“Come on, girls. Let’s go,” the teacher said, and quickly hurried them out of the room.
Angel took out her gun and cocked the hammer.
“Didn’t I tell you you couldn’t win, Roc? I told you that. Remember?”
Rahman kept his eyes on her without speaking. Angel rose from the chair and crossed the room toward him.
“You a true gangsta, Roc. Or should I say, a true Muslim? You’re like a Tupac song, playin’ no games, right?” Angel smiled. “But that was your weakness, the one I knew I could use against you at will.”
“I’m here. I fear nothing except Allah, not even death. So, if you gonna shoot… shoot. I ain’t got all day,” Rahman calmly said. He was completely at peace with the death he was about to meet.
Angel raised the gun and held it sideways to execute a head shot. Rahman braced himself.
“Tell… me… why,” she growled.
“Why what?” Rahman replied, the smell of death burning his nostrils.
“Why? We made a vow, Roc. All of us. We vowed never to turn on each other!” Angel shouted, trembling with rage.
Rahman then saw Angel do something he had never seen her do before. She cried. Fat tears ran down her face. Rahman closed his eyes.
“We were family, Roc… family! And you threw it all away!”
He took a deep breath. He was ready for it to end. “If you gonna shoot,” he opened his eyes and locked his gaze with hers, “shoot.” He didn’t give a damn about her, their past, or anything she was saying. It was too late. Nothing could save him or her from what she was about to do.
She steadied her arm and said, “I still love you, Roc.”
“I love you, too.”
It was his reply but it didn’t come from Rahman. The familiar voice rang in her ears. She just couldn’t believe she was hearing it.
Nina pushed the door open, and her heart fell and leaped at the same time. Fell because he wasn’t there. She had expected to open the door and see the only man who made her body smile all over.
She expected to see Dutch.
She had imagined running into his arms, sticking her tongue down his throat, feeling his warmth all over, both inside and out.
But he wasn’t there.
What made her heart do double-time, however, was what lay on the bed.
Nina had followed the rose-petal trail to her bed. Spelled across her white comforter was a question.
Will you marry me?
Even the question mark was formed in petals, but the dot below was a one-way ticket to France. Nina covered her mouth. Her hands were shaking. She prayed that if it was a dream, she would never wake up.
“Yes,” she whispered to herself. Then in a louder voice, as if he could hear her, she shouted, “Yes! Yes! I will marry you, Bernard. I love you!”
Dutch had managed to romance her like no man had ever done before, from the shadows, without ever speaking a word. Nina knew she was in love with fire, a very dangerous, all-consuming fire, but the burn was the sweetest thing she had ever known.
“I leave and come back… to this?”
Angel and Rahman both looked into a face they knew well but hadn’t seen in a long time.
“Cr-C-Craze?” Angel spoke in a hushed whisper as she lowered her gun hand.
It was Craze, second in command in Dutch’s empire. It had been over three years since they had seen him, but he was still the same Craze. Same soft brown skin, same chipped tooth, same smirk, same dress code. The custom-made crème-colored linen suit draped his frame, showing he had gained some weight but had chiseled it into an athletic physique.
Angel’s intention to kill Roc was immediately forgotten. “Where’s Dutch?”
Craze chuckled. “Same ol’ Angel… What? Craze don’t get no love? Damn! What about me? Why you ain’t been worried about ol’ Craze?”
Craze smiled and Angel knew it was all real. She ran into his arms. “Crazy!”
Angel’s high-pitched squeal snapped Rahman out of his zone. When she hugged Craze and wrapped her arms around his back, Rahman quickly snatched the gun out of her hand.
Craze, with his back to Rahman, never turned around and never let go of Angel’s waist.
“What now, Roc? You gonna shoot me, too?”
Craze turned to face his former lieutenant with his arms around Angel’s neck.
“Behold the black messiah,” Craze remarked sarcastically. “You wanna clean up the hood? Then forget everything that’s happened between you and Angel and take a trip with me.”
Rahman held the gun on his side, not pointed, but poised.
“A lot’s changed since we last saw each other, Craze.”
Craze took his arm from around Angel’s neck and approached Rahman. Rahman was a head taller, so Craze had to look up to see him eye to eye.
“Look, Roc. You want Newark? Okay. It’s yours. All yours. Every spot under Angel’s control is yours. Now… what you gonna do wit’ it? What you gonna do when the crooked cops, crooked DAs and judges, the mob, and the cartels all come at you at once? Huh? Because you’ll be eatin’ off their plates if you stop the drugs in Jersey.”
“I’ll worry about that when it happens,” Rahman said, stunned that Craze seemed to know every little thing that had been going on. He handed the gun over to him.
“It’s gonna happen so you better worry now.”
Then he turned to Angel.
“And you…” He kissed her on the forehead and smiled at the chain around her neck. “You so busy tryin’ to take back what we left for dead… We been there, done that, ma, then moved on, left the scraps for the dogs.”
He gently lifted the dragon chain from her neck and held it up to watch it dangle in front of his eyes.
“You shoulda buried this wit’ World,” he said before he let it drop to the floor with a heavy thud. Angel moved to pick it up but Craze stopped her.
“Leave it. Just like we leavin’ this petty street paper to the pawns who think they playas.” Craze turned once more to Rahman.
“You want the streets? Take ’em. See how long you can keep ’em. ’Cause to the Feds, you the worst kind of gangsta. But you come wit’ us and we’ll show you how to really change the game. No more hood gangstas, no more street gangstas, but international gangstas. Then you can make your own decision from there,” Craze proposed.
Rahman looked at the gun in his hand and realized he had made a major miscalculation. He was so caught up in the battle he had forgotten about the war. Craze was right about the judges and cops and district attorneys. They all had a piece of the drug pie, either directly or indirectly. Cops were either paid under the table or promoted to detective or captain after a big bust. DAs got convictions and became senators or presidents. One black man in prison could launch and elevate the careers of four white men.
The streets weren’t his enemy. They were his army. His only regret was all the blood that had been shed for this one valuable lesson.
“The trip,” Rahman began, “where we goin’?”
Craze smiled, threw his arm back around Angel, and said, “We’re goin’ to see an old friend.”
The three of them walked out, leaving the tangled dragon chain in a pile on the floor, glittering in the morning sun.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The VA hospital in Newark smelled of sanitized pain. Amputees and invalids lined the linoleum halls.
Nurse Shirley had been working there for fifteen years and it pained her to see how her government treated the men who risked their lives. The government tossed them into half-rate medical facilities with inadequate health care coverage and left them to rot. Yet every year they held mock memorials for so-called Veterans Day. It reminded her that everyone was expendable.
The only reason she remained at the job was to try to bring her own sense of comfort to the people under her care. She had seen many die, but she had also helped many survive, physically as well as mentally. Her current priority was an old Vietnam vet. He needed dialysis three times a week for his deteriorating liver, an organ destroyed by many years of cheap liquor and poor diet.