Blood Abandon (Donald Holley Book 1) (5 page)

My brother had set me up.
But why?

It was an extensive lie; there were so many details he had to have covered correctly, and he probably would have put it over on someone else; hell, he had almost done it to me. All of my analytical thinking had been mitigated when it came to thinking of supporting my brother. I had gotten into this so deep, and now...it was a setup.

No cartel.

No street gang.

No missing money...he just wanted mine.

And until now, I had taken him at his word with the story, not checking things out for myself.

I wanted to kick myself for telling him I had the money there in the house in the safe. He had probably developed a scheme prior that would have made me pull it out of some account and transfer it to another, but this had made things way easier for him. If it weren’t me he was running the scheme on, and it weren’t my brother, I would probably be impressed with him. Right underneath my eyes, Gerald “2-Bit” Holley had grown into an actual, cold-blooded criminal. If he could do it to his brother, then he had become something else.

And the murders in those homes...they were barbaric, brutal...could he have done that? Or was that the work of his partner, 'Oscar', or whatever his real name was? He had also been a good actor in the homes, and on the phone...I had never even questioned any of it. It was impressive, in spite of the crushing weight I now felt.

I tried to pace my breathing. I had to have a level head, and not let him realize that I knew what was happening. I pulled my SIG Sauer from my coat, inspected the silencer, checked the magazine, made sure a bullet was in the chamber, and was satisfied that all was in order. I put the gun back in my coat pocket and turned on my vehicle, and spun around and headed back home. I couldn’t trust my brother, but I could trust my gun.

Chapter Eight

I pulled in my garage, and hit the
remote, closing door behind me. I sat in my vehicle for a few seconds, trying to clear my head. I took a deep breath, thinking about the despair I felt, like something was pulling me down toward the floor from inside of my chest. This was an uncommon feeling for me, and I realized in that moment that the fact that it was uncommon to feel it was depressing in its own right. I had figured long ago if I were to undergo some clinical analysis, a profiler might suggest I was a sociopath, though I would disagree due to the affection and love I felt toward my brother. He was all I had in the world, and now...I couldn’t think about that from an emotional standpoint now. I had to be smart.

I entered the house through the garage, and made my way to the kitchen. As I rounded the corner into the kitchen, that’s when I saw Bit with his gun pointed at me. His face was devoid of any emotion. “Pull your gun out slowly from your coat and set it on the counter,” he said.

I put my hands up slowly, and reached into my coat, feeling for the grip.
Are you fuckin’ serious…? One step ahead, again.
“Okay,” I said. I pulled the weapon out slowly, and sat it on the counter next to me. That’s when I heard steps behind me and a gloved hand reached out around me and picked it up. I felt the cool touch of a gun put to the back of my skull.

“You fucked up,
ese.”

I kept my hands up. “How did you know that I knew?” I asked my brother.

“When you decided to leave without me. Coincidentally, Oscar was nearby, so I called him in.”

Bit smiled wanly, and motioned for Oscar to step around over next to him. The
Hispanic man was in his late twenties, a little less than six feet tall, and had a wispy mustache, slick hair and hard eyes. He was lean and cagey looking; he was the type of guy who had a mean streak. I figured he was the one who had murdered the men from Bit’s crew.

“What happens now, brother, is that you pull out all of the money in the safe, put it in a bag, and give us your vehicle.” He motioned toward me with the gun. “Let’s get to it.”

They put me in front of them, hands interwoven behind my head, and walked me down the hall to my bedroom. The safe was in my closet, and was mounted into the wall. I put my hands down, opened the closet, and walked in. I cleared the section of suits and dress clothes hanging in front of it. I turned around to face them.

“Open it,” Bit said.

I looked at my brother; he looked like someone I did not know, and never had. All the compassion and love for me was gone from his eyes. I wondered what had happened.

“I will, but you have to answer some things for me first,” I said.

“I don’t have to do a damn thing for you,” he replied. “Now, open the fucking safe.”

“You are going to answer me first.” I pointed at the safe. “This safe cost one-hundred thousand dollars. If you kill me, you don’t get in it without extreme trouble. You bring in more people to help you
and you have to split the money more ways.” I watched their faces. “Your choice. Answer some questions, I’ll open it. If you don’t, shoot now, and do your best with it.”

Oscar pursed his lips. “Fuck your brother, man. Pop this fool and
let’s get that shit and roll out.”

Bit just looked at me; it was more a look of irritation than anything. “Okay, ask your question.”

“There’s more than one,” I said.

“Well you can only start with one, so
let’s get to this shit,” he rasped. Oscar held his gun on me; Bit put his by his side. I did not see my gun, so I figured it was still back in the kitchen.

“Why didn’t you just ask me for money?” I asked. “I would have helped you.”

Bit retorted with a light chuckle. “Oh, you would have given me a million dollars if I asked for it? I’m sure you are that charitable.” He snorted, looked over at Oscar. “Can you believe this guy?” He looked back at me. “The fucking nerve you have.

“My whole life, it’s always been about you. You were older, you were smarter, you were this,
and you were that. I was ‘two-bit’, the dummy of the two of us. That’s how you always treated me, and look how things are now. You never gave me my due; I was always a second class citizen to you. And that’s what has you in this predicament now,” he said.

I couldn’t believe this. I had never noticed these feelings, but it made sense.

“It was so easy to set you up, because of course you would believe I would fuck something up,” he continued. “Of course, I would need my big brother, who’s only two years older, mind you, to come and save me from myself.” He laughed. “That was easier than fishing with dynamite. You went right for it and even talked down to me the whole time as I had expected.”

“Bit, I was trying to help you-

“Shut the fuck up, Donnie. You asked; I’m answering.” He no longer resembled the bummy surfer type of guy I was used to seeing as my brother; he was changing, metamorphosing into something entirely different. “Not so dumb, am I now?” he asked rhetorically.

“If you were trying to make your point, you’ve made it,” I said.

“Too late for that, Donnie.” He lifted his gun back up.

“I’m your brother,” I offered, trying to keep him off his guard. “I love you, Gerald. I’m sorry you’ve been hurt by my actions. I’ll try to do better.”

“What did I just say? It’s too late for all that. You aren’t shit to me; I just want the money.”

Oscar looked over at Bit when he said that, and that’s when I rushed Oscar.

***

There was a deafening roar of gunshots as I tackled Oscar to the floor; Bit turned and jumped into the fray, trying to peel us apart. A wave of nausea hit me as Oscar and I fought for purchase with one another. I clawed at Oscar’s eyes as he screamed, and just as I was getting the upper hand, I felt hard blow to the side of my head and the world went black.

***

I awoke from a hard slap to the face; I found Bit and Oscar standing over me, their body language extremely agitated. A terrible pain registered in my gut, and I looked down to see a
large, dark oval spot on the right side of my lower abdomen. One of them had shot me.

“Open the fucking safe, now!” Bit hissed. “We don’t have time for this shit.”

I felt dizzy. “Why, you don’t want to do it on your own after I die?”

Oscar kneeled down in front of me. I was slumped against the safe. Blood was out over the edge of my pants, slowly running down into my lap. He grabbed my chin, and looked right in my eyes. “
Puto, I can make what's left of your life very, very painful. You’ll wish you had opened that safe long before you did,” he said. Looking in his eyes, I could tell he meant what he said. Somewhere in the back of my thoughts I had this idea that he probably would have been very good at my job with the same training I had received.

As my brother stood above watching, I could see he was no longer my brother. He was just a bad man now, in a world full of them. He was the one person in the world I cared about deeply, and that had not been good enough. Looking at it, maybe we weren’t so different after all. I had strongly underestimated him.

“I’m not going to open the safe, no matter what you do,” I said.

My brother looked at me, clearly annoyed. Oscar withdrew a knife from his waistband. As he was getting ready to put it to my stomach, Bit fired two shots into the back of Oscar’s head, blowing brain matter out the front of his skull onto my clothes and the wall and floor around me. I gasped a deep breath, and wiped my face, the thunderous boom still ringing in my ears. I looked up at him, my vision blurry.

“I never did care for silencers,” he said, calmly. “Besides, even as things are, I couldn’t let him torture you. You are my brother, after all.” He flashed a devilish grin.

“Do what you are going to do, Gerald.” I said. “It’s only a matter of time before the cops are here.”

“Ah, Gerald, now, is it?” he said. “No more ‘Bit’?”

I exhaled, the blood loss wearing me down. I was in shock.

“No more ‘Bit’,” I said. “You are you own man, now.”

“Well then, this relationship has come full circle. It is time to be on my way.”

And then my brother Gerald pointed his gun at me and fired.

Chapter Nine

I was released from the University
of North Carolina Hospitals in Chapel Hill one month to the day from when Gerald had shot me. I shuffled slowly out the front exits, the pain still pretty intense, looking for a taxi in the midday sun. I was gaunt, having lost thirty pounds; by all accounts, I shouldn’t have survived the shooting. The surgeon who had operated on me in the emergency room that January night said that I had a bullet lodged in my stomach that had bounced around and caused some pretty intensive internal damage. The second bullet had entered my chest, missing my heart by a quarter of an inch. Even so, they had been able to surgically repair the damaged organs. The surgeon said that though he was hard pressed to believe in such things, what had happened could be a miracle. I thanked him for his efforts. My neighbors had called 911 after the first shots and even though I had lost a tremendous amount of blood, the ambulance and paramedics had arrived quickly enough to stabilize me.

As I stood out in front of the hospital, waiting for a taxi to take me home, I thought of what my next move would be. As a contract employee
, I had no health insurance. I could only imagine what a month’s stay in the hospital, on top of major surgery, was going to cost me. I needed work, and soon.

And then there was the matter of my brother.

On the cab ride home, I thought about something that had transpired while in the hospital.

I had been visited by two detectives who tag-teamed me with questions. They wanted answers for the dead man in my house. I told them that I believed it was a home invasion gone
bad. After all, my safe had been removed. They didn’t ask about my gun, so I figured that my brother had taken it on the way out. I kept no other guns in my house, so that was a stroke of luck.

“Mr. Holley, we know you are a convicted felon. Do you own any guns?”

“No sir,” I answered the first one.

“So why was there one dead guy in there?” the other detective asked.
             

“His partner killed him; kept the money for
himself, I guess.”

“Did you know these men?” the first one asked.

“Never seen them before,” I replied. They didn’t buy it, but they had nothing at this point that made any sense other than a home invasion.

“Okay Mr. Holley, take our cards. Call us if you think of anything.”

“Sure thing, sirs,” I said.

***

At home, I sat on the edge of my bed, looking into my closet. There was ripped-out drywall around the cutout where the safe had been. I wondered if Gerald had been able to get into it. Seeing as how I had underestimated him before, and knowing what type of money was within, he would find a way. My Tahoe had not been recovered yet, either. I tried to think about where he might have gone, but that was fruitless in my current condition. Worst of all, somewhere along the way, I had lost my work cellphone. I had had no communication with my employers in a
month’s time, and how I left things prior was not a good thing. I wasn’t one to feel overwhelmed, but I put my head in my hands. No tears came, even if I wanted them. I wasn’t sure I was capable of crying anymore.