The Syndicate 2

Book 2: Syndicate

by Brick, Storm

Genres: Women's Fiction; Anthologies

Synopsis

All hell has broken loose, and the McPhearson clan is right in the middle of the chaos. After finding out their beloved foster mother, Claudette McPhearson, was anything but the sweet old woman they thought her to be, Javon, Shanelle, and the rest of their siblings hit the ground running in order to keep the Syndicate operating and to keep themselves alive. That also means they have to lose some of the people they love the most.

With the legacy of their mother and her plans for them in motion, the McPhearson children are operating on a broken foundation. Attacked on all fronts, Javon and Shanelle are struggling to keep the family normal, while following the criminal plans of their dead mother. The Syndicate is growing, and Javon is determined to bring in new blood while looking for those who killed Claudette. Not to mention, something odd is going on with all of his siblings that threatens to rock the family to the core. Will the McPhearson clan fall in order for the Syndicate to rise, or will the truth end the legacy before it can even begin?

Release date: January 31, 2017

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

“We have a problem . . .”

“Talk to me,” I stated; then I listened.

I stood there, stunned then furious, with a tiny thread of fear coursing through me due to what was being relayed to me. My home was, yet again, breached and this time it was by the law. The FBI had implemented a raid all while I had been away from home. Never in my life had anything like this happened in our neighborhood, with good reason. My mother’s choice in neighborhood was picked not so much as just comfort for her, but also as a cover, and now that shit was being picked apart, piece by piece. On top of that, motherfucking pigs had attacked my family?

Oh, hell no. That just wouldn’t go.

When it came to family in the street game, there was no point in thinking shit out. It was time to react and that was what I did. I briskly walked away, stepping over the red wetness of the floor. Dead bodies had been there just moments before the cleaners had come to get rid of them. Fury had me aggressively pushing through the doors of our secret location while reaching for my Glock. Behind me were a few of my Forty Thieves—basically my personal group of highly skilled bodyguards—also checking their ammo. A brotha had to think smart about this shit. Logically I understood that. However, I also knew that there was no way in hell that I was about to lose my family in the system again for some bullshit power play by the law.

I’d go down before I allowed that to happen. See, even the law needed to be taught a lesson, just to get everything in line. Which was what I planned to do. I was going to reverse all this shit and get the motherfuckers who had my family to understand exactly who the hell I was. There was no backing down from that shit.

I was a “made” man now. All due to design.

After all the hoopla with the Syndicate, I was sure the game had more than changed. It was still odd to me that I was now the head of a criminal enterprise, but judging by all that had happened in just a few short days, it was my reality.

First, Mama Claudette, the woman who had adopted me, my fiancée, Shanelle, and the rest of my siblings, had been gunned down senselessly. At first we thought it was because she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Come to find out she was the head of the Syndicate and none of us kids had had any idea. It was a rude awakening. One that I, initially, had no intention of being any part of . . . until one of the Syndicate foolishly kidnapped two of my siblings. Once that happened, all bets were off.

I ended up taking the seat Mama had left vacant and, in doing so, I made enemies. Enemies I took care of swiftly. Mama had people in high places who owed her plenty of favors. I’d called on my ace in the hole and it had paid off. Everything had been going according to my plan . . . until now.

I could remember the heated summers when I was kid, wilding out while Mama Claudette was sipping either sweet tea or some other sloshing liquid on the front porch, thinking in her chair with Uncle Snap smoking his cigarillos. Or, Mama with a big bucket at her feet, shucking peas while he barbecued in the back. I could remember the scent of fresh bleach and lavender drifting through the house while she and some of us kids were cleaning the house as he fixed whatever was broken in the house.

Chuckling to myself, I sighed. They had a unique system. No one would have guessed who Mama really was.

I could vividly see Mama Claudette in my mind’s memories, bent over, ass swallowing her shape, while digging in the dirt at the front of the house, setting flowers and fussing at Uncle Snap. I smiled in thought, remembering her pulling weeds and gardening while talking to me or us kids, spitting wisdom. I also could remember the way her face would contort in anger while going in on my bad ass after gathering me from the principal’s office.

In all those memories, I could clearly recall the sweetness of Mama Claudette’s voice saying, “Now, Javon, the Lord said ya enemies will become ya footstool. You hear me, boy? Those who attack you will always be made to stumble and fall at ya feet. Remember that always or be made a fool.”

I used to laugh that shit off as a kid, not really understanding the power of those words until now. My enemies had stumbled and fallen. At my feet was a river of their blood mixing with flowing water, detergent, and other chemicals. I had just erased certain members of the Syndicate with one calculating move: a power play and alliance with an old-school crime base, the Commission.

This move garnered exactly what my adoptive mother, Claudette McPhearson, had spent years cultivating with the fostering and adoption of me and my eight siblings. She had single-handedly had planned the restructuring and longevity of her crime family, the Syndicate, through us. Yeah, that’s right; sweet, old, Southern Claudette McPhearson was a true-to-the-blood mobster, along with her right hand, our uncle, Raphael Wilson, aka Snap. It all started long ago, which is a story for some other time, and it all led to me stepping in as the lead of the family due to her murder.

Before finding out her true story—that she wasn’t some sweet, old lady wishing to help some bad-ass foster kids like myself and my foster siblings—I was just your average, mundane white-collar analyst, working at a Fortune 500 financial advising firm. My world was good and I had my woman by my side, Shanelle. She was the savvy of the family. Yes, I say of the family. She’s my foster sister. We were not related by blood and we never thought of ourselves as actual brother and sister. Frankly, she wouldn’t allow me to see her that way but I digress.

Shanelle was my fiancée. She was the additional glue of the family. In her job at the same firm as me, she was lethal in how she handled her business; and her aim with a gun could rival any sniper or hunter. Which was why, as I reformed the Syndicate, I’d gradually move her in place to be my second set of eyes on the business front. She and I were the heads of the kids. Our mother, Mama Claudette, chose all eight of my siblings for our varied personalities. When the truth about her criminal dealings came out, we all slowly started to learn exactly why that was.

Now, dealing with that truth, the fractures in our family became wide and the eight of us dropped down to six. Like Mama Claudette, we lost two other siblings, this time due to bullshit that could have been corrected had I known about it. My blood, my personal counsel, and my right hand, Cory, my baby brother, and our foster sister Inez were both gone in the blink of an eye after we all found out that they were in a secret and abusive—on both ends—relationship.

Shit broke my heart when I found out.

Cory was my best friend, not just my brother. But, he had a problem with fucking around with pussy and drugs. Shit all stemmed back to before Mama Claudette adopted us. He always had issues and I’d always helped him manage it. But with Mama’s murder and finding out about her secret life of crime, and even before that, with being swamped with work and trying to make life good between Shanelle and me, I ended up dropping the ball.

I allowed my baby brother to fall between the cracks and leech off Inez, something that should have never happened. Shit turned my stomach when I found out the truth of it all. But, as they say, the bond of family can be one’s support or downfall.

I learned that my brother was an addict and now liked to put his hands on women . . . I should say one woman. Nigga was an abuser. Shit was foreign to me because he never learned that crap from our time growing up. Hell, whenever us kids would fight, Mama Claudette would always say, “Any man who puts his hands on a woman for fun ain’t worth shit stuck on a donkey’s ass, and any woman who thinks she’s a man and puts hands on her man for fun is no better than cat piss in a bucket. Don’t let me catch any of y’all fighting each other again or I’ll shoot ya then put ya back in the streets, hear me?”

The memory was fond, but it scared us as kids. So, where Cory picked up fighting a woman from I didn’t even know. I just knew that that shit was dishonorable and wack as hell.

When I learned Cory hooked Inez on drugs, that she was crazy in love with this nigga now, and that she also was fighting him, I was livid. The people before me weren’t my siblings. Hell, the people I knew had sense. They were individuals who had made it out of the system and were now achieving their goals, not the people who died in a car accident caused by the Irish. My sister Inez was hella young, twenty, so she was a pre-med student in college on track to be a surgeon. Whereas Cory, shit, he was supposed to be a grown-ass man, and in his second year of criminal law. They had so much ahead of them.

Both of those fools hooked up and, apparently, the shit hit the fan. When I found out, I went off. I fought my brother then tossed him out, along with Inez when she tried to attack me on his behalf. They sped off during a war at our house and went out in a flame like some crazy ride-or-die tragic love tale. Cory and Inez: toxic to each other, even in the end.

Even in my anger at them, I was ashamed that I pushed them to their deaths. That shit burned in my spirit because I let them both down by not knowing the truth. I didn’t uphold my responsibility in keeping them both on the right path. We lost them and now the family was broken even more. I wished I could have saved them.

Sadness made my temples throb at the memories.

In the mix of the family drama, there were my three younger foster brothers and foster sister: Lamont, Naveen, Jojo and Melissa. Lamont, or Monty as we called him, was training to box. He never felt a connection with extending his education. He was about the streets and fighting, so we never pressed him about it.

Twenty-year-old Melissa was an accountant. I’d put her over the club, one of the only legal businesses Mama had left behind. Melissa was good like that. Really, she was only managing the club. Shanelle was running everything else, being that she was the business maven. Naveen and Jojo were our youngest. Jojo was the baby at seventeen and a genius in high school, while Naveen was a fresh graduate and in tech school for civil engineering. We all came from different backgrounds and walks of life. Oh, and cultures: Native American, Black, Filipino, Bangladesh, Latina, and White. A few of us were mixed all the way up, as none of us knew what Jojo was mixed with. In the end, we all were bonded like blood family.

Keeping us in line after the death of our mother and siblings was our Uncle Snap. Old head was like a father to us all, but he, too, was living a secret. He wasn’t our dapper-dressing, eccentric, old-ass uncle who loved to sing us the blues while sipping moonshine and quoting Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and Shakespeare. Nah, he was a crazy-ass country gangsta, who was our mother’s right-hand man and bodyguard. He was once full of vibrancy but now, because of Mama Claudette’s murder, he was quiet and withdrawn, until it was time to handle business.

That was when he’d return to being my mentor, keeping me straight and making sure that I didn’t break while being the leader of the family and the Syndicate. See, it was my responsibility to keep the McPhearsons together. If we broke, we’d lose everything we built in our real lives and everything Mama built as a legacy for us. No matter what, I couldn’t let us fall.

We were all we had.

So for them, I chose this life of darkness and intrigue. Besides, Mama felt that I could carry on the legacy, and I intended to honor her wishes no matter how bloody it might be while looking for her killer. I didn’t want this life, but I could see why Mama chose me. This shit was coming too easy and natural for me.

“Nephew, are you good?” came from my right side.

My fingers were digging in my palms. The adrenaline from the meeting and watching a few members of the Syndicate die was still flowing sharp through me. I had a partial hard-on from the intensity. So, fuck no, I wasn’t good. But, I wasn’t about to verbalize any of that. Besides, the buzzing from my cell phone was drawing my attention again.

Calming down from my thoughts, the hazy red that filmed over my eyes was now gone. I gave a nod, noticing everyone was gone and that it was just me, Uncle Snap, the Forty Thieves, and the cleaners. Exhaling with my arm stretched out by my side and my Glock in my hand, I looked toward my uncle.

“Make sure they go through this place more than once. Any drops of blood, any splashes of it from the cleaning, any trace needs to be erased,” I said, reaching for my cell only to feel it stop buzzing.

“This is what they do, nephew; don’t worry about it,” Uncle Snap said, almost too calmly.

A frown spread across my face and I turned to fully face the old man. “What’s going down?” I asked.

My uncle was staring at me with his flip phone in his hand and speaking to me without even talking. A sudden anxiety attack had my spine tightened like steel and I knew that there was a problem with the family.

“Monty, Navy, and Jojo were taken by the cops,” he finally said, getting closer.

What?

All thoughts paused in my mind in that moment. Any types of what the fuck didn’t have a chance to flourish because I was already acting. I let out a sharp whistle. Stepping from where they stood at the side, my Forty Thieves appeared behind my uncle and me. I turned and motioned for everyone to follow me. In one fluid motion, I pushed through the doors of the building, then pulled out my Glock, making sure the clip still was good.

From my side, my uncle kept up with my strides as a blacked-out Escalade pulled in front of us.

“Nephew—” he started, but I stopped him.

Pulling off my jacket, I changed quickly behind the open door of the truck, tossing clothes in the back seat. “Run me down how deep our connections are with the police, in our area and ATL as a whole.”

“I sent ya mother’s lawyer to handle the situation and report back to me. Melissa dropped the message but Shanelle gave the rest of the intel,” Uncle Snap briskly mentioned.

“I didn’t ask you all of that. Answer my question . . . though I appreciate it,” I said between constrained emotions.

The old man cleared his throat then swiftly broke it down. “Overall we own a small five percent of the law. It’s one of the things your ma made sure to have secured in her reign.”

Climbing in the back, I slid over for my uncle then looked at him. “Make that ten and find out who in the districts are watching us to the point that they feel justified in going after our family.”

“Nephew, first of all, this is the Feds and you need to think calmly before you step to them,” he said, tapping the roof of the ride to signal for our driver to pull off.

“Don’t I always?” Smoothing a hand down my button-down that I changed into, I reached up and rubbed my chin, repeating myself. “Don’t I always?”

When my uncle chuckled low, I glanced at him and he adjusted his brimmed hat over his eyes. “The names are Special Agent in Charge Andy Monroe and his partner Special Agent Stillwaters. The same ones who tried to question Shanelle.”

“Humph,” was all I said in thought with my fingers pressed to my lips. Eventually, I spoke up after thinking. “Have Shanelle meet us near the station. I take it she’s there?”

“Of course. That girl is your shadow when she has to be in situations like this, nephew,” the old man stated in a tone that had pride in it.

“Good. Find out their life stories. We need ammo.”

“No doubt, nephew, I’m on that.” Uncle Snap whipped out his flip phone and he got to business. “Seems like it’s always something. Welcome to the game.”

The ride felt like forever, but once we pulled up and I pushed open the car door, reality hit hard. Shanelle quickly climbed in, and the car whipped around. The urgency in the air was thick. It had me reaching out to take Shanelle’s fisted hands in my own, and staring into her big brown eyes. My woman was pissed off. I saw that fury clear as day and it didn’t have to take reading the tension in her body, the locked jaw, the slightly flushed red of her skin, or the way her leg shook to tell that. I knew my girl. She was ready to kill.

“Debrief us, Shanelle,” I softly asked of her, holding her hand.

“They . . . they . . .” she stammered. “Baby? They kicked in Mama’s door and came at us hard. Roughed us up. A motherfucker put their knee in my back. I was pressed to the floor. They had Navy by the hair. Knocked Jojo’s glasses off his face and broke them. I know he can’t see shit.”

Shanelle bristled in her constrained anger then immediately went to detailing everything else that had happened. “We have to get them out.”

“You went in and tried?” I asked calmly when really I was ready to jump out of the car. They put hands on my family? They put hands on Shanelle?

“Yes, but they are playing stupid and won’t tell me if they will be released on bail,” she explained.

“Let’s go,” was all I said. I climbed out, helped Shanelle out, and walked near my uncle.

With a slap to my chest with his hand, Uncle Snap gave me a look that had me chilling for a second. “I’ll speak for them since I’m Jojo’s guardian now, and I’ll see if our lawyer is here,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” was all I had to say at that moment just to keep calm.

Once we stepped into the precinct I made sure to observe everyone. Cops and nobodies moved around us as if we were invisible. White noise indicated the busy atmosphere as people moved through the place. Stale cigarette smoke mixed with old coffee annoyed my senses. Then Shanelle bristled at my side as she squeezed my hand near her side.

Copping her from the side of my eye, I noticed her nod ahead of us. I wondered who she had noticed and a part of me hoped it was one of our family; but it wasn’t. When my gaze focused on an older white dude who reminded me of Andy Griffith, I grimaced. Next to him was his plump, Homer Simpson–looking friend.

“Stillwaters and Monroe,” she whispered to me, never breaking her poker face.

“Of course.”

I chuckled and it was as if they heard me, because both men looked our direction, locked eyes on Shanelle, then chuckled themselves. We watched them come our way. Uncle Snap was busy talking to a receptionist who played like she hadn’t seen Shanelle before or heard of our brothers.

“Ms. McPhearson, what a joy to see you again. Come to drop off more trash?” Stillwaters taunted.

“You know what? I will . . .” Shanelle made her way to him, but I stopped her by stepping in front of her, blocking her with my body.

Adjusting my blazer, I looked down at the floor and shook my head while inwardly chuckling at the disrespect. I knew that I was going to let Uncle handle this, but shit didn’t always go the way it was supposed to, now did it?

“Very unprofessional of you to taunt my fiancée like that. Aren’t we supposed to be on the level of showing why some cops’ lives matter? Huh?” I asked snidely, stepping close to Stillwaters while staring down at him.

That tension was back. Stillwaters took to his full height as if to intimidate me, but wasn’t shit I was scared about in the building, not even the fucking roaches hunting for doughnuts. So, we both stood glaring at each other. My jaw tensed and my lips curved in a slanted smile, taunting him.

“What did you say to him, McPherson? That sounded like a threat,” I heard the Andy Griffith lookalike say. Stillwaters smelled like beef jerky and ass.

Silence overcame me and I never took my eyes off Stillwaters while I ignored Monroe. All it would take was one snatch of his fucking windpipe and me falling on him to slice his throat, then lights out for his ass. That’s all it would take and I could kill him in a blink before anyone would even know it. Or, I could light him and his partner up with my Glock. No remorse for either kill. I’d say I was provoked and that it was self-defense. You know? Standing my ground. All he had to do was get froggy.

I knew I was thinking foolishly. No matter how angry I was, I knew I couldn’t harm a fed in a police station and get away with it.

“McPhearson, I know you’re angry about your brothers, but it would be ill advised to go head up with us in the middle of a police station, son,” he repeated, adding emphasis on the “son” as if to stir my already risin. . .