“That was beautiful,” Aquilla proclaimed when she modestly dropped the flute. “Can I see it?” Aquilla asked.
Kerri handed it over with a smile, happy that someone in her family finally appreciated the sophistication of the flute.
“May I?” she asked, dying to play. She couldn’t remember the last time she played. She missed it.
“Absolutely, do you play?” Kerri asked.
“A little,” Aquilla replied, just as unassertive as her aunt.
Aquilla brought the flute to her mouth and positioned her fingers. She closed her eyes and played, “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” from the movie “The Lion King.” It was breathtaking. Even Reese had tears in her eyes.
Aquilla was a little embarrassed when she blew the last long note. She hadn’t realized she had lost herself so deeply into the music.
“Aquilla, that was beautiful,” Liz exclaimed, wiping a tear.
“Thanks,” Aquilla said, handing the flute back to her Aunt Kerri.
“How did you learn to play like that?” Kerri asked.
“I had a teacher since I was seven. Have you ever heard of Randy Durban? I was taught by a nephew of his.”
“Randy Durban’s nephew taught you to play? It wasn’t Johnathan Durban, was it?”
“Yes. You know him?”
Kerri sat down with her hand over her heart. “Are you seriously telling me that Johnathan Durban taught you to play the flute?”
“Who’s Johnathan Durban?” Reese was the one to ask.
“Oh My God! He is the most amazing flute player in the world. I think he was even better than his uncle Randy.”
“Oh, me too, without a doubt,” Aquilla agreed with all eyes on her and Kerri, having no idea who they were so excited about.
“How in the world did you luck out?” she wanted to know.
Aquilla shrugged her shoulders. “I was only seven. I don’t really know how my father acquired him. He taught me from the time I was seven until I was fourteen. When we moved, I had another teacher, but he wasn’t near as talented as Johnathan was.”
“I cannot believe that Johnathan Durban was your teacher. This is crazy. That must have cost your ____ somebody a lot of money.”
“Yeah, probably,” Aquilla agreed with a sad tone. She didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It made her miss her father and Julius. She wanted to be back there. She wanted everything to go back to the way it was. She would never complain about being isolated, if only she could go back.
“I’m kind of tired. I think I’m going to turn in,” she announced and walked back toward the cabin alone.
Seri showered and joined her already in bed. “Do you want to read some of Julius’s writing?” she asked, crawling into bed beside Quill.
“No. I don’t want to think about that anymore. I want you to tell me about you. Make me think about something else.”
Seri took a deep breath. She wasn’t overly excited about going down memory lane either. “What do you want to know, Quill?”
“Where did you grow up?”
“In New York.”
“Do you have brothers or sisters?”
“I had a sister, Lakota. She died seven years ago.”
“I’m sorry, Seri. Where you close to her?”
“Very. We were raised by my Grandma Violet.”
“Where were your parents?”
“I never knew who my father was and my mother is serving a life sentence.”
“WHY!?!” Aquilla asked, shocked. She was expecting to hear how perfect her family was.
“She was a heroin addict. I was only two and Lakota was four. She gave birth to a baby boy and dumped him in an alley, wrapped in a trash bag.”
“Oh My God, Seri, are you serious?” Quill asked, sitting up with chills running down her spine and arms.
“I am,” Seri replied sitting up too. “Want to burn one?”
“Uh…Yeah,” Quill replied.
“Lock the door, and don’t you dare tell Monica on me,” Seri demanded as she moved to her bag. She instantly regretted her decision to let Quill smoke weed. She knew she shouldn’t. She knew she was enabling her. Just because she used it as an escape didn’t mean she should be teaching Quill her bad habits. She knew exactly why she did it. She thought of Quill like she thought of Monica. She didn’t see her as a 17 year old child. See saw her as a friend, a very good friend.
“Tell me what happened next,” Aquilla requested, taking the joint from Seri.
Seri laughed. “I don’t know what happened next. I told you I was two. I don’t remember any of that. I wouldn’t remember my mother had my grandma not had pictures. We went to live with her and she raised us.”
“How old was Lakota when she died?”
“She was twenty two,” Seri answered, hitting the joint.
“I have a feeling this is the part where you are going to tell me how you got involved with the FBI,” Quill assumed.
“I had just gotten my two year degree in criminal justice and was in police academy for maybe two weeks. I knew she was messing with drugs a little. I wasn’t too worried; I didn’t think she was into anything too dangerous. It was the people she was hanging with that should have had me worried.”
“Why?” Quill asked, intrigued with Seri’s story.
“They used her to pay off a debt.”
“What do you mean?”
“The leader of the pack, Felix Lopez, he owed a bunch of money for some cocaine that had gotten seized before he had a chance to disburse it and get the money. Lakota was beautiful. I swear that girl didn’t have one flaw.”
“You’re kind of beautiful,” Quill offered, still smoking on the joint.
Seri smiled over at her. “Thanks. Anyway, Lopez didn’t have the money to pay and offered my sister in exchange for half the payment.” Seri stood and walked to the window. “They fucking gang raped her and left her for dead. The authorities didn’t give a shit. They probably thought the world was better off. They made her out to be some street walking whore. She wasn’t, Quill. She was in college to be a nurse. She just ran into the wrong guy at the wrong time.”
“And you went after them?”
Seri nodded, hiding the roach in her bag. “Monica and I, both. I continued to go to police academy and she continued to work on her phycology degree. We spent every free minute we had learning these guy’s every move. Lopez was into more shit than either of us thought, kind of the same thing your father was into. He had mass quantities of drugs being brought into New York on an almost weekly basis.”
“When we finally had enough to go to the authorities, they laughed at us and sent us on our way. I wasn’t giving up. I wanted the little fucker to pay.”
“Is that what the vengeance means on your tattoo?”
Seri nodded and sat back on the bed with her.
“Did you kill someone, Seri?”
“Lots of someone’s, Quill, and I didn’t care. I didn’t and still don’t feel one ounce of remorse for what I did. I was going to make sure they never did to another girl what they did to my sister.”
“But how did you get Lopez? Did you kill him too?”
“No. I didn’t want him dead. I wanted him ass fucked in prison for the rest of his life. It only took a little over four months to get inside his apartment. That was crazy too. The guy lived in the hood. His apartment building looked like it needed to be demolished, but when you got to his eight floor apartment, it was fucking amazing, like you walked into a different world.”
“But how did you get to him? How did you end up in his apartment? I know how those guys work, remember? I lived with two of them. They don’t do the dirty work. They have lots of little gatekeepers keeping people like you away.”
“Aquilla…You just told me I was beautiful,” Seri said, batting her eyes.
Aquilla laughed. “And you used it,” she replied with more of a statement than a question.
“Yeah, it was cheesy as hell. I couldn’t get to the guy to save my
ass. I knew his every move. I knew what times, what days, where he ate, when women came and left his place. Hell, I even knew when and where his shipments were coming from, but I couldn’t get to him. I couldn’t go through any of his followers, they never really got to him either, and I had already disposed of most of them.”
“I feel like I’m watching a movie. My nerves are going crazy waiting to find out how you got to Lopez.”
Seri smiled at her. She freaking loved that girl. WHY? That was the question she couldn’t answer. “One afternoon, I was on his turf, wearing a hoody and dark sunglasses. I was leaned against a pole, pretending to be on my phone right in front of the bistro table that I knew he sat at every day. I listened as he made a call.
“Yo, bring me some pussy later on.”
“Seven.”
“I don’t give a fuck as long as she’s hot. I don’t want no skanks.”
“He was smart. He never stayed on the phone long enough to trace a call. Monica and I were smarter, well Tina was the smart one.”
“Tina?”
“Yeah, she was another friend that wanted no part of Monica’s and my revenge. She used my laptop at a public library and got into more records and illegal shit than I’m sure anyone could. She was the one that got the call trace down to forty five seconds. That is unheard of. She’s a freaking computer genius. If anyone can split atoms, it would be Tina.”
“Does Tina work for the FBI now too?”
“Yes, behind the scenes of course.”
“Did she help find my father?”
“She did,” Seri answered truthfully, wishing for the first time that she was never involved in finding Romano Chavez.
“If you’re so good at investigating, why didn’t you know about me?”
“I couldn’t get in that house to save my ass. I didn’t know about your father’s little chattel business. You didn’t come out of that house, or if you did, I never saw you.”
“How long were you there before it all went down? How long were you watching my house?”
“I was only there a couple of week’s right before we closed in.”
“I probably never came out then. When my father was nervous about something, he wouldn’t let me leave. That was the first day I was out of the house in weeks. He thought whatever was going on had died down and let me go.”
“Tina was the one to find about the chattel industry. She took some pictures of me and sent the application in from a small village in Romania.”
“Are you Romanian?”
“I have no fucking clue. My grandmother is Mexican and who knows what my father is.”
“Sorry, finish,” Aquilla said, wanting the rest of the story.
“Finish the story about Lopez or getting into being a chattel for your father?”
“I want to hear about Lopez, but I have one more question about that.”
“Okay.”
“How did Agent Dick Face get in there to be the one to pick you up?”
“Tina.” Seri offered. “He just magically appeared on there to be the one to buy me for three months. Julius didn’t like it. He ran him through a million questions in your father’s office. He was pissed that your father let an outsider come to your house. Of course, we knew where your father was and he wasn’t taking any calls. We knew Julius wouldn’t be able to talk to him and ask him about the man that he had no clue was in his home.”
“Did you fuck Agent Dick Face too?”
“No way, that’s fucking disgusting.”
Aquilla laughed. “So you were the pussy that was taken to Lopez’s that night?”
“Yes, that was the night it was all going to go down. Tina had traced the guy’s phone and Monica and I showed up at some nasty ass bar that afternoon. He thought he was going to get laid and then just about shit his pants when we flashed our fake FBI badges.”
Monica held him at gun point in a back room while I showed him the evidence of him being involved in the drug run. He was scared shitless. The guy even cried, telling us how disappointed his mama was going to be. We kept him in that room until it was time for Lopez’s pussy to arrive.”
“Which was going to be you?”
“Yup, but in the meantime, Tina had been working on a new wire device that was totally undetectable, something she found in China. Told you she was smart, anyway, I was wired the whole time I was talking to this loser and Tina had everything that was being said transmitted to my boss now, Houston.
We had no clue if it was going to work or not. He could have very well blown it off as some smart kids playing a sick joke. He knew that I would be in that apartment at seven o’clock that night. Whether he was going to show up with a team was the question.”
“Why didn’t you send it to the NYPD?”
“We were afraid they wouldn’t care. We had been to them several times. They wouldn’t help us, even after we discovered his drug cartel. They blew us off.”
“Okay, so you show up at his apartment with this thug.”
“Yes, Lopez buzzed us up and the guy turned and left. I was glad that he wanted me to come alone. I didn’t know if this guy would give me away. So, he left and I took the elevator to his floor. As soon as the doors were opened, I was met by two guys there to pat me down. I was fucking shitting my pants. I was terrified that they were going to find the wire hidden in a cheesy headband that I had worn. I didn’t have a gun, I knew better than that; it was the wire I was worried about.”
“You went in there without any protection? Weren’t you afraid of getting yourself killed?”
“I wasn’t afraid of that. I was willing to do what I had to do to get justice for Lakota. I had already accepted the fact that I may not come out alive.”
“Did you have to fuck him?”
Seri blew out a puff of air and shook her head. “Yeah, I did, Quill. I thought I was going to be sick. That was the worse fuck I have ever had in my life.”
“Have you fucked a lot?”
“Are we talking about my sex life or Lopez here?” Seri asked.
Aquilla laughed. “Sorry, were talking about Lopez.”
“By that time, I knew the feds weren’t coming. I wanted them to be there before I had to do that. Unbeknownst to me, they were there. Monica had talked them out of raiding the place just yet. She knew that I would get him talking. Don’t ask me how she knew that, I didn’t even know that.”
“How did she talk them out of raiding the place right then?”
Seri shrugged her shoulders. “Monica can talk a dog into fucking a cat.”
“Yeah, I get that. I swore I wasn’t talking to her and she had me talking about feelings”
“You have those?” Seri teased.
“Fuck you. What happened next?”
“Luck, we were in his room getting it on and he wanted me to bend over the back of a chair in his room when I saw the gun. He laughed and told me that it wasn’t loaded when I pointed it at his head. I was never so scared in my life. I stood naked in front of him shaking like a fucking earthquake.
I moved the gun and shot him in the foot. He dropped to the floor, giving me the opportunity check the chamber. I had three bullets, enough to make it out alive. That’s when I relaxed and remembered what I was there for. My nerves shifted gears and I was pissed, thinking about Lakota and what he put her through.
“Do you remember Lakota Strokes, you maggot?”
“Nope, don’t know any Lakota Strokes,” he smirked, holding his foot.
“Let me remind you,” Seri said, pointing the gun at his head.
He tried to grab it and I kicked him in the face.
“You used her to pay off a debt. You watched while she was gang raped by nine men. You shot her in the head when they were done with her. Ring any bells, fucker?”
“Oh, yeah, I do remember her. Hmmm, fine piece of ass, she was. You didn’t want her back after that. She would have been too fucked up. She was better off. It makes my dick hard thinking about those scared fucking eyes, look
ing up, and begging me not to kill her.”
“Oh, my God, Quill. Hearing him say that was like watching a tsunami coming toward me with nowhere to go. The thought of her lying naked on that cold, concrete floor in that dark warehouse flooded me like a mother fucker. I started shaking again, and he knew I was breaking. Thank God Houston burst in with his men once he had heard the gunshot through my wire.
He took the gun from my shaking hands and someone covered me with a trench coat. I spent the next three days locked in a room while being interrogated by none other than Houston himself.”
“And let me guess. He was so impressed with your work, he wanted you?”
“Yes. That pretty much sums it up. They had been after this guy for three years straight, and one little 20 year old kid brought him down for vengeance. I’ve been chasing bad guys ever since. I never even finished my schooling.”
“Do you like what you do?”
“No. Not so much. This wasn’t what I had in mind. I wanted to work with kids who were trending down the wrong path and help steer them in a better direction. I wanted to be a juvenile probation officer.”
Aquilla lay down and Seri followed right behind her.
“Seri?” Aquilla quietly said in the dark.
“Yeah?”
“You’re going to leave me in one more day.”
“Yeah, but I’m always going to be your girl. You’re stuck with me for life now.”
Aquilla fell asleep with a smile and a new sense of respect for Seri. She wasn’t the spoiled little rich kid that she had presumed her to be. She had a rough life without a mother or a father. She lost her only sister to a horrific murderer. She was as fucked up as Quill.
Chapter 15
“Either we finish reading today or I am taking your computer home with me tomorrow,” Seri warned as they dressed for breakfast the next morning.
“Let’s take it down to the lake after we eat,” Aquilla offered.
Aquilla had breakfast with the entire family out on the deck. She didn’t realize that her aunt, uncle and two cousins would be joining them, along with her grandparents. She wanted to leave and go sit in the sun with Seri and Julius. She didn’t want to entertain.