The Syndicate 3

Genres: African American Urban

Synopsis

When Claudette McPhearson died, she left eight foster children to fend for themselves after they discovered the truth about her secret life. She was the leader of the Syndicate, a criminal enterprise that had a stronghold on the underworld. Much to her children’s chagrin, it was up to one of them to step up and take the lead. Javon, her oldest and most trusted son, took on that mantle. It was a role he had never wanted, but with threats to his family coming from every direction, he had no choice. 

One year later, Javon has taken the Syndicate to the next level. Javon seems untouchable, and the Syndicate can’t be stopped, but as it grows, it draws attention. This time, it’s from the Commission, the ruling body of the world’s most dangerous mafias.

“You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” comes into play as the Old Italian needs Javon’s help. The Commission has been threatened, and they call on the Syndicate for reinforcements. The Syndicate aims to help its allies, but the past comes knocking at the McPhearsons’ door. With everything coming full circle, Javon will find that not everyone can be trusted, and ghosts from the past always have a way of coming back to haunt you.

Release date: October 31, 2017

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

The cries of a baby woke me up in the middle of the night. Life in the McPhearson household had changed drastically. It had been one whole year since our foster mother, Claudette McPhearson, had been gunned down on the street. One whole year since we’d found out she was not the woman we had thought she was. On the day of our mother’s funeral, we found out that she had been the leader of a crime ring called the Syndicate. Since then, our lives had played out like a crime mob or gangster movie.

Mama Claudette had raised us like we were her own children, all the while giving us the skills we would need to control one of the biggest criminal enterprises since the Commission, which had been the governing body of the top five mafia families in New York at one time. It had been a hard pill to swallow for those first few days—hell, for those first few months—but we’d done it. Javon had done it.

In a few short days after learning the truth of who Mama Claudette was, Javon had taken the Syndicate and turned it on its head. He’d taken out the Irish, who, we’d initially thought, put the hit out on Mama, and had brought in the Commission to have a seat at the table. My husband was a mastermind, and Mama Claudette had known this, which was why she’d tagged him to be the one to take her place.

I frowned as I sat up. I threw my legs over the side of the bed and instantly regretted not sleeping with socks on. The floor was as cold as ice. I yawned as the baby’s wails got louder. I looked behind me and almost jumped out of my skin. Javon’s eyes were planted right on me.

“Jesus Christ,” I whispered, laying a hand on my chest. “I thought you were sleeping.”

He grunted. Yawned. Scratched at his nuts. “I was until that baby started wailing.” His voice was low and guttural and told of how tired he was.

I’d found out I was three months pregnant shortly after finding out one of our foster sisters, Melissa, had been the one to set Mama Claudette up to be killed.

“I don’t know why she’s crying,” I said. “I fed her and changed her—”

“That’s not our kid,” he said.

I furrowed my brows in confusion. I was still halfway asleep, so I didn’t readily get what he was saying.

“Huh?”

“That’s not Honor crying,” he said as he slowly sat up.

I watched the muscles in his back as he stood from the bed. He looked tense as he rolled his shoulders and lolled his head from side to side. The sinewy muscles in his back rolled and coiled. His ass was tight with muscles. Thighs flexed powerfully with each stride. He walked over to my rocker and snatched up his linen pajamas.

“That’s Justice,” he sighed.

I flipped the light switch on and got my senses about me. As I listened, I realized it was our niece wailing at the top of her lungs and not our daughter. Javon turned to look at me. I looked at the clock. It was 3:00 a.m., and most of us who had chosen to keep living in Mama Claudette’s house had things to do later that Monday morning. A crying baby ruined everyone’s sleep.

“You know that means that in about five minutes we’re about to hear Jojo and Dani arguing,” he said.

I nodded. It was a sad situation to see my little brother end up with a girl—I refused to call that bitch a woman—who wanted to do any and everything but be a mother. I didn’t like to be one of those women who judged other women, but Dani had gotten with my brother when he was sixteen and she was grown and in college. That would forever make her ain’t shit in my eyes.

But one year and a three-month-old baby later, she was proving to be exactly what I thought she was: a nothing-ass bitch.

“Go get her, Shanelle,” Javon said.

I snapped my head back around to look at him like he’d lost his mind. My upper lip twitched. “Say what?” I asked.

“Go get her. If they’re about to start their bullshit, Justice doesn’t need to be in there with them,” he said.

I shook my head, ready to put up a fight. This had been the routine far too many times. I had our own daughter to think of, and she would no doubt wake up soon because of the noise. “I’m not about to take on—” I started, then stopped.

Javon stood to his full height, then took a deep breath. Annoyance was in his eyes when he looked at me. He’d gotten fitter over the last year as well. He’d always taken care of himself, but over the last year he’d cut most meats from his diet. He ate a lot of raw fruits and vegetables and worked out more than ever. His chest and arms were sculpted, and his abs contracted and released with each breath he took.

“Look, I know I’m asking you to do something you don’t want to do, but I don’t want to hear that tonight. I’d have liked to sleep through the night, but that’s not going to happen obviously. I told Jojo I’d let him handle his own business with Dani, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to subject Justice to their bullshit. So, will you get her for me?”

I let out a deep breath while staring my husband down. Clearly, he wasn’t in the mood for any back-and-forth. I could tell by the way he quirked a brow at me and tilted his head. I wanted to cuss him out; I really did. But Javon was good to me, and I never wanted for anything materially or emotionally. So I swallowed down my annoyance and headed to Jojo’s room. I did stop in the nursery to check on Honor, our baby girl, who was still on her back, fast asleep. I closed the door before knocking on Jojo’s door.

He didn’t tell me to come in, but since Justice was screaming at the top of her lungs, I let myself in, anyway. I was surprised the door wasn’t locked. The room was messier than Dani normally kept it. Clothes were hanging from hampers. Bottles were strewn about. The smell of a dirty diaper assaulted my senses.

Dani was coming from the closet when I entered the room. In her hand was a duffel bag, and she was dressed in an Adidas tracksuit. Her curly hair sat unruly on her head. She stopped abruptly when she saw me, then ran a hand through her hair nervously. I looked toward the window, where Jojo was sitting in a rocking chair with Justice. His back was to me as the chair moved backward and forward slowly.

“What’s going on?” I asked no one in particular.

“Um . . . I’m leaving,” Dani said.

“Where are you going at three in the morning?”

“I don’t know. I’ll figure it out,” she said. “I just need to get away from here.”

I looked down at the duffel bag, then around the room, and noticed she hadn’t packed any of Justice’s things. When I looked back at her, she had a defiant look in her eyes. My eyes narrowed, and I had to count to keep my temper in check.

“Don’t even start, Shanelle. Since I been here, you been shitty toward me. You ain’t want me here no way. So, you should be happy I’m leaving,” she said.

I kept my voice as calm as I could when I asked, “What about your daughter?”

Dani glanced around, switched her weight from one foot to the other. “She gon’ be all right. Jojo got her. I mean, at least until I get myself together.”

“He’s eighteen, Dani. He’s in school. He’s working. You can’t leave him here to take care of a baby by himself,” I said coolly.

“Well, I got shit to do too. And I’m sick of fighting with him and sick of that baby crying. I need a break. I need some time to myself,” she said, agitation in her tone.

“You didn’t think about before—”

“Let her go, Shanelle.” Jojo’s voice came out low and even, but there was no life in his tone. He sounded defeated.

It damn near broke my heart. I couldn’t see his face, but the fact that it sounded as if he had resigned himself to his fate told me this had been a long time coming. My little brother knew me well, because I didn’t have any intentions of letting Dani walk out of here so easily.

I wanted to shove that bitch’s face into a wall, and she knew it. That was why she stayed a few feet away from me.

“Will you move so I can leave?” Dani asked loudly.

I knew she was being loud so either Uncle Snap or Javon would come in. They were the only two who could stop me from beating her ass. The nerves in my hands ticked, I wanted to punch Dani so badly. And I probably would have punched her, but something told me the last thing Jojo needed was for her and me to fight right now. I stepped to the side just as I heard Uncle Snap’s bedroom door open.

Dani eased past me like she was walking through a field of land mines. She got to the threshold, then looked back at Jojo. “I’ll be back . . . one day. I just need some time to think and clear my head,” she said.

“What’s going on?” Uncle Snap asked, his voice groggy, as he rounded the corner.

I glanced up to see he was in cotton pajamas and was pulling a T-shirt over his head.

“Bye, Dani,” Jojo drawled. “I love you.”

Dani rolled her shoulders. Her brows furrowed, and she chewed on her bottom lip. For a moment, her eyes darted back and forth like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to leave or stay. Then she snatched up the car keys that were lying on the dresser and quickly made her way downstairs.

“What the fuck is going on?” Uncle Snap snapped, his voice louder and clearer than before.

I walked over to Jojo. My baby brother was staring straight ahead, tears rolling down his face, but there was not one bit of emotion in his eyes. He looked as if he was somewhere else. Justice had stopped crying. Her small hand was on Jojo’s tearstained cheek, and she gazed up at him like she knew he needed her to chill in that moment. I reached down to take her from his arms. For a minute he stiffened; then, once realizing it was me, he loosened his grip. I signaled for Uncle Snap to go back into the hall; then I left the room and closed the door behind me.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” I said to him. “But Dani just made my little brother a single father.”

Uncle Snap scratched his head, then frowned. Downstairs, I heard Javon. Now, to a normal person, Javon being downstairs would be confusing, since I’d left him in the bedroom, but with all the secret passages we’d found in Mama Claudette’s home, it was safe to assume he had used the closet in our bedroom to get downstairs.

“Leave the keys,” Javon said to Dani.

“Why? It’s my car, and I wanna leave,” she whined.

“It’s Jojo’s car, which we allowed you to use since you’re Justice’s mother, but if you’re about to run off on your responsibilities, it won’t be in a ride this family funded,” Javon told her.

“You have to be fucking kidding me! So, because I don’t want that nigga anymore—”

I heard the front door open, and then Javon said, “You were leaving, right?” cutting off her tirade.

There was silence. I heard a car zoom by. Loud music rattled the windows of the house.

Dani tried to explain again. “I just need—”

Javon cut her off again. “The keys, Dani. I need the keys, and then you can be on your way.”

I could tell by the no-nonsense tone in Javon’s voice that he had very little patience. That must have shocked Dani. Javon had always been the nice one. I smirked. While I was pissed off she had hurt my little brother, she would get the perks of being attached to a McPhearson no longer.

I walked downstairs with Justice cradled in my arms. Javon shoved the door closed behind Dani. He cast his eyes in my direction before looking at Justice.

“She’s going to need you more now than ever,” he said.

Uncle Snap came down behind me, then sighed. “I knew that gal was fickle, but I didn’t think she’d run off and leave her baby,” he said.

Javon asked me, “Jojo cool?”

Justice cooed in my arms. “I’m not sure. He was staring straight ahead, looking out the window, with tears running down his face,” I answered. “Maybe he’s in shock.”

I replayed the exchange between me and Dani for them, then told them how detached Jojo had been.

“I saw it coming,” Javon said. “She hasn’t been behaving very motherly. She does the least for Justice when left alone with her. When Jojo comes home, she pushes the baby off on him before hitting the streets. I just felt something in the air tonight, and I was right.”

I shook my head. It finally clicked for me that once again Javon had picked up on something between them that I hadn’t. I mean, I knew they were having problems. They had been since the girl moved in here, but I in no way had thought she would abandon them.

I left Uncle Snap and Javon to talk about how they would help Jojo. I headed upstairs to get Justice back to sleep. It didn’t take long once she had been fed and changed. I put her next to Honor and smiled. I wouldn’t have thought a year ago that I’d be a wife or a mother, but there I was.

Honor slept peacefully in a red onesie, while Justice wore purple. They were beautiful brown babies with masses of curly hair, and I’d do anything to keep them safe. As soon as that thought crossed my mind, the phone rang. My spine stiffened, because it wasn’t my phone or Javon’s phone. It was the private line, which meant it was Syndicate business. I guess I wouldn’t have been so concerned about it if it weren’t at that time of the night. Someone ringing that line now meant there was an emergency.

I closed the nursery door, then headed to the bedroom just as Javon was entering it.

“Talk,” he barked into the phone. I watched quietly as his facial expression moved from anger to shock. “What?” he asked. “When?”

He turned to look at me with something akin to panic in his eyes. “I’ll be there,” he said. He hung up the phone.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Yo, Uncle Snap?” Javon called out the door, ignoring me for the moment. Then he rushed into the closet, popped the light on, then started tossing clothes onto the bed.

“Javon, baby, what’s going on?” I asked again.

“What up, nephew?” Uncle Snap asked, sticking his head in the door.

Javon glanced at me, then at Uncle Snap. “Get dressed. We need to head to New York. It’s an emergency.” Then to me, he said, “Someone killed Cavriel, and the old man was shot. Lucky says it was a hit on Cavriel, and they think it was a botched hit on Luci. Absolan is missing.”

Cavriel, Absolan, and the old man, Luciano, were the heads of the Commission, which was the governing body of the mob back in New York. I’d given them a seat at the table of the Syndicate in exchange for their connections and the protection they could bring us.

“Oh, shit,” Uncle Snap said. He left our room quickly.

I asked Javon. “What does this mean?”

“I don’t know,” Javon said as he pulled on a pair of jeans. “I won’t know much of shit until I get to New York.”

My heart raced, slammed into my chest. I thought about our daughter, our family. For a year now, Javon had managed to come out alive after every attempt to dismantle the Syndicate. However, if someone was aiming for the Commission, that was something else altogether.

“Mama?” Young Snap stood holding open the screen door for me.

Hotter than a hooker walking past a church, I swatted at a lone mosquito, then whipped my brow. It took me a moment to realize that he was watching with a curious look in his brown gaze. But once I did, I brushed off the rise of emotions in my spirit. I defiantly tilted my chin up. My whole body language was coded in a big “You hurt me, bitch,” that only the figure behind the screen understood. Snap or Miss Jenkins, they’d see me only as being icy and posturing.

“Thank you, Ralph,” I said in a manner that only he could hear, then walked up the cement steps that led into the screened porch.

Once in front of eyes that matched my own, eyes set in a diamond-shaped face that was common to the people in my family, I carefully removed my lace gloves, then moved for Snap, who now had our bags in his hand.

“Deedee,” I said with disdain.

“Sista,” she returned in a reserved tone.

Everything in me said to slap the taste from her mouth. Because this was my eldest sister, the desire to hit her with the side of my pistol was an automatic no-no, but there was another fact going on. As the sun poured into the porch, I could see my elder sister for the first time in almost eight years. The fact that she was still as glamorous as she had been when I last saw her didn’t surprise me.

Deedee was three years my senior and known in the family as the carefree one. So much so that she had hopped on the first train ride outta Creek Town to see the world, ending up in Europe and breaking her promise to me by leaving me behind. My sista never used to think of herself until that day. As I looked up at where she stood on the porch, the corners of my lips dropped into a deep scowl.

Deedee’s black hair was in a mess of teased curls that had been pulled up in a side ponytail, which made the curls fall like waves over her shoulders. Her makeup was done in a neutral, fresh face look, while the hands that rested on her wide hips were accented with sharp pink nails. Again, nothing in how she looked surprised me; however, what did surprise me was the slight roundness to her stomach, one that indicated not that she had gained weight but that she was carrying life.

When my gaze ripped from her stomach, then up to her face, white-hot anger could be seen in my eyes.

“You let him knock you up?” I all but yelled.

Deedee gave a light chuckle, not answering my question. My bitch of a big sister turned her back on me, then disappeared inside of the family house. On her arms, I saw bruises and the half-moon marks of fingernails that had dug into flesh. Deedee made no damned sense to me. Accepting a beat down by a lowlife of a nigga was not something Big Papa Haynes had raised us to accept. Yet here I was, staring at marks on my sister, along with a swollen belly.

“Don’t walk away from me.” The rage in my voice made Snap briefly look my way. When I realized that he was still there, I gave a sharp sigh and pointed inside. “Gawn inside. My room is the last one near the kitchen. Unless that fat cow changed it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Snap gently said, looking my way. “Can I help ya in any way?”

“Just put my bags up, go to the kitchen, get chu one of them mason glasses, and pour yaself some sweet tea. I need to have a private moment, a’ight?”

There was something hidden in the way Snap looked at me. It made nerves spark up in my stomach, something that I did my damnedest to push back, because I didn’t want to confront what they could possibly mean. Or confront the way Snap sometimes watched me.

When he said, “Yes ma’am,” and nothing else, I gave a sigh of relief.

Once Snap went inside, I rolled my shoulders, then walked into the house our great-grandfather had built. Inside was the same as it had always been when I was but a child. Fresh smelling, except for the scent of cooked bacon, with a welcoming, warm feeling. Over the mantel was our grandmother’s old shotgun. Above that, was the porter hat that belonged to our grandfather. Hanging on a brick wall near the white bookshelf and record player corner was a picture of black Jesus and a fading family photo.

Mama’s rocking chair was still by the fireplace. Daddy’s smoke pipe still sat on the side table, as if he was about to pick it up and give it a nice puff. Memories played in my mind. The echoes of children laughing back when I was innocent, and not the killer I would become, made me take in the tiny house until reality settled back in and had my anger blazing.

“Deedee,” I shouted.

“Girl, if you don’t calm all that mess.”

I spun around to see Deedee sitting on the couch, staring at the occasionally jumpy reception on the TV. From what I could see, she was watching Soul Train.

“I woulda told ya on the phone, but you hung up on me.”

Annoyed, I walked up to her and dropped my purse on the coffee table. “Of course, I did. You had just told me your monkey-ass, piece-of-trash nigga had raped our goddaughter. Yet you sit here, swollen with his child?”

“You jealous?” Deedee looked up with a smirk.

Pain was reflected in my eyes. It made me freeze where I stood, as if the wind had been knocked from my gut. Then everything happened fast. My hand whipped out on its own and landed against the side of my sister’s face.

“Bitch, I might not be able to whup ya ass because of that baby, but I’ll for damn sure beat the breaks off your face.” My nails scraped at my sister’s face.

The instinct in me made me pull out. . .