “We need the room.”

I groaned and rolled over to my back. I blinked and my eyelids burned. My hands gripped the carpet as I tried to sit up, but was having trouble.

The worker grunted, chewing a wad of gum that had his left cheek inhumanly bulging. He squatted down, both knees cracking. He grabbed my shoulder and helped me sit up.

I got to my feet on my own, my head reeling, my eyes watering from the headache and my sore back protesting from taking a long, acholo inducing slumber. But even with all that, I still didn’t miss the worker wiping off the hand he had used to pull me up on his dirty tan shirt, but at one point and time was white, and then on his filthy faded jeans.

He chewed his gum slowly as he eyed me from under his metal work hat. “We need the room.”

I leaned over the bar, my hand reaching under, my fingers grabbing the neck of a bottle. “I heard you the first time.”

“Then clear out, we got to get this room done today.”

“Hey, go fuck yourself.”

I wobbled as I walked to the open door. I tried to unscrew the cap to the drink, but was having trouble.

I refused to go back and ask the man for help.

***

I pulled at the tie around my kneck, not caring who I was pissing off, or disrespecting at the act. Something about hangover and the feel like the walls were closing in on you that made you no longer give a damned about the smaller things that completed a screwed up life.

My suit was wrinkled, my curls flopped down in front of my eyes – having not cut my hair in so long – and my eyes felt dry, like blinking was grinding sandpaper into my corneas.

I cleared my throat at the threshold to my father’s office. He and Papa were pouring over blueprints.

I swallowed; my spit getting stuck in my dry throat and evaporating when Dominique stood from the chair and turned around.

My father looked at me, lifted his eyebrow. “You want something, Tristan?”

I barely heard my father speaking. My attention was obtained by Dominique. She was wearing a tight fitting black shirt with long sleeves and tight jeans.

Two months had been good for her.

Two months had been shit for me.

It showed on her.

And it definetly showed on me.

She walked around my father’s desk and leaned over to him. Her lips touched his ear as she whispered something. Her hand touched the side of his face as her lips pressed to his cheek.

She left no lipstick.

She tugged his face so he could be looking at her and closed the distance between their mouths.

The kiss ended and none seemed too surprised that it had taken place. They were supposed to be married after all.

“I’ll leave you with your son,” she said.

Dominique’s shoulder brushed my chest as I turned to the side to let her pass. She smelled wonderful: flowers, candy, sugar and heaven.

The smells disappaited as she did.

She didn’t even look back.

“Congradulations are in order, Tristan,” Papa called out to me, motioning for me to come into my father’s office.

I closed the door and collapsed against it. My palms were flat on the door, like I was trying to keep from falling off the face of the earth.

My father used his thumb to touch his bottom lip. His eyes closed and he breathed heavy. Sure, I knew what that was. Dominique’s kisses had a way of interrupting you life and made you reevulate just what heaven on earth was.

“We’re getting ready for the party, Tristan,” he told me.

Papa: “Dominique will be introduced tonight.”

Introduced
, meant that she would be brought into the family fold, and every earning and helping hand in the Rogue family would be there to watch it. There would be a brief ceremony, one that was spectular and very rare. A torch would be lit and handed not the new lead earner and leader.

Papa would light a match and pass it to my father and Dominique would take a cigar, put it to her lips and breathe in the new smoke of the Rogue life. The show would give meaning to the men in the family and governers and police we had on payroll a message:
there was a new boss in the family.

I grabbed for my tie again and loosened it. My throat felt raw, I cleared it. “Daddy –“A word I hadn’t used in so long, “–I have to talk to you about Zander.”

My father toss his hand in the air. He took a seat, chose a cigar from his box, lit up and smoked. Papa leaned on the side of his desk, his hands clasped on his lap.

The two most important men in my life looked at me, watching me and I almost gagged. The air around me had changed. There was always hostility between me and the two oldest Rogue, but this felt different.

It felt calm, tranquil and there was a finality to it.

If I could’ve, I would have clawed my way out the room.

But I didn’t.

“Sit,” my father motioned to the chair in front of his desk.

And that’s what I did.

I had always known that my father was a hard, dangerous and murderous man. He was his father’s son, but he was my father, and even then we seemed not to see the evil of what I parents really were.

I saw it today and almost screamed.

I leaned my head into my hands, my head felt raw, my temples blaring. “What are you congradulating me for?”

Papa took the seat next to me and patted my shoulder.

“When Almond was here, we proposed a deal to each other.”

“I know I was there.”

“It was sealed but not completely.”

I shrugged away from Papa’s touch and turned my sights back on my father.

My father puffed on his cigar, blew out a stream of smoke and spoke, “At a certain age, men in this life get something to help with their lifestyles.” He pointed to me. “I had you before I got that something. I felt I hadn’t needed it, but you were a very important warning sign.”

He stubbed out the cigar.

Papa asked me, “Drink?”

For the first time in years, I declined booze.

My father continued. “Dominique is pregnant, Tristan.”

And the world melted away, crashing right at my feet. I kept the hurt out of my face. Of course I knew this would happen. My father was going be a father again and the woman I loved would give to birth to my brother.

Life is sickening.

Papa slapped a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Your father shoots blanks, Tristan.”

My father spoke next, “The gift I gave my
wife-to-be
was not the chance to sleep with the man she loved, but to choose who she wanted to be the father of her child – because I had no intentions of going under the knife to undo my hystorectmy.”

Papa: “You were the lucky man, Tristan.”

The shattered world at my feet seemed to grind more into fine dust. I touched my wrist, feeling the small, round hole of the cigarette burn. Touching that small cigarette burn told me one thing:
Yes, you’re still here.

“She’s pregnant and it’s mine,” I croaked.

“I do not care to get married again, Tristan.” And my father stopped, smiled, blush rushing into his cheeks. He touched his lips again. “But I am warming up to the idea. You may be the father but the child will only know you as a brother.”

“People will know because of my – my,” I stopped, pinching my lips with my teeth.

I looked at Papa, because I knew he would be bursting to fill in the blanks.

“Because you’re a nigger, Tristan? Is that what you couldn’t say?” Papa asked, smiling.

I trudged ahead, “People will know.”

My father shook his head. “They will know what I tell them and I’m not worried. The child will pass as mine. You are my son, after all.”

My hands were shaking. My elbows touched my knees, my head bowed and I crashed to a very ugly reality. “Then why tell me this?”

“Just in case you found the truth out for yourself if my son bore more of you than me.”

“But she said she loved me,” I whispered but that information hadn’t been for the two voltures sitting around me, picking my dead meat off my bones. It had been my own internal dialogue, my last and lazy fight for my sanity.

Papa was the next to talk, “She may care for you but she understands business far better than you ever could. You needed to believe there was more just in case there would have to be a few tries for the desired effect.”

Papa leaned back in his seat, his hand dropping off my shoulder. “But there is no need for that, Tristan. You hit a home run at your first time to bat.”

“And what if she miscarries?” I asked.

“Then your brother will be up to bat,” Papa answered.

My father: “She chose you, Tristan, and I would expect that you would do what needs to be done for the future of the Rogue.”

“You mean fuck her?” I clarified.

“Oh no,” he said, “the charade is over – cards on the table – you will give sperm and we will turn to science to finish what you could not.”

My father smoothed out his jacket. He lifted his chin and fixed his tie, his eyes on me – telling me he wanted me to fix mine.

I ignored the gesture.

***

The world was violently spinning.

I clutched my stomach and it twisted and turned. I opened my mouth to breathe, but felt the many hands – my family, the women in my life – choking off every fought for breath.

I wanted to ask God for help, but I had been so far on the left hand of God that I knew my prayers would be heard, because he heard all prayers from his children, but he didn’t have to answer me.

Not a man who lived and strived in a family that ruled and destroyed so many lives for their own personal gain and for enjoyment.

So I wouldn’t be angry at God for being silent to me.

I strolled through the doors to the indoor pool, my eyes landing on Dominique as she stepped out of the warm waters. The sparkling droplets of pool water cascaded down her firm body and the newly formed roundness of her stomach.

I knew she felt my presence. Her back was to me as she grabbed a towel off the chair and tended to dry her hair off with it.

I waited. Not sure what I would say if and when she turned to give me indication that, yes, she knew I was here, and, yes, she knew that I wanted to talk.

Talking
would’ve been polite to what I actually wanted to do. Sure, I wanted to talk but the conversation that I had in my head would end with my hands around her throat. 

What did I feel?

The word
betrayed
wasn’t even a big enough term.

I had always known that my family was sharks but this was too much, too much evil, and too little respect for what was humanity.

My father would marry the woman I loved.

The woman I loved had tricked me into fathering her child.

The woman I loved and my father were going to raise my child as their own.

And the woman I loved who was hours away from being recognized as the Rogue’s next leader, and had done all those things to me – lied to me, made me believe enough to give her my seed – looked at me like I was a piece of hair caught in her glass.

And the world stopped its turning and started tilting. I was at the edge of it, my toes gripping for support – my body trying to save itself, but my mind knew the truth: it was over.

“What can I do for you, Tristan?” Dominique asked as she wrapped the towel she had used to dry her hair off around her waist.

And I closed my eyes tightly. My hand pinched roughly at the bridge of my nose. I was trying to wipe away the vision I had seen. Dominique had sounded like Lulina, and looked so much like her when her eyes met mine.

“My father told me that I was about to be a daddy,” I croaked out, wincing at my words.

Dominique huffed then chuckle. “Your father is about to be a daddy again, Tristan.”

She turned her back to me then.

I grasped on to the back of a chair to keep from falling off the world’s edge, and, more importantly, to hold something solid to keep me grounded because I could see in my head hurling myself at her. I swallowed, grabbing the tie around my neck and loosening it, hoping for some air to cool down my neck.

“So that’s it?” I asked.

“Yes, pretty much.”

“You said you loved me and I believed you. I believed you because I knew you weren’t lying and you weren’t.”

“Love is beautiful, Tristan,” She whispered.

I watched as she licked her lips – choosing her words carefully, just like her mother did. Dominique wanted the best words that would get her message across, had the most effect and she wanted the words that would hurt, and crush you if that what they were intended for.