I cringed before I kissed the top of her head where she had pointed, making her smile through the stress etched on her face. She was painting a picture so vivid I felt a touch of her pain creeping into me. The notion that the metal plate may have explained a bit of her crazy made me smile.
The sheer volume of physical violence inflicted on her defined a large part of why she was so determined and hard-charging. The list of injuries she named would have kept some of the strongest men I knew in that dumpster.
“Raymond came to visit me in the hospital only once, and he had the nerve to ask me if I had allowed the distro money to be taken. My cousins Raymond and Rayland came to see me a few times, but the one person that was by my side every day was Desiree. She flashed the hospital staff one of the fake ID’s we’d gotten made to sneak into clubs, telling them she was eighteen so she could stay with me. She ended up missing nearly a month of school because she refused to leave my side. We had always been close, although she was more into school and art, and I was into the streets. But, having someone be there when I was at my lowest, at my weakest, meant everything, and it’s one of the reasons she and I have always remained close.”
Her and Desiree’s relationship reminded me of me and Khane’s.
“Once I was released from the hospital, I became obsessed with finding the guys who had jumped me. My uncle tried to get the information out of me so that he could find them, but I kept my mouth shut because I was determined to avenge myself. It took months, but I found them, stalked them, and added them to my body count. No one ever knew how they died, or why, because I never told a soul, until you.”
The knowledge of that revelation chilled me to the bone. It wasn’t that she’d killed. It was that it wasn’t forced on her, but something that she had chosen.
“I think that was the birth of quiet chaos,” I whispered more to myself than her.
She flashed a weak smile at my statement. “I guess you can say that. The notion that I could kill and get away with it wasn’t the surprising part. I’d been witness to a number of murders and still know the murderers to this day. The thing that bothered me the most, was that I didn’t have any guilt about it.
“I’d heard so many times that once you take a life, the dead haunts you, but for me, it wasn’t like that. It was like once my mind was convinced that they had done something wrong enough to be dead, guilt didn’t register. I started to think that I was turning into a monster and even at that age, I feared what I might become. However, I was more afraid that I would end up a statistic after witnessing countless Black Saints, and others die young and senselessly.”
She paused and all I could think was, please keep going.
“After the attack and my retaliation, I think I had an epiphany. I started soaking up knowledge, reading anything I could get my hands on, and volunteering at businesses in exchange for information. I searched for training on how to fight and defend myself. I volunteered for boot camps and took self-defense classes. I was like a sponge soaking up anything that could give me an advantage over an enemy. Raymond was the first to tell me that I was wasting my time, until he noticed the results of my self-imposed training.
“The Black Saints I worked with had always given me a certain level of respect, because I was always grinding and being dragged through the same trenches as they were. They started noticing the way I handled myself in a fight, handled a weapon, and even speaking like I was about something. I started gaining respect, a lot of it, to the point where they were asking me to train them.”
The knowledge gave me more insight on the relationship she had with her men.
“Raymond gave me my first test the day I turned sixteen. He sat me down and planned out a mission that involved me taking out one of his enemy. When I completed the mission without a hitch, I became Raymond’s secret weapon.