I squinted my eyes at him. “All this to get some pussy?”

  “All this to build an empire,” Calvin said. “Now, get ready. It’s almost time for the show to start.”

  Jah had instructed Calvin to meet him at a construction site after all the workers left. Paul drove Calvin to the site to give the illusion of a boss, and I wasn’t too far behind them. I parked the Tahoe some distance from them and footed the rest of the way. Once again, I was dressed in all black. This time, however, I didn’t wear a face mask. Instead, I pulled my long red hair back into a black bandanna. I wore a black jumpsuit and black combat boots. I had an artillery belt on my waist and all-black gloves on my hands. As I ran toward where I heard voices, I darted from shadow to shadow. When I finally reached them, I kept my distance and held my gun.

  I didn’t have a good shot at Jah. Calvin was in the way, but I knew all I had to do was wait for the perfect opportunity. The two men stood in the only lit-up spot of the construction site, and behind Jah stood a small army. No one was behind Calvin, only the three duffle bags beside him. If he was nervous, he definitely didn’t show it.

  “You came alone?” I heard Jah say to Calvin, and I heard Calvin chuckle in response.

  “I’ve heard enough about you in these streets to know better than to come alone,” Calvin bluffed.

  I saw Jah cautiously look around, so I moved behind a tractor to avoid being seen.

  “Smart man,” Jah said.

  I studied him. I’d seen him in pictures, but seeing him in person was completely different. His skin was fair, and he looked only five foot eight. His mustache went into his freshly trimmed beard, making his face look even more menacing. His eyes were cold and unfeeling, and his bushy eyebrows were furrowed like he was standing there before Calvin in deep thought. One glance and I didn’t peg him as a businessman. He was still wearing street clothes. He was just a common street thug who’d lucked up. I felt the anger inside of me boiling, and it took everything in me not to shoot him.

  “This is a business meeting, correct?” Calvin asked, motioning toward the bags. “I would honestly like to make this quick. Usually, when I do business with people, there is less talk and more hustle.”

  Jah looked at Calvin and then behind him at the men standing there. He suddenly burst into laughter.

  “It’s funny that you say that,” Jah said, pacing back and forth. He wagged a finger in Calvin’s direction. “Because when I do this kind of business with people, I usually get my facts first. You see, I know your uncle Los. I’ve known him for a while now . . . and there is one thing I know about that nigga. He never throws deals on his produce. Los is a ‘what you see is what you get’ type of nigga, so when you were offering his product so low, I decided to reach out to the nigga and see what was up . . . just because some shit ain’t smell right, you feeling me? And what do you know? This nigga didn’t know about any of this shit. Also, I had niggas here waiting before anybody pulled up, so I know you came alone.”

  Everything was falling apart right before my eyes. I’d sent Calvin on a suicide mission and saw his hand twitch toward his gun. I cocked mine as well.

  “And another funny thing.” Jah continued to chuckle to himself. “The other night, one of my houses got hit. The nigga got away with almost $2 million of cocaine. Now, tell me.” Jah pulled his gun out, and the men behind him did the same. “Where is the rest of it? Because it seems that you tryin’a sell me something that’s already mine.”

  I had to make my move. I grabbed a grenade from my artillery belt, pulled the pin, and threw it behind Jah at his entourage. The explosion knocked all five men off their feet and immediately made my presence known while they were down.

  “Who would ever come alone to a business meeting with a snake like you?” I asked with my gun pointed at Jah.

  Jah turned around and saw all his men disabled. He then turned back to us. He put his hands up when he saw Calvin’s gun and my gun pointed at him.

  “Who the fuck are ya? Bonnie and Clyde? Robbing me for fifty thousand? That’s chump change. Y’all can have it and keep the product.” Jah tried to reason with us.

  “If what? We let you live?” I said, laughing. “This isn’t about the product or the money, you stupid nigga. I have an old score to settle with you.”

  I saw one of the men behind Jah try to get up, so I sent a hollow tip through his head. My gunshot echoed through the whole site. Half his head was blown off, and the blood and brains splattered on the others lying near him.

  “Stay down,” I barked at the rest of them. I walked into the light and stood next to Calvin so Jah could better look at me.

  “Recognize me?” I asked.

  “I’ve never seen you in my life.” Jah glared at me. “I don’t know who the fuck you are.”

  “You knew my father,” I told him.

  “Wh—” Before the question had fully formed, I removed the bandanna from my head. My red hair fell loosely on my shoulders. The look on his face was priceless, and I drank in his expression.

  “There it is,” I said.

  “Smooth?” Jah asked in shock.

  “Yes . . . I’m his daughter. And Chleo was my mother,” I told him. “You killed both of them behind your greed, and now, I’m going to kill you and sit rightfully in the spot you are trying to take.”

  Just as I was about to pull my trigger, I heard a gunshot and felt Calvin go down beside me. I had been so busy talking to Jah that I hadn’t noticed one of the men behind him grab their gun. Caught off guard, I took my eyes off Jah, which proved to be the biggest mistake of my life. He rushed me to the ground and got the gun out of my hands. He hit me in the face with the butt of the weapon, and I felt a bone in my face crack.

  “Bitch!” Jah exclaimed and stood up next to me. He kicked me as hard as he could in my ribs.

  I cried out and saw Calvin out of the corner of my eyes, trying to get to me as Jah towered over me with his gun pointed at my head. “Did you really think you were going to stop me? I killed the biggest in the city, and now, I will do the same to you. Then guess what I’ma do . . . clean this shit up like it never even happened. Any last words?”

  I struggled to catch my breath as I lay there, feeling like I was dying. “Bitch,” I coughed right before one shot rang . . . and I felt nothing . . .

  “Sierra, Sierra, wake up!” I felt somebody shaking me, and I jumped up.

  “Wha-what?” I asked, frantically searching my body. “Where am I?”

  I looked around and saw that I was in my old house, seated at the dining room table with a bowl of cereal in front of me. Neffy was standing over me with a bewildered look on her face.

  “You’re at home, baby. Paul is here to take you to the library,” she said, like I was being ridiculous.

  “Library . . . What?” I was confused. Then I suddenly remembered something. “Mama! Where’s my mom, Neffy?”

  “She just left.” Neffy was looking at me like I was crazy at that point. “You just said bye to her. Sierra, honey, are you feeling OK?”

  “No!” I screamed and jumped up. I was preparing to run to the door to go after her, but the front door opened just as I got to the foyer.

  “I forgot something.” My mother’s voice rang out as she took her first step into the house.

  Before she could shut the door, my arms were around her neck, and I sobbed.

  “Stay!” I said over and over in her neck.

  My mother looked at Neffy with confusion plastered on her face. Neffy just shrugged her shoulders. My mother stood back and looked at my face. I couldn’t get out what was wrong with me, but my mother knew something happening.

  “Please stay,” I cried out again.

  “OK,” my mother said to me. “OK, baby. I’ll make a few phone calls and stay home with you. All right?”

  I nodded and clung to my mother, not wanting to lose her again. I didn’t know if my dream would come true, but I refused to take my chances. That moment right there meant the world to me, and my mother would never know it. She was all I had, and that was one thing I understood about the dream. If she died, the streets would have to mourn two deaths because I would die too. But that was something I was going to make sure never happened.

  Greed

  by Marcus Weber

  Chapter 1

  “Death is only the beginning,” an unforgiving voice spoke softly.

  Five men stood around another man tied to a chair in the middle of a garage. The light directly above them shone dimly, accenting the grim scene. The man attached to the wooden chair sat quivering, looking hopeless. He had already tried to plead his innocence, but his words fell on uncaring ears. He looked into the eyes of the muscular figure before him and realized that he was staring at the Grim Reaper himself.

  Denny Capello stood directly in front of the terrified man with murder in his eyes. The only thing separating the two of them was a table. On top of that table were two items: a syringe and a metal bat.

  “I trusted you, Chris,” Denny spoke again. “You’re my cousin, but I loved you like a brother. Why would you steal from my office? You must have thought that taking the security footage from my home would cover your tracks.”

  Denny had never felt more betrayed in his life. Not only was he missing $150,000 from his home safe, but the offender was none other than his own flesh and blood. One of his most trusted workers informed him that he saw Chris take the money. Shortly after, Chris left town for a few days, and Denny didn’t hear from him.

  As Denny spoke, he grabbed the syringe and thumped the needle. Chris, whose mouth was duct taped shut, tried to scream, but the sound was muffled. Seeing the murder in Denny’s eyes, Chris fought hard against his restraints and made silent pleas with his eyes. Denny laughed out loud at the sounds Chris was making.

  “Whose idea was the duct tape?” he asked with his thick Spanish accent. He looked around at the circle of men, and his eyes fell on Diablo, who had come forth with the news of the betrayal. He nodded his approval. “Good job. Can’t have all of New York hearing the cries of this scum, can we?” Denny said, thumping the needle with his finger. “You have been working with me for years, Chris—years. Not only are you my blood, but you are also my lieutenant. You have seen firsthand what happens to those who betray my trust. You have assisted with it. You are the only person who knew the combination to the safe, and Diablo here says he saw you taking the money from my safe out in a suitcase.”

  Chris’s eyes opened even wider, and he whipped his head to face Diablo, who looked away. His brow furrowed, and he shook his head, trying to plead his case, but the duct tape over his mouth prevented his speech. He fought so hard against the ropes around his arms and ankles that the chair shook back and forth. Finally, Chris gave up, knowing that fighting was no use. There was no point in fighting for his innocence because Denny was far past the point of reason.

  “This, my dear cousin”—Denny nodded his head toward the needle in his hand and spoke so icily that he once again demanded Chris’s attention—“is rat poison. I want you to witness and feel every horrific thing I’m about to do to your body.”

  Without warning, Denny reached over the table, jabbed the needle into Chris’s neck, and released the poison into his body. It didn’t take too long for Chris to start feeling the effects of it coursing through his veins. He began to lose the ability to move his body parts. Within minutes, the only things Chris could move were his eyes. Next, Denny set down the syringe to grab the bat. His anger got the best of him, and he kicked the table between them out of the way to get in Chris’s face.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t discover that you’ve been stealing from me for years? After Diablo brought this shit to my attention, I had my accountant check all my numbers, and lo and behold, it turns out that almost half a million dollars have gone missing from right under my nose. I never questioned giving you any of the codes to any of my safes or access to any of my bank accounts because I trusted you. We were raised like brothers.”

  Denny brought the bat down on Chris’s knee so hard that everyone in the garage heard the bone crack upon impact. Chris had no choice but to stomach the pain. He clenched his eyes shut, and a pained groan erupted from his throat. When he opened his eyes, tears spilled from them, and they fell on his injured leg. Denny hit the broken bone again with just as much force, and Chris screamed like a tortured animal through his sealed lips and tried to catch his breath. Denny backed away and went to one of the shelves in the garage, the one with all the tools. Chris used that time to gather his wits and glare again at Diablo in disbelief. His chest was heaving, and he wanted nothing more than to pass out, but he knew how his cousin operated. His torture had just begun.

  He could take another breath just before he heard the sound of chains dragging on the ground. He looked up in time to see the metal chain being hurdled toward his face right before he felt the pain.

  Unknown to the men in the garage, their every move was being watched by a pair of tiny eyes. Nine-year-old Taina Capello stared at the brutal act her father was performing from behind a tall trash bin. Her lip shook, and she bit down to keep her whimper from coming up. Earlier, she had been asleep for a while before she had heard suspicious sounds coming from the garage of their raised-ranch-style, five-bedroom home. It hadn’t been the first time her father had used his garage as a torture chamber, but that night, something made her get up from the bed. Her mother would have a fit if she knew that her baby girl was sneaking around, spying. That was why Taina knew she must be as silent and quick as possible. She swore that her mother had eyes in the back of her head and bionic hearing.

  Taina wrapped the silk robe her grandmother gifted her on her last birthday around her petite body and hurried out of her room. When she passed her parents’ bedroom, she peeked in to see what her mother was doing but quickly saw that she was fast asleep and had plugs positioned snugly in her ears. Taina knew what that meant. Whenever her father thought it might get a little noisy at night, he told her mother to wear them to sleep. Knowing that the coast was clear, Taina walked fast through the house until she got to the spacious kitchen of their home. The door leading to the garage was open just a slit—enough for her to slide through the opening without touching it or being seen.

  She ducked down and got on all fours to crawl behind the family’s tall black trash bin. The horrible smell suddenly reminded her that she was supposed to take it to the curb. The trashmen would be there in the wee hours of the morning. Taina made a mental note to do that before her mother found out she had forgotten to do one of her chores.

  Taina heard her father speaking to her cousin, Chris, and her heart beat fast at the accusations she heard directed at him. She peeked around the bin to look at the gruesome scene beginning to unravel and looked helplessly at Chris, who she loved dearly, almost as much as she loved her father.

  “Stop, Papi,” Taina whispered to herself, trying to will her father to stop the attack, but he did the exact opposite.

  Taina put her shaking fingers to her mouth, trying to decide what to do. She knew that if she made her presence known, she would be in big trouble with her father. But he needed to know that the man who had betrayed his trust was indeed in the garage, but it was not the man who he had strapped to the chair.

  Taina knew for a fact that it was not Chris who had stolen Denny’s money from the safe in his office. She remembered the day perfectly.

  One of the neighboring parents had dropped her off early from soccer practice, and nobody important was home yet, only the maids. They were doing what they always did when they thought nobody was home, standing in the backyard smoking marijuana. Taina was thrilled to have the house to herself. That meant she could sneak some ice cream and watch an R-rated movie before her parents arrived home. As she was sitting in front of the sixty-inch floor television in the family room of the home her father had built from the ground up, she heard footsteps coming from upstairs.

  Taina had never been the type to run from danger. She was the type of kid to check out what was happening. Standing up, she set her almost-empty bowl of cookies and cream to the side and wiped her hands on her soccer shorts. Walking to the stairs, she slowly crept up them and stretched her neck to see who was cutting into her time. When she finally reached the second level, the noises got louder and more distinct. They came from her father’s office, and Taina knew her father wasn’t there. She also knew that nobody was allowed in her father’s office—only her cousin, who she viewed more as an uncle.

  “Cousin Chris?” Taina’s high-pitched voice called, assuming that it was him.

  She pushed the door open to see who was in the office, but as she pushed, someone pulled. Taina was shocked at the face she saw on the other end of the door. It wasn’t her father or Chris. It was another one of Denny’s trusted hands, Diablo. Taina looked at him with a confused look frozen on her young and innocent face. He looked just as shocked to see her as she was to see him, but he quickly recovered.

  “Lo siento mucho. I’m so sorry, princess.” He flashed her a charming smile. “I did not know anyone would be home.”

  “What are you doing in my papi’s office?” Taina asked, her eyes finally landing on the black bag hanging from Diablo’s shoulder. It was slightly open, and she could peer inside and see what was there. Her eyes widened.

  Diablo noticed her alarm and thought fast.

  “Your father and I were out in the . . . um,”—he cleared his throat—“in the field, and he needed me to run here and grab a few things for him. His hands are tied up at the moment. We all know how busy your father gets.” He gave a small laugh.