CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“Sirs, drag them from the pit unto the prison.”

- William Shakespeare

 

Nine lay face up on the bed, her limbs sprawled out at each end and tied to the bedposts. Naked. Gates stood at the bottom of the bed and from his view, he could see the pinkness of her center. His tongue hung out the side of his mouth as he gazed down at her flesh.

“I don’t know what you did to get her so mad but you had fun with her,” he said as he looked toward his right at Leaf who was tied up and sitting in a chair, his mouth bound and gagged. “And now I’m going to have a little fun too.” He chuckled loudly. “I hope you don’t mind me digging into the cookie jar.”

Upon hearing his words, Leaf struggled to get out of the restraints and Nine’s heart broke silently for him. What it must’ve felt like not to be able to help her. Not to be able to come to her rescue. Just like Leaf, she was gagged and was unable to say a word.

When Nine dropped Isabel off, she never realized the mistake she made by dismissing her soldiers. Without their protection, Gates was able to break into the mansion, bringing eight people with him who were able to subdue her family. He tried to enter the basement but Nine had already begun to lock it for fear her new relatives would wander downstairs and see her secret prison.

Gates, dressed in only a t-shirt and grey sweatpants, removed his clothing. With a revolver in his hand, he crawled toward her until his stiffness pushed against the opening of her vagina. He placed the gun against the tip of her nose and said, “Don’t make me separate your beauty from your body.” He paused. “I don’t want to do you like that.”

Nine closed her eyes and held her anger inside. Her body was as stiff as a corpse.

As Gates eased into her, he looked over at Leaf, loving the look of hate on his face. “I don’t have to tell you why I’m doing this,” he continued as he pushed deeper into Nine’s center. “I think you already know but if I must, I will.” His body began dripping with thick sweat. “You have to understand how hard it was for me to lose my daughter.” He made his strokes long and wide with the focus being to enjoy the tightness of her body and to get revenge on Leaf at the same time. “So now I’m going to take a little pussy before—” He bit down on his bottom lip. “Oh…you have to excuse me for a minute, man. I knew this pussy was good but I never thought it would feel like this.”

Gates quieted down as he continued to rape Nine roughly. Although Leaf was inflamed with anger, Nine was cool and calm. She managed to go elsewhere in her mind since she’d been physically abused before and detached from her experiences.

When he was about to reach an orgasm he said, “Damn, man, I thought I’d be able to last longer than this.” He looked into Leaf’s eyes before gazing down at Nine whose expression was blank as a white sheet of paper. “But when you got pussy as good as this you gotta give in to it.”

At the point of ecstasy, he removed his penis and splashed his semen onto the top of her stomach. When he was emptied he wiped a little with the tip of his finger, walked over to Leaf, pulled down the gag covering his mouth and spread his nut on the top of Leaf’s lip before putting the gag back in place.

Leaf went into a violent outbreak with another man’s cream on his mouth and he almost freed himself until Gates stole him with a hard right, forcing him into temporary sanity.

“Calm down,” he laughed. “I’m about to put you out of your misery in a minute. Soon you’ll forget all about this bitch. Soon you’ll forget about everything.”

When he was done he walked back over to Nine and stood at the head of the bed again stroking his now limp dick. The sleekness of her body due to his sweat made her look oily, disgusting even. It was a far cry from how he perceived her since their first encounter.

“Well, Nine, I must admit, you were as good as I thought you would be but now I must let you go.” He picked up the gun that sat on the edge of the bed while he raped her. “It was such a pleasure but I can’t allow you or your husband to live after what you took from me.

“You probably don’t know this, or even care, but because of you my wife left me and took my only remaining daughter after Dymond was murdered by Kerrick. And I know you didn’t have anything to do with that, but your husband did.” He looked at Leaf. “He was responsible for both of my daughters being murdered and I could not deal with him being alive. Ever. First, I wanted to take you for myself but you wouldn’t go with the program. Now it’s too late.”

He was about to pull the trigger when Nine thrust her leg slightly to the right. It was the first movement she made since his defilement of her body and he was interested in what she was trying to say.

Instead of killing her like his mind suggested, he removed the gag from her mouth and said, “So you have a few final words after all?” He chuckled.

“Do you think your daughters had pussies wetter than mine?” she asked with a sly grin.

The smug smile disappeared from his mug when he heard her statement. “Excuse me?”

“I asked do you think your daughters had wetter pussies than me?”

Irritated, he was about to fire until she said, “What about the one daughter left? The one who is still living that was supposed to be with your wife?” She paused having gained his complete attention. “Do you know where she is, Sir Gates? Because I do.”

He searched her eyes for a joke but saw none. Besides, he’d known Nine long enough to realize when she was serious and at the moment she was humorless. “What are you talking about? Where is my daughter?”

“You know, at first, when I found out who she was, I thought you sent her here for some strange reason. But after speaking to my accountant and learning that she was siphoning money from my bank accounts, a few hundred at a time, I realized she tried to get at me and Leaf on her own. That you were clueless that your daughter came here to get revenge for my husband killing her siblings.” She readjusted herself as much as she could with the binds around her arms. “But she was out of her league. Wasn’t she?”

His body trembled. “Are you saying that my daughter is…in this house?”

Silence.

Quickly he rushed to the head of the bed and released the ropes. Now that Leaf heard why Nine kept Banker beneath the house, everything made sense.

Gates grabbed a fistful of her hair in the back of her scalp and pushed and shoved her toward the basement, but he couldn’t enter. When they made it to the door, she stared at it and then Gates. “You can kill me now if you want to but I will never tell you how to get inside unless you release my husband.”

Angry at how she attempted to have the upper hand, he shoved her back toward the bedroom. Once there he placed a gun to Leaf’s head. “I will fucking kill this nigga! Do you hear me? I’ll fucking kill him. Is that what you want? Do you even care?”

“If you kill my husband I will die with him and still, I will never open that door.” She looked into his eyes, hoping that he could feel her seriousness. “You know that what I am saying is true.” She turned around and showed him her back, still chewed up from Kerrick’s lashes. “And if you are considering torture, think again. I have endured it all. You can do whatever you want to me but that door will remain locked and your daughter will die a horrible death. Of starvation. The worst kind!” She paused. “Is that what you want your only child to go through?”

She looked at Gates but avoided eye contact with Leaf. Although he never said, he stood by the motto the United States held. And it was to never negotiate with terrorists.

“Do what you must, Gates,” Nine said still avoiding eye contact with her husband. “I am waiting.”

Seething mad, Gates placed the gun next to Leaf’s head, cocked and pulled the trigger. Nine didn’t move, although a urine droplet trickled down her inner thigh that they couldn’t see.

When he saw how cold she was, he looked into her eyes. “You really don’t care, do you?” He paused. “That explains why he was already tied up.”

Nine was confused.

“Release my husband and put down your weapon, or I will not free your daughter.” She paused. “On that, Sir Gates, I will not waiver.”

 

****

 

Instead of freeing Leaf, Gates instructed his men to move him, still bound to the wooden chair, to the living room. But to appease Nine for the moment, he released her aunt Lisa, her uncles and their mother Bridget. Her new family members stood behind the chair Leaf sat on while Gates’ men maintained their guns aimed at the family.

“Okay, I let them go. Now open this door so I can see my baby girl. If she’s really here, then I’ll release everyone.”

Nine grabbed a device off of the floor, slid a small grey panel to the side, and placed her entire hand on the touchpad and the door leading to the basement slid open. Gates followed Nine down three flights of stairs before stopping upon a large room. She slid the panel aside and placed her palm on the pad, opening a room with a prison. Two cells were filled with Alice and Banker. However, there was no touchpad to open the cells, otherwise Gates would’ve killed her, cut off her hand and freed them with her cold palm.

“Nine, please let me out,” Alice screamed, grabbing the bars and stuffing her face through them. “I can’t stay in here anymore! I can’t take the dark! It talks to me!”

Nine ignored her. What she had planned for her cousin could not be altered with words.

As Alice continued to yell, Banker’s eyes fixated on her father. Slowly they moved toward each other, the thick iron bars separating them.

Beside himself with grief, he placed his hands on the bars and looked into her eyes. “Berry, what are you doing in here?” He called her by her birth name, not the fake name she adopted of Banker Troy. “I thought you were in Aruba with your mother.”

“I’m sorry, daddy,” she said with a low head. “I wanted to…to get them back for what they did to me. Now look.” She exhaled. “I’m so sorry, daddy. I never wanted to put you through this.”

Slowly he turned around and faced Nine. “What do you want?”

When he heard gun blasts upstairs, Gates knew what happened. Nine managed to alert her soldiers that there was danger using the device in her hand. The one that fell on the floor when they knocked her over the head and now his men were dead.

When Nine left Antonius earlier, he handed her the device, having no idea how he may have saved her life. After the Russians came to the property, Antonius intended to do whatever he could to protect her, so only one push of the button would let him know that she was in trouble.

Within seconds, Antonius, Leaf, and three other men from the Legion rushed down the stairs. Everyone was surprised at Nine’s makeshift prison and how much trouble she’d gone through to keep people incarcerated.

With guns aimed at Gates, he knew what was up. Slowly he looked down at the floor and then at Banker before placing his weapon on the ground.

He surrendered.

As he raised his hands into the air, Nine walked toward a wall directly across from him. She removed a panel, which revealed a small safe. After entering the code into the keypad, it popped open and she took out a set of keys. She removed one and handed it to Leaf. She also gave him Gates’ weapon. “You can kill him or beat him. It is your choice.”

Nine strolled toward the door and her men followed, before closing the door behind them.

“Get on your knees,” Leaf ordered Gates.

He complied and said, “I guess there is no chance I can convince you not to kill me.”

Through clenched teeth, he said, “Not a chance in hell.”

“Please,” Gates said, “I’m not ready to die.”

“I had big plans for you, Gates, but I can work with this situation just the same. Do you remember me saying that there would come a time when you would beg me for mercy? We’ve come to that moment.”

Gates in that second knew that his pleas were of no use.

He was going to die.

“I dreamed about this moment,” Leaf continued as he looked down at him. “When you and I would be alone.” He walked around Gates’ body before stopping behind him. He peered down at the center of his head. “I imagined choking you, or stabbing you until I saw your eyes roll behind your head.”

“Please don’t kill my father,” Banker whispered from behind the cell bars.

“Shut the fuck up, bitch!” he yelled pointing at her.

She backed up into the cell and sat down on the bed.

“And now I realize you aren’t worth it.”

Gates laughed and slowly shook his head from left to right. “You know what’s wrong with you Prophets? Besides the fact that you fuck each other? You honestly believe that you are the only ones entitled to revenge. Like you’re the only ones who hurt or feel pain!” He paused. “You took two of my daughters away from me!” he cried. “Two of them! If the shoe was on the other foot, and it had been your family, you would’ve taken me out a long time ago!”

“You’re right,” Leaf nodded. “But you didn’t take me out. Instead, you waited and sneakily tried to steal my wife. Then you raped her in front of my face.” He brought the butt of the gun down on the side of his head, splitting it in the process. “Say what you want, I would’ve never done no shit like that! You made me a monster.” He paused. “And after all this, I’m still going to show you mercy.” He exhaled, looked up at the ceiling and placed the gun to the top of his head.

Pow!

****

 

Leaf walked up the stairs leading to the living room and flopped down on the recliner across from the sofa were Nine was sitting. Waiting. His clothing and hand were sprinkled with blood. “Where is everyone else?”

“They went to get liquor,” she shrugged. “Only one week in this house and look what happened. I guess they needed a drink so Antonius took them to the store.”

Leaf chuckled softly although he didn’t find a lot funny. Seeing Nine being raped, having another man’s cum on his face and committing murder in one day did something deplorable to his psyche.

“How did it go?” she asked.

“He dead.”

“But I heard two shots.”

“I let his daughter go with him.”

She nodded, although that was not her plan. She wanted to play with Banker a bit longer. “Well at least this was done quietly, without the winery getting involved.”

Leaf gazed over at her. “What is up with you and that wine shit?”

“I—”

“You what?” he yelled, causing his temples to throb. “Don’t give a fuck about nothing but that shit!”

“It is not that I—”

“I’m sick of you and that wine,” he continued, cutting her off. “You make me want to—”

“IT WAS MY FAULT SHE WAS KILLED!” Nine yelled, her body trembling.

The bass of her voice caused Leaf to pause.

In a low whisper, she said, “It was my fault.” Her head hung low. “Had she not been trying to teach me to be strong, to be safe, grandfather would have never killed her and I have never been able to forgive myself for it.” She wept. “So I…so I wanted to do this so that her name would live on. So that she would always know how much I love her.” Nine wiped the tears from her face and sighed. “I just want her to know that I love her.”

He leaned back in the chair, the warm gun still in his grasp. “What about me? Do you love me?”

“Must you ask?”

“Then why were you going to let him kill me upstairs?”

She averted her gaze toward the floor. “Is that what you believe?” She looked at him. “Or is that what you want to believe?”

“I want the truth.”

“I was not going to allow him to kill you.” She paused. “I would have stopped it way before that happened.”

“And when were you going to do that? When he pulled the trigger the second time?”

She smiled. “When he was on top of me, forcing himself into my body, I saw the chamber of his gun. The first one did not have a bullet inside of it, Leaf. So he could not have killed you.”

He exhaled, relieved to hear that at least she had a plan. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“How could I? It would have ruined everything!”

Leaf laid back, his face bludgeoned. “What I don’t know, what I can’t understand is why he sent the old lady first. Why did Gates have her and her henchman tie me to the chair?”

Nine’s eyebrows squished together. “What old lady?”

“I was downstairs, by the backdoor when you took Isabel to the institution. I guess somebody left the door open and this big white man hit me over the back of the head with a blunt object. I still don’t know what it was.” He paused. “But when I came to, I was tied to the chair.”

Nine’s mind swirled. That’s what Gates meant about him already being tied up. “What were they saying?”

“Nothing really. Just kept asking me about you and telling me I would be rewarded.” Leaf searched his mind but considering the events of the day, everything seemed cloudy. “She used the word Goddess too.” He touched his head. “I don’t know, bae. It’s foggy.”

“Dr. Banning is on her way,” she said. “Do not worry about it. It is obvious that they were with Gates and must have left before I came back. I just hate that they got away before we could do something about it.”

He closed his eyes and his mind wandered to another thought. “We’ll see them again. I’m sure. She’s an old lady. How bad can she be? Baby, is Antonius in love with you?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Why do you ask?”

“Because he seems to know when you need him. He seems to always be there. How do you know that he wasn’t involved in all of this? To get you to depend on him?”

“How do we know anything, husband? How do we know who is capable of what at any given time? For now, all I know is that he saved me. He saved us. I also know that he was loyal when I needed him most. That is all I can ask.”

“You finally called me husband.”

“Because you are.”

Silence.

“But there is something else,” Nine said.

Frustrated, Leaf placed the gun in his lap and looked into the ceiling. Wiping his hands down his face, he sighed and said, “What now, bae?”

“Gene had a son who is staying with Antonius for the moment. I am worried for the child, Leaf. He is such a sweet little boy and if he is put into the system, we will lose him for good. He may turn out like his father or worse. Let me help him. It is not like we do not have the money. He needs to be around a man like you. Will you raise him? And love him like you do Julius?”

“What are you saying really?”

“I am asking if it is okay that we take him into our home.”

He smiled and shook his head. He never realized he married a woman with such a strong need to help others until then. “And if I say no?”

Deflated, she said, “Then he would have to go somewhere else. And I would have to love him from afar.”

He smiled having heard the right words. “Okay, let’s do it.”

She stood up, rushed over to him and plopped on his lap. “There is something else.”

He placed the gun on the table beside him. “Nine, please!” he yelled. “What is it now?”

“I am pregnant.”

He didn’t know whether to laugh or be mad at how she manipulated the situation. She was real smart about getting him to say yes to letting Denarius stay with them first, because had he known, he would’ve said they should focus on their own child. “Are you serious, bae?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “Can you believe after all of this, the Phenethylamine poison and the madness, that I am going to have our baby?”

He rubbed her back, and felt an immense sense of pride. “It’s the only good that has happened in all of this.”

“I love you, husband.”

“You just talking shit,” he chuckled.

She reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a white sheet of paper. It was a legal document she had the lawyer draw up during all the madness with her banking accounts. “What is this?”

“Read it.”

He opened the document and what he saw made him love her all over again. It was a name change. She was now Nine Lincoln.

“You know you don’t have to do this, right?” He paused trying not to appear too excited, only to lose his cool, although his light skin was flushed red from blushing. “Through all this shit, I realized I am what I am and you are what you are.”

“What do you mean?”

“The beef with the Prophets was my father’s thing. Not mine. So I’m going to adopt the name I should’ve had all along. From here on out, I will be known as Leaf Prophet.”

She laughed. “So I got this done for nothing?”

“No, not for nothing,” he said moving her chin so that she was looking into his eyes. “I’ll know that you did this for me, despite what the world calls you. What the world calls us. And that means more to me than anything.”

“We are Prophets,” she said proudly.

“I guess we are.”