The Score (22 page)

“Arrrrggghhh!” the goon screamed out. “Agggghhh! Get her off of me! Get this bitch off of me! She's fucking biting me!” he hollered, his voice going high-pitched like a woman's. I was taking great satisfaction in inflicting this type of pain on him. He was trying to dump me over but I wouldn't let go of the jaw lock I had on his ear. I could taste his blood on my tongue now. The scent and taste made me feel animalistic. The adrenaline made me feel powerful. Even with all of that going on the goons still managed to take me inside the building. The scent of sawdust, burnt flesh, and blood shot up my nose as soon as we entered. Blood covered my lips and made a red smear that extended from my mouth across my cheek. I was breathing like a wild beast.

WHAM! The force and pain from something hard slamming into the side of my face forced my mouth open. I finally let go of the clamp I had on the goon's ear. The man quickly threw me down onto the concrete floor with a thud.

“Agh!” I cried out as a foot slammed into my rib cage as soon as I was on the floor. I also hit the back of my head and was seeing stars for a few seconds. Dazed and confused, I was still very aware that my life was about to end.

“This fucking little bitch took a chunk of skin off my ear,” the goon I had bitten whined as he carefully put his hand on his injury. When he brought his hand back to the front of his face and saw all of the blood covering his fingers. . .

“Aghhhh! Look at this shit! I should kill this bitch,” he shrieked like a woman. He drove his huge foot into my stomach.

“Awwg,” I gagged. My legs instinctively shot up toward my chest, forming a cover for my stomach. He went to kick me again but one of the other goons stopped him before he could.

“Nah. We had instructions to bring her here alive. We can't do shit until the boss says so,” another of the goons answered.

“This bitch is so lucky. I would rip her fucking head off and shit down her neck, I swear,” the goon with the missing ear chunk snarled. I started laughing like a crazy woman. I was losing grip with my reality and I think shock or delirium was setting in on me. Was this how it was all going to end for me? After all of the shit I had survived growing up . . . I was about to die in some warehouse behind some stolen money?

“Go get the boss,” the other goon said to the one holding his ear. “Let him decide what to do with her.” The injured goon scrambled out of the door. I began praying in earnest.

My prayer was interrupted after a few seconds. I opened my eyes when I heard the click of more than one pair of shoes ringing out against the concrete floor like gunshots. From the sound of it there was more than two people entering the room.

“Oww,” I howled as I was snatched up from the floor by my hair and forced into a hard metal chair.

“Fuck off of me!” I growled as both of my arms were forcefully pulled behind my back so far that my shoulders bulged. I moved my body up and down but to no avail. My ankles were roughly tied to the legs of the chair. It was no more use in fighting. I finally went still. I kept my head down and my eyes closed. I didn't want to see whatever they were going to do to me coming.

Just do it. Get it over with. Take me out of my misery,
I said in my head as if those killers could somehow read my mind.

“Look at him!” one of the goons growled, clutching onto a fistful of my hair and forcing my downturned head upward. “He wants to look into the eyes of the bitch that took his money! Show him some respect!” My eyes fluttered open and I squinted against the bright light that was hanging from the ceiling. At first all I could see was the silhouettes of two men. I could tell they were dressed in suits. I knew from the sound when they entered that they also wore hard-bottomed dress shoes. All of these assessments told me that whoever had captured me wasn't Matt and his rough-around-the-edges-ass friends.

The first man stepped closer to me. His chin was square and his face was hard, his expression twisted in a cruel sneer that was nothing like the playboy businessman I'd seen in the magazines and on TV. The man we'd stolen three million dollars from. Nikolai Kudrin.

I was shocked. I never imagined that one of my marks would actually come after me. My hustles were supposed to be safe. My victims probably got all their money back from their banks after I hit them up. Plus, they'd never be able to track me. How did Kudrin find me?

“So this is her? The genius behind the whole operation,” the man said. “Look at her now? All pitiful,” he continued. He summoned the other man over. When the second man stepped closer, I felt warm urine escape down my legs. I shook my head no. My body was wracked with the shakes. Suddenly I could no longer breathe. I felt like I would hyperventilate.
Can't be? This can't be!
I screamed in my head. I told myself that I had to be hallucinating.

I sucked in my breath when I looked up and my vision finally came into full focus. Tears sprang to my eyes immediately and I could literally feel my heart crumbling to a million little pieces in my chest. My head started pounding like somebody was using it for a drum. My stomach swirled with nausea. Before I knew it, I leaned over in the chair they had propped me up in and threw up. I gagged and gagged over and over again until I had nothing left to give. I couldn't stop the dry heaves from coming. I literally felt like my entire world had crashed in on me.
This can't be! No! No!
My mind raced at the speed of light.

“Dr . . . Dr . . . Drake,” I rasped, my throat burning as if I had just swallowed a firelit sword.
No! This can't be true! No! It can't be him!
I screamed inside of my head. No words would come out of my mouth. The shock was tearing me apart inside. I literally felt like someone had set all of my organs on fire.

I blinked a few more times just to be certain that my eyes were not deceiving me. I couldn't believe that Drake was standing there, dressed in a suit. I had just slept with him the night before. He had just told me he loved me the week before. I had just made love to this man every night for the past two months. He was a part of my new life, not the Virginia Beach hood I'd been born into. Our whole relationship flashed through my mind and I still couldn't figure out how my old life and new life collided. My mouth hung open in shock.

“You thought that you could just get away that easily?” the other man snarled at me. I had come to the quick conclusion that he was the boss. Maybe Drake was his right-hand man? I didn't care what the boss was talking about, I simply could not take my eyes off of Drake. He refused to look me in the eye.

“You bastard! Fucking bastard!” I shrieked. It just came out of nowhere. It had bubbled up from the pit of my soul. The scream zapped all of my energy. The pain I felt from Drake's betrayal was enough to kill me. When the pain subsided and I was able to look up again, Drake was looking at me like he didn't know me. I was in too much shock to even call his name out. Drake probably wasn't his name anyway. I was in love with the enemy. He had been so perfect. I had never had a man treat me like he had. Just like everything and everyone else in my life, it was all temporary, all a lie. I guess I wasn't good enough to find someone who would really love me. If I wasn't good enough to be loved by my parents why should anything else be different?

“Oh she's a tough one, huh?” the boss gritted. “But what she didn't know is that you don't fuck with Nikolai Kudrin. Get her the fuck up. I want to show her what she can expect.”

My eyes went wide. I knew it was time for me to be killed. I wondered how Drake was going to feel watching me suffer. I wondered if any of his feelings for me were real.

The same three goons untied me and roughly pulled me up from the chair. It didn't matter what they did to me at that point, I still could not and would not take my eyes off of Drake. I locked eyes with him and we both exchanged a long, telling glance. There was a serenity in his eyes that changed something inside of me. It was like all of the hurt and pain faded away in that instant. Although he had betrayed me in the worst way, for some reason I wasn't afraid to die anymore. I had accepted my fate. I guess everything had come full circle for me. There was no more need to fight. I was finally ready to accept the karmic consequences of my actions for all of these years. Stealing from people. Lying to people. Tricking Matt and Yancy out of every dime of the money although they had worked for it too. All of the shit I had done was coming back to me.

When Kudrin's minions took me out of the chair, I didn't even fight. I had accepted my fate, therefore I had no more fight in me. I was forcefully led into another room. The lights were dimmer in this other room and the air in the room was freezing. Even with the bitter-cold air stinging the inside of my nose, I could still smell the acrid, tinny odor of old blood. It was like raw meat gone bad.

“Take her over there. Show her what she did. Show her what's about to happen to her if she doesn't start talking about where the fuck they put my money,” Kudrin demanded. I was dragged to the other side of the room. I was shivering so fiercely my muscles started to seize up. It was painful being that cold. It was like they had me inside of a meat freezer.

“Look! Look at what you caused! This is all you,” one of the goons growled, while he held my neck in the direction of what he wanted me to see.

I sucked in my breath. My eyes went round and my mouth fell open when I saw him. My knees began knocking against each other. More urine trickled down my legs and my stomach knotted up. I had to squeeze my sphincter muscle to keep from literally shitting myself.

“Matt!” I screamed. I felt the blood rush to my face, which caused my head to swirl. “Matt!” My knees finally buckled and I almost fell to the floor. The goons held on to me tighter and kept me from hitting the floor.

“Look! Look at him and don't turn your fucking face away!” one of the goons snarled, holding my face roughly and forcing me to look down at Matt. I felt like throwing up again. I couldn't stand to look at him. It was too much. Guilt kicked me in the head. I was responsible for this. I tried to look around the room to see if they had gotten Yancy, too. There was just me and Matt. In the end, we had started out together and now it looked like we were going to end things together.

“Oh Matt,” I cried, and shook my head.

Matt was beaten so badly I could barely recognize him. His nose was completely flattened, his lips were like two pillows, and he could barely open his eyes because his battered eyelids were so swollen. As dark as Matt was I could still see blue, green, and purple bruises cropping up all over the sides of his forehead. Blood covered his face, which made it even harder for me to make out his features. I could see huge knots on his head that had begun to swell to the size of golf balls. It seemed like blood was leaking from everywhere—gashes in his head, his mouth, the inside of his bloodshot eyes, and from the inside of his ears. The way Matt lay curled into a fetal position, I knew he was probably dying. I had seen that before. Once when I was a kid I witnessed a boy get hit by a truck and when his body flew up in the air and hit the ground it immediately curled in on itself. Mrs. Shepherd later told me that it was the body's natural defense against danger, but it was also how the body began to react when a person was about to slip away. I had never forgotten. And now it looked like that was going to be my fate, too.

MATT

“O
oof,” I gagged as another fist slammed into my stomach, causing all of the wind in my body to involuntarily escape through my mouth. Acidy vomit leapt up into my throat and spewed out of my mouth right after.

“Hit 'em again!” a deep baritone voice commanded. With that, another sledgehammer-sized fist slammed into my left jaw. I felt the blood and spit shoot from between my lips. The salt from the blood stung the open cuts on my split bottom lip.

“Until he tells me where the fuck every dime of my money is I want his ass to suffer,” the deep voice growled. “Break every bone in his body if you have to.”

“Agh!” I belted out as a heavy-booted foot crashed down on my ribcage. I think hearing the crack and crunch of my own bones disturbed me more than the excruciating pain I felt.

I coughed and wheezed trying to will my lungs to fill back up with air. Each raggedy breath hurt like hell. I knew then that some of my ribs had been shattered. More fury came right after.

“Ugh!” I coughed as a front kick with a pointed, steel-toe boot slammed into my back. I swore I heard my spine crack. My insides felt like they were being shuffled around by the punches and kicks I'd been subjected to since these dudes had snatched me from my hideout in the thick of the night. I had tried to bounce before they could get me, but I was too slow. Lauren was lucky I hadn't snatched her ass outta that restaurant and brought her here to beat the money outta her. Although I wanted to kill her myself right now, I could only pray that she was someplace safe . . . maybe with the police or back on the run. But if these dudes were after me, I would think they would be after her and Yancy as well.

“Where is my fucking money!” the voice boomed again. This time, I forced my battered eyes open and looked at the sharply dressed man who was standing over me. In dim light I couldn't make out his face. But I could see from the flash of his sparkly diamond pinky ring, solid-gold cufflinks, and a clearly expensive tailor-made suit, this dude hadn't even broken a sweat. He obviously took great satisfaction in commanding his goons to torture me over and over. And like good little soldiers, they did just enough to hurt me, but not kill me.

“I'll ask you one more time, Matthew Connors . . . what the fuck did you and your bitch do with my fucking money?” the boss man growled. His money? Me and my bitch? What the . . . It finally hit me like a hammer to my head. My entire body went cold like my veins had been injected with ice water. The score that was supposed to put me back in the game and set me and my woman up for life had turned into my worst nightmare.

The man who'd been our mark let out a raucous, maniacal laugh. “You petty fuckin' thief,” he spat as he moved closer to me. “Stealing instead of going out there and working for your own shit. I can respect a man who hustles for himself, but a man who steals from another hardworking man is a waste of fucking sperm. Your mother should've just swallowed.”

The heat of anger that lit up my chest from his words was probably enough to make me kill him with my bare hands. I bucked my body out of anger but that just made shit worse.

I couldn't believe our big score, that pussy-ass playboy businessman Nikolai Kudrin, was delivering the worst beatdown I'd ever known. Even worse than the smackdown I got at my condo. It was all coming together now. How my whole life started to go down the toilet right after we stole dude's money. I can't believe Lauren's hustle had gotten into a situation crazier than anything I'd done out in the streets.

“Aggh!” I screamed. Kudrin crushed one of his hard-bottom Salvatore Ferragamo loafers down into my balls. The famous Ferragamo buckle glinted off the bright lights and taunted me. I guess this was payback for all of the times I had purchased expensive Ferragamo shit with other people's money and identities. Maybe Kudrin was right, a man who is a thief is the worst type of motherfucka alive.

“Now, you little bitch. I want to know how you got the balls to steal my money and where it is now. I'm not going to keep playing so nice because this . . . this little bit of ass-whooping and pain is nothing compared to what I do to niggas like you who I see as the scum of the earth,” Kudrin growled. Then he stomped down on my balls with what felt like the force of a ten-ton boulder.

“Hmgh!” I screamed out and panted for breath at the same time. The pain was unbearable. I could barely catch my breath. Small squirms of light flitted through my eyes. I was literally seeing stars.

“That's what I thought. Now, if you want to make it out of this alive you better fucking start talking,” Kudrin snarled. “You must've realized by now that you and your little female crew of thieves fucked with the wrong man,” Kudrin hissed. “I just look like a square businessman. You have no idea who I really am. Not even now.”

“Agggh!!” I shrieked as the square heel of Kudrin's shoe slammed into my nuts again. This time with so much force I felt like my ball sack had busted open. I opened my battered and swollen eyes and stared up at the blinding light dangling from the ceiling. I was praying and inviting death to just come take me away from this pain. I could feel the walls closing in on me but before the darkness and the shock engulfed me I thought about Lauren and Yancy and all the shit we had done to get to this point. Suddenly I was thrust back in time to how all of this shit started.

If I had my way a nigga would've bypassed that fucking lick and just stuck to the credit card shit until I could get on my feet and back in the game.

“We got a little surprise for you . . . maybe this will jog your memory about where my money is,” Kudrin snarled.

“Uh! Ah!” I screamed as freezing cold water was dumped on my battered body. The icy water shocked me back into consciousness. I was shivering. I felt like my heart was going to explode. The pain that was wracking my body was unbearable. Every inch of me ached . . . even my hair follicles.

“Bring her in!” Kudrin demanded.

I think I smelled Lauren before I even saw her. It was her familiar scent that forced me to open my battered eyelids although it hurt like hell to do it.

“Matt!” Lauren screamed out. I could hear that she was sobbing.

I could barely see her. My vision was blurry and clouded.

“Lauren,” I garbled through my swollen lips. Blood leaked from my mouth and burned the cuts on my lips. “T . . . T . . . tell him,” I rasped. “Wh . . . where . . . the mo . . . money is.” It hurt so bad to talk. My left jaw was definitely broken. I had to fight through the pain. I needed Lauren to understand that if she didn't cooperate I was going to die and she was also.

“Oh my God, Matt! I'm so sorry!” she cried out. “I'm so sorry for everything! I'm going to fix it! I'm going to make it right!”

“Get her up. Fucking torture her until she tells me where my fucking money is,” Kudrin snarled. Lauren started screaming again. I saw Lauren's hand extending toward me like she was trying to touch me. She never made it. She was snatched away. That was it for Lauren. Her life was about to be over.

I closed my eyes because even after all Lauren had done to me, I couldn't stand to watch them torture her.

BANG! BANG!

I jumped from the loud roar of a gun. “Lauren,” I called out painfully. I couldn't get enough air in my punctured lung to put any force behind my words. I couldn't hear her anymore. Just the idea of Kudrin killing Lauren sent enough adrenaline through my veins to make me go crazy.

“Lauren! No! Lauren!” I screamed. I rolled onto my side in an attempt to get up.

WHAM! Something slammed into my side. When I hit the floor again darkness finally took over. For good.