Hard Candy Saga (20 page)

Then Tuck heard it. The voice.

“Don't move, you fuckin' murderer!” Candice screeched, gripping her Glock 22. She placed the gun up against Junior's temple, her hands trembling.

“What the fuck!” Junior screamed.

Tuck whirled around and pulled his gun on her.

Candice was shaking all over.

“Drop your weapon!” Tuck ordered.

“Stay out of this! You don't have shit to do with this beef!” she yelled at him, her voice quivering.

“Look, baby girl, we can talk about this,” Junior pleaded. “I didn't have nothing to do with Shana getting murked.”

“And this ain't got nothing to do with Shana, either,” Tuck interjected.

Candice's eyes stretched slightly.

“She thinks you're the one who killed her father. Eric Hardaway.”

Junior was stuck on stupid at Tuck's revelation.

“Mind your fuckin' business!” Candice growled, the tears forming in her eyes. She tried to will them away. Getting emotional was a sure way to blunder the mission.

“Yo, shorty, you got the wrong man,” Junior said calmly.

Candice shoved her gun harder into his head.

“He didn't kill your father, Candy,” Tuck assured her.

“Yes, he did!” Candice screamed. “Broady was there! So was Razor!”

Junior looked at the tinted car windows and wondered why the fuck his connect's henchmen didn't get out and blast this little girl.

“I'm tellin' you, ma . . . it wasn't me!” Junior said in a placating tone.

“You motherfucker, don't you fuckin' stand in my face and lie! My father had just argued with you! You were jealous and wanted to take over his business. You set him up, and you and your little crew came in and killed him and my whole family!” Candice screeched. She racked the slide on her Glock just to make Junior flinch.

“Candy! Let me tell you the real story! You can't shoot him. He is innocent,” Tuck exclaimed, his gun still trained on her.

“If you don't drop your fuckin' gun, his brains go flying now!” Candice growled. She didn't know why the fuck she just didn't blow Junior's brains out and then shoot Tuck. Now she realized why Uncle Rock told her that feelings fucked up everything.

Tuck placed his gun down and raised his hands above his head. “Candy, I put my shit down. Listen to me. I told you before I wouldn't hurt you. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm about to tell you everything. The whole truth.”

“Just shut the fuck up!” Candice screamed. She was crying now.

“Listen to him, ma,” Junior said, although he didn't know what the fuck Tuck was talking about.

“Your brother Eric Junior was the one who really shot your father, your brother, your mother, and your sister, and then killed himself. He was being used, brainwashed.”

Tuck's words fell on Candice's ears like atomic bombs. She gripped the gun harder now. “You're a fuckin' liar! I found them! My sister was naked. They raped her! They raped my mother too!” Candice cried, her legs buckling a bit as she recalled the scene in her head. It wasn't her imagination. The dreams were real.

Tuck was at a loss for words. He didn't know anything about that.

“I came there after the fact,” Junior filled in. “Your father had called me to come control your brother. He had gotten out of hand.”

Candice yelped, “You are a fuckin' murderous liar! I watched the news. You were a suspect. Your fingerprints were in the house!”

“Yeah, I went in, but I ran back out,” Junior explained.

“Your brother bragged about it. He was on the streets saying he shot my father and got off.”

“That's just how Broady was,” Tuck chimed in. “He talked a lot of shit. He was tryin'a make a name for himself.”

“You just tryin' to fuckin' save your friend!” Candice screamed. “Well, it's too late.” She pulled her trigger finger down from the side of the gun and placed it into the trigger guard.

“Candy, wait!” a voice wheezed.

Candice jumped.

“Let me tell you the truth once and for all,” Uncle Rock gasped out.

Tuck bent down quickly and tried to pick up his gun. Within seconds, Rock had his face in the dirt.

“Who the fuck are you?” Tuck gasped, Uncle Rock's foot heavy on his back.

“Yo! What the fuck is going on here?” Junior barked.

Candice's demeanor softened. Uncle Rock had come to save the day. If she wasn't so angry, she would have laughed.

“Candy, let me tell you the truth about what happened to your father,” Uncle Rock said softly, his voice raggedy and breathless.

“Stay out of this, Uncle Rock,” Candice choked out. She was angry at herself for being so emotional.

“Your father made a deal with some very dangerous people, Candy,” Uncle Rock began.

* * *

Easy held his head in his hands as he listened to the voice on the phone.

“Junior, don't you ever fuckin' question any of my executive decisions. I'm the boss. Remember that shit. If you don't want to be excommunicated and shut out of this hustle, you better do what the fuck I say to do. I am your fuckin' father. You don't run this operation!” Easy growled. He didn't know how he'd completely lost control of his own son. If he didn't know any better, he would've thought Eric Junior had been given a bad batch of PCP. The boy had seemingly changed overnight.

Easy hung up the phone on his son. He looked around and saw his oldest daughter in the doorway. He gave her an uneasy smile. Easy didn't like his kids to see him angry.

“C'mere, Candy Cane.” He called her to his side. Easy hugged her tight. “Please be home on time from practice. Your mother will be beefing if you don't.”

Candice sulked. “She gonna beef even if I get here on time.”

“I'ma send a car to the gym for you,” Easy told her.

“No!” Candice protested. “I'm gonna be on time,” she assured, starting out the door.

“I'm trusting you, Candy Cane.”

Just then Easy's phone rang again. He looked at the number displayed on the small screen and sighed. “Yeah,” he answered.

“There is nothing you can do or say to change my mind. I'm gettin' outta the game. I'm an old man now. I've grown out of all of this shit,” Easy said. “C'mon, DeSosa, ain't no reason to raise your voice. I should be the one pissed with you. I hear you been talkin' to my son. He is not going to go against me.”

Easy listened some more.

“You can make all the threats you want. I'm out of the game,” Easy said with finality. He disconnected the line.

Easy dialed Rock's number, but there was no answer. “I wish this dude would get a cell phone,” he huffed. He couldn't reach Rock on the ancient landline he used.

“Eric!” Corine called out. Easy snapped out of his trance. He shook off the feeling of trepidation that lurked in his mind and walked out of his home office to see what his pain-in-the-butt, high-maintenance wife wanted.

“Whatchu wanna buy now for this party?” Easy yelled out as he moved toward the living room. He pushed the strings of a dozen helium balloons out of the way, just to see where he was going. “This woman would buy these kids the world for a damn party,” he mumbled.

Easy stepped into his living room, and his heart almost stopped.

“What the fuck are you doing, Junior?”

Easy's son, his junior, his firstborn, was holding a gun to his own mother's head, and there were three other men of Hispanic descent with him. That much was obvious. They hadn't even bothered to cover their faces, even though ski masks lay on the floor near them. Easy knew what that meant. He wasn't going to make it out alive.

“Shut the fuck up!” Eric Junior screamed, his voice sounding deranged and off-kilter.

The other men started speaking in Spanish.

Eric Junior relinquished his trembling mother to the men. His baby sister and his brother had already been subdued.

“Junior, don't do this,” Easy begged, a sharp pain stabbing him in the chest. His heart was breaking. His own son.

“Why?” Corine cried out as one of the men manhandled her.

The other two went about binding Easy up.

“There is only one way out of the game,” Eric Junior said, his voice sounding harsh and unfamiliar.

“What did they give you, Junior? What kind of drugs?” Easy asked.

His son walked over to him and hit him across the face with the gun, and blood spurted from Easy's mouth.

The Hispanic men began laughing.

Easy bent his head. He had given up right then and there. There was no greater pain than to have your own flesh and blood betray you in such a way.

“Hold ya head up, nigga!” Eric Junior screamed as he hit his father again.

Easy refused to do as he was told. His neck was throbbing with an unbearable shooting pain. It had been snapped back, left and right. Another blow to the face caused something to crack at the base of his skull this time. It felt like a fire had erupted in his brain. Easy could not even open his mouth to let out a whimper, much less a scream.

“You thought you could leave the game just like that? I asked you to be boss, to let me take over. You didn't want that. Thought I wasn't ready. You think I'm crazy, and had those fuckin' people calling me a manic-depressive psycho,” Eric Junior growled. He hit Easy again, this time even harder.

Easy didn't budge. His pride wouldn't allow it. It wasn't in him to fold and give in to another man, even his own son. Cut from a different cloth, he wasn't going to show weakness now.

“How does it feel to have your own son turn on you, motherfucker?” one of the Hispanic men taunted, getting so close to Easy's face, his breath hot on Easy's nose and lips.

Still, Easy continued to let his head hang, his blood dripping on the expensive Oriental rug that covered his living room floor.

“Rolando DeSosa says you can't leave the game alive. You still willing to die and sacrifice your family?” another of the assailants asked. He was trying his best to provoke Easy to relent, to say he would remain in the game.

Easy didn't say a word.

Eric Junior hit his father again and again.

Easy's body swayed from the constant blows, but he still didn't lift his head or give the men the satisfaction of knowing they were hurting him.

“Fuck this whole family!” one of the men called out.

Then Easy heard the high-pitched screams of his youngest daughter.

“Daddy!” Brianna wailed from someplace distant at first. “Daddy, help me!” she screamed again, this time more high-pitched and frantic.

Easy opened his battered eyelids and fought to lift his head, turning it painfully toward the sounds of his youngest daughter's voice. The sounds grew closer as the intruders dragged her by her hair to Easy's location.

“I want my daddy!” Brianna belted out again.

Her voice caused a sharp pain in Easy's chest. His breathing became labored as a surge of hot adrenaline suddenly coursed through his veins. It was the first time Easy had felt nervous since the entire ordeal had begun.

Easy had conditioned himself to believe that he would die in the game, so this wasn't totally unexpected. But he'd never thought that his own son would betray him like this. That Eric Junior would watch as his own flesh and blood suffered at the hands of men who didn't give a fuck about him or them.

Out of his severely swollen eyes, Easy could see his baby girl squirming and fighting with blood on her face.

“Now are you gonna change your mind? You gonna give DeSosa what he wants? This is your one last chance!” one of the men said.

Easy closed his eyes in anguish. He didn't want to see them kill his baby girl. At that moment, his heart felt like it would explode—a mixture of pain and pure anger. He envisioned himself killing all of the intruders slowly, torturing them unmercifully, even his own son.

“I always knew you was a fuckin' punk! You ain't none of my fuckin' father. You a pussy!” Eric Junior hollered in Easy's face.

Easy knew if he said he would stay in the game, they would kill them all, anyway.

“Eric, please! Give them whatever they want . . . please,” Corine begged. “Eric, please! I'm begging you! Junior, why are you doing this?” Corine let out another bloodcurdling plea for help from her husband.

Even with his wife pleading with him and his daughter screaming, Easy didn't budge. He refused to open his mouth. It wasn't pride or selfishness; this moment was like living an art-of-war principle. The one rule he was going to live and die by was never to give in to the enemy when he knew they planned to kill him, anyway. In Easy's eyes, that would be giving them double satisfaction.

“Eric!” Corine screamed again frantically, her mouth full of blood and her eyes pleading.

Nothing. No response from Easy.

“Take off her clothes,” one of the Hispanic men ordered.

Easy's eyes popped open. He looked directly at his son. Eric Junior looked horrified. He hadn't signed up for this.

Easy began fidgeting against the layers and layers of duct tape and rope that held him captive, his knees burning from the kneeling position they forced him in. He stared at his son, begging with his eyes. Easy remembered feeling this powerless when, as a child, he took beatings from his aunt's drunken husband.

“Daddy!” Brianna let out another throaty gurgle, her ponytail swinging as she tried to get away from her captors.

The first man slapped her with so much force, she hit the floor like a rag doll.