Hey guys. Thanks for following the link and checking out the blog. As a special treat today, I've decided to share an entire chapter from "Blood & Vengeance," my collaboration with Keith Gaston. Enjoy. As always, don't be afraid to leave comments and feel free to click the links to purchase a copy.
Sassy took the cash out
of the safe in Will’s hotel room and packed it into the empty black suitcase he
had left under the bed. Tears fell on the bundles of bills as she thought about
what had probably been their last meeting, just a few hours before.
***
For a split second,
when Sassy walked through the front door of the Sushi restaurant, Will
seriously considered abandoning the suicidal path he was on. For the majority
of the time they had spent together, she had either been naked as the day she
was born or barely dressed in lingerie so, to see her dolled up was breathtakingly
strange for him because of how amazing she looked in her dress. The tattoos
that showed because of the parts of her body that were exposed made her look
exotic and stunning. If he didn’t know better, he could have mistaken her for a
celebrity, possibly a rock star or even an actress. As he took another sip of
the top shelf, expensive Saki he had been gulping down like an uncivilized
savage, he couldn’t help but smile as he watched her crane her slender neck to
search for him in the dimly lit section where he told her he would be sitting.
The way the tight, brown dress hugged her slim but curvy frame turned heads as
she walked over to his table, gracefully and very runway model-esque.
For a split second he forgot what she did for a living and wondered what she
might have been like if the uglier side of life hadn’t sunk its filthy fangs
into her.
“You look gorgeous
tonight,” he told her as she sat down which made her pause and look at him
strangely.
“How long have you been
seeing me?” Sassy asked.
“I don’t know. Four
years, maybe five,” he slurred, tipsy from drinking too much Saki.
“And how many times
have we fucked?” she asked, causing an elderly woman celebrating her
anniversary with her husband at the table adjacent to theirs cringe when she
accidentally overheard Sassy’s question.
“Shh, keep it down,”
Will laughed as he saw the woman’s face flush bright red. “I don’t know. Too
many times to count I suppose. Why?”
“You’ve never once told
me that I’m pretty. Not ever until just now,” she answered with a deep sadness
in her eyes and a sense of impending doom in her heart.
“I’m sorry. I probably
should have a long time ago. Why are you crying?” he asked as he watched her
first tear fall. He reached out and touched her hand to try to stop the steady
stream that followed before they were turned black by her mascara.
“Why does it feel like
you’re telling me goodbye without actually saying the words?”
“If I said that I
wasn’t going anywhere, would that stop you from crying?”
“No, because it would
be a lie. I’ve shared my bed with you enough to know you better than you think
I do. You’re here right now but I can see in your eyes that you’re already
gone. I’m crying because even if you meant it when you said you’d stay, I’d
still want you to go.”
“Why?”
“It’s not safe for you
here anymore,” Sassy warned him.
“What’re you talkin’
about?” he asked her. “Why do you sound so afraid all of a sudden?”
“Because this Fed that
came around asking for you scares me. I’ve known enough men in my life to
recognize the dangerous ones.”
“I’m dangerous too,”
Will reminded her.
“You should run while
you still can. I came to beg you to run.”
“I won’t,” he answered.
“You have to! This
Royce and his partner aren’t gonna stop hunting you until they catch or kill
you.”
“They won’t catch me until
after I do what I have to do,” he answered. “After that, I don’t care what
happens to me.”
“What’s so important
that you’d stay here and die?”
“Sig’s dead.”
“What? How?” she asked
in shock and horror.
“That man on your block
that got his throat slashed open in his car...that was Sig.”
“Oh my God,” Sassy
answered, feeling the pain for Will and all he had lost.
Will poured himself
another small cup of warm Saki, looked at it for a moment then brought it to his
lips and gulped it down. He slumped a little lower in his chair right after his
cup was empty.
“Sig’s dead because I
took him away from pouring concrete and fixing sidewalks, earning an honest
living with his father. He got murdered because I decided to set him free too
late, after I made him help me to do what I was too afraid to do alone,” he
told her.
In all of the intimate
moments Sassy spent with him, she had never seen Will so unsettled and
unstable. He had always been calm and almost emotionless except for the
occasional, random act of kindness he sometimes extended towards her that
hinted warmth did exist somewhere deep inside his cold exterior. Curiosity and
an irrational desire to find that fire had caused her to accidentally grow to
love him. She had never been able to bring much emotion out of him with her
words, her touch or her body, but now, his own pain made it plain to see his
humanity as he grieved like a man on the edge of losing his soul or sanity.
The fact he was sitting
across from her and pouring out his feelings faster than he was pouring his
liquor was confirmation that, he was there physically, but mentally he was
already gone. It was like listening to him read out his own last will and
testament. Her heart crumbled like a sand castle at high tide when she realized
that she could do nothing to bring him back. All she could do was comfort him
as best she could and after that, she would have to let him go. She got up and
moved her chair next to his to be closer to him.
“I’ve never seen you
like this,” she said as she gently took the bottle out of his hand before he
poured himself another cupful.
He turned his head to
look at her and for the first time, Sassy felt as if he really saw her. Then he
turned his eyes to stare at his own hands as if they didn’t belong on the ends
of his wrists.
“I told my father that
I didn’t trust it. The amount of money they were willing to pay for him to help
them smuggle in drugs just didn’t make any sense. I was there for the sit down
when Azul made my father the offer and even he seemed nervous and unsure about
his new business partners that no one else on the streets had ever heard
of. My father did what he was supposed to but once he got their packages
through, they killed him and my brother. Then they went to our house and
murdered my mother and my little sister. I’m only alive because I wasn’t home.
I was with you that night,” he explained.
“I’m so sorry,” she
said and cried the tears that he refused to shed himself.
“They sent a man to
hunt me down after I killed Azul. That man slit Sig’s throat and would have cut
mine too if I didn’t get lucky. I tortured him to find out who was behind all
of this and why they killed everyone I cared about. They weren’t smuggling
drugs. It was something much worse and I need you to get out of the city, as
far away as you can get. The men that hired my father were terrorists and they
plan to kill a lot of innocent people.”
“You have to run. This
is bigger than you. You’re going to get yourself killed Will,” she warned him.
“This man that’s after you now is a federal agent. This is the kind of thing
that they handle. Call him and tell him what you know so he can stop it from
happening,” she begged Will as she handed him the card Royce had given her.
He stared at it for a
moment before he spoke again. “Sassy, I’m tired and I’m only living for one
thing.” His eyes turned downwards.
“Live for me. Come with
me,” she pleaded.
“I can’t. Even if I
lived to be eighty years old, I couldn’t live a single happy day ever again if
I ran from the men that I have to kill. I have to finish it or die trying. Try
to understand,” he asked as he reached across, took her hand and gently
squeezed it.
“I do,” she lied,
wishing with her entire being that he would find it in his heart to care enough
about her to come away with her.
“I’m sorry that I led
trouble to your door. If this Fed wasn’t watching you, I would have liked to
spend at least one more night with you.”
Sassy didn’t answer.
Instead, she poured herself a cup of Saki and raised it to toast him. She
wanted love from him and in his own way, what he had just told her, was as
close as she would get from him, so she swallowed the warm liquor and accepted
it. Then she poured him a cup and another for herself. They toasted each other
and drank together in silence until the bottle was finished.
“Is there anything
sentimental that you need back at your place?” Will asked after he ordered a
third bottle from their waiter.
“Not really. I’d burn
that damn apartment down if I had somewhere else to live,” Sassy answered. She
was very conscious of how many dirty deeds her walls and mattress had
witnessed. To think about all of it up in flames gave her so much joy that she
suddenly laughed out loud.
***
Well aware of the risk,
Sassy had indeed gone back for just one thing from her place. Once the safe was
empty and she had neatly packed up all of the money, she took one of Will’s
T-shirts out of her handbag. He had left it behind by mistake two summers ago
and she had kept it but never washed it. She held it to her face, inhaled
deeply and then placed it neatly on top of the cash before she zipped the
suitcase shut.
Out of the room, down
the hallway, into the elevator, down the lobby and finally out to the taxi that
was waiting to take her to the airport, she kept thinking that she should be
happy. Almost all of the women employed in her profession dreamed of being able
to escape it. Here she was with a suitcase of full of enough money to run away
from it forever with a bittersweet taste in her mouth because she would have
traded it for the life of her savior, a man that didn’t even love her back. The
driver helped load her luggage into the trunk and then opened the door for her
to get into the backseat. She sat down in the musty vehicle and the door closed
before she noticed another man sitting up front with the driver. They were
having a heated discussion with someone through the speaker on a cell-phone in
a language she didn’t understand.
A bad feeling made
goose bumps raise up on her skin.
Copyright
© 2014 Keith Gaston & Keith Kareem Williams
All
rights reserved.
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