Chapter 26

Xavier climbed out of his 3 Series BMW in the underground parking garage dressed in a three-piece suit and carrying a briefcase. He walked briskly toward the elevator with a lot on his mind. His focus was mainly on Luca. The stunt she pulled on the golf course embarrassed him, and his associates wanted to turn their backs on him. He’d underestimated her, but no young bitch was going to outsmart him and embarrass him.

It was that time of the month, the customary meeting with the Commission in their secure and secret location. At the table, his main priority was Luca and World. He gave World a pass because he would need him in the future, but with Squirrel dead and Luca threatening his life, there were no more passes.

Xavier stepped into the elevator and pushed for the top floor. He checked his texts while the elevator quickly ascended. He stepped off the elevator and walked into the room where the council of corrupt officers was already seated and waiting to discuss the month’s business. Xavier took his seat at the table and placed his briefcase beside him. He placed his cell on the table.

Captain Clark immediately expressed his concern. “What are we going to do about this bitch?”

“I heard she paid you a visit on your favorite golf course, Xavier,” Detective Holden added.

“Gentlemen, everything is under control,” Xavier assured them.

“She’s not stupid, Xavier,” Sergeant Ripple exclaimed. “She killed Squirrel, and she is becoming a problem. A fuckin’ threat to us!”

“And if she tracked you down so easily, what’s stopping her from tracking us all down?”

Everyone was worried and upset.

“We should have killed her and her lunatic cousin a long time ago,” Captain Clark said.

Xavier frowned. The men at the table wanted to pay a hit man, whatever his fee, to take out the problem.

As Xavier was about to address the Commission, his cell phone rang. He looked at the screen—anonymous caller. He ignored the call, but the phone rang a second time.

“Who this?” he barked into his phone.

“I warned you, Xavier, to leave me the fuck alone,” her voice serenely spoke on the other end.

Xavier cringed hearing Luca’s voice. “How did you get this fuckin’ number?”

“I have my ways. And I see you don’t listen,” she expressed coolly.

“Fuck you! You don’t know who you’re fuckin’ with, you fuckin’ cunt!”

The Commission was stunned that she had called his phone during their secret meeting. They all looked suspiciously at Xavier while sitting on one butt cheek.

“She found us. Shit, she fuckin’ knows where we’re located,” Lieutenant Greenwood shouted out in a panic. He jumped from his seat and was ready to leave the room.

“Relax,” someone told him. “She isn’t that smart. We’ve been doing this for years. You think some young cunt bitch can track us down. We went against the fuckin’ Mafia, coldhearted killers, and the FBI. This bitch ain’t a fuckin’ threat to us.”

Luca chuckled. “I hear some unrest going on in your Commission,” she taunted.

“You listen closely, you fuckin’ bitch—”

“No, you listen. But wait, you don’t, and I think you never will. So good-bye, Xavier. It’s been fun. Oh, and answer the fuckin’ phone in your briefcase.”

Luca ended the call, leaving Xavier bewildered.

The minute she hung up, he heard another cell phone ringing. It was coming from his briefcase like Luca predicted. He was dumbfounded.

He slowly picked up the case, placed it on the table, and opened it. Inside was a cell phone chiming. It wasn’t his phone. He didn’t put it there. A text message was coming through.

“What the fuck!” Xavier opened the text and it read: Here comes the bang!

It took him only a second to figure out what the text meant. His eyes widened in fear and panic, and he screamed out, “Everybody, get the fuck—”

KA-BOOM!

The loud explosion violently shook the room, filling it with fire and black smoke, sending pieces of the Commission everywhere. The remote control device exploded from his briefcase. Billowing smoke filled the room. Everyone was dead, blown to pieces. There was no more Commission.

Unbeknownst to Xavier, when Luca left him on the golf course, she had planted a tracking device on his car. She hacked into all of his accounts and figured out his routine. It didn’t take long for her to have his briefcase switched with an exact replica. Inside the briefcase, the cell phone was used as a typical remote control to send a signal via radio airwaves. The signal energized a relay connected to a blasting cap, which in turn detonated the explosive material sewn into the briefcase. It was genius.

Following Xavier was the key, and the Commission was handed to her on a silver platter.

Luca sat in the passenger seat of the Lincoln Navigator, peering up at the top of the building, black smoke billowing from one of the rooms. She smiled. Killing her rivals was becoming too easy.

Meeka turned to her and said, “If they didn’t know then, they fuckin’ know now not to fuck wit’ you.”

Luca nodded.

***

Angel grieved over Squirrel’s death for weeks. She blamed only one person, Luca, and she wanted her revenge. Unbeknownst to anyone else, she was pregnant with his third child. She connected with Squirrel’s cousin Homando and decided to take over his organization with Homando’s help. She had been around the drug game for far too long to not know what she was doing and how things worked. She knew all of Squirrel’s connections and sources, and with Homando’s help, she was on a mission to avenge her baby father’s death, and Luca was the target.

***

Luca heard about Angel and her struggle to rise in the streets. She laughed and even mocked Angel. It’d been weeks since Squirrel’s death, and the bitch needed to get over it. Squirrel got what was coming to him. It was the game; some people played it better than others. He had made his move, and Luca made hers. Fortunately, her move was checkmate.

Luca wasn’t worried about Angel or any of her nemeses. When she took out the Commission, it solidified her position in the game and showed just how ruthless, calculating, and evil she could be. People started to fear her a lot more. Not even World saw that one coming.

The streets were talking. Luca was becoming the new power.

However, Luca caught a surprise of her own. She sat in the doctor’s office waiting for the results to come back. Lately, she hadn’t been feeling too well. She was suffering from headaches and nausea. Some days she would become lightheaded and would have a loss of appetite. Now wasn’t the time for her to get sick. She was re-building her empire and couldn’t look weak. She feared that some burning sickness was overcoming her. So she immediately went to get checked out, meaning blood work done, her urine examined, her blood pressure taken, the whole works.

Luca sat silently in the doctor’s office alone. She took a deep breath, and gazed at all the medical degrees that covered the entire wall, from his master’s degree to his PhD. He had numerous family photos throughout the room and plastered on the wall behind his chair, from his kids to what appeared to be his loving wife on his desk. He was a family man. Luca thought about having a family once, but things became too hectic and crazy in her life.

Looking at the certificates on the doctor’s wall, Luca wondered if she hadn’t become a drug queenpin, if she’d grown up having a better life with loving parents, finished her schooling, had healthier encouragement, then where would she be? She was smart enough to become anything she wanted to be, even a doctor. But fate had something different planned for her. Was this her destiny? She always wanted kids and a family, but that never happened. She was the loyal girlfriend, but she was always cheated on and forgotten.

The doctor walked into his office, closed the door, and took a seat behind his desk. He was an attractive black male clad in a white lab coat with the stethoscope around his neck. He was six foot tall, well built, had smooth black skin with a dark goatee.

He placed Luca’s medical chart on his desk and leaned forward with his elbows on the table, his hands clasped together. He looked at Luca.

She became nervous. Did he have some bad news to tell her? Did she contract some kind of STD—Ohmygod! Was it AIDS? Did karma come back to bite a chunk out of her ass? She had done a lot of bad things.

Luca’s mind started to spin with worry after worry. It felt like her heart was sinking into the bottom of her stomach just waiting to hear her results. It had to be bad news.

“Ms. Linn, you’re six weeks pregnant,” he announced.

“What?” Luca was stunned. It was the last thing she expected him to say. “I’m what?”

“You’re six weeks pregnant. Congratulations to you and the lucky man.”

Luca took a deep breath. Congratulations? This is crazy.

The doctor continued talking to Luca, but she blocked him out.

She already knew it wasn’t Kevin’s baby; they’d only had sex one time, and he’d used protection. It definitely was Clyde’s seed growing inside of her. Six weeks pregnant . . . the time frame definitely added up. It was the night she’d gone to his place and they fucked like rabbits. He didn’t use a condom, and he came in her multiple times.

Luca walked out of the doctor’s office feeling ambivalent. She always wanted to have kids, but life always prevented that from happening. Now, she was pregnant, and the man she wasn’t with, who she had walked away from and didn’t want any dealings with, was the father to her unborn.

How was she going to explain this to Kevin?

Luca exited the medical building and climbed into the passenger seat of the Lincoln Navigator with Meeka sitting behind the wheel.

Meeka looked at her and asked, “Is everything cool?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine.”

She didn’t want to tell anyone about her pregnancy yet. She planned on keeping it a secret until the right time. The life she lived wasn’t that of a housewife or a married woman who couldn’t wait to share the news with loving friends and family. She was a gangstress. A bitch like her couldn’t go around sharing news of her condition. It might send the wolves ready to carve her unborn out of her stomach.

“Just take me home,” she told Meeka.

Meeka nodded and drove away.

Luca laid her head against the window and closed her eyes.

***

Rikers Island was the last place Luca wanted to be. It was dirty, loud, overcrowded, and intimidating. The jail sat on an outsized island a stone’s throw away from the runway to LaGuardia Airport. There was only one way on and one way off the island, a long, sole route bridge to the island for vehicular traffic. It was a fixed, low-level span built with concrete and steel.

The correction officers were steady scowling and didn’t seem to care about anyone’s well-being. She was going through the searches where there was signs posted everywhere and the guards making it clear that no cell phones, cameras, or any type of electronic equipment were allowed inside. Everyone was thoroughly searched as they stepped on the premises, and anyone found with contraband would be subject to immediate arrest and full prosecution.

Luca had nothing to worry about. She came simply dressed in a pair of jeans, a T-shirt for the warm summer day, and her white Nikes. No one suspected who she really was and what she was about. She showed her ID and continued on with her visit.

Before she got to the main visiting room, she went through two more thorough security searches where she had to take off her shoes, her belt, and be scanned by a long wand after stepping through the metal detector.

The Rose M. Singer Center was the only female inmate facility on Rikers Island. It featured a nursery with capacity for up to 25 infants. Luca took a seat at the table and waited for Phaedra to enter the room.

Luca sat patiently. The room was filled with female inmates who had mostly family and their children come visit them.

Moments later, Phaedra was escorted into the room by a female guard. Luca hadn’t seen her in months, since the frost and cold in New York. Now it was early summer, and so many things had changed.

Luca couldn’t believe her eyes, seeing Phaedra clad in her prison attire and wobbling toward her, almost eight months pregnant with her hand against her stomach. She was pregnant with Clyde’s baby too.

Phaedra was stunned to see Luca had come to visit her. Was it a social visit or a threat? She stared at Luca as she struggled to sit across from her.

“I didn’t think you would ever come visit me. What brings you here?” Phaedra asked indifferently.

Luca looked at her former friend and couldn’t do it. She had come there to boast and talk shit to Phaedra. She couldn’t believe the bitch was pregnant too. Her mind had changed. Seeing her big belly was a shock.

“Is it Clyde’s?” Luca asked.

Phaedra nodded. “It is.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Boy.”

Luca wished she could tell her congratulations, but she just couldn’t.

“Do you love him?” Luca asked.

“I do. I really do, Luca,” Phaedra responded emotionally.

Luca sighed. She didn’t love Clyde anymore, and she had Kevin now. But there was still that tinge of hatred for the woman who stabbed her in the back and betrayed her. Luca decided to keep the news of her pregnancy to herself. It just didn’t feel right telling Phaedra.

Phaedra’s eyes started to tear up. “I didn’t want for any of this to happen, Luca. I just got caught up, and one thing led to another, and then I’m in here. I’m sorry. You were like a sister to me. You were my best friend.”

“Would you have pulled the trigger?” Luca asked.

“I don’t think I had it in me to kill you. My emotions just came over me,” Phaedra said. “Wit’ Kool-aid’s death and Little Bit, Clyde gave me that little comfort. I was fucked-up, really fucked-up.”

Luca believed her.

“If I knew you liked him in the first place—”

“I was in love wit’ you, Luca,” Phaedra blurted out. “I’ve been in love wit’ you since the day we met. I never could tell you. But I’m telling you now. I love you and Clyde.”

It caught Luca off guard. She didn’t swing that way and never planned to. She was somewhat glad Phaedra had kept her feelings to herself, but didn’t take any offense to the confession. She decided to bury the hatchet with Phaedra. They’d been through too much to continue on with their beef.

“Phaedra, you will always be a friend to me, despite what went on between us. You taught me things.”

“And you taught me things too, Luca. I do owe you, because if it wasn’t for you, I don’t know where I would be,” Phaedra replied. “I’m so sorry. I got two years in here, but it ain’t gonna be the end of me. When I get out, I’m gonna raise my son and start over. And if it ain’t awkward to you, I want you to become my son’s godmother.”

Luca respectfully declined.

It was an emotional reunion between them. Luca left Rikers Island with a feeling of accomplishment. She had rekindled an old friendship, making her list of enemies shorter. She could have easily had Phaedra killed, but there was some love still left in her heart for her friend.

No one needed to know she was pregnant with Clyde’s baby too. She would play it off as Kevin’s baby.